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NEWS & LETTERS, JULY 2003
Workshop Talks
Workers gouged to pay for tax cuts
by Htun Lin Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz recently
confessed that the claim that Iraq wielded weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was
used as an excuse to invade Iraq, because “that was the one reason we could
all bureaucratically agree on.” In the same way, President Bush marketed his
three huge tax cuts for the rich as a “job growth” program. The result is that all across the nation state budgets
are facing the worst fiscal crisis in 50 years. One county supervisor in
Oakland’s Alameda County literally wept in his seat as he felt compelled to
cast his vote for a budget. He felt he had no choice but to cut yet more vital
services to Oakland’s desperately poor communities. One local man said,
“They’re not cutting to the bone. This is the bone!” An unemployed woman said, “What good is a tax cut
without a job?” Bush’s tax cuts for the rich have meant massive cuts in
local government jobs and services. Workers are paying punishing increases
in local taxes, like sales taxes on everyday necessities. CRUMBS FOR POOR WORKERS The Bush gang reneged on his promise of a “tax cut for
all,” including “working families with children.” He promised an increase
in the “child tax credit” as a consolation for the poor working class, with
crumbs that are left over from rewarding the richest capitalists of his class.
The biggest fanatic of the Bush religion is Rep. Tom
DeLay. He said the reason why he and Bush, behind closed doors, decided at
the last minute to break a promise and omit the child tax credit for the poorest
working Americans was: “They don’t pay any taxes.” Forget for a moment that the taxes they do pay--Social
Security and Medicare--are the very funds Bush is stealing from the now
forgotten “Social Security lock box,” in order to finance his wars and tax
cuts. The Bush tax policy really represents a massive redistribution of
wealth to those who make money not through their labor but through capital
investment. Tax policy as a means of redistribution of wealth had a
different dynamic when capitalism was fighting to save itself. That was
the intent behind Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs 30 years after
Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” earned him the label “class traitor”
by some in his own class. But without the New Deal, Roosevelt realized, the
popular uprisings by workers’ movements, armies of the unemployed, could have
sounded the death knell of capitalism. The global system of robber barons
collapsed in a global depression. With Bush, the robber barons are back in
charge. Towards a future of permanent war, they’re restructuring the tax
system for that end. TAXING OUR BODIES Every day that a worker enters the factory, he is
already being taxed. In the first hour or so, the worker creates enough
value to cover all his living expenses. The rest of the eight hours are
all surplus labor, extracted by the capitalist as surplus value. The capitalists
are prone to calling the workers’ wages “labor cost,” a constant irritant
that has to be cut. The capitalist behaves as if this cost comes out of
something he earned, when in reality, everything the capitalist “earned” is
value created by workers and expropriated as unpaid labor. From this
perspective there is a tax on workers of over 80% that Bush and DeLay don’t
want to talk about. Outside the factory the worker is taxed once again, this
time by government. In fact, the capitalists pay their own corporate
taxes, if any, from the added value stolen from workers. However, it is through
alienated labor, which produces value, that the biggest “tax” occurs every
minute of our work lives. The cost is tremendous in damage on our bodies,
our minds and our environment. DIFFERENT VISION Our basic conditions of life and labor will not
necessarily improve by changing our tax laws. We need to change the very
nature of our thinking about why we have taxes at all, whether for essential
social needs like schools and hospitals or to launch senseless military
campaigns. We don’t share the same nightmares as the capitalists since
we don’t share the same vision. Since they’re the ones who created and spread weapons of mass destruction, the capitalists’ worst nightmare is not those weapons, but it is us. We are their worst nightmare, everyday working people, especially if we regain our ability to act in concert not only against the total catastrophe toward which global capital is leading us all but also towards a positive vision of a society where the needs and creativities of every human being is its own end. |
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