Re: David Broder's new (materialist) idea

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

MG writes: >"It made me realize how rarely observers like me make the link between the decline of progressive politics and with it the near-demise of liberal legislation, and the steady weakening of organized labor", wrote columnist David Broder a couple of days ago in the Washington Post. Not only Broder. Many on the left also fail to make the connection, more often confusing cause with effect by blaming the rightward shift of the political spectrum primarily on the failure of the traditional workers-based parties and their "misleaders" -- the Democrats in the US and social democratic and (communist) parties in the other advanced capitalist countries -- rather than on the structural changes which have housebroken the left in the political arena.< 

"structural changes" seems to be a _diablo ex machina_. It's not like the shift of manufacturing from the US Northeast (and places like L.A.) to the southeast -- and then to the global South -- was an accident. Dave Fairris had an article in the REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS a few years back that argued that almost as soon as the class truce was established in the US after World War II, the capitalists started making an end run around it to move to the south and to look for non-union workplaces. The technical changes that allowed this type of "structural change" were also shaped by the need to avoid union labor, as were the moves toward deregulation (the airlines, trucking, etc.) and anti-trust (ATT). The structural change was made by people, for very specific reasons, though of course it didn't work out exactly as they had hoped. 

The fact is that the leadership of US labor unions were not ready for these changes, in part because the most far-sighted leaders had been purged while "organize the unorganized" efforts were shelved. Nor were the various political leaders (in the Democratic Party), because (among other things) they had to appeal to other constituencies besides organized labor in order to preserve and promote their careers. Further, the leaders of neither the AFL-CIO nor the DP saw the need for labor to be a vibrant mass political and cultural movement rather than just a diverse bunch of unions; in fact, that would have been a bad thing from their perspective, since it would have created alternative power centers which would have threatened their careers. Of course, as the AFL-CIO's clout weakened, the DP's leadership turned more and more against labor. 

>Broder's belief that the unions once had more political clout than the capitalists is either a genuine misunderstanding or, more likely, a journalist's exaggeration designed to illustrate his thesis. And the Democrats, if anything, are less rather than more tied to the unions, as he suggests at the end.<

he doesn't refer to the power of the labor movement as much as the power of labor lobbyists, fitting with his top-down perspective. It's actually possible that at some point and on some issues, labor lobbyists were actually more powerful than the opposition. But if so, that hid the rot at the lower level. The leadership of organize labor was dedicating its resources to lobbying for kinda/sorta welfare-state legislation and (sometimes) civil rights legislation rather than to widening and deepening the movement. This led to some short-term victories, some of them important, like the Civil Rights Act of 1965. But eventually, the membership base gave way, so the lobbyists lost their dues-base and their clout. Further, much of the lobbying power on social issues had been purchased by the AFL-CIO being enthusiastic backers of the US in the Cold War. This involved such things as investment in the AIFLD, which helped company unions and narrow craft unionism outside the US, eventually helping capitalism's move to the global South, helping to undermine the AFL-CIO. 

JD