Morning Joe Crew Can’t Name a Single Successful Unionized Firm
You can tell MSNBC is liberal, because their daily 3 hour program hosted by a former Republican congressman is in the morning rather than in prime time. And here they are claiming that it’s impossible to name a single successful company that’s unionized:
Jamison Foser observes that General Electric, where they work, employs many union workers and seems to be quite successful. They also name UPS. It’s worth noting as well that all of Americans’ major professional sports teams are unionized, that the entertainment industry is very heavily unionized, much of the telecom sector is unionized, Safeway where I buy my groceries is unionized, etc.
But stepping back, the larger issue here is that you tended to see firms becoming unionized back when the legal climate was friendly to unionization. That was in the 1930s and 1940s. Since that time, it’s been exceedingly difficult to organize new union workplaces in the private sector. It’s been over fifty years since Taft-Hartley and the beginning of the anti-union backlash. Obviously, it should come as no surprise that many of the economic sectors that were huge in the 30s and 40s are smaller now. That’s because we have whole new economic sectors that didn’t exist back in the day. And when a sector has arisen—as the whole suite of things around computers and technology largely has—in the era in which the law tilts heavily against union organizing, you wind up with a sector with little in the way of unions. To take this history and read it as a story about unions causing sectors to fail is backwards. What’s happened is that unions have been locked out of huge swathes of the economy, denying workers their chance at securing a decent share of the value created in those areas.
In a country like, say, Finland where union density is in the seventies, there are obviously going to be tons of successful unionized firms. The difference is just that Finland made it easier to form unions. And it hasn’t crippled their economy—median living standard are pretty clearly higher over there than here.
71 Responses to “Morning Joe Crew Can’t Name a Single Successful Unionized Firm”
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June 3rd, 2009 at 2:46 pm
here they are claiming that it’s impossible to name a single successful company that’s unionized
Non-union labor like Joe and Mika can’t be very bright.
June 3rd, 2009 at 2:50 pm
It really needs to be pointed out that they were literally surrounded by members of an exclusionary union. The IATSE guys should’ve just walked off the set at that point.
Have fun working out that equipment, Joe and Mika.
June 3rd, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Costco is a successful company that is heavily unionized.
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:03 pm
As a Democrat who is basically union agnostic (mostly cause of ignorance on the issue) I’d be interested to know what the progressive line on dysfunctional unions should be.
In Philly where I live – and in lots of old line cities – public unions exert what seems to be a stultifying influence on local politics. How is think kind of calcification avoided (once growth ends, it seems to be pretty self-perpetuating).
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Jon Stewart didn’t anoint him “Douche-borough” for nothing.
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Well, I’ll be damned – Matt Yglesias writes a post about unions, and it’s good.
Harn – the answer is that you get a bunch of union workers together, put a platform together about how to fix things, canvass their peers, run a slate against the leadership, and take over the local. In short, fixing a dysfunctional union is just like fixing a dysfunctional local Democratic Party or a dysfunctional elected official – more democracy.
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:26 pm
I would point out that most of the growth at UPS (not to mention the much better salaries) is in the supply chain management division, which employs several thousand and is non-union.
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Let’s not forget the success that Cesar Chavez had organizing farm workers, a sector deliberately left out of the union movement in the New Deal.
More recently the SEIU and UNITE/HERE have scored gains even in areas where there isn’t a single big employer, such as office janitors, home health care workers and doormen.
As big industrialized firms become less common the unions have become more innovative. Not only don’t these guys know what is going on, they are still using a 20th Century yardstick to measure the 21st Century.
Just this week the IWW (look that up) won a court case against Starbucks for interfering with organizing efforts. They have already gained a foothold in NYC stores.
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:31 pm
The financial services industry would have never had a few trillion in losses if only those bankers hadn’t unionized back in the 1970s. It’s a shame, really. AIG was a well run company before the Teamsters got in there.
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:31 pm
GE is no longer a great success story, but that is because of the legacy of Jack Welch, not its unioned workers.
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Jamison Foser observes that General Electric, where they work, employs many union workers and seems to be quite successful.
Oh, please. GE employs 323,000 people, of which fewer than 23,000 are unionized, or about 7% of GE’s workforce.
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:33 pm
JM:
Don’t forget that idiot Andrew Ross Sorkin. The NYT was a successful unionized company at one time.
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:37 pm
The financial services industry would have never had a few trillion in losses if only those bankers hadn’t unionized back in the 1970s. It’s a shame, really. AIG was a well run company before the Teamsters got in there.
Or, GM and Chrysler would be rolling along making profits if they weren’t unionized.
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Judd-
Right on. Remember the Pontiac Aztec? Management approved that only because the unions made them. Same thing with the big SUVs. Management was like, “We want to build our business plan around fleets of well built, fuel efficient vehicles that are reliable.” And the union workers we’re all like, “Fuck that. Design me something that looks like crapola and falls apart quickly.”
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:49 pm
“Or, GM and Chrysler would be rolling along making profits if they weren’t unionized.”
Yeah, just like Toyota. Wait, (non-union) Toyota lost money too? Gee, how did that happen.
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Yeah, just like Toyota. Wait, (non-union) Toyota lost money too? Gee, how did that happen.
Using your logic, I guess they just weren’t paying their workers enough.
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Yeah Royce,
How dare management sign the contracts that we propose. It’s not our fault.
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Isn’t the reverse actually the case?
I’d say the auto makers and the Airlines stand out as predominately unionized business that are failing the majority are doing fine.
And Judd, no his logic says nothing of the sort, his logic says that since both unionized and non unionized firmas in the same industry both lost money just maybe there are other factors at play than union membership, like just maybe the fact that demand for cars is way lower than the collective manufacturing capacity of the industry?
But then if you understood logic 101 you wouldn’t post 90% of the BS you do.
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Same thing with the big SUVs.
You do know that trucks and SUV’s are the most profitable autos they make, right?
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:06 pm
profitable if people buy them, so yeah 5 years ago, today not so much when they sit on lots for months and get sold at deep discount…
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:11 pm
I’d say the auto makers and the Airlines stand out as predominately unionized business that are failing the majority are doing fine.
You forgot government.
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:15 pm
profitable if people buy them, so yeah 5 years ago
No kidding. But 5 years ago, the “fuel efficient” vehicles were not profitable, even when selling. They were, I guess you could say, subsidized by the bigger gas hogs.
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:16 pm
“You do know that trucks and SUV’s are the most profitable autos they make, right?”
Sure. All they needed to do is find enough customers for those very profitable, very expensive vehicles to keep themselves out of bankruptcy. Since they failed, doesn’t seem like a real great strategy.
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:29 pm
The Prius has been profitable for Toyota since 2001.
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:36 pm
I’m far from pro-union, but to claim something like this is just plain ignorant. It’s crap like this that makes TV news less and less important.
By the way, since when is Finland’s median living standards higher than ours?
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:42 pm
unionized parts of Government: Firefighters, Police, Post Office, Civil Service, and so on, all work fine.
Nonunionized: Congress, State Legislatures, etc.
Hmm…
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Like the other poster, I’m agnostic about unions (although my wife’s membership in an educational union has provided her with peace of mind about a few things)
However, I remain amazed at the circular logic of the conservatives when it comes to unions. I think generally the GOP bashes unions because the unions don’t really donate to them. Of course, the unions don’t donate because the GOP bashes them so much. So if conservatives backed off even a little bit, maybe they’d get a few more votes here and there. Nothing more counterintuitive than taking literally millions of votes out of your column by whining about unions (same thing applies to the way the GOP drives away African-Americans, Latinos, the non-religious, the educated, etc).
While one could certainly devote a lot of time to the efficacy of a business model that assumes that the price of gas will never ever ever go up (even when the US invades an oil producing country), I have a larger question for our union-bashing Republican friends:
If you truly feel that labor unions are unacceptable, would you support legislation making them illegal? If you’re not willing to make unions illegal, then why waste so much time whining about them?
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Eric k Says:
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:42 pm
unionized parts of Government: Firefighters, Police, Post Office, Civil Service, and so on, all work fine.
=============================================================
You conveniently left out teacher’s unions. And we know how well the schools are doing
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:54 pm
at&t is unionized. The have the iphone biatch!
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:59 pm
28, did you ever stop to think that schools have issues because district funding is tied directly to property taxes, leading to incredible inequalities of funding from district to district.
Of course, what you are deliberately leaving out is that non-unionized private schools have the ability to exclude any student from enrollment, especially special needs children. It’s a lot easier having higher average test scores if you weed out special needs or at risk kids from your student population.
Again, if conservatives stopped screaming bloody murder at the very notion of public education, they’d probably get more educators voting for the GOP.
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:01 pm
One other thing, European schools have substantially stronger unions than the US, and their students have substantially higher test scores than American kids. Huh, plus their schools are decidedly more secular than our Jesus obsessed culture. Huh.
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:02 pm
You conveniently left out teacher’s unions. And we know how well the schools are doing
Texas is a work-at-will state, and our schools still suck.
Your point?
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Oddly enough, Texas is rather progressive in funding mental health services for at risk students, instead of the too typical “test them and get Federal Funding” mentality. My wife, who is a school psychologist, did her internship in Houston, and if Houston hadn’t been the most god awful city on the planet, she might have taken a permanent position there.
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:12 pm
I often think that where they’re quite well protected under law, unions tend to function much like businesses unto themselves. When they get a complete monopoly over an industry, they can be abusive and counter productive. My local municipal union is a true monster of corruption and sloth. But in general workers want to work and want their companies to succeed and unions lead to benefits and salaries that are highly beneficial for the workers without crippling the company. Also I’d contend that having a decently-paid population makes a far nicer society to live in than one that simply exploits it’s people as much as it can.
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:16 pm
But stepping back, the larger issue here is that you tended to see firms becoming unionized back when the legal climate was friendly to unionization. That was in the 1930s and 1940s. Since that time, it’s been exceedingly difficult to organize new union workplaces in the private sector. It’s been over fifty years since Taft-Hartley and the beginning of the anti-union backlash. Obviously, it should come as no surprise that many of the economic sectors that were huge in the 30s and 40s are smaller now.
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Utter historical blindness. It was easy for the big manufacturing industries to unionize in the post WWII era, as the US industrial base was mostly the only game in town after Europe and Japan had theirs destroyed in the war.
Most US industry faced little competition from abroad and we could export just about anything we made. Relatively high union wages weren’t an issue and corporations could pass them on with little consequence to their bottom line. It took until the 1970s for the rest of the world to catch up in terms of manufacturing quality and breakthroughs in transportation (like containerized shipping) and communication.
The extra labor expense of US unionized industry had to go head to head with cheaper foreign labor. Shoes, clothing, consumer electronics, steel – all good-paying US union jobs in these industries are all gone. Automobiles finally hit the wall. Aerospace is barely hanging on.
People like Krugman and MYglesias who write about that wonderful time from 1945 – 1975 when union jobs buoyed the middle class are utterly blind to this point. Our country and its unions were in a sweet spot with little foreign competition and a technological head start. To say that unions declined because the government was hostile to the formation of new ones is to ignore the rest of the world.
The industries that supported unions declined and the unions along with them, because union wages made their products too expensive relative to foreign competition. It really wouldn’t have mattered what stance the government took toward them, they kept their industries from competing
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Bullsmtih Says:
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:12 pm
I often think that where they’re quite well protected under law, unions tend to function much like businesses unto themselves. When they get a complete monopoly over an industry, they can be abusive and counter productive.
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Well you stumbled right into it. People all over complain about how awful monopolies are – the government has laws against them and agencies set up to try to keep them from forming. “Anti-trust” is a big part of government.
But unions are nothing more than monopolies. Monopolies on the supply of labor.
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:26 pm
JM Says:
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:02 pm
You conveniently left out teacher’s unions. And we know how well the schools are doing
Texas is a work-at-will state, and our schools still suck.
Your point?
============================================================
You have teacher’s unions in Texas – what’s your point?
http://www.tsta.org/
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:43 pm
… and they’re powerless?
… because it’s a work-at-will state?
… which was the point.
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Yes, and hiring power is an oligopoly.
Keep going. You’ve almost reached the 20th century.
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Kramer. Love ‘em. He knows the score.
“If they get card check, I gotta tell ya, I think Walmart, cut in half.”
Profound. He is not talking about a magician sawing a lovely corporation in half. He is portending doom. Walmart’s yearly profits would be sliced and diced, and plunge from the lusty $13.7 billion 2008 figure to a disturbingly low $6.85 billion in future years.
Presumably, the other $6.85 billion would go to Walmart greeters and cashiers, if we indeed allow a dirty Union to card-check their way in and began the process of robbing the company.
This is America. Such wealth distribution is unacceptable.
June 3rd, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Perhaps the neo-cons who adore the “free markets” so much and view workers as merely ledger marks and not legitimate economic actors ought to look at these third-world countries where labor is cheap and regulation is non-existent. Do you really truly want the US to resemble India, with the losers in the economic lottery literally eating garbage off the street? Well, if you look past the millions of people living in their own filth so multinationals can squeeze some extra profits, think about the air and water quality in India and China. Is this really the type of economic system you’d like here in the good old USA?
June 3rd, 2009 at 6:10 pm
35. You know, conservatives are also nostalgic about the 70’s. The 1870’s that is.
June 3rd, 2009 at 6:31 pm
[...] Matthew Yglesias [...]
June 3rd, 2009 at 7:00 pm
How about John Deere? John Deere is a union shop. They’ve been around over 170 years. They have a union contract with the UAW. They have survived the Civil War, WWI, WWII, and the great depression. They are one of the best run companies on the planet. They sell tractors. The best tractors on earth. They sell them to farmers around the world. Theirs is the standard by which competitors are measured. If that isn’t success, we need a new definition.
June 3rd, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Campesino: if teachers’ unions made schools perform poorly, you’d expect to see that across the board – there are teachers’ unions in rich school districts as well as poor school districts. But we don’t see every school district going to hell in a handbasket, do we?
June 3rd, 2009 at 7:02 pm
One of the very good things about the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church is the importance accorded wide unionization and even profit-sharing/ownership among workers. According to St. Thomas, workers have a “natural right” to form social groups; such grouping of workers provides a buffer between the State, on the one hand, and the Individual WOrker, on the other, and is a crucial element to a healthy civil society.
June 3rd, 2009 at 7:04 pm
what the progressive line on dysfunctional unions should be.
Dysfunctional or crooked? Dysfunctional is just life. Crooked?Prosecute.
June 3rd, 2009 at 7:08 pm
To say that unions declined because the government was hostile to the formation of new ones is to ignore the rest of the world.
And you object to ignoring important issues, do you?
June 3rd, 2009 at 7:15 pm
JM Says:
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:44 pm
But unions are nothing more than monopolies. Monopolies on the supply of labor.
Yes, and hiring power is an oligopoly.
Keep going. You’ve almost reached the 20th century.
===========================================================
You might almost have a point if there was only *one* corporation hiring. Most places there are multiple companies looking for labor. Not a monopsony – the term I think you were really looking for.
If a company has a union he is pretty much stuck with it as the source of his hourly labor, at least at that location.
June 3rd, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Pete Says:
June 3rd, 2009 at 6:10 pm
35. You know, conservatives are also nostalgic about the 70’s. The 1870’s that is.
===========================================================
You misunderstand me. I’m not saying that it’s a good thing that unions have declined. Unions have done a lot of good things for this country in their time.
I am just disgusted by people like MY who seem to think that if we signed everyone for unions that working conditions and income would be infinitely better, and point to the example of the 1945 – 1975 era as proof. I really believe that it would only destroy more US manufacturing in the present environment.
June 3rd, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Campesino,
It is true that unions have blemishes. There has been coruption and self dealing by union management in the past.
That said, without unions, workers would be at the mercy of corporate management. Unions make even non-union shops adhere to a minimum standard of conduct regarding their hourly workers simply out of the fear of unionization. Management has been just as guilty of coruption and self dealing but most of the time, these people occupy a gilded world where they are immune to the consequences of their actions. If unions cause a company to fail, it’s the workers who ultimately pay the price in the form of lay offs and give backs. If management screws up, they get wheelbarrels of money handed to them just to go away and it’s the workforce who suffers the consequences. A world without unions is a dangerous place. Labor cannot be left to the tender mercies of rapacious bankers and corupt management. Those people have very few checks on them as it is. left to their own devices, they would enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of us and when the bill finally came due, well, they would get to keep their millions and the taxpayers, you and me, would be left to clean up the mess. Unions are not perfect but they are essential to equilibrium of the labor markets.
June 3rd, 2009 at 10:23 pm
Union good vs Union bad is too black and white for reality. There are different models of unionization that work better or worse. Any model that restricts the ability of the employer or the free market from rewarding productivity, skill, and innovation is a bad model that is doomed to fail (e.g. pure seniority systems like the teachers unions where bad teachers cannot be fired and good teachers cannot be paid more)
On the other hand I don’t mind the way plumbers and electricians unions tend to work. I can hire or fire a plumber or electrician based on how well I think they perform their task. I hire union because I know they have an apprenticeship and certification program so the person I hire knows the codes and so on and in exchange I pay a higher wage than some “Joe the plumber” off the street. But the choice is mine so the market rewards the right behavior.
If you outsource the choice of who to hire/fire to the union and agree to stupid contracts like the car industry did or the schools did then it’s hopeless. But That does not mean unions are intrinsically good or bad. Most of the time it means management was just stupid and lazy.
June 3rd, 2009 at 10:38 pm
In 2008 the percentage of unionized workers in America was at 13.7%. Clearly a that’s a “unprecedented power”, especially compared to the 23.3% of 1983. At least in the world of Joe and his deluded friends. Yup, if card check comes through, don’t count on the sun rising the next day.
June 3rd, 2009 at 11:10 pm
The problem with American unions is that they were never socialist. They never seriously fought for public health care, just health insurance for themselves. Now the companies that insured them are going bankrupt.
Teacher unions never address the social problems that have led to a decline in educational attainment. In Great Britain, teacher unions address issues such as 4 and 5 year-olds entering the school system with ever declining social skills and violence against teachers. In the US, all they do is peddle credit cards and meekly accept the imposition of NCLB and a management system taken from the business word.
Americans – including unions, unions members, and workers – bought into the God-blessed country, shining light, and beacon propaganda instead of seriously confronting social problems. Complacency engenders decadence.
June 4th, 2009 at 12:54 am
Lupita: You’re just flat wrong, and need to learn your labor history before you say something like that. In the 19th century, the entire Chicago Labor Federation was socialist or syndicalist-led – hence “eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, eight hours for what we will,” and the origins of May Day. Add onto that Eugene V. Debs and the Railroad Worker’s Union, as well as socialist and socialist-leaning unions in the AFL, like the UMW. Once the 20th century rolls around, you get the IWW (International Workers of the World), and once you get into the 1930s, you’ve got the Communist-led unions of the CIO – the International Longshorman’s Association (ILA) led by CP member Harry Bridges, the National Maritime Union, which was dominated by Caribbean Communists, the United Electrical Workers (UE), Mine Mill, and so on and so on. As for not advancing the cause of social justice, the CIO was at the forefront of fighting for the New Deal, fighting against Jim Crow, anti-fascism, you name it.
Kopotkin:
Where’d you get the 13.7% number from? I was under the impression that the number was 12.4% (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm)
June 4th, 2009 at 2:38 am
It was NOT easy to unionize after WW2. After World W 2 came Taft Hartley, which made it much harder to unionize and which split the workplace into workers (who could unionize) and management (who could not), the better workers got siphoned off into management and excluded from the unions. This is not the case in Europe where only the very top management is excluded from unions. Taft Hartley also prohibited general andsympathy strikes further crimping the unions’ power.
Unions became corrupt when they were co-opted in this way by management.
June 4th, 2009 at 2:46 am
Two words: Nothing. Burger. TPM is off the deep end with this story. Sorkin overstated a point that illustrayes a totally unsurprising bias for a business reporter, but beyond that this is dumb.
June 4th, 2009 at 6:28 am
Re: the US industrial base was mostly the only game in town after Europe and Japan had theirs destroyed in the war.
This is often stated, but is only very partly true. Canada and Austaralia were just as intact as the US after the war. Sweden and Switzerland had suffered no damage. And Britain had taken only minimal damage during the Blitz, which had ended in 1941. The US was NOT the only nation with functional industry after WWII.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Sorkin overstated a point that illustrayes a totally unsurprising bias for a business reporter
Is that what we are calling rank ignorance and borderline dishonesty? Look, just bvecause you’re a “business reporter” doesn’t mean you can say self-evidently false things and use the excuse of, “well, that’s just the way it looks from the perspective/bias of a business reporter.”
Seriously, Mike, what sort of bullshit is this that you’re spouting? Neither Sorkin nor anyone else is entitled to his own set of facts by dint of his profession.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:56 am
The problem, of course, is that unions aren’t big enough. Unions started out to be international. They are now national, while capital is global. This is backwards. Global unions, able to mount general strikes for worker demands in several countries at once, would be awesome. We need worker’s organizations that can take on and crush the moneyed power of the multi-nationals. Unions going across national boundaries would quickly do away with the divide and conquer strategy of business – and would ultimately benefit both the developed countries and the exploited midlevel countries, like Mexico, which has suffered heavily under a Nafta regime that stipped away the old labour power and put in place a mobocracy of oligarchs. If Mexican labor and American labor had insisted on being able to unite – as they should – imagine the consequences. It would lift wages for millions – businesses would no longer be able to shift money to the upper management like mad – a much more even distribution of the wealth would ensue without being enacted by the government. Beautiful.
June 4th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
[...] Matthew Yglesias argues that Sorkin just has it backwards: [...]
June 4th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
They are now national, while capital is global
We need worker’s organizations that can take on and crush the moneyed power of the multi-nationals.
Excelent point, Roger. Worth reposting.
Lupita: You’re just flat wrong, and need to learn your labor history before you say something like that. In the 19th century…
Steven, my point stands for the second half of the 20th and the 21th century. There has been no socialism in the US in living memory. The US has a far right government and political culture. If you do not understand this you understand nothing of global politics (21st century) and why the empire is crumbling.
June 4th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Oh, so if we simply exclude the half of the century where American unions had mass power then we say that unions were never socialists. Again, in the 1970s, you can see a labor movement that put universal health care and the right to a job on the Democratic Party platform – look at the midterm Democratic Party Convention in 1974. If you look at staffers and leaders within the American labor movement in the 1970s and 1980s, you can find a hell of a lot of socialists and social-democrats.
Again, I think your argument misses the New Left completely, it misses the activism of Michael Harrington and other socialists working within American politics and the American labor movement. And I think it’s a distortion of the term “far right,” at a time when the American government is turning in the direction of Keynesianism and universal health care. Quite frankly, your posture of “global-souther-than-you” is not a productive one.
June 4th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
The NEA has been ruining public education for the past 60 years. The American public must be insane because we keep electing the same demorats to office and piling more money into solving the problem!
June 4th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Steven, The US does not have a socialist party. Please do not mention some web page. I mean a socialist party that has millions of members and routinely wins elections at all levels. This type of socialist party exists in all the democratic countries of the world. The US is an extreme example.
While all the socialist parties were forming, growing, and governing, the US had McCarthy. More recently, Obama has been accused of being a socialist. Do you realize how people in other democratic countries laugh at this, as if “socialist” were a bad word? Then there is the word “neoliberal”. Many socialist parties have run and won on an anti-neoliberal agenda while, in the US, the term has just begun to pop up. Then there is the word “empire”.
I agree the US is “turning in the direction” and I wish you good luck. I also believe that you have a better chance of success if you are able to see just how far to the right your starting point is. After all, the US spends half of the world’s military budget, has military bases all over the world, threatens non-nuclear states with nuclear attacks, has two countries under military occupation, Obama has stated that prisoners will be held indefinitely without trial, you have no public health system, minimal public transportation systems, 3 millions agricultural workers living in infra-human conditions, and sub-par labor rights such as parental leave and vacations.
As a nation, you are to the far right and imploding.
June 4th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Steven Attewell:
I got my stats from a newspaper editorial I googled, but according to the BLS, your figure is correct, forgive me for not double checking.
I think the criticism of the moderation union politics after the late ’40s is accurate. Yes Taft-Hartley made it harder to organized, but on the other hand some unions did become happy with whatever fiefdom they controlled and became complacent, that’s really an endemic feature of trade unionism . That’s been a longtime problem with unions, blame everything on reactionaries in order to avoid self-criticism.
I wouldn’t be so quick to cite Harrington and the New Left. New Left students constantly talked wonderful things about unions, but when it came actually interacting with actual workers, they failed badly when trying to talk about Trotsky when all the rank and file wanted was an extra break and dental plan.
But don’t blame me, I’m a wob.
June 4th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Kropotkin: don’t get me wrong, I’d like it to be 13.7%; I was hoping you were right and I was wrong. As for the moderation of union politics, it depends which unions you’re talking about – unions like the UAW maintained a strong social-democratic politics, the UFW certainly had more radical politics than most unions, the emerging service unions like SEIU and AFSCME had strong connects to the civil rights movement.
As for the New Left, it’s true it wasn’t much of a success in mass politics terms. I was more referring to the migration of New Leties into the union movement as staffers and the like.
Lupita: by that logic, there aren’t many Socialist Parties in Europe, considering the state of the European Left at the moment. Moreover, this is a relatively recent phenomena – as late as the 1940s, the American Labor Party was a going concern, especially in industrial strongholds.
I understand where the U.S is starting out from, but I would argue that it doesn’t aid the cause of turning in a more sane direction to spend all of your time in political discourse saying things like poverty doesn’t exist in the United States because it isn’t the same thing as poverty elsewhere, or that unions have no politics in the United States because they aren’t the same as in other countries. It betrays a lack of engagement with American history and politics, and it tends to turn people off.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
by that logic, there aren’t many Socialist Parties in Europe
True, compared to Latin American socialist parties, European leftists are very right wing when it comes to global affairs and traditionally side with the US when it comes to military and financial hegemony. They are socialists solely regarding domestic affairs, that is, what they loot from the 3rd world they distribute more equally than Americans do and give themselves nice vacations. However, they do not have the hysterical, knee-jerk reactions Americans do at the mere mention of the word “socialist”. Ideologically, they are a bit more advanced.
it doesn’t aid the cause of turning in a more sane direction
Socialism, at least as it is understood in places like Cochabamba and Chiapas, is our liberation from a neoliberal and imperial world order, not for Washington to turn a little bit. Furthermore, the words I post here do not alter our reality in any way. In any case, the US is at the mercy of China, not me.
It betrays a lack of engagement with American history and politics, and it tends to turn people off.
Actually, it is the other way around. The US has not engaged with 3rd world history and politics and you not only turn us off but actually bomb, invade, and occupy our countries, assassinate our democratically elected leaders, raze our financial systems, privatize our clouds, launder our criminals’ money, and threaten us with nukes.
June 5th, 2009 at 12:31 am
[...] smacked around like a punching clown at a kid’s birthday party (good examples can be found here and here), it seems that Andrew Ross Sorkin is retreating a bit from his challenge [...]
June 5th, 2009 at 1:26 am
Lupita:
It’s a pretty restrictive definition of what socialism means, and what internationalism means, if the only socialists are the ones in the developing world.
I think either we stand for a more sane course everywhere – in which everyone matters, from workers in Latin America to workers in Asia to workers in Europe and Europe in Africa – or we fall. I think writing off the possibility of progressive change in America does the cause an enormous disservice, because it blocks off the potential for sapping the strength of the “neoliberal and imperial world order” from inside. Building on earlier debates about poverty, I think it lets capitalism off the hook everywhere outside the developing world, by implicitly saying that the only important bad stuff it does happens in the developing world.
I’ve studied the history of American foreign policy in the 3rd world; I know how heinous it is. I also know that it is impossible to get Americans to actually change American foreign policy unless there is a two-way process, a genuine form of solidarity instead of a treacly form of elitist guilt. That requires working people and progressives in the global North and the global South to work for the interests and recognize the voice of both parties.
June 5th, 2009 at 1:27 am
That second sentence should read “from workers in Latin America to workers in Asia to workers in Europe, in the United States, and in Africa.”