U.S. President Biden's
Infrastructure Plan
Infrastructure Plan to Pay the Rich
- K.C. Adams -
  
The Biden Administration infrastructure plan is
presently before the U.S. Congress. The plan seeks
to put $2.3 trillion in funds from the public
treasury into constructing new infrastructure and
rebuilding already existing roads, bridges, rails,
electric grids, water supplies, ports and
airports.
Over half of the proposed funds are slated for
direct handouts to private investors in what is
called green projects such as $174 billion in
pay-the-rich schemes for the auto oligopolies to
produce electric vehicles or as some commentators
derisively remark "to make Elon Musk richer."
A modern economy requires social infrastructure
serving all sectors regardless of the relations of
production or system of ownership and control. In
a country the size of the United States, social
infrastructure is massive in scope demanding
equally massive investments. Infrastructure is
socialized means of production that all
enterprises and the people require in one way or
another. The necessity is not in dispute. The
issue facing the people is not the necessity of
social infrastructure but who controls it and in
whose social class interest it is built,
maintained and realized
(paid for).
Should
financing, building, maintaining and realization of social
infrastructure serve the competing private interests of the oligarchy
or the common good of the economy as a whole and the people and society
and its humanization? Working people can resolve this problem in their
favour with mass political mobilization to stake their claims on what
is theirs by right and open a path forward to democratic renewal and a
new pro-social direction for the economy.
Infrastructure and Imperialist Globalization
Means of transportation are an obvious necessity.
The need exists to transport resources and
commodities to factories and other workplaces,
including the human factor and its capacity to
work. The further transportation of commodities to
retail outlets and buyers, and customers to
markets are all
necessary functions of a modern economy.
Globalization has added distance to all these
activities.
 International
infrastructure under imperialism includes
militarization and the competition for
investments, resources, markets and workers to
exploit. Resistance of the people to foreign
control and exploitation is unrelenting with
challenges to imperialism coming from all
quarters. Development
is uneven and competitors inevitably arise to
challenge the existing powers with war a constant
danger. For example, the silk road of the old
world has become the Belt and Road Initiative of
the modern one to build international
infrastructure connecting China to 71 countries.
In response, the U.S.
imperialists under President Obama announced a
U.S. military "pivot to Asia" and preparations for
war with China, which is now intensifying under
President Biden with Prime Minister Trudeau and
others in lockstep. International and domestic
infrastructure is a concern of the ruling U.S.
oligarchy closely
connected with its war economy driven by their
individual private interests and their collective
desire for global hegemony and to defeat all
rivals.
Ownership, Control and Realization of
Infrastructure
The ownership and control of infrastructure, its
financing, price of production and realization,
the distribution of profits and which companies
are to be involved in its construction,
maintenance and management both at home and abroad
are matters that the oligarchs and their political
representatives fight over according to their
private interests and needs. The common good and
how infrastructure should serve the entire economy
and its parts in cooperation are not
considerations of the imperialist oligarchs. Their
quest for maximum private profit dominates their
thinking and
actions.
Once decided by those in control, infrastructure
needs financing. The $2.3 trillion will come from
both general taxation and deficit financing. This
suits the oligarchs fine as lending governments
money is a safe and reliable way not only to make
some interest but also to park money that has few
other possibilities at the time. General taxation
has become a matter of the working class paying
from its reproduced-value as most oligarchs and
their enterprises pay relatively little in taxes.
The construction and maintenance of
infrastructure is mostly a private affair of huge
companies that are customarily owned and
controlled by global investment cartels. The
profits from infrastructure construction are
enormous as can be seen from the scramble and
infighting among the rich for
political influence to be in a position to decide
and award contracts.
Realization
of the transferred-value of infrastructure is shrouded in mystery. The
enterprises that consume infrastructure as means of production and
distribution want to do so at the lowest price, if at all. In many
cases they do not pay anything such as with mass commuter transit, or
only partially at a fraction of the real value with roads and bridges,
and with agreements on lower "industrial rates" for example with the
Post Office or state owned hydro-electric enterprises.
The
oligarchs regard infrastructure that reproduces the human factor and
keeps workers available, healthy and educated to standards they need as
not their responsibility to pay for (realize) through their enterprises
other than by minimal user fees, corporate taxation, charity and
certain collective agreements with their own workers for pensions and
other benefits.
The refusal to recognize social infrastructure as
necessary means of production for which all
enterprises active in the economy are individually
and collectively responsible has the effect of
dumping the cost of realization onto the working
class. The refusal of those who control the
economy
and its parts to recognize and assume their social
responsibilities means problems go unresolved,
social conditions deteriorate, and the people are
deprived of their right to education, health care,
employment and even their lives.
Nation-Building
Under
the current regime of the oligarchs, infrastructure spending is
directed at strengthening their private interests and control in
contradiction with the necessity for nation-building to serve both the
people and the economy. Modern nation-building is a project the working
class must assume under its control and aim to serve the people and
their society and all humanity.
Very little of the public spending under the
control of the oligarchy results in realized
actual and potential income from state enterprises
that can then be reinvested in other
infrastructure or social programs This lack
results in a structural problem for imperialism as
to where public
funds can be found to pay the rich and to finance
the massive domestic and international police
powers, state bureaucracy and infrastructure. The
oligarchs shift the burden of finding public funds
for the state treasury onto the working class
through individual taxation and user fees. This
results
in constant downward pressure on the working class
and its standard of living.
 Reduced
state spending on social programs and the necessity for the oligarchs
to always have a certain level of unemployment or "surplus workers"
available at any time result in deteriorating social conditions and a
continuous stream of workers falling out of the productive workforce
into extreme poverty, and an equally large number of people engaged in
social welfare and charity attempting to help the poor or advocate for
their needs. Why this industrialization of poverty and charity exists
is never questioned in official circles even though the productivity of
the modern economy quite obviously allows solutions to be organized to
lift up all people culturally and socially, affirm their rights and
allow them to participate in work and life according to their ability.
When building and maintaining social
infrastructure, the private interests of the
oligarchy are first and foremost served. This is
yet another reason the oligarchs fight so
ferociously amongst themselves to ensure their
private interests are represented in government
and that their political
operatives within the cartel parties win positions
to award contracts.
The exposure of the political economy regarding
infrastructure and the refusal of the oligarchy to
meet its responsibilities is a front of the
struggle to affirm the rights of all and claim
what belongs to the working class by right as the
producer of all value. The exposure and class
struggle to
stop paying the rich and increase spending on
social programs point to the necessity for a new
direction for the economy where the actual
producers themselves take control of economic and
political affairs freed from the burden of the
narrow competing private interests of the
oligarchs dictating
what is to be done in contradiction with working
people and the socialized productive forces.
This article was published in
Volume 51 Number 19 - August 1, 2021
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2021/Articles/MS51191.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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