(Seattle) What's wrong with the slogan: "Money for Jobs, not for War" ?

is that jobs aren't what people want. I hate working jobs. I'm interested in doing the work it takes to support my community, but jobs have never provided that. I don't see how people can rally behind pro-job platforms while being kept miserable and spiritually ungratified by their jobs. Money for food not war. Money for open spaces not war. No money, no war. Those all sound more up my alley.

Today the slogan in question ("money for jobs, not for war") is mainly used by opportunist elements in the anti-war movement to _drown out_ anti-imperialist and other militant anti-war slogans. Instead of uniting with _these_ sentiments, they attempt to get the mass to unite with _their_ narrow fixation on the economic struggle.

The slogan in question tends to suggest that the main issue is a mis-allocation of funds (as opposed to how our society is currently organized and which class is currently in charge)--and the opportunists make no serious attempt to explain how this all works. (Putting it in vague, over-simplified terms in the small print of a newspaper or "theoretical" journal is not the same thing as a serious explanatory effort.)

However, I strongly disagree with one of Ben Seattle's claims. He writes

<<And the way it works is that imperialism will _not_ give money for jobs if we ask for it. They will give money for jobs when hundreds of thousands of activists _stop_ asking for it and _start_ asking the _working class_ to join in struggle to _overthrow_ the system of imperialism.>>

If Ben Seattle thinks this is a "just demand" that "deserves support," then why would he want activists to _stop_ "asking" for this? We have a right to these things, why not fight for them? Obviously getting these things would require more than "asking"--it requires struggle. But the demanding jobs and education and struggling to end imperialism need not be mutually exclusive.

I certainly don't think that the slogan in question should be a _leading_ slogan in the anti-war movement or anywhere else. Like Ben Seattle, I completely oppose this tailing of the economic struggle (economism), which is precisely the practice of the opportunists. This opportunist practice weakens the struggle against imperialism, and thus the struggle against imperialism is inseparable from the struggle against opportunism.

But fighting this opportunism, and struggling to put proletarian politics in command, is not the same as calling on activists to _stop_ demanding money for jobs and other basic human needs! What's wrong with trying to combine the struggle for jobs with the struggle to end the war? More, why shouldn't we try and do this?

This in itself is not inherently opportunist or reformist. What's opportunist and reformist is the political methods the opportunist and reformists use to try and do this, and how they consistently fail to address the common misconceptions surrounding the slogan in question.

In his effort to oppose this opportunist orientation, Ben Seattle also ends up opposing the raising of these just economic demands.

Who cares which slogans are "drowning out" other slogans. Who listens to people chanting slogans on a street corner in 2007?

Like all slogans, this one can mean different things to different people. For example, there are naïve people who probably raise it thinking that if the government didn't spend tax dollars for wars and occupations, it would spend them for jobs and education. But the ending of the Cold War showed that ruling class gives no "peace dividends": concessions regarding jobs, education, open spaces, the environment and other issues of mass concern can only be won through mass struggle. Chanting this slogan doesn't help these people discard their illusions, and it may even help fortify them.

Moreover, in any just struggle for jobs, parks, libraries that are open, etc.; or against tuition increases, cut-backs in social services, etc.; activists may raise the "money for x, not for war" idea---and justly so! Yet particular struggles require particular demands and slogans, and it would be wrong to drown these out w/ "money for x, not for war". Furthermore, according to bourgeois politics, the workers, poor people, youth and students, the elderly, etc., are all thrown together as "special interest groups" competing with each other for a meager share of the national wealth that the working class ultimately creates by selling its labor-power. Chanting this slogan doesn't help people mired in these politics break out of them, and it may even help fortify them.

Clearly, the idea that the government should budget "money for jobs and education, not for war and occupation" is something that few working people or other progressive people would disagree with. But herein lies the rub (which has been taken up by Ben and X9 above): This slogan is not one that is spontaneously coming up from below at Seattle and other anti-war demonstrations. Instead it's being chanted over and over through bullhorns by alleged revolutionaries---Trotskyists from the ISO, Socialist Alternative, PSL and others---and it's often only grudgingly taken up by people in their immediate vicinities. Further, as X9 points out, this slogan is raised in opposition to slogans that can really help advance the movement from its present state, i.e., slogans that point to the capitalist-imperialist system at root of the war, slogans that bring out proletarian internationalist sentiments for the workers and poor of Iraq, slogans that point out that the Democrats too are a party of imperialist war, and plain simple but militant anti-war slogans in general. (In the Tacoma March 17 anti-war demonstration members of the S.A. even shouted "Money for x, y, z, not for war" in direct opposition to "Fight the rich, not their wars!"... .but, in this case, they lost.)

I think X9 is entirely correct in his criticism of Ben Seattle's formulation above. To pose the struggles for partial or immediate demands against the revolutionary struggle for socialism is an error.

I was intrigued by the title of this post.
I have problems with that slogan...because I think that "jobs" means "worker exploitation and skimming profits off of someone else's labor" in capitalism most often. I do not think of selfemployment when I hear "jobs" I think of something like slave wagery...When I hear they are "creating jobs" I think of things like they are opening a nuke plant or coal mine or auto assemblyline NEAR YOU! It is very very rare that "job creations" means workers get the good end of the deal. I think of "creating jobs" as something that really is more geared toward corporate profits than teaching people real skills or jobs they can use to be fully selfemployed or seflsufficient. I think of "creating jobs" as the same as "using cheap labor" - so no, making more "jobs" is not really the ticket. I think "job creation" is mostly about providing the SERVICE end of labor for some business person to collect profits from. My view of progression is not more crappy jobs where the worker is exploited but rather a society where people are paid fairly for their labor in service, not a situation where some sleazy business middle man gets their share FIRST before the worker who produced the profits...Jobs is not the answer in my opinion. Jobs entails someone else skimming profits from your labor most often. I really think there is no way to see capitalism as anything but a pyramid scheme in many ways. If it said "self-Employment for all" but "jobs for all" implies a tiered system, where the worker is at the bottom.

I also agree that "protests" in their current forms are primarily useless. Marching around a preconscribed route with police escort, well, walking round and round a little race track to please cops is absurd and not really a "protest." It is more like a chapperoned walk downtown. I think what went on at the Post of Tacoma recently was a protest, but that crap downtown recently where people literally walk a little walk with the police is crazy shit, I see no purpose in it all. I feel like the police "allow" protests in Seattle because people let the police do whatever they want and follow any commands cops throw at them to a point that they lose all effectiveness as protests. I personally am not willing to walk around a little track on a leash for police to pretend I am using my free speech rights.