Books by Jack Rasmus: The Corporate Offensive Against American Workers and Unions from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush What Reviewers Say About THE WAR AT HOME <http://www.kyklosproductions.com/posts/index.php?p=37> Reviewers Comments "Did you like Howard Zinns, A People's History of the United States? If so, you are going to love the new book by Jack Rasmus, THE WAR AT HOME: The Corporate Offensive From Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush. Rasmus effectively picks up the story where Zinn leaves off..His book is an excellent complement and companion to Zinn's popular work..Give THE WAR AT HOME a look. It is a sobering and path-breaking effort to 'put it all in one place'." Harvey Schwartz, Curator, ILWU Oral History Collection Labor Archives and Research Center San Francisco State University "A hard-hitting, full-scale account of the corporate assault on American working people. No one seeing all the strands of that attack brought together in one place can feel anything but outrage. Rasmus's stirring book is for labor activists, but its effect will be to create a lot more labor activists than there already are. A great job!" David Brody, Professor Emeritus of History University of California, Davis "THE WAR AT HOME is a path-breaking work which will stand as a milestone on the road to a fight back by and for working people..Jack Rasmus has performed a major service to the movement by starting what needs to be a great debate about our collective future..we all should read it and spread the word about THE WAR AT HOME." Laurence H. Shoup, Ph.D. History Author, Imperial Brain Trust: The Council On Foreign Relations and U.S. Foreign Policy 'The War at Home' <http://www.kyklosproductions.com/posts/index.php?p=14> <http://www.kyklosproductions.com/images/war/homewar.jpg> THE WAR AT HOME is a nonfiction book about the current Bush-Corporate offensive against American workers and their unions. Its ten chapters cover the current Jobs Crisis, offshoring, Free Trade and the collapse of manufacturing, declining Wages and workers' incomes, the great American Tax Shift, attacks on Pensions and Social Security, the pending privatization of Medicare, the health care costs crisis, the transformations of the Republican and Democratic parties, the decline of union membership and bargaining power, the pending split in the AFL-CIO, and the origin and evolution of the corporate offensive from Reagan through George W. Bush. On this page you can read the PREFACE and the TABLE OF CONTENTS and advance order <http://www.kyklosproductions.com/posts/#order> the book. Preface to the War at Home <http://www.kyklosproductions.com/posts/index.php?p=8> Copyright 2004 Jack Rasmus Corporate America and its numerous pundits and talk-show mouthpieces are quick to point fingers and charge 'class war, you're advocating class war', whenever anyone writes or speaks up about the Corporate Offensive against workers and their unions today. Accusations of class warfare are levied at the slightest criticism of the radical restructuring of jobs, wages, the retirement system, taxes, healthcare, and civil liberties currently underway today-restructuring begun by Reagan two decades ago and now accelerating even more rapidly under George W. Bush. 'Class war' has become the economic 'N-word' for Corporate America and Bush apologists. But like a discrete racist who acts but dares not say it, Bush and his corporate contributors have been engaging increasingly in the very thing, economic Class War, they so readily decry. That practice of Class War has become so blatant of late that even notable figures within Corporate America itself have raised a note of concern. Someone no less than Warren Buffet, the multi-billionaire and richest man in America, in his most recent annual letter to the stockholders of his investment company, Berkshire Hathaway, was compelled to point out "if class war is being waged in America, my class is clearly winning". In the pages that follow, THE WAR AT HOME unapologetically attempts to describe and analyze the major elements of that class war being waged today in the U.S. against American workers and their unions. The offensive comes from many directions and takes many forms. A particular worker may be impacted in one way more than another and not aware of the full scope of the coordinated assault. For one, it may be the loss of his or her job to rampant outsourcing. For another, it may take the form of a tripling of the cost of health insurance or a loss of medical benefits coverage for themselves or dependents. For many it has meant wage cuts or the foregoing of any wage increase whatsoever for several years. For those in middle age, the growing anxiety of how to pay for the spiraling cost of a college education for their children without losing their home or abandoning forever any prospect of retirement. For those approaching retirement, the increasing fear whether their pension will still be there or will be wiped out by a corporate bankruptcy court. For those in retirement, the fear of cuts in pensions or social security payments, costs of drugs and Medicare premiums, or companies simply discontinuing retirees health coverage. And for virtually all, the extraction of taxes in larger amounts from their paychecks, while watching the wealthy and corporations granted an incessant series of tax breaks with no apparent end. THE WAR AT HOME attempts to bring together in one source, address in one place, the various major elements of this new Corporate Offensive that has been building in scope and intensity since the early 1980s. While others have been describing different aspects of it-jobs, taxes, benefits, retirement, etc.- none to our knowledge have addressed the broader development in general or in one place. Nor has anyone placed the event in a longer term historical perspective and policy context. Not until recently has the offensive been able to reach a threshold point that has enabled its true scope and meaning to become increasingly clear. In quantitative terms, the magnitude of the negative impact on American workers and their unions perhaps had to reach a certain level before the qualitative aspects revealed the bigger picture-much as the mosaic pieces of a puzzle eventually reveal the outline of the broader vision. Until the advent of Ronald Reagan, Class War in America remained publicly muted. It has always been there, though somewhat subdued during the long period of the great social compact between Labor, Capital and Government that spanned the period from the late 1940s through the worst of the Cold War. But just as that war began to wind down during the 1980s, the new war, the 'War At Home', began to gain momentum. Like the Cold War abroad, the costs of the 'Class War' at home to tens of millions of American workers and their unions, have been immense over the past quarter century. That magnitude of costs is measured, moreover, not only in terms of economic hardship but in terms of the immense psychological misery of tens of millions of U.S. citizens. The WAR AT HOME attempts to trace the growing momentum of the new Class War in America, the new Offensive, being waged by corporations and their political friends from Reagan through Bush. THE WAR AT HOME is different in yet another important way. It is written for those actively engaged at the grass roots level in opposing the new Corporate Offensive. It is written for the worker and the community activist desperately trying to survive and deal with the devastation of the American health care system; for progressive intellectuals concerned with the accelerating destruction of civil liberties and civil rights; for students with a social conscience aware of the constant rising cost of education amidst ever declining job opportunities; for local union stewards and officers frustrated at every turn when they try to defend the wages, benefits or the job security of their members; for the American working class family struggling to make up for stagnating wages by working second and third jobs and assuming an ever growing burden of debt just to maintain living standards; for professionals and workers who spent years and tens of thousands of dollars to educate themselves only to find their jobs and future outsourced or offshored to Asia or Latin America; for all those actively supporting candidates for elections who may be opposing one or more elements of the Corporate Offensive; and for everyone increasingly concerned that something fundamental has changed in America, that the 'rules of the game' are being turned against them, and who are determined to defend their own rights and interests. THE WAR AT HOME does not refuse to assume a perspective or to take sides. Its intent is to arm the reader with essential data, statistics, facts and arguments that reveal the character of the new Corporate Offensive. It raises suggested policies and solutions for consideration at the close of each chapter.. And it is hoped the facts, analyses, and proposals presented in the book will prove useful to the reader, who may then be able to argue and advocate more effectively in defense of the more than 100 million working and middle class families in America today whose basic economic rights and interests are increasingly being ignored by politicians across the political spectrum. This book isn't about how the Business Roundtable met at some Virginia mountain retreat and decided how to finance and lobby the defeat of the Labor Law Reform bill in 1978. It's not about which corporate CEOs met with George W. Bush staffers to plan the details of the 2001 and 2003 tax legislation benefiting the wealthiest top 10% Americans by more than $2 trillion. It's not about how heads of major American manufacturing companies plotted strategies to force re-opening of union collective bargaining agreements in 1980 in the steel, auto and teamsters union, setting in motion the concessions bargaining of that decade. Nor is it about how CEOs of most major multinational corporations today co-operate ever more closely to export more and more jobs to China, Central and South America, and beyond.. Direct evidence of this kind of deep organization politics is often limited, circumstantial and, at best, inferred. The key business and government participants in such events seldom give interviews or respond to pollsters or journalists, or accommodate inquiries of academics writing books. That reticence, however, does not make such events any less real. The best evidence of such events are the results and outcomes that follow them-in the form of programs and policies that get passed by Congress and state legislatures, get implemented by Executive branches of government, become legitimized in turn by the courts, and are implemented by leading corporations and business groups at the point of production. The identifiable results and consequences, the outcomes, are far more important than any opaque process. Follow the money, identify who benefits, and more often than not there will lie the originating forces behind the policies. This book in its core chapters is concerned with describing, chronicling, and analyzing those results and consequences. While corporate lobbyinig groups are identified, the details of which corporaate personalities were directly involved, as well as when, where and how they decided on the resturcturing, are left for another work and time. Our attention here is on the outcomes of policies and programs that constitute the core of the Corporate Offensive that has been growing in scope and magnitued from Reagan through George W. Bush-as measured in terms of wages, incomes, taxes, jobs, retirement rights and security, health care and general social legislation with direct benefits to working class Americans. The lengthy Introductory Chapter of the book is designed to place the current Corporate Offensive in broad historical perspective, as well as within the context of the deepening economic, cultural, and political crisis in American today-the only decade comparable to which was perhaps the decade of the 1850s. The Introduction further argues the current Corporate Offensive is not a new phenomenon, but is only the latest of several such offensives that have occurred in America over the past century during which a restructuring of the economy and social relations, or what are here called the 'rules of the game', have taken place. The more immediate roots of the current Corporate Offensive are traceable, furthermore, to the preceding transition decade of the 1970s. An overview of the connections between that transition decade, the early emergence of the current phase of the Corporate Offensive under Reagan in the 1980s, and the Offensive in its current form under George W. Bush concludes the Introductory Chapter. The remaining chapters of the book turn to focus on the various dimensions of the current Offensive. Thus Chapter One addresses the huge transfer of incomes that has occurred over the past three decades from the roughly 105 million plus core working class Americans to the wealthiest 10% and 1%. Chapter Two describes the parallel and related shift in the relative tax burden, from the wealthy and corporations to middle and working class Americans, and its overall contribution to the general transfer of incomes. Special emphasis is given to the current acceleration of this income transfer via tax shifting under George W. Bush. Subsequent chapters address how income has been transfered before taxes are paid. Chapter Three looks deeper into what has happened to the 'core' real hourly wages and earnings of the 105 million plus American workers since 1980, revealing details often overlooked by a consideration of more general categories of incomes and wealth. Chapter Four supplements Three by examining emerging Corporate wage strategies at 'the periphery', as opposed to the 'core' basic hourly wage. Thus in Chapter Four corporate strategies are examined aimed at containing and reducing overtime pay, holding down the minimum wage, checking movements for a living wage, and shifting health insurance costs and contributions from employers to workers. The subsequent Chapters Five through Seven address the subject of jobs. Chapter Five examines the role of Free Trade policies from Reagan through George W. Bush, and shows how Free Trade has been at the core of the general Corporate Offensive since 1980. The chapter addresses the role of trade policy in the destruction of ten million jobs, and how trade-related jobs destruction is accelerating under George W. Bush. Chapter Six considers in some detail the changing structure and composition of jobs and jobs markets in the U.S. since 1980, and the emergence of what is called the 'New World Job Order'. Examined and estimated in some detail are the growing pools of tens of millions contingent jobs and workers, low paid services jobs, and the new millions of 'hidden' unemployed. The implications of the radical, restructuring of jobs in the U.S. for workers and the economy in general are explored. Chapter Seven then addresses in detail George W. Bush's record on jobs during his first term, the phenomenon of extended jobless recoveries from Reagan to Bush, and the relationship of those jobless recoveries to the structural changes in jobs markets sin the U.S. The chapter closes by dissecting Bush's deceitful claim that tax cuts for the rich produce jobs for the rest, and considers the possibility of yet another aborted jobs recovery and recession in a Bush second term. Chapters Eight through Ten look at the condition of 'deferred wages', the residual 'wage surplus' in the form of employer health insurance contributions, private pension plans, and Social Security retirement benefits. Each chapter considers how these social benefits so critical to workers' standards of living have been reduced, rolled back, or progressively privatized since the Corporate Offensive was launched, resulting in fewer benefits and coverage for workers simultaneous with a shifting of the costs for the same from employers to their workforce. Jack Rasmus <http://www.kyklosproductions.com/images/posts/rasmus_01.jpg> The Conclusion Chapter, entitled "The Corporate Offensive, Democrats, and the AFL-CIO", recaps the general themes raised in the Introductory Chapter, summarizes the key defining characteristics of the current Corporate Offensive, and places that offensive within the context of the general organizational and political crisis confronting American workers, the AFL-CIO unions, and their historic post world war II ally, the Democratic Party. The final chapter concludes with initial suggestions for structural and odther reforms of the AFL-CIO, as a contribution to the debates currently underway on that subject in union circles today. Jack Rasmus, National Executive Board National Writers Union, UAW, AFL-CIO http://www.kyklosproductions.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] CONTENTS of the War at Home <http://www.kyklosproductions.com/posts/index.php?p=10> Copyright 2004 Jack Rasmus PREFACE INTRODUCTION: Convergence, Crisis & Corporate Restructuring CHAPTER 1: The Road Back to 1929 CHAPTER 2: The Great American Tax Shift CHAPTER 3: Corporate Wage Strategies I: The Thirty Year Pay Freeze CHAPTER 4: Corporate Wage Strategies II: Attacking the Periphery CHAPTER 5: Free Trade and the Collapse of Manufacturing in America CHAPTER 6: Welcome to the New World Job Order CHAPTER 7: Jobless Recoveries and the Bush Recession CHAPTER 8: Medical Mount St. Helens: The Health Care Crisis in America CHAPTER 9: Pensions in the Corporate Cross-Hairs CHAPTER 10: Stealing the Social Security Surplus CONCLUSION: The Corporate Offensive, Democrats, and the AFL-CIO _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
