Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mack4289]

This column was in the IHT today. It sounds like it was written about 50 years ago. Marxism hasn't been discredited because it's never been tried? Granted, people have control over their own actions but there do seem to be certain circumstances under which people always act more or less the same. Marxist states always turn out more or less the same way, with an impoverished, oppressed population and a bloated, corrupt government that can't be held accountable.
But even reviving labor in a capitalist state seems like a losing bet. The states where unions hold the greatest influence are normally those with the slowest growth and least new opportunities. I don't think bringing in better people is the solution because the problem is the structure. Unions inevitably become entrenched special interest groups interested in protecting their own jobs at the expense of accountability and profit.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/03/opinion/edcarroll.php

"Labor's failure
By James Carroll The Boston GlobePublished: September 3, 2007

BOSTON: Labor Day can seem like a holiday that belongs to another era. That is not because the trade union movement is no longer relevant in America, nor does the impulse to honor work and workers ever lose its importance.

But the word "labor" once defined an entire culture, with its "names, battle slogans, and costumes," in Karl Marx's phrase. Where did it go? The labor movement had its symbols, from politically charged clothing to badges to the holidays in May and September; its structures, from picket lines to unions to worker-owned insurance companies; its rhetoric, from the manifestos of agitators to the leaflets of organizers to the songs of Woody Guthrie; its ethic, defined as solidarity.

Millions continue to hold membership in unions, which continue to protect the rights of workers, but the triumph of the labor movement consisted in its becoming a feature of a social landscape that is taken for granted. Labor stopped being a force for political change, much less for social justice. What happened?

The 19th-century dream of a workers' vanguard leading to a better world was both betrayed and realized, and in each case, labor was undercut. The "dictatorship of the proletariat" turned out to be mere dictatorship. Yet the discrediting of the vision of Marx by the 20th-century Communisms that claimed him does not vitiate the original vision. Echoing what Gandhi once said of Christianity, Marxism has yet to be really tried.

The realization of the workers' dream occurred, across the same decades of the 20th century, when regulated capitalism made its adjustments, and a vast population of working people was able to lay solid claim to the middle class. But affluence had an inherently co-opting effect, as was powerfully displayed during the American civil rights movement, when the labor virtue of solidarity was trumped by racism, and union members mostly found themselves on the wrong side of history.

Meanwhile, the human significance of work was undergoing a massive cultural mutation, as traditional industry gave way to high technology, skill to mechanization, manufacturing to information, and economic nationalism to globalization. Marx worried about the control of the means of production, but what is control when the factory is replaced by the keyboard as the center of invention? For 200 years, "capital" was decisive, but then along came "intellectual capital." Goodbye borders. Goodbye regulation. Welcome to the free market, a free-for-all that destroys freedom. The very conditions of transcendent inequality that gave rise to the labor movement in the first place are now being re-created on a global scale.

In the United States, the most revealing failure of the labor movement to live up to its foundational ideal involves labor's role as a pillar of the military-industrial complex. Since the end of the Cold War, America has cannibalized itself by investing its best minds and most of its treasure in a profoundly counterproductive military establishment.

Usually this is blamed on the so-called "iron triangle" of corporations, Congress, and the Pentagon, which keep trillions of dollars circulating through the unbroken loop. But the labor movement has long been an essential part of this corrupt system, with union lobbyists playing their crucial role in keeping the lucrative defense contracts coming.

What would have happened at the end of the Cold War, when the expected "peace dividend" might have rescued education or rebuilt America's infrastructure, if union leaders had demanded an end to the Pentagon boondoggle? The conversion of a military-based economy, serving no real purpose beyond its own enrichment, to an economy of authentic productivity would have transformed foreign policy in the nick of time (no war in Iraq), and provided resources for homefront infrastructure (no failed dikes, or collapsed bridges).

It did not happen, for a lot of reasons - one of which is the hollowed out commitment of a movement that should have known better. What America needs is a revitalized reason to celebrate Labor Day."

[mindmetoo]

If people want get together and collectively withhold their labor until pay/work conditions are met, then let 'em. If the plant owner wants to fire them all, then let him.

In the anti-labor movement there's a somewhat unwritten assumption that the corporation owners are benevolent as regards their employees. Both sides greed is the motivator. I see nothing wrong with the worker asking for as much as he or she thinks she is worth.