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A few weeks ago George McGovern, former
US senator for South Dakota & 1972 Democratic Presidential
candidate, made use of the opinion pages of the Los Angeles Times
to display his liberal orthodoxy. His message, in a piece (May
22) called "The End of More"? U.S. workers and working
class communities should quit struggling against the tide of
"a new competitive reality." But whose reality is it?
Telling workers that they are asking for too much without a
corresponding analysis of the increasing inequity of wealth division
in this country further debunks the myth that the U.S. doesn't
operate on a class system.
As someone who in 1972 co-chaired a state labor committee for
McGovern's presidential candidacy (while the AFL-CIO's George
Meany withheld support) and, in the late 1970's called on him
in his Senate office to affirm support for key labor and social
issues, I can think of many public figures more worthy of criticism
than George McGovern, but the distorted conclusions of that Los
Angeles times piece leave little choice.
It's too bad a man of McGovern's acknowledged compassion and
history of dissent against reckless imperialism and championship
of worker rights, feels obligated to help hoist American liberalism's
flag of surrender to global capital. It has become the typical
response of liberal Democrats and most U.S. Labor leaders, when
they come up against corporate America's definition of 'reality,'
not to challenge it but to adjust to it.
Victims of today's relentless corporate assault at Delphi will
find it hard to forgive the former Senator his misrepresentation
of the historical definition of "more." That call
for "more" actually used by AFL President Samuel Gompers,
not John L. Lewis, not only spoke to 'more' wages, but also 'more'
education, healthcare, access to leisure and culture. It was
about the quality of life for workers, something today's robber-barons
of industry and capital clearly view as a removable obstacle
on their path to unfettered wealth accumulation.
For workers the dog-eat-dog, race to the bottom economic model
now being touted as the new competitive reality has all the social
validity of a epidemic for which only the elite have access to
a vaccine. The shake-outs in the domestic auto industry are
only the latest in a continuous pattern of corporate restructuring
which now features refashioned bankruptcy laws to aid an ongoing,
neo-liberal attack on workers and gains won through collective
bargaining.
For a generation now, workers have been asked to make sacrifices
to gain security in a future that never comes. Corporations on
the other hand have gotten pretty much everything they've asked.
Isn't is about time that we have a national discussion on the
amazing disconnect between the remarkable economic success of
the American economy we hear so much about and the argument-most
recently from McGovern-that workers must lower their expectations?
The corporations have gotten what they asked for and haven't
delivered. Isn't it their credibility that we should be
focusing on, not workers trying to hang on to what they have?
What is it about how our society is structured-how power is allocated
and priorities set-that has led to technology being another threat
to our well-being instead of a liberating force?
Liberals have long since abandoned their claimed "core principle"
of justice and equality as they continue to ignore rising economic
injustice and inequality. Guided by what Wall Street wants,
not the real needs of a majority of working Americans, they are
left to shill for the companies and the system by appealing to
workers to be "more realistic".
The new "realism" leaves out the fact that US companies
have increased their share of the economic pie at a faster rate
over the past five years than at any time since the Second World
War. Recent government figures show that profits from current
production as a share of national income have risen from 7 per
cent in mid-2001 to 12.2 per cent at the start of this year.
This rate of growth is unprecedented since collection of these
figures began in 1947 (Financial Times, 6-4-06). To the
millions of workers being asked to sacrifice to accommodate this
new realism it seems that compassionate conservatism and conservative
liberalism are increasingly offering the same fake medicine.
And, while the former Senator restates his support for a universal
health care plan, he offers it in the context of supplementing
the wages of workers he has already characterized as too high
and more as a way of relieving the stress on hard-pressed businesses
than ameliorating the catastrophic burden on the millions of
uninsured and underinsured in and out of U.S. workplaces.
Labelling union leaders, who agree with the conclusions of the
commentary, "progressive" is also contested territory.
The opinion that carries the most weight on the conduct and
effectiveness of politically insulated national union leaders
belongs to the dues paying members in their unions. By a wide
margin workers faced with incessant concession demands want a
labor movement that aggregates its power to repel attacks on
their hard won gains and fights for greater social distribution
of those gains. Labor leaders calling for partnership with a
corporate elite presiding over a new era of 'wealth accumulation
by dispossession' are by those workers not as progressives but
as accomplices.
It's the workers, Senator, not union leaders, who have come to
see business as an enemy, and with good cause. Workers also
see the evidence of corporate control of government and expropriation
of rights under that domination which is supported by both national
political parties, including the liberal wing of the Democrats.
American liberalism's about-face on social equity matters and
capitulation to the class war mechanics of global neo-liberalism
is further exposed by how reckless corporate bankruptcy filings
have been turned into Damoclesian Swords over workers and communities.
Equally ironic is the gentle defense Wal Mart-ism, if not the
company itself, gets in this plea for worker realism and consignment
of 'less.' Essentially, McGovern is telling us that the Democratic
Party, on their best day, has nothing to offer.
Despite what the corporate, and political elite, and much of
the labor leadership are telling us about not struggling against
the "new competitive reality," acceptance of their
role for the U.S. working class is acceptance of a downward economic
spiral from which there is no recovery.
The reality for workers, union and non-union, immigrants and
native-born alike, is resistance and the renewal of those collective
institutions delegated by history to outfit the struggle for
social and economic justice-a class-struggle based labor movement
and a political party representing the interests of workers,
not the interest of the bosses.
But then, if to any extent McGovern is right, his logic suggests
a quite different conclusion than asking for 'less.' If this
is the best American capitalism has to offer, maybe it's the
system and not workers' hopes that have to be changed?
Jerry Tucker is a former Intl UAW Executive Board Member
and is an Initiating Co-convenor of the new national Center for
Labor Renewal.
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