atd - Webb's little candle

[alice wellintown]

> mistakes were made
> but the labor movement is responsible for a lot of good

The American Labor movement is, and it primarily has been, and
especially since the 1920s, a working-class movement outside of the
broad steam of socialist thought. The class struggle, existed,
primarily in the early rhetoric of the movement, but rarely in
operating principal. American Labor has been and remains, depite what
Robert Reich says in the Times today, deeply rooted in pure and simple
economic unionism. Bread and Butter, a conservative unionism has been
our history and every major successful labor leader since Gumpers,
even the patron saints of industrial unionism. Lewis, Murray, Reuther
were conservatives. Even the left-wing unions, with Marxist Leaders,
were conservative, economic unionists. What developed here is business
unionism. So private property and the market are viewed as fundamental
and beneficial, foundations of economic life in America. It was never
the case, not is it now, that business and markets were the
evil-doers, but capitalism must be tempered by organized labor. BTW,
Organized Labor was dismantled and Dismembered, not by Presidents or
CEOs, but by Labor itself. This is what Pynchon writes about .