Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Socialist Sawant: Workers Should Take Over Boeing

KIRO TV reports:
Seattle City Councilmember-elect Kshama Sawant told Boeing machinists her idea of a radical option, should their jobs be moved out of state  
“The workers should take over the factories, and shut down Boeing’s profit-making machine,” Sawant announced to a cheering crowd of union supporters in Seattle’s Westlake Park Monday night.
This week, Sawant became Seattle’s first elected Socialist council member. She ran on a platform of anti-capitalism, workers’ rights, and a $15 per-hour minimum wage for Seattle workers[..]Sawant is calling for machinists to literally take-possession of the Everett airplane-building factory, if Boeing moves out. She calls that "democratic ownership."
“The only response we can have if Boeing executives do not agree to keep the plant here is for the machinists to say the machines are here, the workers are here, we will do the job, we don't need the executives. The executives don’t do the work, the machinists do,” she said.
Sawant says after workers “take-over” the Everett Boeing plant; they could build things everyone can use.
“We can re-tool the machines to produce mass transit like buses, instead of destructive, you know, war machines,” she told KIRO 7.
I am not going to lose too much sleep over Boeing being taken over by a bunch of left wing crazies, because it is a major part of the military-industrial complex, but Sawant believes the same thing should happen to Amazon.

16 comments:

  1. After being alive long enough, it is becoming abundantly clear that there are very different kinds of people in this world. Our hierarchical specie of hunter/gatherer monkeys is divided into the alphas, betas, and omegas. Our brains are still wired to be living in related groups of about 100. It's the only way this kind of thinking makes any sense to me at all. I can see the need for fairness and equality when you live with uncle Bob, Tim, and Joe, back when you all hunted and shared the fruits of everyone's labor with the group, and the women tended to the children and the nests. The industrial revolution brought about some serious changes to those dynamics, specializing the labor force and all.

    I feel like liberty-minded folks are fighting some bad genetic defects. There are apparently plenty of people who hear Ms. Sawant and think her tried and tested ideas (which have generated failures on massive scales in the past - Chinese famines anyone?) are the best thing to happen to humans since the invention of the wheel. When the wheels start falling of the USA wagon, it is going to be primordial for libertarians to take control of the narrative. If not, someone who is a more charming sociopathic version of Ms. Sawant will take the reigns and take this country back to the dark ages.

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  2. that would be magnificent to watch, its always grand to see a part of the elite at war with another yet pretend that nothings going on.

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  3. I guess this dumb bimbo doesn't realize that the Soviet Union already tried this idiot Marxian silliness. Result? They ended up with tens of millions dead. Clueless moron.

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    1. Yes! "We can re-tool the machines to build Trabants and Riga-55 washers."

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  4. Yeah, I can totally see Jeff Bezos bowing down to this lady. It's more like whatever Jeff Bezos says goes. That's the whole fantasy with these believers in socialism like they can actually tell powerful people what to do. In reality, it's the powerful establishment that corals them.

    It's like the time when the Coyote finally caught the Roadrunner. Except that the Roadrunner was gigantic. The Coyote had no idea what to do with it. I don't think they thought this all the way through. What will happen when they do take it over? There's no leadership structure and no money moving.

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  5. Wow, just like Atlas Shrugged! Good luck with making that work!

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  6. This would proceed swimmingly until the paychecks don't show up in the mail. Then, the workers will be rioting wondering how that could happen when they took over the plant like they were told.

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    1. It might not even make it that far. Someone's got to pay for production inputs.

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    2. Somebody has to supply the knowledge required to build a plane, or a bus, or any product with commercial value. What socialists consistently fail to mention is that "Labor" is useless without knowledge and (as Anonymous above suggests,) someone to ante up the capital to get started. But we're supposed to rally around the idea of an idle factory full of idle workers as some kind economic victory?

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  7. I think they ought to do it.
    What could possibly be better than a real life example of socialist action on a micro-scale?
    Without hierarchy, no difference in pay. With no difference in pay, no incentive to outperform any of the slackers on the workforce. A nice race to the bottom. Resentment all around. Company down the toilet.
    Ayn Rand couldn't make this stuff up. Oh wait a minute... She DID.

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  8. A bus in every garage! Ahhh, paradise.

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  9. It will be entertaining to watch Boeing show up with the riggers to haul the machines off.

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  10. We don't need the executives? Say, isn't the city council filled with executives? Why don't the people of Seattle take over the city council and retake their rightful ownership.

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  11. What would be kind of interesting is to see these commie lunatics make an attempt to take over the means of production. With Boeing being a customer in the military industrial complex, i wonder what the military would think of a bunch of pinko's screwing with one of their own. And the hilarious thing is: the majority of American citizens would probably love to see the army go in there and taking care of business. Stupid commie Sawant. Not to mention irresponsible to urge a bunch of fools to try something like this while she sits behind her city council desk.

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  12. I am trying to understand how a crony company like boeing has the right to claim free market principles? Since they lobby for special government privileges, it makes sense for the workers to take over the company. After all, if the company practices socialism, so do the workers.

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    1. Uh, no, it doesn't make sense "for the workers to take over the company." Also, it's not clear that Boeing claims "free market principles". Your remark reads like a straw man attack fabricated entirely from your uneducated juvenile imagination.

      Now, it does make sense to cut Boeing loose from government subsides in the form of contracts for equipment and related services, but even afterwards it wouldn't have "the right to claim free market principles". Like the airlines, Boeing is utterly dependent upon governmental subsidization of airports. Take, for example, O'Hare and Midway in Chicago, the city where Boeing's HQ is located.

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