[Pen-l] the crisis in korea and labor responses

[Larry Damms <larrydamms@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed Mar 18 18:57:27 PDT 2009 MH-L posted:

 

>*KCTU Statement Opposing the Grand Agreement to Overcome the Economic

>Crisis*

 

Hey Marty, thanks for posting this. All hail the S Korean independent labor movement,

still militant, alive, and kicking.

 

What interests me though are the KCTU's simultaneous attempts to move beyond 

economism and their ongoing capture by it. By economism I do not mean Lenin's sense

of the term, i.e. posing narrow wage and benefit demands on behalf of the labor

aristocracy. The KCTU has never been in that camp and we see continuing evidence of that here in its list of demands (employment quotas for the youth, social insurance for all, etc). No, what I mean by economism is the KCTU's continuing embrace of the growth paradigm and its lack of a cultural and environmental critique, despite its laudable support here for a S Korean variety of green Keynesianism (however much belief in such a program requires suspending thermodynamic disbelief).

 

But let's face it... S Korea is a largely unhappy society. Suicide rates and divorce rates

are through the roof (although the latter of course is not a unidimensionally bad thing).

I think it's safe to say that consumerist preoccupations with which the population feels

(semi-conciously) ill at ease run rampant. Find me an urban street corner on which an

electronic billboard is not hawking a soft drink, a luxury sedan, a prestigious high-rise

complex, or an insidious government public service announcement and you'll win a bet.

As long as the KCTU speaks the rigid language of battling over the distribution of

spoils (so modernizationist and so 20th Century) it will never speak to the itch that S

Koreans can't scratch, if you know what I mean. 

 

Anyway, since you are the resident expert on matters Korean, I'd be interested in your

thoughts on this.

 

 

 

 

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