Jobs for all: it’s not a dream

By Deirdre Griswold

It’s still dark but the alarm goes off. It takes a minute for your mind to clear.

Then your anxiety level rises as you realize: another day looking for work. You think about what to wear, what to say, where to go, how much you’ll have to spend on transportation and lunch, how many people will be on line ahead of you.

The odds are heavily against you in this imploding economy. At the end of the day, you will probably be even more “discouraged.” That’s not just a state of mind. It’s an actual category of the Bureau of Labor Statistics to describe those who’ve run out of unemployment insurance and have stopped actively seeking work, even though they want and need a job.

Once you reach that point, you’re not included in the official jobless rate.

Look around you. So many millions of people are out of work. And so many jobs need to be done.

If you and the people in your neighborhood were to get together and make a list, it would be long.

How is the housing where you live? Crowded? Dilapidated? Or maybe it looks okay but, with rising energy prices, people need better insulation. Fixing up housing provides all kinds of jobs. Put that on the list.

What about the schools, playgrounds and parks for the kids? Are they safe getting to school? Need more crossing guards or school buses? Once they’re at school, are there enough teachers? Books? Computers? Do they have a place to run around in the fresh air and let off steam between classes?

Lots of people could be hired to correct deficiencies there. Let’s add tree planting and building bike paths to the list, too. And of course good public transportation.

Older people have special needs. Are they safe and comfortable? Does someone check on their health and keep them company? What kind of recreation is available? Put down senior centers and caregivers. And how about hiring some gardeners? Let’s make those centers beautiful and give the seniors a place to plant flowers and vegetables. In fact, let’s make the whole neighborhood beautiful.

There are so many people eager, desperate, to find work. And we’ve all heard about the trillions of dollars given to Wall Street to pep up the economy—which hasn’t worked. Trillions! Who ever heard of such huge numbers before this crisis!

If the government has that much money to commit, why not get the people to draw up their lists of needs, open up job centers in every community, and start matching up people looking for employment with the needs to be filled?

That would work. It’s called socialism. Uh-oh. Yes, the system we’ve been taught to believe is so bad. However, socialism is gaining in popularity while those who’ve been boosting capitalism are finding it harder and harder to sell.

Under capitalism, the economy has to turn a profit for a class of rich owners. But problems build up. Eventually, so many goods and services are produced while workers earn much less than the cost of what they’ve produced that there’s a surplus of everything.

Houses, cars, clothing: they can’t be sold for a profit. But profits are what capitalism is all about. So the owners cut back production and start laying off workers. Then the workers can buy even less. And the downward spiral begins.

Socialism doesn’t have this problem. There are no individual rich owners. The factories, the infrastructure, the firms that provide services belong to everyone—which especially means the workers. There are no wealthy investors to skim off profits. The economy is driven by a plan, not by stock and commodities markets. If people need more of something, then that’s what is produced. If something becomes obsolete, that item or service is discontinued. But the workers aren’t laid off. Their right to a job is guaranteed.

We’re in a worldwide recession-depression right now. The worst-hit countries are those tied closest to the capitalist world market.

It was in just such a period as this—the Great Depression of the 1930s—that the differences between these two types of economic system, capitalism and socialism, became crystal clear.

In 1917, near the end of World War I, the workers and peasants of Russia had overthrown the czarist regime there and liberated the means of production. But the country was so poor and half-destroyed by invasion and war that for a while they had a hard time just restoring production to the pre-war level.

By 1928, however, the new Soviet Union was able to start its first five-year plan, based on socially-owned production and collectivized agriculture. Nothing like it had ever been done before. Nevertheless, it worked so well that the goals for the five-year plan were completed in four years.

By that time—1932—the capitalist world was in a terrible state. First the stock markets had collapsed, then the banks failed and businesses started laying off workers. By the mid-1930s, tens of millions of workers in the United States were jobless, and the same thing happened in all of the other capitalist countries.

But not in the Soviet Union. Even though it was having political problems, the economy was stable and growing. Quite a few skilled U.S. workers went there looking for jobs during the Great Depression.

Russia wasn’t an ideal place for trying to build socialism, which is based on workers’ power and a planned economy. It was severely underdeveloped and had a very small working class. Almost immediately, the revolution had to defend itself against all of the capitalist powers, which mounted an invasion to crush this new system in the cradle.

Much could be said about how capitalism finally succeeded in destroying the Soviet Union. But here’s the point of this article: For its entire existence, the Soviet Union never had an unemployment problem. That came only after the USSR was broken up and capitalism was restored in the early 1990s.

So far, socialist revolutions have succeeded in less developed countries, which then have had to focus on trying to “catch up.”

That’s not the problem in the United States. Here there’s already in place the means to create a comfortable life for everyone. In fact, we could cut working hours and still have plenty. For example, with a 30-hour work week at no cut in pay, many more workers could be hired and everyone would have more time for family and leisure.

But the bosses scream at the very thought. Abundance is a huge problem for capitalism. Paradoxically, it leads to crisis, the destruction of jobs and a lower standard of living for workers.

Socialism is the only system that can handle abundance rationally, providing jobs for all doing what is needed and sustainable and not what a profit-hungry ruling class demands.

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