atd - Webb's little candle

[Paul Mackin]

On 9/5/2011 3:45 PM, alice wellintown wrote:
>> 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 .
>
And don't anyone tell ya different.

There was one very interesting connection between organized labor and 
the Soviet Union. .  Before Pearl Harbor the American war build up was 
still controversial.  Many thought the U.S.  ought to keep clear of the 
whole European mess.  Not organized labor however.  After Germany 
invaded Russia in 1941, Labor stood strongly behind FDR's effort to 
prepare the U.S. to eventually enter the war.  Not saying this was all 
due to "the worker's  paradise myth."  But there WAS much good will.  
The American war effort changed everything for American workers.  Even 
teen age kids like me. I actually became a union member in order to work 
swing shift at Douglas El Segundo.

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