Class Enemy of the Week: Postmaster General Louis DeJoy
By Jake J.
This is part five of Austin DSA’s “Class Enemy of the Week” series. You can find part four, on Travis County GOP Chair Matt Mackowiak, here.
Whether you live in a bustling metropolis or the most remote rural locale, the post office delivers your mail. Every zip code across America has a post office and they’re legally required to serve everyone at uniform rates. Besides being an invaluable public service, the post office is also one of America’s largest employers, providing good-paying, unionized jobs to 630,000 workers across the country. For generations, working for the post office has been the path to a stable existence for thousands of black workers, in particular.
It’s no wonder that again and again, the post office tops opinion polls (an incredible 91% in a 2020 Pew poll) as the American public’s favorite federal agency. The affordable, eminently useful, and universal service it provides is valued by practically every American. Just think what a pleasure it is to get a letter or a package in the mail.
That (and more) is what Louis DeJoy, Trump-appointed postmaster general, wants to take away from us. DeJoy, a multimillionaire and former GOP fundraiser, initially rose to the status of national infamy last year when he announced sweeping changes to the post office, pushing the service toward privatization. Racked by accusations that he was attempting to sabotage mail-in voting in the lead up to the 2020 election and facing scrutiny from Congress and labor leaders, DeJoy largely retreated from this foray into destroying the postal service.
The presidential election followed, mail-in voting went off without a hitch, and Democrat Joe Biden won. Goodbye Louis DeJoy — or so you’d think. As it turns out, Biden can’t directly fire the postmaster general. His job security rests in the hands of the bipartisan Postal Board of Governors, which is still dominated by Trump appointees. Biden can fairly easily get rid of these Trump appointees and replace them with people who don’t want to actively destroy the service they’re meant to represent. But just because Biden can reorganize the Postal Board of Governors doesn’t mean he will.
And so, for the time being at least, we’re stuck with DeJoy. That’s bad news. Last week, he announced a ten-year “reorganization” plan for the postal service, which includes slowing down delivery times, raising prices on postage, and reducing hours for post offices. This is nothing short of an attempt to destroy the post office, purposely sabotaging the service so that there’s an excuse to privatize it later on down the line.
The overwhelming popular nature of the post office is no guarantee of its safety. Over the years, Democrats and Republicans alike have worked to erode the post office, beginning with the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, passed in the wake of the nationwide postal workers strike that year. Since the passage of this law, the post office has slowly seen its subsidies decrease, forcing it to cut costs. Services like public transportation and the post office were never meant to turn a profit, they’re meant to provide a valuable service to the public with the use of government funding. With the onset of neoliberalism and austerity politics, lawmakers have changed their tune. If a public service doesn’t make a profit, then it’s on the chopping block.
The post office as it exists isn’t too lucrative for capitalists. Even though it ably serves millions of people across the country, capitalists see it as a barrier to getting to their main objective: maximal profit. Companies like FedEx, UPS, and Amazon would like nothing more than for the post office to be shuttered and its functions handed over to them. Needless to say, profit-seeking corporations would do away with the post office’s commitment to serving everyone at uniform costs — there’s not much profit in that.
It is incumbent on socialists to fight against austerity wherever it rears its ugly head. First of all, we should demand that Joe Biden take the first step in throwing out DeJoy, but we know that he’s just a player in the game. Both parties have actively pursued the degradation of the post office for decades and will continue to pursue it at the behest of their wealthy donors. So what do we do about it?
Opposing cuts to the post office is not enough. We need to formulate a positive vision for how the post office can be improved and expanded. Postal banking, which would give all Americans access to basic financial services and low-interest loans, has long been a demand of the American left from the 1892 Omaha Platform of the Populist Party to Bernie Sanders’ 2020 platform. More radically, democratic socialists need to advocate for nationalizing Amazon and folding it into the post office. Amazon employs over a million hyper-exploited workers and owns a vast array of logistics infrastructure including warehouses and shipping facilities to provide essential services to millions of people. Democratic socialists are fighting for a world in which Amazon’s impressive resources serve public good, not private profits. Nationalizing the company would also give Amazon workers coverage under the postal unions, allowing them to collectively bargain for wages, benefits, and working conditions.
The democratic socialist movement has the whole of the capitalist class arrayed against it. The capitalist class is well-organized, they own nearly all of the wealth in our society, and have plenty of loyal representatives in the mold of Louis DeJoy. So, they’re certainly in a powerful position, but they’re also getting nervous. The resurgence of socialism with Bernie Sanders and DSA, the elevation of issues like Medicare for All and the PRO Act to the national stage, and large unionization efforts like the one at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, AL give them cause for fear. The capitalist knows, just as we do, that when workers get organized they can take power away from the bosses and fundamentally transform society. DSA, with its nearly 100,000 members, is in a strong position not only to stop the Louis DeJoys of the world from making things worse but to make significant advances toward the horizon of democratic socialism.
