Government Shutdown and the General Strike

5 min read

Just now

If a factory slashes their employees’ healthcare plan so that the union goes on strike, who shut down the factory? I didn’t vote for Kamala Harris. I am not a member of the Democratic Party, I am a member of the Green Party who has been arrested with the Green Presidential candidate whom I voted for and I received thirty-something percent of the vote when I ran for City Council in Festus Missouri with the endorsement of the Green Party. I have been thrown out of a Democrat-run St. Louis County Council building with a Yemeni guy whose high school was bombed by Obama because a Democratic President was committing the most well documented genocide in history. The second time I was arrested, now-congressman and Democrat Wesley Bell tried to get federal charges on me because of my participation in various sabotagings of his campaign, the most well funded congressional campaign in history. I don’t vote for Democrats, and I think that both parties should be banned, with their entire treasuries seized, and most higher-up Republicans and Democrats should be banned from running for office and have an ankle monitor at minimum — but in this specific situation I do blame the Republicans for the government shutdown in the same way I blame a factory for a shutdown when they cause a strike by slashing healthcare.

A labor strike must be supported by mutual aid or charity so people can eat while not getting paid, and thus a strike cannot effectively extend beyond the capacity of existing mutual aid networks. In America it is much more difficult to unionize because losing one’s job also means losing healthcare. “Obamacare” is a moderate bandaid that has made it a bit easier for workers to bargain for their interests and made it a bit harder for businesses to extort their workers. With so much unemployment — and having a job is not enough to not need food stamps — a major portion of our population is constantly relying on food stamps and “Obamacare.” From the CNN article “8 Democrats crossed the aisle tonight to help Republicans end the government shutdown. Here’s what’s next” we learn that when “A small band of Senate Democrats voted with Republicans tonight to approve a funding measure to reopen the federal government — without securing their party’s demand to guarantee an extension of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, which help millions of Americans afford insurance” the Democratic Party taught the Republican Party they can get whatever they want by creating conditions inducing a “government shutdown” which keeps funding the state — i.e. police, ICE and war but shuts down food stamps and air traffic control and other things needed to maintain a functioning society called government. Thus we discover that what we may have thought synonyms — “government” and “state” — are in fact two different things: there is a “government” that makes sure people have what they need, and a state which uses violence to enforce the interests of the ruling class upon the people, with the government being a concession from the ruling class which must be perpetually fought for while the capitalist state is a coercive weapon of control the ruling class perpetually forces upon us.

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The terms of negotiation aren’t terribly complex. If Democrats want to win any more elections they must at least try to get us some healthcare. Republicans respond that they will only concede to a government without healthcare, so when the democrats demand healthcare, the republicans simply shut down the government, leaving only the state to make sure people don’t take the food they need.

Where in a general strike workers cease to produce capital for the capitalist, this government shutdown is the state cutting off the flow of capital to the government. One is the expression of the intrinsic contradiction between the capitalist class and working class, the other an expression of the current contradiction between the current state and current government. There is no intrinsic contradiction between the interests of the state and government in abstract like there is between capitalists and workers, but because the state is an employee of the capitalist class and the government is a concession won by the working class, there is an intrinsic contradiction between the aims of the capitalist state and its own government. This contradiction between capitalist state and government can only intensify so long, the rate of profit tends to decline as is always the case within the capitalist system of booms and busts. The only resolution in the fight between state and government is for the capitalist state to be dissolved and replaced by a worker’s state whose interests align with its own government and wellbeing of the people.

For now the contradiction between state and government has been momentarily stifled with the eight democrats siding with the closest allies to the democrats: the republicans. And what has the Republican Party won? The CNN article “Obamacare enrollees get first look at 2026 prices as premiums soar” explains that “The monthly premium for the benchmark plan on healthcare.gov will soar 30%, on average, according to the KFF analysis, which is based on data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.” Again, I happen to think the Democratic Party should be banned and the treasury seized, and Biden and Harris should be sent to prison for war crimes, but I happen to think Republicans really are making things worse with this one: “The only time premiums on the federal exchange increased even more was in 2018, after President Donald Trump eliminated federal support for Obamacare subsidies that help people pay for their out-of-pocket costs. Premiums shot up by 37% that year, reflecting insurers’ uncertainty about the future of the landmark health reform law in the first Trump administration.” Certain places will have it worse than others, “Several states that run their own Obamacare exchanges have announced that premiums will at least double next year if the enhanced subsidies lapse” like the “enrollees in Connect for Health Colorado [who] will see premiums increase an average of 101% next year, the state’s Division of Insurance announced. Roughly 75,000 residents will lose access to health coverage.” Just as ending a strike without gaining demands is a short term win with a long term loss, getting paid again to buy food but without healthcare, by caving to the Republican Party so they will return food stamps the Democrats have cost us far more in healthcare.

The Republican Party is only reliant on the state, whereas the Democrats require both the state and the government. Thus the Democratic government will never be able to conquer the Republican state. We should not rely on the Democratic Party to negotiate for our needs because, as we have seen, they will cave. The previous metaphor I have been using of comparing the government shutdown to a labor strike breaks down here, because capitalists need workers to reproduce profit, but the Republican State doesn’t need the Democratic government to maintain the state of affairs wherein workers produce value for the capitalist class. It is only a workers’ party which can force demands upon the Republican State because a workers’ party can organize a general strike to shut down the economy, which the state is a client of. If the Republican State doesn’t want to lose their job as the mercenaries of merchants and industrialists they must enter negotiations with a general strike, or instead of negotiating, they may simply go full-fascist to violently break it up. I don’t suspect that the first general strike will be the Revolution, but that general strikes are the first step to pushing the contradictions which created a government shutdown to their full conclusion by shutting down the capitalist state itself.