Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center
Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center
Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center
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XII. THE GLOBAL<br />
PLANTATION<br />
1. The Promotion of the Proletariat and<br />
Replacement by Third-World Labor<br />
The short era of "Pax Americana" after World<br />
War I1 was one of completing profound changes for Euro-<br />
Amerikan society. Those expansionist years of 1945-1965,<br />
when U.S. military and economic power lorded over the<br />
entire non-socialist world, saw the final promotion of the<br />
white proletariat. This was an en masse promotion so profound<br />
that it eliminated not only consciousness, but the<br />
class itself.<br />
Just as in the 19th Century, the Euro-Amerikan<br />
bourgeoisie both watered-down class contradictions and<br />
reinforced its settler garrison over the continental Empire<br />
by absorbing immigrant European nationalities fully into<br />
the U.S. oppressor nation. This 20th Century cycle had<br />
begun in the anti-communist "Americanization" campaign<br />
of the World War I period; it reached its decisive<br />
point in the accommodation between the imperialist State<br />
and the dependent, settleristic CIO unions of the 1930s.<br />
The process was sealed by the post-World War I1 imperialist<br />
feast, finally laying to rest the class contradictions<br />
of the period of industrial unionism. While the<br />
deproletarianization of the white masses was a historic<br />
pacification, it led to an increase in decadence and<br />
parasitism that has today reached a nodal point.<br />
This mass promotion rewarded settlers for the<br />
U.S. Empire's "supreme triumph" as the world's No. 1<br />
imperialist, Super-privileged life for the Euro-Amerikan<br />
masses was made possible by two factors: U.S. domination<br />
of world markets and the Empire's giant reserve armies of<br />
colonial proletarians, who took over a greater and greater<br />
burden of essential production from white workers. We<br />
must remember that World War I1 had physically<br />
devastated and bankrupted all the major imperialist nations<br />
save one. In the late 1940's U.S. steel mills supplied<br />
50% of the world's steel (and now supply only 15%). U.S.<br />
aircraft plants manufactured almost 100% of the world's<br />
commercial airplanes. As late as 1949 the flow of U.S.<br />
trucks, diesel engines, elevators, pharmaceuticals, industrial<br />
tools, wheat, etc. accounted for roughtly 25% of<br />
all world trade. (1) Of course, the largest single market in<br />
the entire world - the continental U.S. Empire - was<br />
"owned" by U.S. corporations. This produced the<br />
economic surpluses that started Euro-Amerikan society on<br />
its long retreat from essential production.<br />
In these years the Euro-Amerikan workers moved<br />
upwards, increasingly handing over their places in basic<br />
production to colonial workers. Broom and Glenn summarized<br />
in the 1960's: "Between 1940 and 1960, the total<br />
number of employed white workers increased by nearly 12<br />
million, or 81 per cent, while the total employed labor<br />
force increased by only 37 per cent. Hundreds of<br />
thousands of white workers have moved up into higherlevel<br />
jobs, leaving vacancies at intermediate levels that<br />
could be filled by Negroes ... Negroes are now well<br />
represented in semi-skilled work and in industrial<br />
unions.. . " (2) Once driven, step-by-step during the 19th<br />
Century, out of U.S. industry they had created, Afrikans<br />
were recruited anew into the factories. They, along with<br />
Chicano-Mexicano and Puerto Rican labor, would keep<br />
production growing while most Euro-Amerikan workers<br />
laid down their tools, one by one.<br />
By the early 1950s Armour's main Chicago meatpacking<br />
plant was 66% Afrikan. Of the 7,500 workers<br />
there almost all the younger men and women were<br />
Afrikan. The younger Euro-Amerikans hired by Armour<br />
went into white-collar jobs at the nearby,<br />
4,000-person Armour main office, which was all-white.<br />
136 Swift's meat-packing plant in Chicago was also 55%