Under the transparent disguise of compassionate conservatism, the Bush administration has proven itself a brazen champion of corporate control at home and imperialism abroad.   While the Bushevicks endeavor to turn over the national treasury to the super-rich, they plot openly to garrison the globe with American bases, and bribe or intimidate any country, large or small, audacious enough to stand in the way of U.S. ambitions.  In doing so, they have beaten a brand new path in American foreign policy for preemptive, unilateral aggression.  Nothing¾especially not the international opposition that includes most of the rest of the human race¾is enough to deflect the rogue arrogance of those now running the U.S. government. 

            The new corporate unilateralism is the perfect complement to their imperial conceit overseas.  It is deaf to the pleas of millions out of work, out of health insurance, out of unemployment insurance, out of lifetime savings and old age security, out of house and home.  So what if conscienceless CEO’s and investment bankers pocket other people’s money from corporate treasuries, mutual funds and retirement accounts?  So what if the national and international economy stumbles its way towards true disaster?  So what if the environment is so fouled human beings become walking toxic waste dumps?  No matter, so long as the interests and insatiable desires of a narrow circle of conservative ideologues, religious zealots, “chicken hawk” militarists, and crony capitalists are satiated.  And should the public object, we shouldn’t count too heavily on our constitutional right to dissent.  Empire and democracy don’t mix, so the Attorney General seems never to tire of proving.

            The urge to empire is bound to determine the fate of us all, and in particular the fate of working people, for the foreseeable future.Sensing what’s at stake, the labor movement has joined the ranks of the antiwar movement.  Even before the AFL-CIO issued its official demurral from the Administration’s invasion plans, local and international unions all over the country had registered their own opposition and lent their bodies to the resistance marches in New York, San Francisco, and in dozens of other cities and towns.  For a movement previously known for its knee-jerk fidelity to U.S. government foreign policy, this is historic.  In this issue, JoAnn Wypijewski explores the implications of this watershed development, and attributes this sea change to labor’s notable distance from the corridors of power.

Influencing and even occupying those corridors is, of course, labor’s illusive goal. Increasing its numbers and political heft will not prove an easy task.  In times like these, no tradition, no proven practice from the past, no vested interest can escape the most rigorous questioning.  For this reason, we invite our readers to ponder and respond to the “out-of-the-box” thinking of Steve Lerner.  Lerner analyzes the issues confronting today’s unions and suggests a new architecture for American trade unionism.  His article represents the most though, provocative proposal for a massive organization of labor in recent memory.  It is all the more important because the Service Employees International Union¾the nation’s largest union¾has embraced Lerner’s arguments and issued its own discussion paper intended to provoke conversation about a reorganization of American labor. We are pleased to provide in the pages of New Labor Forum a venue for dialogue and debate on these bold proposals

In the same spirit, Peter Olney and Edna Bonacich suggest ways in which labor might harvest the seeds of last fall’s West Coast longshore lockout.  Olney tells us why the International Longshore Workers Union came away with a victory despite the concerted efforts of the Bush Administration and some of the biggest corporate globalizers to bring the union to its knees.  Bonacich probes the acute vulnerability of the new global economy to disruptions at the point of distribution which made the Bush administration and its corporate allies so panicky when the longshoremen refused to buckle.

            The corporate fraud scandals offer a further point of acute political vulnerability for Bush. Labor made efforts to seize the day, not only by decrying what the media has portrayed as the naughty behavior of corporate miscreants, but by stepping to the front of the line with programmatic and legislative recommendations to eliminate the underlying systemic pressures to cook the books.  Here, we present three articles that assess these efforts.  Ron Blackwell lays out the labor movement’s theoretical and practical approach to corporate fraud.  Kirsten Spalding discusses the innovative work of the California Labor Federation to make corporations, particularly the notorious energy generators, answerable to workers and consumers. And an interview with a former Worldcom worker provides a view of what the “financialization” of the economy looks like at ground level.   In a related article, Elliot Sclar examines corporate fraud as a singularly powerful argument against the privatization of social security.  The push to privatize social security¾right on the crest of a tidal wave of Wall Street collapses and fraud¾is an exquisite expression of the strategic outlook of our corporate-imperial elite.  It is perhaps equaled in brazenness only by the Administration’s offer to exempt the top 5% of wealth-holders from virtually any kind of taxation.

One of the great legal frauds now being perpetrated by the Bush administration is its shameless auctioning off of what passes for America’s version of publicly subsidized health care.  If they get their way, even seniors on Medicare will be coerced into either leaving the system to sign up with a private HMO or else be left to shoulder the insupportable burden of prescription drugs on their own.  The pharmaceutical industry¾a model of capitalist greed at its most heartless¾stands to benefit either way.  Sadly, the labor movement has so far failed to vigorously promote its own alternative, clearly an avenue of potential influence and power among an ever growing and anxious public, starting with the 40 million people now living without health insurance of any kind.  Frank Goldsmith in our “New Strategies” column suggests that the French health care system, largely founded on the French labor movement, is a model American trade unionists ought to study closely. 

Power and how to get hold of some more of it is an endlessly vexing question for the labor movement.  Enlarging its programmatic appeal is one way.  Another is to plough new fields for potential recruits.  White collar workers generally, like those deep-sixed by the Worldcoms and Tycos of the fraud-infested telecommunications industry,  may provide just such a source.  Those working on the now severely pot-holed information superhighway have also fallen on hard times with the bursting of the dot.com bubble.  Andrew Ross takes an intimate look at what infatuated these technoproles about working in cyberspace and how the dream soured into the electronic sweatshop.  Will they ever sing “solidarity forever”?  The labor movement needs to find out. 

Whatever became of the strike, that time-tested weapon of ultimate resort for workers seeking a way out of their powerlessness and subordination?  It’s scarcely a part of the labor movement’s tactical repertoire anymore.   Is it an anachronism?  Does the labor movement’s weakness make it infeasible? Peter Rachleff tackles these knotty questions and we invite our readers to respond. 

Our Books and the Arts section examines material those resisting the empire might find useful or inspiring.  Most directly, Joel Rogers and Josh Cohen review Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who left the World Bank over his disagreements with its free market policies, and William Easterly’s The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics. Andrew Ross’ recent book No-Collar is reviewed by Michael Bernstein.  Striking back against the empire entails a battle for the hearts and minds of working people.  Moe Foner spent a lifetime waging war on the culture front and Carol Quirke reviews his memoir.  The notion of art as a weapon has a contested history.  Yet some of the most emotionally gripping indictments of contemporary capitalist culture now appear in the form of poetry (note Laura Bush’s fear and trembling that some antiwar poets might spoil her plans for a genteel evening at the White House).  So, in our final essay, Dara Young gives us a taste for this high-octane verbal energy in her review of the surprise Broadway hit Def Poetry Jam.