Plant closings and thousands of layoffs are daily news items. We are faced with all the signs of a classic capitalist crisis of overproduction. Crisis of overproduction is misleading. There is a crying need for steel, for transportation, for housing, for hospitals, schools, and for most things that mass production industries make. The crisis is, in part, that working families cannot buy back the goods they make.
Labor needs to champion production priorities that rebuild our country and our infrastructure.
Bridges, roads, dams, sewer systems, schools, low cost housing, and hospitals are examples of what needs building. New priorities must also include investment in social needs like education, health care, housing and child care to name a few. This kind of useful production priorities does not generate the highest rates of profit. If the corporations do not want to make what is needed, then rather than allow plant closings we should consider public ownership for the common good. Already in California there are proposals in the legislature for public ownership of energy to ensure this vital resource for the people.