GET RID OF THIS FUCKER JOE BIDEN AND TAKE BRIBES SUCKING LAWYER KAMALA HARRIS AND JOE'S CRACKHEAD LAWYER SON WITH HIM!
Look who got rich off of arming the Taliban (Full show)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvHr6tsc9JA
But Biden’s choice of Carlos Del Toro also opened up a whole other can of worms because the immigrant is not only a Biden donor, he’s the founder, owner, and CEO of SBG Technology Solutions, a defense industry contractor that has done plenty of business with the Navy.
Biden’s Culture War Pick for Secretary of the Navy
A Biden donor and CEO of a firm that does millions in business with the Navy.
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Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
Carlos Del Toro, the newly confirmed Secretary of the Navy, issued a letter stating that the Navy's four missions would be the 4C’s of China, Culture, Climate, and COVID.
By “culture”, the Biden appointee who has been a long time Democrat fundraiser, hosting an event for Hillary Clinton, and donating to Biden and the DNC, meant political correctness.
Of the 4C's for the Navy, three were domestic Democrat policy priorities, and only one involved deterring a foreign enemy.
"I have a bias for action," Del Toro wrote. But most of the action seems to be political.
That’s not surprising for Del Toro, a failed candidate who had signed on to an anti-second amendment letter and defended illegal aliens. As a member of the Board of Visitors for the University of Mary - Washington, he had led an attack on coal jobs over global warming.
The Biden administration took great care to note that Del Toro had been appointed to the Naval Academy Alumni Association’s Special Commission on Culture, Diversity, and Inclusion.
The Commission had been created in 2020 when a member of the Naval Academy Alumni’s Board of Trustees accidentally broadcast a private conversation on Facebook in which he criticised the racist hate group, Black Lives Matter, while using racial slurs.
Despite his apology and resignation, he was expelled from the alumni association.
“Silence on these matters is not an option,” the association had declared using CRT language.
The purge was another shot in a struggle within the service branch academy alumni association between patriotic alumni who want an end to critical race theory in the institution over those who support it and are determined to humiliate, silence, and destroy those who stand in their way.
Last year a midshipman had sued the Naval Academy over his expulsion for tweeting that Breonna Taylor, the girlfriend of a drug dealer, had gotten what was coming to her when she was shot after her boyfriend opened fire on police, and suggested that rioters should be shot.
While Naval Academy leadership targeted him, others who broadcast hatred for police and support of the Black Lives Matter race riots on social media were not disciplined in any way.
The lawsuit charged that Black Lives Matter and its radical tenets "have been embraced by the Naval Academy's senior leadership and have made their pernicious assault on the First Amendment manifest".
The Naval Academy’s superintendent, Vice Admiral Sean Buck, complained that "the manner in which he was publicly commenting on sensitive topics would be perceived as offensive and inflammatory." The midshipman’s parents alleged in a fundraiser for their son’s successful legal case that Buck “unconditionally embraces the structural and institutional racism tenets of the BLM and Anti-Racist movements and that those tenets will be drilled into the minds of every member of the Brigade of Midshipmen through mandatory training.”
Choosing a member of the Commission on Culture, Diversity, and Inclusion as Navy Secretary sends a pretty clear message in the culture war between free speech and critical race theory.
But Biden’s choice of Carlos Del Toro also opened up a whole other can of worms because the immigrant is not only a Biden donor, he’s the founder, owner, and CEO of SBG Technology Solutions, a defense industry contractor that has done plenty of business with the Navy.
Del Toro was introduced by Senator Mark Warner, another beneficiary of his donations, who called the fellow Virginia resident a "longtime friend". After a brief hearing in which Senate members failed to ask Del Toro any meaningful questions, and instead delivered short speeches disguised as questions, he was quickly confirmed. There was little interest in the propriety of having the owner of a defense industry company heading up the Department of the Navy.
SBG has apparently won Navy contracts including a multi-year contract worth between tens of millions to over one hundred million dollars. This year its site featured more boasts about winning contracts with the Navy. One site tracking government contracts estimates that 2021 was already SBG's best year with $44 million. That’s a sharp increase from previous years.
Del Toro’s successful business was likely aided by his past role as a Military Assistant to the Director of Defense Programs Analysis at DOD, and with the Naval Warfare Information Systems Command. Vic Blanco, SBG’s Director of Contracts, had been a commander at the Defense Contract Management Agency.
That sort of revolving door is not uncommon at defense contractors, but it’s nothing to celebrate when people keep gaming the system on both ends.
The details of SBG’s actual ownership is unclear. Del Toro has announced that he won’t be involved with the company, but his wife, Betty Del Toro, is also SBG’s Chief Financial Officer based on a BA from the University of Phoenix. There’s no clear sign that she will be stepping down or what changes SBG or Del Toro will be making to avoid any conflicts of interest.
The media was too busy gushing over Del Toro’s immigrant status and ethnicity to bother taking a look at his company because identity politics trumps journalism. While Del Toro would be the second Hispanic Secretary of the Navy, second doesn’t really count as much of a glass ceiling smashing moment. However being a minority likely helped Del Toro’s business. SBG is listed as a minority-owned business and a service disabled veteran owned small business.
The federal government is legally obligated to direct at least 3% of federal contract spending to SDVOSB's and 5% of a quarter of its contracts to minority businesses.
SBG conveniently qualifies on both counts. Whatever the details of its ownership, if that were to significantly change with Del Toro’s departure, SBG might no longer qualify for any advantages.
Curiously, we’ve never been told what the nature of Del Toro’s disability might be.
“We remain the preeminent force in the world because of leaders like Carlos," Lloyd Austin, Biden's Secretary of Defense claimed, calling him, "an immigrant who has dedicated his life to public service".
Considering that Del Toro took what he learned in the Navy and built a very successful business around it, that’s not exactly the noble act of public service that Austin, who has profited by his own military past, is making it out to be. Biden’s new Secretary of the Navy has done very well for himself while championing the leftist politics that have done very badly by America.
In 2009, Carlos Del Toro had appeared at Obama’s town hall and asked him about making it easier for businesses like his to get government contracts.
“The more Carloses there are who are out there scratching and striving to get some business, ultimately the better deal we'll get as taxpayers," Obama had gushed.
Now that Del Toro is the Secretary of the Navy, taxpayers should ask how good that deal is.
Joe Biden’s cabinet: A rainbow coalition of imperialist reaction
Eric London
The corporate media and Democratic Party are celebrating Joe Biden’s incoming cabinet as “the most diverse in US history,” proclaiming that the appointment of women, African Americans and Latinos to key cabinet positions is a sign of tremendous social progress.
In reality, Biden’s rainbow coalition of imperialist reaction encapsulates and exposes the right-wing essence of identity politics.
Nowhere is the excitement more palpable than in the editorial offices of the New York Times, a leading proponent of racial and gender politics, which gushed that the president-elect has “signaled his intention to draw from a diverse cross section of America in building his cabinet.”
The Times writes: “Unlike President Trump’s cabinet, which is more white and male than any in nearly 40 years, Mr. Biden’s list of likely top advisers promises to reflect 21st-century sensibilities.” It cites statements by Biden aides claiming the incoming cabinet “will look like America.”
Whatever the skin color of the cabinet members, the Biden administration will not think like America. The population is demanding massive social change to address the deadly pandemic and unprecedented levels of inequality and social desperation.
Though over seven in 10 Americans favor universal health care, there will be no constituency within the cabinet for such a policy. The same goes for the more than six in 10 Americans who support tuition-free college and student debt forgiveness. They will be “represented” by a cabinet consisting of equity fund partners of various races and genders.
While eight in 10 people now favor diverting money from police departments to support social programs following this summer’s nationwide, multi-racial demonstrations against police violence, Biden has pledged to increase funding for the police.
And for the over 75 percent of Americans who want troops removed from Afghanistan and Iraq and who support cutting defense spending, the multi-racial Biden cabinet will give them the exact opposite.
The nominees are not pioneers of their race or gender, they are social criminals:
Avril Haines, a former CIA deputy director, will be the first woman director of national intelligence. Haines was an architect of the Obama administration’s drone assassination program, which killed thousands of impoverished Africans, Arabs and Central Asians, with no attention to the victims’ gender.
Alejandro Mayorkas will be the first Latino to head the Department of Homeland Security. This will be little comfort for the hundreds of thousands of Latino (and other) immigrants he will deport in the coming months and years, or to the immigrant children he jailed in cages when he was deputy DHS secretary from 2013 to 2016.
Janet Yellen will be the first woman treasury secretary, after having helped implement the quantitative easing policy that transferred tens of billions of dollars to the banks on a monthly basis during the Bush and Obama administrations, while providing no support for millions of foreclosure victims.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, an African American, will be ambassador to the United Nations. Thomas-Greenfield worked in the State Department to help American oil and mining corporations extract resources from the world’s most impoverished countries.
Though not formally a member of the cabinet, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris—the first woman and first African American in that position—made her career as a “black woman prosecutor” by trampling on the lives of the mostly impoverished people she incarcerated.
Then there are the white men, whose own records are no more and no less criminal than those of their female and minority counterparts.
Antony Blinken is the nominee for secretary of state, having helped orchestrate the wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen. He was a partner at a private equity firm and co-founded WestExec Advisors, which works with Israeli intelligence and helped develop Google’s censorship tools. Former Secretary of State John Kerry, supporter of intervention in Syria and the 2013 coup in Egypt that established the murderous al-Sisi dictatorship, will be “climate czar.”
As for those on the shortlists for other cabinet positions, the Times holds its breath for the prospect of Tammy Duckworth becoming the first handicapped, Thai woman to serve as defense secretary. Former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg could be the first openly gay secretary of transportation.
These servants of Wall Street and US imperialism have nothing in common with the working people of “their own” race, gender or sexual orientation. It is class, not identity, which is the fundamental dividing line in American society.
This was on display during a surreal press conference announcing the cabinet yesterday, in which Biden made little mention of the coronavirus pandemic currently ravaging the country and the world, instead focusing on the “personal stories” of the above-named nominees. When it was their turn to speak, the nominees congratulated themselves and their loved ones for the career advancement.
Meanwhile, in the real world, 260,000 Americans are dead from the pandemic, with a disastrous winter ahead. The dead include a disproportionate number of poor and working people of all races who were forced back to work for corporate profit. They could not retreat to second or third homes in the countryside. They could not afford adequate health care and for many, underlying health problems (heart disease, obesity, smoking) are themselves badges of generations of poverty and oppression.
The ruling class’s bipartisan policy is to fuel the markets with death like coal fuels a steam engine train. Biden has reassured corporate America that “there will be no national lockdown,” while Democrats and Republicans have conspired to ensure no substantial increase in benefits for the unemployed.
In the two days since Biden began announcing his cabinet picks, the Dow Jones Industrial Average shot up nearly 1,000 points, breaking records and crashing through the 30,000 point mark. The affluent sections within each race and gender grow obscenely wealthy while workers of all races confront varying degrees of disaster.
The selection of Biden’s cabinet shows that politics based on race, gender and sexuality has become a fundamental part of the Democratic Party’s efforts to divide workers, enrich themselves, and falsely present themselves as “representational” of the broad masses, who in reality have no representation whatsoever in any branch of government.
Meanwhile, Trump and his fascist supporters capitalize on growing dissatisfaction with the race-obsessed Democrats. Trump doubled his support among black men and women in the 2020 election and tripled his support among LGBT people. At the same time, the far right sees recruitment opportunities among young white people who have no prospects for the future and are tired of being told by Democrats that they are nothing but racist “deplorables” who deserve their desperation.
In order to immediately address the social needs of workers around the world, the trillions of dollars hoarded by the rich must be seized and made available to alleviate human suffering. This requires the greatest possible degree of unity of all workers in a common struggle.
The world working class consists of billions of people who work thousands of different jobs, speak hundreds of different languages and have hundreds of different religions and local customs. Their skin, hair and eyes happen to come in many colors. For hundreds of years, in each country, the bourgeoisie has attempted to teach workers to hate one another based on pseudo-science, lies and violence.
The great historic task of socialists is to combat the long legacy of communalism and racial politics in order to make this massive, heterogeneous social force aware of its tremendous social power. The affluent proponents of identity politics who pretend to be “left-wing” are bitter opponents of the historic struggle to unify the international working class. For this reason they must be uncompromisingly opposed.
Feeding America, the second-largest food charity in the US, estimates that upwards of 54 million people, including one in four children in the US are facing food insecurity.
This is because despite all its declarations, the Democratic Party is not a party of workers. It, as Biden’s transition team attests, is a party of Wall Street, big banks, Amazon, and the military-industrial complex.
Amazon is entangled not only with Wall Street, but also with the US military and intelligence apparatus. Amazon was awarded a $600 million contract with the CIA in 2013, followed by a $10 billion contract with the Department of Defense last year to move government data onto the cloud. Meanwhile, Amazon’s facial-identification software “Rekognition” is being marketed to federal and local police.
Hunger and evictions surge in the US
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The worst social catastrophe to befall the US working class since the Great Depression of the 1930s continues to leave millions of people hungry, jobless and facing eviction.
Video taken outside a food distribution site in Dallas, Texas this past weekend by CBS News gives some indication of the widespread hunger facing workers and their families. Saturday’s giveaway hosted by the North Texas Food Bank was the largest ever put together by the organization.
Feeding America, the second-largest food charity in the US, estimates that upwards of 54 million people, including one in four children in the US are facing food insecurity.
People line up and check-in for a food giveaway at Harlem's Food Bank For New York City, a community kitchen and food pantry, Monday, Nov. 16, 2020, in New York. Over five hundred turkeys and produce food boxes were given away by lottery to needy families for Thanksgiving. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)
The growing need for food among millions of workers and their families is coinciding with record levels of COVID-19 infections reported in states across the country. In Texas, over 1 million have contracted the coronavirus, with over 20,000 perishing, the second highest tolls in the country behind New York. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation forecasts roughly another 190,000 deaths by March 1, 2021 if current trends continue.
On top of food insecurity, between 11 and 13 million renter households across the country are at risk of eviction, according to research by Stout, an investment bank and global advisory firm.
The Eviction Lab at Princeton University reports that eviction filings increased in several major metro areas following the expiration of CARES Act provisions at the end of July and before the CDC eviction moratorium was implemented on September 4. However, even with the moratorium, Princeton researchers note that evictions have continued across the country, and Stout estimates that with its expiration at the end of the year, this could lead to up to 6.4 million eviction filings.
The Eviction Lab data shows that two weeks after the CDC moratorium was implemented, evictions still continued to be processed, with 508 in Fort Worth and 1,053 in Houston, Texas. Filings also increased on a month-to-month basis in several cities, including Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and in the Florida cities of Tampa, Jacksonville and Gainesville.
In North Carolina, almost 25,000 eviction cases were filed between July and September, according to data from the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts, with almost 15,000 completed. Overall, Stout estimates that between 300,000 and 410,000 North Carolina households are unable to pay rent, with 240,000 expected eviction filings by January 2021.
In an interview with CNN, attorney Michael Trujillo commented on the bind that renters will find themselves in come January 1, 2021. “The pandemic is not going away before the end of the year,” he said, adding that without additional protections, “a huge wave of evictions” is on the horizon.
In a Hill-HarrisX poll taken between November 10 and November 13, 77 percent of US voters were in favor of passing a coronavirus relief package “as soon as possible.” Yet despite massive popular support for more stimulus, no relief is coming.
After the House and Senate passed the $2.2 trillion CARES Act at the end of March, which provided billions to Wall Street, large corporations and the well-connected, ensuring their financial stability for a lifetime, workers were left with limited protections and only temporary unemployment relief. Congress has yet to pass another bill long after the $1,200 stimulus checks have been sent out and enhanced unemployment benefits have expired. Months of inaction have left millions of workers and their families without additional stimulus, eviction protection, health care, food or medicine, exacerbating mental health issues and stress.
Included in the CARES Act was an eviction moratorium that expired, along with the federal $600-a-week unemployment supplement, at the end of July. After Congress failed to come to terms on another bill at the end of July, the Centers for Disease Control, on September 4, implemented a federal eviction moratorium, which required tenants to sign a declaration and provide a copy to their landlord. This, along with additional federal unemployment assistance distributed under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) programs, are set to expire the final week of December, leaving millions of people who have yet to find jobs or come up with the monies needed to pay back rent facing eviction in less than 50 days.
As of October, some 13 million people were receiving benefits through the PUA or PEUC program, more than from state unemployment insurance, which has also expired for millions of workers.
While the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates that over 11.1 million people are unemployed, thousands of workers, primarily low-wage workers, continue to be laid off. Last week, the BLS recorded over 700,000 first-time unemployment filings for the 34th week in a row, with first-time unemployment claims exceeding any week throughout the 2008-09 Great Recession.
A Washington Post analysis found that among higher education workers, low-wage and administrative staff have seen ongoing monthly job losses or have not been called back to campus, while higher paid instructors have been hired back. The Post found that while colleges hired 180,000 workers during the fall semester last year, only 20,000 jobs were added this year.
Mass unemployment has led workers to apply for state unemployment benefits, but hundreds of thousands have yet to receive anything nearly eight months into the pandemic. In Wisconsin, reporters working with Wisconsin Watch found that nationally only 56 percent of unemployment claims were paid from March through August, while in Wisconsin the level was only 42.5 percent. As of November 10, more than 94,000 people in the state were still waiting for either state or federal unemployment benefits.
For those who were fortunate enough to receive benefits, their expiration and the inability to find safe well-paying work have left them unable to afford basic necessities.
The out-of-control spread of the virus coupled with overcrowded hospitals prompted a flurry of public health declarations over the past 72 hours from Republican and Democratic governors, such as Iowa Republican Kim Reynolds and Michigan Democrat Gretchen Whitmer. These included curfews, mask mandates and calls to limit social gatherings to 10 people or less. However, not one politician in either party is advancing the necessary demand to resume lockdowns of all non-essential businesses, with guaranteed pay for jobless workers and small business owners.
As Democratic President-elect Joe Biden made clear in his speech yesterday after meeting with corporate executives, the number one concern of the ruling class is “to get the economy back on track,” not to stop the spread of the virus, feed the hungry, provide relief or house the homeless. All policy is focused on ensuing the flow of profits to the corporations and Wall Street.
Not once in Biden’s speech did he call for resuming the unemployment benefits in the CARES Act or extending eviction moratoriums.
This is because despite all its declarations, the Democratic Party is not a party of workers. It, as Biden’s transition team attests, is a party of Wall Street, big banks, Amazon, and the military-industrial complex.
In the latest round of political theater on Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appealing, “for the sake of the country,” to “come to the table and work with us to produce an agreement that meets America’s needs in this critical time.”
The letter noted that the negotiations should begin from the previous failed starting offer of $2.2 trillion, which McConnell and the Republicans have dismissed, a position from which they have not budged for the last six months. Despite the intransigence on the part of the Republicans, the fact is that the Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have found time to advance several of President Trump’s federal judges past committee hearings, including Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, allowing them to be approved.
Ultimately, both parties see the provision of even the most meager benefits as a “disincentive” for their real aim: getting workers back on the job in factories and other workplaces amid a raging pandemic.
Amazon’s 25th anniversary: A conglomerate based on parasitism and exploitation
Tom Carter
8 July 2019
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Last week, Amazon commemorated its 25th anniversary. From its beginnings in a garage in Seattle, Washington, Amazon has grown into a multinational technology conglomerate with a market capitalization of nearly one trillion dollars.
In 1994, future Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos left his job at hedge fund D.E. Shaw to get out in front of the possibilities opened up by the accelerating development of the internet, beginning with the modest idea of an online bookstore. Bezos went on to become the wealthiest man on the planet, his hoard by one estimate peaking at a record $157 billion before his assets were divided in a divorce earlier this year.
Now considered one of the “Big Four” technology monopolies alongside Apple, Google and Facebook, Amazon controls the largest marketplace on the Internet: Amazon.com. The conglomerate’s reach extends from Whole Foods Market, which Amazon purchased in 2017 for $13.4 billion, to consumer electronics such as the Kindle reader and the voice-controlled Alexa. Amazon subsidiary Kuiper Systems announced in April of this year that it will spend a decade launching 3,236 satellites into space to provide broadband internet.
Traditional book publishers were decimated by the arrival of Amazon, which aggressively pursued them, in the words of Bezos, “the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.” Using its vast flows of cash, Amazon ruthlessly undercut its rivals, from neighborhood stores to diaper manufacturers, accepting losses in order to drive competitors out of its way. Meanwhile, Amazon demanded and obtained free money from state and local governments in the form of tax breaks and other concessions.
Amazon’s annual revenues reached $233 billion in 2018, on which the conglomerate is expected to pay zero federal income tax. To put this figure in perspective, these revenues are nearly at the level of the annual tax revenue of Russia, which amounted to $253.9 billion in US dollars in 2017. Amazon’s revenues are higher than the government revenues of Turkey ($173.9 billion), Austria ($197.8 billion), Poland ($90.8 billion) and Iran ($77.2 billion).
Nearly half of American households now have subscriptions to Amazon Prime. The click of a mouse on a personal computer, or the tap of a finger on a mobile device, now sets into motion the speedy delivery of commodities from around the world, or the instantaneous electronic transmission of a film, song or book. Behind these deceptively simple transactions lies Amazon’s vast and complex commercial, logistics, distribution and computing empire.
Promising advances have indeed been made in automation and artificial intelligence. These technological advances carry with them tremendous liberating potential for human civilization as a whole. Heavy and repetitive toil by humans can increasingly be mitigated by robots, and possibilities appear on the horizon for advanced levels of coordination and integration around the world, assisted by artificial intelligence.
But under capitalism, new advances in technology have made possible new techniques of exploitation. Amazon has become a watchword for a new kind of despotism in the workplace.
In Amazon “fulfillment centers,” workers are forbidden to carry cellphones or to talk to each other. They are searched coming in and out, and minute details of their activity throughout the workday are tracked. Amazon specializes in putting constant pressure on workers to move as fast as possible, with electronic devices constantly prompting and prodding them to complete the next task.
Workers are instructed to compete with each other to surpass each other’s rates, which they are admonished constitutes “fun.” Arbitrarily high rates are demanded, and then raised, and then raised again. A worker who takes a moment to rest, to drink water, or to go to the bathroom can be criticized for a diminished rate. The workers who are deemed too slow, or who simply tire out, are replaced.
Amazon is now the second-largest employer in the United States, and there are around 647,000 Amazon workers worldwide. Journalist John Cassidy, writing about Amazon in The New Yorker in 2015, commented: “Behind all the technological advances and product innovation, there is a good deal of old-fashioned labor discipline, wage repression, and exertion of management power.”
Over the past week, the World Socialist Web Site published an article exposing the injury of 567 workers over a two-year period at Amazon’s DFW-7 fulfillment center near Fort Worth, Texas. In December of last year, the WSWS reported how Amazon had hired a private detective to spy on 27-year-old worker Michelle Quinones in an effort to block compensation for her injury.
Amazon has appeared in the “Dirty Dozen” list maintained by the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH) for two years in a row. The 2019 report highlights six worker deaths in seven months, 13 deaths since 2013, “a high incidence of suicide attempts, workers urinating in bottles and workers left without resources or income after on-the-job injuries.”
Amazon’s techniques are merely a refined expression of conditions being imposed on workers around the world. In March of this year, Ford Motor Company announced the hiring of its new chief financial officer, Tim Stone, who previously served as Amazon’s vice president of finance and the leader of the Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods. Stone was hired as Ford carries out brutal cost-cutting in the US, Europe and around the world.
There is no shortage of opposition among Amazon workers. On social media, current and former Amazon workers are contacting each other, looking for ways to fight back. In Poland, where Amazon workers make around $5 per hour, Amazon walked out of negotiations on July 2 with two unions over working conditions, setting the stage for a strike.
To fight for their interests, Amazon workers cannot allow their struggles to be corralled and smothered by the pro-capitalist trade unions, which are doing everything they can to block a fight against inequality and exploitation. The WSWS fights for the building of independent, rank-and-file workplace committees to unite Amazon workers throughout the world with all workers in a common counteroffensive.
The key to the struggle of Amazon workers is an understanding that the fight against Amazon is a fight against the capitalist system itself. In 25 years, Amazon produced the biggest individual fortune in history, and it did so on the backs of hundreds of thousands of workers. In the words of Karl Marx, Amazon’s trajectory represents an “accumulation of misery, corresponding with accumulation of capital.”
Not just Bezos, but many others have enriched themselves or stand to enrich themselves from Amazon’s rise. Wall Street has its fingers in the pie. The Vanguard Group currently owns $55 billion of Amazon stock, BlackRock owns $45 billion and FMR owns $30 billion.
The parasitic activities of Amazon, through which it has sought to appropriate for itself the surplus value accumulated by other companies, have been integrated with the financial parasitism of the American economy. Amazon’s own stock has been buoyed ever higher as part of the speculative mania on Wall Street.
Amazon is entangled not only with Wall Street, but also with the US military and intelligence apparatus. Amazon was awarded a $600 million contract with the CIA in 2013, followed by a $10 billion contract with the Department of Defense last year to move government data onto the cloud. Meanwhile, Amazon’s facial-identification software “Rekognition” is being marketed to federal and local police.
In 2013, Bezos personally purchased, and now operates, the Washington Post, which has been a main media voice for the Democratic Party’s anti-Russia campaign and the overall interests of American imperialism.
The increasing integration of Amazon with the repressive apparatus of the state, while its tentacles stretch into every corner of society, confirms the Marxist understanding of the relationship between capitalism and democracy in the modern epoch. “Finance capital does not want liberty, it wants domination,” wrote Austrian Marxist Rudolf Hilferding, in a passage quoted by Lenin in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.
Amazon must be placed under public ownership and democratic control. It must be taken out of the hands of the financial oligarchy and transformed into a public utility. The technology and infrastructure behind Amazon’s meteoric trajectory and the biggest individual fortune in modern history must be turned towards the needs and aspirations of the world’s population as a whole.
This program can only be achieved through the mobilization of the working class on an international scale on the basis of a fight to overthrow the capitalist system and establish a democratically-controlled socialist economy, run on the basis of social need, not private profit.
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