Re: Alex Cockburn vs. Michael Moore

["William S. Lear" <rael@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, November 12, 1997 at 17:38:41 (-0800) Nathan Newman writes:
>
>On Wed, 12 Nov 1997, William S. Lear wrote:
>
>> If Moore actually said this:
>>
>>     while GM employees were being laid off by the thousands,
>>     'the left' was in Nicaragua supporting the Sandinistas,
>>     or in Philly protesting the death penalty.
>>
>> then, I don't blame Cockburn for being upset.  This goes far beyond a
>> critique of style.  While workers in Detroit were being downsized,
>> Nicaraguans were being, quite literally, slaughtered by the
>> contras.
>
>But the question is does spending your main energies protesting the
>Contras help the Nicaraguan people more than concentrating on the needs of
>Detroit workers who are needed as an integral part of any decent,
>progressive foreign policy?

Suppose someone down the street from you were being raped.  Next door,
a friend of yours is fired.  Do you rush to the aid of the person
being raped, or do you rush next door?  As far as I'm concerned,
building labor solidarity, pushing back against capitalists (and more)
is a long-term job, something which should never be neglected (and,
contrary to what Moore apparently writes, it was not).  Aiding people
who are actively being slaughtered (this was a full-scale war,
remember), however, is far more urgent.  You can always get people
another job, you can always build a movement out of displaced
workers---you have no such luxury with murdered campesinas.

One could have asked the same question in the 1960s:

    ...does spending your main energies protesting the
    Vietnam war help the Vietnamese people more than
    concentrating on the needs of American workers...?

The answer then, as in the 1980s, is clear I think.

Again, as I said earlier, I don't think this is, or ever was, a
zero-sum game.  The left spent a goodly amount of time bemoaning and
actively fighting "downsizing" during the eighties, as I recall, and
also strongly fought against rapacious U.S. foreign policy.  I also
remember some difficulty in getting U.S. unions to join the criticism
of U.S. foreign policy, to put it mildly (see below for details).

>                             "Reagan Democrats" were very likely the
>margin of death in a number of third world countries and neglecting strong
>inclusive mobilization of our own working class is a rotten approach to
>defending the working class of other countries.

I don't exactly understand what you mean by "Reagan Democrats".  Both
Democrats and Republicans were perfectly ok with the murderous
contras, the Democrats objecting, typically, only that it might be too
costly, etc.  As I said, one should never neglect working class issues
(and they were not, in fact), but I should point out that this was not
about the "working class" in Nicaragua, it was about peasants,
intellectuals, etc., *and* the working class in Nicaragua.

>I would hazard a bet (and I could be wrong, but I don't think so) that
>Congresspeople with 100% COPE labor rating are probably more consistently
>good on international issues, pro-environment and pro-choice issues than
>the other way around.  There are exceptions, especially dating from the
>anti-Communist years of the AFL-CIO, but overall when working class issues
>are a key part of the progressive agenda, other progressive issues usually
>are strengthened.

Just when do you think the "anti-Communist years of the AFL-CIO"
ended?  The AFL-CIO's Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI), as part of
the National Endowment for Democracy (NED---"a government tool for
penetrating civil society in other countries down to the grass-roots
level", employing "'Psychological-political penetration and subversion
of foreign states'" [1]) was key to the Reagan program in Nicaragua.
One of Reagan's favorite recipients of cash was the Coordinadora
Democratica Nicaraguense (CDN), composed, inter alia, of two trade
union groups affiliated with the AFL-CIO.  The AFL-CIO also helped
funnel cash to the American Institute for Free Labor Development
(AIFLD) (with the term "Free" needing the usual Orwellian
interpretation), and Lane Kirkland himself personally solicited funds
to help out "Free Labor" in Nicaragua.

For further evidence of the supposed turn from the "anti-Communist
years" by the AFL-CIO, see Winslow Peck, "The AFL-CIA," in Howard
Frazier (ed.), *Uncloaking the CIA* (Free Press, 1980); Jonathan
Kwitny, *Endless Enemies* (Congdon and Weed, 1984); Tom Barry and Deb
Preusch, *AIFLD in Central America: Agents as Organizers* (Resource
Center, 1990).

Despite this, I do agree that it is key for the left to integrate
working class issues as part of its agenda, no question.


Bill

[1] William I. Robinson, *A Faustian Bargain* (Westview Press, 1992)
provides most of the facts I cite here.