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Chicago Indymedia

Commentary :: Labor

Bank of America Does Not Own These Workers

It's time to state the case plainly: What Bank of America does - using public funds to seize ownership over labor and resources that will be profitable to the bank's managers - is not a legitimate way to make a living. Placing human lives under the control of speculative markets so that a few wealthy tycoons can fill their pockets - is not a practice that would be tolerated by a sane society. And yet this practice is essential to the financial industry in its most basic operations. Taking control of social resources in order to exploit them for corporate profit is quite simply what financial agencies like Bank of America do. We should recognize this when we consider the role of Bank of America in the ongoing factory takeover at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago.

Now this eminently patriotic Bank is offering to salve the workers' wounds by breaking off a small portion of its $25 government handout to pay for outstanding compensation. These wounds were originally inflicted when Bank of America (- maybe it is called that because its schemes are funded by the American public, even as its obscene profits are privatized -) executives grew impatient with the door-and-window business and promptly cut the workers' only lifeline. But now they want to salvage a respectable public image by acquiescing to the workers' demands for their lawful due - but only after passing the monies through the filthy hands of Republic management. This is not an acceptable solution, and in no way does it satisfy the workers' fundamental desire for an end to exploitation in their workplace.

Let me explain.

As much as Bank of America has stolen from the people of this country - and therefore owes to the people of this country according to even the most modest scale of justice - we should not allow a partial, meagre, and belated repayment of this debt to serve as a smokescreen for the bank's effort to retain control over the management and wealth of Republic's operations. The idea of allowing a huge, multinational corporation to control the livelihood of 250 door- and window-makers in Chicago would be regarded as an utter perversity in any remotely democratic society. The further idea that this tyranny would be facilitated by the tax-dollars of millions of ordinary citizens would surely drive such a society to the cusp of spontaneous revolution. Yet this is precisely the state-of-affairs that will be realized if Bank of America is permitted to regain control over the manufacture and exchange of these workers' products. Such an outcome would be almost unimaginable in a democratic culture, for it confers special privileges (receipt of public funds, unrestricted managerial authority, consolidation and control of wealth) upon an institution that has repeatedly shown itself to be fundamentally opposed to that society's common good. The opportunity to collect public funds in order to invest them selectively and self-interestedly in elementary forms of social production would sound to the participants in such a culture like a capitalist's sadistic wet dream. But in our society, it is simply known as "an economic stimulus."

The essential meaning of democracy, according to any reasonable definition, is self-government. In the realm of economics, where the most basic conditions of human survival are determined, self-government exists when the workers become responsible for managing their own productive activity. This means that all decisions about what to make, how to make it, and how to utilize the resulting products, should fall under the collective authority of the workers themselves - in cooperation with affected members of the surrounding society. An institution like Bank of America - an institution whose aims are purely predatory - would have no place in such a system of workers' self-management, for its logic is inherently devoid of social conscience.

Instead of allowing public funds to be filtered through a profit-seeking, private agency - why not apply those funds directly to the creation of a self-managed, cooperative economy? Why not use community resources to construct a new, socially beneficial system of production, exchange, and allocation? Windows and doors are useful - especially the energy-efficient windows and doors that were produced at Republic until last Friday. People need them to keep the weather outside (or inside, when the air is more livable) - and that need is not reducible to the need of companies like Republic and Bank of America to turn a profit. Moreover, the workers who have occupied their factory are not bits of expendable property that can be transferred from hand to wealthy hand. Their situation is not unique; it is the natural expression of a system in which kleptocrats are given the power to make consequential decisions without taking into account the common needs of humanity. Instead of reinforcing that system by permitting Bank of America to restore its grip on the livelihood of these 250 workers, let's put the kleptocrats out of business and transfer power where it belongs - into the hands of the door- and window-makers themselves. If the Bank of America executives want to make a living from these products, they can find a spot on the factory floor alongside the people whose energy and know-how have made Republic Windows and Doors possible. This is the only solution to a problem whose roots are in the system of economic hierarchy and exploitation itself. After the bankers pay reparations to all those whom they have so greedily and monstrously exploited, they will have to pay back their debt to the rest of us as well.

Silas Crane
Chicago, IL
 
 

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