the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Nov 22, 2021
President Joe Biden dropped into Detroit last Wednesday, joining local Michigan Democrats to crow about his infrastructure bill on the site of GM’s “Factory ZERO.” He drove around for the cameras in a brand new Electric Hummer, smiling and waving like a used-car salesman—helping sell GM’s new cars ... and his own policies.
“This law is going to help rebuild the backbone of this nation,” he said. “This is a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America.” He says, driving a car that starts at $115,000 “without the wheels.” A car that costs almost three times what an actual “blue collar” worker takes home in a year.
And it flies in the face of facts. Factory ZERO in Detroit/Hamtramck may get up to 2,200 workers ... eventually. This is less than the 3,000 workers that the Poletown plant on this same site employed at its peak—which was less than half of the number of jobs GM said would be there, after they bulldozed 400 acres of Detroit and Hamtramck to build it. And Poletown replaced the Fleetwood Body and Clark Street Cadillac Assembly plants which employed over 20,000 workers at their peak in the 70’s.
But Biden, a crafty salesman, knows a good line. He ignores GM’s constant attacks on its own workers, and instead calls out China, and points out a couple of new jobs that are “Here in America, not halfway around the world.” Peddling some of the same nationalist poison that Trump loved to dish out, as did the unions and the Democrats before him! Following in the same worn-out footsteps.