Re: Re: the Kaiser

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Nathan:
>And yet blacks are more likely to be in unions than whites at this pont and
>the autoworkers and such are an increasingly smaller proportion of the labor
>movement.  The largest single new block of workers in the last few years has
>been home health care workers with a range of other service workers
>following up.

Black autoworkers and black home health care workers? Something doesn't go
together here.

>In fact, most studies show that the vast block of white well-paid blue
>collor unionists, what was dubbed the "labor aristocracy" by Maoists and
>others in the late 60s and early 70s, have been the ones who have suffered
>the largest relative decline in wages and standard of living in the last
>twenty-five years.

This is true. But this is in the context of a qualitative change following
the postwar period. Erosion takes place within that reality. Let me
reiterate. I am not talking about workers voting for Democrats. I am
talking about proletarian revolution. If anybody thinks that such a topic
is on the minds of UAW workers, they are kidding themselves. Most workers
dream of a return to the 1950s or early 60s. This was accounted for the
phenomenon of "Reagan Democrats". Whether this can become a reality is
another question.

>And yet that group feeling the collapse of their status did not necessarily
>turn to class consciousness- instead race and religious consciousness and
>even guin-based cultural consciousness were powerful political organizers.

Guin-based? I'd call that naked revisionism.

>Which reinforces the idea that bad economic times is not necessarily good
>news for the Left.  In fact, historically, militant unionism has done well
>only during good times or during times of expected improving times.  This
>includes the Depression where unionists made gains only when the New Deal
>had gained enough momentum to give hope to folks- and  unionism took a big
>step back with the 1938 recession to be revived numerically with the full
>employment policies of World War II.

No, this is a misreading of the 1930s. What happened is that an uptick in
the economy made it more difficult to break strikes because the reserved
army of the unemployed was not as vast as it was in 1930. This is different
from American society today, when a worker in the typical sit-down strike
unions of the 1930s is looking for a bigger slice of the pie and little else.

Louis Proyect
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