This has been building for more than thirty years, and now it’s coming to a head. This time it’s in Wisconsin; thirty years ago, it was the PATCO strike.
Back in the 1930′s, virtually all progressives understood that organized labor was the key to building a decent society. The mainstream media hated it for the most part, but people knew better. In a country in economic collapse, working people, standing together, could demand and get the basics of a reasonable life for themselves and their families — and the families of people like themselves.
Steinbeck wrote in The Grapes of Wrath that two families of migrants would meet by the side of the road. Each of the men — it was just the men who did the talking in those days — would say, “I lost my land.” That, in itself, was not revolutionary … until they said, “We lost our land.” That was where the world changed. And out of that change came some of the best times ordinary Americans have ever known — however unequal things were for women and minorities.
For thirty years, there has been an orchestrated campaign to undo the conviction that collective action is the basis for everything. Everything comes down to the “free market,” where independent individuals make separate transactions. What comes from these transactions is “earned”; what comes from collective action is “stolen.” Some of the more extreme parties have tried to re-imagine working people as “entrepreneurs,” who operate “businesses” selling their labor.
That’s what it means when people talk about “intellectual hegemony” — the ability to get ideas like that taken seriously.
At the same time, there has been a poisoning of the relationship between non-labor progressives and the labor movement. The older folks among us remember the “hard hats,” construction workers who beat up anti-war demonstrators during Viet Nam. (That was orchestrated too, of course.) Union labor came to be associated in many people’s minds — more than it should have been — with selfishness and social conservatism. There were also, unfortunately, generous doses of social snobbery.
That was never an accurate picture. Back in the 1960′s — most people don’t know this — a large part of the legislative muscle to get the civil rights laws past was provided by Walter Reuther’s UAW. More recently, the growth areas for the labor movement have tended to be sectors with a lot of women and immigrants. (Union rallies are usually racially integrated; tea parties are not.) Many unions have signed on to the Apollo Alliance to work for alternative energy and environmental protection. The Steelworkers have joined with the Mondragon system from Basque Spain to explore bringing full-fledged worker- control to this country.
I bet you haven’t seen anything about this in the mainstream media.
So now, when the labor movement has its back against the wall, it’s time for non-labor progressives to rediscover its origins and rebuild its bridges. Together we can change the world.
Here are a few links to get started:
