I can’t help but respond to this blog post that appeared on the website of the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators. Jennifer de la Cruz’ thoughtfulness and good intentions are commendable, but underneath all this positive attitude and cheer I detect the sickly spirit of pessimism and defeatism so deeply internalized that it is all but unconscious — hence the analogy between austerity economics and tornadoes. The latter may be partly anthropogenic, thanks to global warming; but the former is entirely so, and there is a good deal more we can do about it. Employment security, education, housing, health care, retirement security, and even the enjoyment of culture and leisure are — guess what! — human rights. The fact that those who point this out are regarded as Bolsheviks attests to how far our entire political culture has shifted to the reactionary right. We are expected to bow down and be grateful to The Man for our crust of bread. The trade unions, by and large, are collaborationists who clamor for a seat at the table where they can participate in the slashing of wages and the gutting of benefits.
So we are told to embrace change and be positive as this attack is going on. No. We need to work on our political consciousness, clear the clutter from our minds and see the big picture. You know the facts. Income inequality has gone through the roof even as we are told there is no money for frills like education and health care, even as Wall Street and the war machine are still lavishly funded courtesy of the taxpayer.
As we speak, the Federal Defenders in Manhattan — a first-rate squad of extremely hard-working, committed lawyers who represent indigent defendants in federal cases — are subjected to furloughs tantamount to a 20% pay cut with no reduction in work load. As we speak, millions of federal workers like your humble servant are in their third year with no cost of living adjustment, even as the cost of living itself has risen — a de facto pay cut. As we speak, public sector workers in the judiciary, and elsewhere, are being furloughed or laid off. There are, of course, innumerable other examples, many of them even worse.
Economic inequality of fantastic proportions, hideous social problems (including mass incarceration, of which court interpreting is but one of many spinoff industries), environmental destruction: the word for this grotesque condition is capitalism, a system where virtually by definition, the needs of people are subordinated to private gain for the few. What we need is a worldwide socialist revolution whose aim is to invert these priorities and place the resources of the planet under the democratic, rational control of the working class, by which I mean at least 90% of the world population. No one is saying this is going to be easy. But the alternative is far more dire: quite possibly, species extinction; at a minimum, further deterioration of your material conditions and a shitty future for you and your children.
Dear reader, if you are snorting “good luck with that revolution thing,” then let us return to where we started. Defeatism and pessimism will get us nowhere. Rather than bowing down and “embracing change” with pop-psychological cheerfulness, we should be planning ways to resist and fight back. One idea that comes to mind is what I call the counter-furlough. For every furlough day that is meted out to workers, every worker strikes for one day, furloughed or not, and not just in the industry of the afflicted workers, but as far across the economy as we can manage. This action should be organized not under the aegis of a union, but by ad hoc rank-and-file committees of workers themselves. Do not wait to be saved by reforms implemented within the Republican/Democrat political framework because that, truly, will never happen.
Yes there is enough to go around. Please think about this and use your imagination to envision a world in which things like employment insecurity, hunger and poverty are all but eliminated — change of the sort we can truly embrace. If you are curious to learn more, I invite you to check out the Socialist Equality Party. You have nothing to lose but your chains.