The Judas Economy

(Conspiracy Nation, 3/8/04) -- Writing in 1997, the authors of The Judas Economy warned that the "appearance on the scene of vast numbers of elite workers in the emerging world, willing and anxious to work for less, is intensifying the pressure in developed countries to drastically pare down and cut costs." (The Judas Economy by William Wolman and Anne Colamosca. Addison-Wesly Publishing, 1997. ISBN: 0-7382-0202-9)

Seven years later, the authors' warning is proved correct by current concerns about outsourcing.

The world ends not with a bang but with a whimper: "If American prosperity dies, it is more likely to be with a whimper, not a bang." "There is a quiet desperation... It's all very quiet. Very private. But the agony is widespread." (Wolman & Colamosca, op. cit.)

The system works to gradualize economic collapse, to prevent wide public outcry. On the other hand, the system is fallible and a revolutionary sudden collapse could occur. There is an uncanny sense of hope in statements by, for example, Lyndon LaRouche, predicting imminent global financial meltdown: "Good. Then at least the bullshit will end," is the implicit hope. The Capitalists have their government stooges working to gradualize the transition to hopelessness; others hope that the experts will fail so that meaningful change is forced to happen.

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, where wealth accumulates and men decay. The supposedly populist stock market is in fact mostly owned by a relative few. "The vast majority of stock in this country, after all, is held by the richest 5 percent of the population." (Wolman & Colamosca, op. cit.) Yet news of stock market gains is presented by the corporate media as if it's something we should all cheer about.

The authors trace an accelerated betrayal of workers to 1988 and the end of the Cold War: "The sudden collapse of Communism raised the power of global capitalism to new heights." Whatever you think of Communism, the demise of Capitalism's arch-foe left it free to bully whomever it chose.

What has been gradually happening, say Wolman and Colamosca, is a synthesis of labor where an antithesis, for example, between conditions of Chinese workers and American workers slowly levels out: A "new heaven" for third-world workers; a "new hell" for workers in the developed world. "At the end, relative wages, heaven and hell, will fuse."

Other myths challenged by the authors:

...that small business is the prime generator of new jobs. This "has been greatly exaggerated."
The unemployment statistics are misleading. The "labor force participation rate for men aged twenty-five to fifty-four has been falling since 1971." These are the "discouraged workers" who are not calculated into the unemployment rate. In 1995, for example, 838,000 men wanted to work but had given up looking for a job.
The Federal Reserve is not owned by the general public but by the commercial banks who hold the stock in the system. The role of various Fed chairmen is to "dissemble; tell the public as little as possible about what you are really up to..."
"In the 1990s we witnessed a concentration of wealth that is probably without historical precedent in the United States, one to which the wealth concentration [during the 1920s] was only a pallid prelude."
The low taxes granted to some are spent largely on goods and services not produced in the United States.

We are now in a phase of history where "finance rules all." But historically "the financialization of society has always been a symbol that a nation's economic position has entered a phase of deterioration." (Wolman & Colamosca, op. cit.)

In 1997 the authors were warning of a "new crisis of capitalism." The only question is, will the deterioration be sudden or (relatively) gradual. The government stooges are working to keep things gradual and the corporate media strives to mask the crisis, otherwise the People would wake up.

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