------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the July 12, 2001 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- EDITORIAL: TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN One of these days soon, many people who filed federal income tax returns this year will get a $300 check in the mail-- $600 for couples who filed jointly. President Bush is certain to jump before the cameras and take credit for this "windfall" of the tax cut bill; he has already made sure that a pre-notification letter with his name on it was sent out at a cost of $29 million. Anyone who has resisted playing three-card monte or which- shell-covers-the-pea will recognize this check from the Internal Revenue Service as the biggest accounting trick of all time. What is being hidden here is the intention to further slaughter social services once the tax cut--which is nothing but a huge giveaway to the rich--reduces the budget surplus. Having lulled the public with this initial check, the marauding bandits in Washington and on Wall Street will then proceed with their onslaught against Social Security, Medicare, public education, and all useful government programs. But not the Pentagon, of course. Nor the CIA nor the bloated police and prison system. After all, this is what the state is all about: repressing the people. Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, who was actually introduced as a "moderate" in the Bush cabinet of flaming right wingers, recently lifted the lid somewhat on what is in the minds of this cabal of capitalist crooks. O'Neill was the head of Alcoa, the world's biggest aluminum company, before coming to Washington. By the way, under his stewardship, Alcoa didn't pay one cent of corporate taxes in 1996, even though it enjoyed profits of $399 million. In fact, it even got a "rebate" of $17.6 million from the federal government through the wizardry of its accountants. In an interview with the Financial Times published on May 21, O'Neill said he's for eliminating the corporate income tax and capital gains taxes altogether. And he went even further. On Social Security and Medicare, the Treasury Secretary said: "Able-bodied adults should save enough on a regular basis so that they can provide for their own retirement and for that matter for their health and medical needs." So there shouldn't be any government retirement plans or health care plans for "able-bodied adults." O'Neill, in other words, wants to go back more than 65 years to the days when the robber barons were unfettered by any nuisances such as taxes; workers who hadn't been able to put money aside on their meager salaries--there were millions of them, of all ages--were begging and dying in the streets. O'Neill, it should be remembered, is not just a right-wing crank spouting off to his cronies. He is a very, very rich man with considerable economic and political clout, and he is now in charge of the Department of the Treasury, which, in its own words, "performs four basic functions: formulating and recommending economic, financial, tax, and fiscal policies; serving as financial agent for the U.S. Government; enforcing the law; and manufacturing coins and currency." What could make it clearer that the government serves the interests of the billionaire capitalist class, not the majority of the people--the workers and their families? This illustrates a concept that is one of the ABC's of Marxism and Leninism. The state is not neutral, it is not a buffer between classes, it is not an arbiter. Whatever social programs have been administered by the state have been wrested from the ruling class through huge mass struggles. The state, in essence, is the instrument by which the dominant class imposes its rule on the rest of society. It will exist as long as there is inequality, haves and have- nots. Those who fight for socialism, a society based on social ownership of the means of production, are for dislodging and breaking up the state that serves the capitalist parasites-- people like Paul O'Neill--and replacing it with a state beholden to and created by the working class. The objective of a workers' state, however, is to create equitable social conditions that would dissolve class differences and, with them, the state itself. This can only happen if the tremendous productive apparatus created by labor is liberated from private ownership and taken over for the good of society. The Bush administration thinks they're pulling a fast one with their little check in the mail; that they'll be seen as champions of the people. But most people have grown a healthy skepticism towards the sleight-of-hand of the rich, and can recognize a shell game when they see one. We Marxists say to anyone who actually gets that check: Take the money and run. And the best thing you can do with it is to make a generous contribution to Workers World and the struggle to end capitalist greed forever. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
