Workers Shutdown the US Government Shutdown

Ending the government shutdown was the work of the proletariat, not the political class. For 35 days, between December 22, 2018 and January 25, 2019, the Federal Government was mostly shut down; only “essential services,” primarily the security apparatus, continued to operate, because Trump did not get his wall, even from a Republican Congress. The problem was exacerbated by the weakness of the incoming Democratic Congress, which had promised a Blue Wave that, it turned out, was little more than a drop in the bucket, and its servility to the agenda of the bourgeoisie. The end of the shutdown demonstrates two things: the impotence and cupidity of the political class, and the power of the proletariat.

The political class demonstrated the inability of its leadership to achieve its objectives. Prior to the seating of the new Congress in early January, the government shut down because President Donald Trump threatened to veto any spending bill that did not include funding for his border wall. Even the Republican-dominated Congress could not pass a spending bill that included it. When the new Congress took office on January 3rd, the Republicans had lost control of the House and barely maintained their control of the Senate, and were deeply divided. The Democrats in the Senate, however, were content to allow business as usual, and did not attempt to challenge the unpopularity of the shutdown or the arrangement of power, for fear that encouraging a back‑bench revolt amongst the Republicans would encourage their own back‑benchers to revolt against them. Far more important to them were the perks and privileges of high office and the profit to be made off the misery of their constituents.

In spite of the press’ fawning over the leader of the Democrats in the House, Pelosi, her repeated attempts at “negotiation” with Trump were, in the end, little more than theatre. The Democrats, traditionally seen as the party of the urban poor, and thus welfare recipients, as well as state employees, could ill afford to abandon the masquerade, but, as members of the executive committee of the ruling class, could equally ill afford to offend the powerful noise machine that the bourgeoisie cranks up whenever there is a hint that their will may not be obeyed by their agents in Washington. Hence they continued to prolong the agony. Finally, having gone over a month without pay, many of those “essential” workers who were not part of the bourgeoisie’s menagerie of security agencies, had enough. When air traffic controllers, airline pilots, and flight attendants began to make threatening noises about not being able to continue to work, and faced with the shut down of their critical artery of commerce, Washington took heed, and a spending bill was passed, re‑opening the government. It was this, and not the theatrics of the politicos, that ended the shutdown.