The Productivity scam - Measure Of Misfortune
"The whole (productivity) thing is an elaborate scam, because what is presented as a value-free study by sober social scientists is actually a struggle over the distribution of national income." George P. Brockway, Economists Can Be Bad For Your Health
A recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal, by Thomas Donlan, "Laboring In Liberty" states "the ongoing weakening of union power continues to strengthen productivity."
This is typical WSJ dogma and revealing of the "productivity" scam perpetrated on the "free market." From the Journal’s perspective any crushing of labor is wonderful, and any rise in wages or power of the wage-earning majority - which may be indicative of economic democracy – is anathema to these fascist capitalists.
Indeed, these people even applauded when Boris Yeltsin bombed his own democratically-elected Duma so the Oligarchs could steal the country. We’re talking some sick, undemocratic, minds here.
In fact, dating from the onset of "free" trade, (read forced trade with the greater slave) the bulk of "productivity gains" touted by our totalitarian capitalists are the result of labor’s outright extortion and "arbitrage." - a nice word indicating the power of employers to de-employ Americans and employ desperate, non-unionized, foreigners without rights, freedom, or protections.Unions have lost members yesterday and today because people are, and have been, scared to death of losing their jobs, of having their livelhood outsourced, of being threatened, and of having to train lower-paid immigrants, legal and otherwise, to take their positions – the ultimate indignity.
In foreign countries, our own CIA has been so effective in helping dictators abroad kill and imprison their pesky labor dissidents. The victims of the "death squads" are clearly not the rich, but the laboring poor seeking a better distribution of the fuits of the economy and their labor.
What has gone on here, and in the First World in general, in the last decade of so is nothing less than a pogrom against labor – i.e., the vast wage-earning majority. Sold out by Clinton and Bush, the American worker has been screwed, forcibly "harmonized" and "flattened" as ruling-elite sycophants like Tom Friedman and WSJ editorials state. "We" have given away our markets and, as a result, all power and gains accrue to undemocratic, fascist, economies and powers who now hold sway over our lives and currency.
In short, the touted "productivity gains" are less technological improvement than labor and democracy being decimated on the forced trade rack. Any reduction in unit costs due to labor’s losses are clearly not "gains" for the economy as a whole, only for employers and the profits of the few. A consumer-based economy is thus hurt and damaged by such ill-defined productivity, and rampant factor imbalance.
As explored in my 1995 book, Cap-Com, The Economics Of Balance, there is no "factor" balance in our economy and society. There is no balance of socio-economic power between capital and labor – and that is the reason we are losing our independence, ability to produce, sovereignty, and any semblance of economic democracy. We, the people, the wage-earning majority, have no National Initiative process to override a capital-fed Congress, nor change a corrupt "money is free speech" doctrine of the Supreme Court, or get us out of a WTO to which the people do not even elect their own representative!
In short, we now have a complete fascism over the American people – i.e., a society in which corporations have become the goverment, and capital the complete master of labor. This is the very setting for depression and revolution, and even Adam Smith warned of us of this sick condition:
"Masters are everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour. Masters, too, sometimes enter into combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate... in all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer."
So even Adam Smith was no chump, he knew the score in his day was the on-going conspiracy of capital and employers against labor. This has culminated today in a Global Gulag brought about by a "free trade" regime not authorized by the vast wage-earning majority.
At this stage we have no real democracy, no real freedom, we are pawns. If we had a factor balance in society we would not need unions. Until we have some credible factor balance in society history informs us this dismal condition will continue to the point where either real reform emerges or a revolution and killing of the rich begins.
The ruling elite are well aware of the trap they have set, and of the reaction which history dictates. This is one big reason for the "War on Terror" - a phony, diverting, enterprise for setting up the fascist state, all in order to resist labor’s attempts to rebalance the economic slate, and give a totalitarian capitalist state the reason and right to crush dissent and labor’s inevitable "blowback."
Today, we are being diverted by war to avoid challenging the planned North American Union, or scrapping the Fascist, top-down, Euro-Land setup, or recapturing our own "Federal" Reserve. We are mislead and distracted by the corporate media’s "weapons of mass distraction" into a totalitarian capitalism.
The ruling elite plans yet another fait accompli... on our freedom, security, and "productivity." In view of history, we must ask where, and when, does the "terrorism" against this cabal begin? Adam Smith would agree its long overdue.
