“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital; that, in fact capital is the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not existed first; that labor can exist without capital, but that capital could never have existed without labor. Hence … labor is the superior — greatly the superior — of capital.”

–Abraham Lincoln, Milwaukee, Wis., Sept. 30, 1859

Today, March 25, 2011, is the hundredth anniversary of the fire at the factory of the Triangle Waist Company on the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of a building near Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. The factory employed young Jewish and Italian immigrant women sewing “shirtwaists,” the new blouse style that remained popular into the 1960′s. (Donna Reed, among others, wore them on TV, and they’re currently featured on AMC’s Mad Men.)

A few minutes before the end of shift on Saturday afternoon, someone apparently dropped a match or cigarette into a scrap box on the eighth floor. People on the tenth floor were alerted by phone. People on the ninth only learned of the fire when it reached them.

The New York Fire Department arrived quickly, but water pressure was insufficient to reach higher than the sixth floor. Sprinkler technology was apparently already available, but property-owners considered it too expensive and resisted attempts to mandate it.

The fire exits to the stairwells were locked –illegally, of course — to prevent theft. The foreman who had the key got out quick, and saved himself. The two guys running the elevators, however, kept going back up as long as they could — until the rails warped in the heat and the cars were overloaded by the weight of bodies from people who had jumped into the shafts.

There was a fire-escape, which collapsed quickly under the weight of people. The NYFD life nets also failed. The only thing left to do was jump, which many of the girls did. (Apparently a couple were found alive on the sidewalk.)

According to legend, a gentleman was seen at one of the windows helping the girls out. It’s just as well that he did, because any girl who hesitated would be in flames as she fell.

There was also a wrought-iron fence on the ground, with spikes on which some of the jumpers were impaled.

Of about 500 people who would have been in the factory that day, 146 died.

One of the witnesses on the ground was young woman named Frances Perkins, who was later U.S. Secretary of Labor, the first woman in the Cabinet, and one of the architects of much of the New Deal labor reform.

The owners of the factory were brought to trial but beat the rap. Apparently one of the key witnesses against them, who was probably not a native-speaker of English, had actually memorized her testimony.

One of the owners was fined $20 a couple years later, however, for — you guessed it — locking fire exits.

File this one under “Why We Fight.”

It’s time to tell the truth about the free market.

It’s a useful social tool — sometimes — but it’s no panacea. People get to the conclusion that it produces the best outcomes only by arguing in a circle: The best outcomes are, by definition,those produced by the free market, so … the market produces the “best” outcomes. (QED)

Let’s get specific, with an issue which is now roaring to the front. What determines the price of labor under a market system? Advocates of capitalism say that it all comes down to productivity; productive labor is more highly paid. Nonsense. I’m no economist, but I did take basic econ back in the day. Back then we said that, in an unrestricted market, prices are set by (surprise) supply and demand. Anything that increases the supply of a commodity or reduces the demand drives down the price.

What raises the supply of labor? Population increase, of course, but also bringing new populations into the labor force. End discrimination against women or minorities, and suddenly there’s more labor. Reduce shipping costs so that products can be brought in from Mexico or China — or call centers can be located in India — and again, more supply. Productivity increases, of course, reduce the demand for labor. So do reductions in the aggregate demand for goods and services as working people’s incomes go down — because their wages are falling and their credit lines are tapped out. In sum, there is a “natural” tendency for the wage rate to fall. That’s not a distortion of the market — that’s how it’s supposed to work.

Won’t increasing people’s education levels bring them higher pay? Why would it? You’re just increasing the supply of educated workers. If everyone got an engineering degree, engineers would be paid minimum wage.

So what will raise the price of labor? Raising demand or lowering supply. If someone — anyone, including the government — puts in orders for, say, new infrastructure or green technology, the demand will go up. If the supply is restricted by, say, rebuilding the unions, the supply will go down.

Won’t that violate the “laws of the market”? Well, yeah. You got a problem with that?

Let’s get simple.

The tripod, as any engineer can tell you, is the most stable structural form. If we want to be a society where substantially all of the population — the folks Bill Clinton used to say “play by the rules” — enjoy a decent and secure middle-class life, we need to build on three feet.

The first is a high level of unionization. It’s really very simple: Where unions are strong, working people live well, and where they’re not, they don’t.

The second is progressive taxation. The unregulated free market, which has been practically deified in this country in the last few decades, produces extreme inequalities. Progressive taxes counteract that. Again, very simple.

And the third is generous social spending — paid for by number two. Everywhere else in the developed world people don’t have to worry about being wiped out financially by health problems, or losing their shelter in a downturn. It just doesn’t happen.

What do these all have in common? They do not stand in awe of the “free market.” Yes, unions “distort” the market by artificially restricting the supply of labor. Yes, progressive taxation and social spending take from those who have “earned” in the market and gives to those who haven’t.

Know what? I couldn’t care less.

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:

• LabourStart
• Talking Union
• AFL-CIO Now Blog