raghu wrote: > No, but they still have the power to at least pretend to give a fuck > about people who are even less fortunate then them.
Even when emphasized using an obscenity, that's not true. For example, see reports by the AFL-CIO-related organizations: http://www.solidaritycenter.org/files/pubs_guatemala_wr.pdf (on Guatemala) or http://www.aflcio.org/issues/jobseconomy/globaleconomy/upload/colombia_briefing.pdf (on Colombia) or their posting of the link to http://survey09.ituc-csi.org/survey.php?IDContinent=0&Lang=EN (a global survey of the violation of trade-union rights). On the first two, it's clear that they differ from the political perspective of most of our ruling class, which wants to sweep away all trade unions and similar non-capitalist forces if they can (replacing all human relationships with the cold cash nexus). Now, I would be the first to say that I don't like the _way_ that the AFL-CIO shows its solidarity (e.g., its more-than-enthusiastic support for the US side of the Cold War & their focus on narrow trade-union issues), but to say that they don't care at all is totally inaccurate. The issue of _how_ they care is a matter of political difference (for me, a major one). > Unions have repeatedly shown that they care only about maximizing the > pay and benefits of their members and nothing else. They are just as > rotten and greedy as their profit-maximizing masters. It's always easier to ignore the social context and history when analyzing the world. It's especially easy if all one cares about is making moral judgments and moralistic denunciations. That's a lazy way of thinking (though it may have the beneficial side-effect of reinforcing one's self-esteem). In hopes of being serious, let's avoid that way. In the US, trade unions have survived by being as narrow as possible in their focus and by making deals with their "profit-maximizing masters." This has been encouraged by the way that those masters have aimed most of the heat at left-wing trade-unions over the years. The unions are in the same general environment as unorganized (non-unionized) workers: they have to survive a labor-power market where the fundamental bias (based in the existence of unemployment, etc.) helps the profit-maximizing masters exploit the workers. Workers, both organized and unorganized, have to survive, while one major way to do so is to set up narrow craft unions and to focus on merely getting "More" (as Gompers put it). That's a bad strategy, to my thinking, since it doesn't work in the long run. It's a lot like small-holding peasants who go for subsistence farming if they can. Looking at their perspective alone (and not a wider socialist one), who can blame them? People have to survive, no? This is especially true if they have family responsibilities and the like. In the US, at least, trade unions that survive have generally been reduced to mere cogs in the machine -- at the same time that their profit-maximizing masters try to figure out how to fix the machine by eliminating those cogs. It's a fundamental mistake to focus moralistic ire at mere cogs while ignoring the larger machine and its masters. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
