Re: David Broder's new (materialist) idea

["michael a. lebowitz" <mlebowit@xxxxxx>]

At 08:35 11/09/2004, Jim Devine wrote:
> 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.

No question about all of the above, Jim. There was a constant stream of
propaganda from the plant (in Clifton, N.J.) where my father worked---
basically right-to-work stuff, unions and freedom, etc which I got to see
when he brought it home. The company did what it could to break the union
and, failing that, picked up and moved south (around 1956, I think) to a
southern right-to-work state. What was the union's response? I wasn't aware
of one-- but can guess. It was the I.U.E. (Jim Carey's anti-communist
answer to the UE, the United Electrical workers), and I grew up reading the
union paper and learning that the enemy was the UE rather than GE. (My
father, incidentally, agreed and always denounced the 'commies'-- having
been in the UE during the war, when the no-strike pledge was only part of
the problem.) Here was a case, though, of a company almost completely
dependent on 'defense' contracts-- unions could have done quite a bit to
stop that process using that leverage. Think about that period-- they never
united in struggle to attempt to make new inroads. They (the leaders) had
won what they basically wanted, and we see the results that followed. Those
not busy struggling are busy dying.
        michael


---------------------
Michael A. Lebowitz
Professor Emeritus
Economics Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
Office Fax:   (604) 291-5944
Home:   Phone (604) 689-9510