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.