While acknowledging the grubby practicalities of realpolitik in an environment where most of capital is hell-bent on destroying what remains of organized labor, isn't there something deeply troubling about the Cal Fed threatening California capital w/a proposition requiring shareholder approval for corporate political donations, and then dropping this threat when California capital backed off from publicly supporting Prop 226 ? It reminds me of the tacit agreement that the respective military industrial complexes of the U.S. and U.S.S.R. had during the Cold War to wage a controlled arms race, thus benefitting the Pentagon, Lockheed, the Kremlin, and Russian nuclear scientists alike. In the unequal game of campaign finance politics in a bourgeois democracy, capital keeps its prerogative of buying politicians, labor keeps its prerogative of funneling union dues to Democratic Party hacks, and hired-gun lobbyists in Sacramento laugh all the way to the bank. Recall who won the contest between American and Soviet imperialism ? While I'm sounding off on said topic, a few more things. Was anyone disturbed by the Cal Fed's mantra that "corporations don't have to solicit their shareholders to make political contributions" ? Even though this was obviously not the intent of the Cal Fed, given the context the simplistic invocation of this mantra made the impression that organized labor is opposed to member control of institutional decision-making. Now, I'm no fan of "shareholder democracy" a la bastardized market socialism, but come now, what the hell was the Cal Fed doing inadvertently trumpeting a message which implicitly impugned shareholders having more control of corporate policy ? While it is true that Prop 226's ultra-cynical backers painted themselves as defenders of union democracy, how come organized labor's response was simply to expose the true intentions of Prop 226's architects, and not address the pressing need for more rank-and-file input into campaign funding decisions. Oh, I forget, that would have "confused the voters." And so organized labor not only remains wedded to the Democratic Party and business unionism, but also to post-modern sound-bite politics. John Gulick Ph. D. Candidate Sociology Graduate Program University of California-Santa Cruz (415) 643-8568 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
