Harry Targ
Six hundred and fifty Hart, Schaffner, and Marx clothing workers rallied at noon, on Monday, May 11, 2009, in the Chicago suburb of Des Plaines. They demanded that Wells Fargo, which received a $25 billion bank bailout from the federal government, provide loans to investors who would purchase their bankrupt company and keep it open. Workers at the Des Plaines, Illinois plant were speaking for 3,600 workers around the country who could lose their jobs if the company was sold to an investor committed to closing the company.
Stephen Greenhouse in a New York Times article quoted Illinois Congressman Phil Hare who asserted that Wells Fargo needed “to stand up for the American worker, like Congress stood up for the banks when times were tough.”
A spokesperson for the workers proclaimed that the union local was going to do whatever was necessary to keep Hart Schaffner and Marx plants open. The workers, Greenhouse wrote, were “coming from Chicago’s south side as well as China, Greece, Mexico, Poland and a dozen other countries, many earn around $12 an hour.”
Worker’s struggles for jobs and living wages at Hart Schaffner and Marx have a long history. Ninety nine years earlier, on a bright and sunny morning, 17-year-old Russian immigrant, Hannah Shapiro ran to work at the old Hart Schaffner and Marx factory in downtown Chicago. She rushed to her wooden chair and began sewing the pockets that would be attached to men’s pants. Shortly after the workers assembled at their work stations the foreman came on the floor and curtly announced that from now on they would earn 3 ¾ cents per pocket instead of 4 cents.
Hannah, called Annie by friends, was so outraged by this cruel cut in piece work pay that she got up from her chair and stormed off the shop floor. To her surprise 15 co-workers, also young women, followed her. Thus was launched the great Hart Shaffner and Marx strike that would lead to 40,000 workers in Chicago factories walking off their jobs in support. Annie Shapiro, the Russian girl who spoke English haltingly, mobilized support from Hull House activists, the Women’s Trade Union League, and she marched with famed lawyer Clarence Darrow and 20,000 workers in a solidarity parade on December 4, 1910.
While the workers did not earn union recognition immediately, Hart Schaffner and Marx offered an agreement to Hannah Shapiro and her co-workers to establish a joint worker/management committee to address grievances. Workers voted to accept the agreement. Within three months workers gained pay raises and improved working conditions. In addition, the walkout, led by a humble young Russian woman, not only brought modest gains to workers in the men’s clothing factory but planted the seeds for worker solidarity, militancy, and trade unionism in Chicago.
In retrospect, the seeds for worker justice today were planted long ago in hundreds of thousands of invisible local struggles, like that waged by Hannah Shapiro and her co-workers. Until jobs, living wages, healthy working conditions, and rights to a union are guaranteed, these struggles will continue.
A forthcoming children’s rendition of the story of Hannah Shapiro and the Hart, Schaffner and Marx strike by Marlene Targ Brill is in production. For further information see http://www.marlenetargbrill.com/
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Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Thursday, May 7, 2009
MIDWEST CCDS DISCUSSES STRATEGIZING AROUND ECONOMICS, BUILDING A PROGRESSIVE AGENDA AS NATIONAL CONVENTION APPROACHES
While this article reports on a discussion at a regional meeting of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS), the issues raised are of general interest to progressives and warrant inclusion on this blog.
Harry Targ
May 3, 2009
Building a Progressive Coalition
Twenty members and friends of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS) spent a beautiful Saturday, April 25, in West Lafayette, Indiana, discussing how to build an effective progressive majority for the Obama years at its semi-annual Midwest regional meeting.
Mildred Williamson, member of the CCDS National Executive Committee, opened with four questions that she said were critical for the Left as it seeks to help build a coalition of progressives.
First, and most basic, we need to figure out how we can analyze and overcome our differences. Instead of highlighting differences with Obama, with Democrats, among activists with different views of the environmental crisis, she argued, we need to prioritize thinking and acting on ways to bring our disparate voices together.
Second, Williamson said, we need to ask ourselves how we should act when we disagree with the new Obama administration.
Third, and inextricably connected with the second point, we need to discuss how we can most effectively address issues that are not being addressed.
Finally, she claimed that we have to develop more effective techniques to reach out to different sectors of the progressive movement.
Issues Central to a Progressive Coalition
Having raised general issues of strategy and tactics, Williamson then discussed issues that have not been adequately addressed through public discourse or our various movements and campaigns. She said that by framing the impacts of economic crisis around the so-called “middle class,” the particular nature of the economic crisis in poor and working class communities, particularly communities of color, has been ignored. For example, measurable African American unemployment is at least twice that of white unemployment, and underemployment among African American male youth in some communities approaches fifty percent. Percentages of unemployment among other marginal communities exceeds that of the so-called “middle class” as well.
Along with ignoring poverty and differential experiences of poverty by race and gender, the Obama administration and Congress still have not imposed a moratorium on mortgage foreclosures and have not addressed the fundamental issue of affordable housing for millions while more and more people are living on the streets, in tents, and in homeless shelters.
Finally, Williamson said, progressives must begin to address the consequences of long-term economic crisis; addictions, incarceration, and differential criminalization of addictions by class and race.
Janet Tucker, CCDS National Organizer and activist with Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, confirmed that in rural (as well as urban) Kentucky, unemployment, homelessness, racism, and criminalization were problems for poor and working class people before the current crisis and remain problems. She added that geographic differences should be taken into account as well. In the Kentucky case, mountain top removal has destroyed the environment and communities while it has brought new wealth to elite energy companies.
John Wilborn, a Louisville CCDS member, called for a progressive response that builds upon united efforts from a variety of groups (Progressive Democrats of America, Democrats for America, Progressives for Obama and others) to demand the firing of Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers, Obama economic advisers; the establishment of a commission to investigate the causes of the financial crisis like the Perora Commission of the 1930s; and the restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act and revocation of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, to reregulate the financial sector of the economy.
Labor economist, David Cormier, from West Virginia, underscored the need to reestablish financial regulation, arguing that the entire US economy has shifted from the production of goods and services to financial speculation. Now less than 15 percent of U.S. workers are in manufacturing, he pointed out.
Don Scheiber, local UNITE-HERE member and Clint Fink, West Lafayette CCDS, added military spending to the list of causes of economic crisis. In addition, George Fish, Indianapolis CCDS member, raised the specter of a futile "guns and butter" policy with Obama trying to pursue his domestic agenda while still keeping sizeable forces in Iraq and escalating U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and incursions into Pakistan. Such policies, in conjunction with an economic stimulus package at home, were economically impossible to sustain and were reminiscent of the disasters that ensued when Lyndon Johnson pursued the same strategy in the 1960s, trying to have both his domestic Great Society and the War on Poverty while simultaneously escalating a war in Vietnam.
Activating the Progressive Majority
European nations, all capitalist, have progressive policies concerning health, transportation, education, and the environment Ted Pearson, CCDS National Executive Committee member, pointed out. While President Obama’s job description is to oversee and advance the interests of capitalism, people in motion can work inside the system as well as outside it to achieve the modest but significant reforms that Europeans have gained. The possibilities may be enhanced now, he said, because of the economic crisis and the fractionalized character of the capitalist class.
Several attendees warned, however, of the emergence of rightwing populism fueled by the far right of the Republican Party and their spokespersons in the mainstream media. For them the economic crisis is the result of Obama and the “Left” as they see it.
As to organizing, Stephen David, Lafayette, urged activists to build off of the grassroots mobilizations of the Obama campaign and to use those that remain active to challenge “bureaucratic” top-down politics with “grassroots” bottom up mobilizations. April Burke, Purdue University graduate student and IWW member, reported that there are positive signs among young people attending colleges and universities, who are beginning to organize around workplace issues as well as in support of labor struggles generally. Beth Rosdatter, Lexington, pointed out that progressives need to include organizing temporary and unemployed workers.
Finally, Berenice Carroll, CCDS member in West Lafayette, added that all the issues discussed must also consider the particular effects of economic and political crisis on women. We should remember, she said, that building a progressive majority involves networking with women’s organizations as well as others that have been mentioned.
At the end of the discussion of the economic crisis and building a progressive majority, Ira Grupper, CCDS Labor Task Force coordinator, urged CCDS to expand its organizing work and to include discussions of causes in analyses of the economic crisis.
It was agreed that this report on building a progressive coalition, issues relevant to it, and activating the progressive majority should be passed along to the National Convention of CCDS for inclusion in discussion.
Harry Targ
May 3, 2009
Building a Progressive Coalition
Twenty members and friends of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS) spent a beautiful Saturday, April 25, in West Lafayette, Indiana, discussing how to build an effective progressive majority for the Obama years at its semi-annual Midwest regional meeting.
Mildred Williamson, member of the CCDS National Executive Committee, opened with four questions that she said were critical for the Left as it seeks to help build a coalition of progressives.
First, and most basic, we need to figure out how we can analyze and overcome our differences. Instead of highlighting differences with Obama, with Democrats, among activists with different views of the environmental crisis, she argued, we need to prioritize thinking and acting on ways to bring our disparate voices together.
Second, Williamson said, we need to ask ourselves how we should act when we disagree with the new Obama administration.
Third, and inextricably connected with the second point, we need to discuss how we can most effectively address issues that are not being addressed.
Finally, she claimed that we have to develop more effective techniques to reach out to different sectors of the progressive movement.
Issues Central to a Progressive Coalition
Having raised general issues of strategy and tactics, Williamson then discussed issues that have not been adequately addressed through public discourse or our various movements and campaigns. She said that by framing the impacts of economic crisis around the so-called “middle class,” the particular nature of the economic crisis in poor and working class communities, particularly communities of color, has been ignored. For example, measurable African American unemployment is at least twice that of white unemployment, and underemployment among African American male youth in some communities approaches fifty percent. Percentages of unemployment among other marginal communities exceeds that of the so-called “middle class” as well.
Along with ignoring poverty and differential experiences of poverty by race and gender, the Obama administration and Congress still have not imposed a moratorium on mortgage foreclosures and have not addressed the fundamental issue of affordable housing for millions while more and more people are living on the streets, in tents, and in homeless shelters.
Finally, Williamson said, progressives must begin to address the consequences of long-term economic crisis; addictions, incarceration, and differential criminalization of addictions by class and race.
Janet Tucker, CCDS National Organizer and activist with Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, confirmed that in rural (as well as urban) Kentucky, unemployment, homelessness, racism, and criminalization were problems for poor and working class people before the current crisis and remain problems. She added that geographic differences should be taken into account as well. In the Kentucky case, mountain top removal has destroyed the environment and communities while it has brought new wealth to elite energy companies.
John Wilborn, a Louisville CCDS member, called for a progressive response that builds upon united efforts from a variety of groups (Progressive Democrats of America, Democrats for America, Progressives for Obama and others) to demand the firing of Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers, Obama economic advisers; the establishment of a commission to investigate the causes of the financial crisis like the Perora Commission of the 1930s; and the restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act and revocation of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, to reregulate the financial sector of the economy.
Labor economist, David Cormier, from West Virginia, underscored the need to reestablish financial regulation, arguing that the entire US economy has shifted from the production of goods and services to financial speculation. Now less than 15 percent of U.S. workers are in manufacturing, he pointed out.
Don Scheiber, local UNITE-HERE member and Clint Fink, West Lafayette CCDS, added military spending to the list of causes of economic crisis. In addition, George Fish, Indianapolis CCDS member, raised the specter of a futile "guns and butter" policy with Obama trying to pursue his domestic agenda while still keeping sizeable forces in Iraq and escalating U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and incursions into Pakistan. Such policies, in conjunction with an economic stimulus package at home, were economically impossible to sustain and were reminiscent of the disasters that ensued when Lyndon Johnson pursued the same strategy in the 1960s, trying to have both his domestic Great Society and the War on Poverty while simultaneously escalating a war in Vietnam.
Activating the Progressive Majority
European nations, all capitalist, have progressive policies concerning health, transportation, education, and the environment Ted Pearson, CCDS National Executive Committee member, pointed out. While President Obama’s job description is to oversee and advance the interests of capitalism, people in motion can work inside the system as well as outside it to achieve the modest but significant reforms that Europeans have gained. The possibilities may be enhanced now, he said, because of the economic crisis and the fractionalized character of the capitalist class.
Several attendees warned, however, of the emergence of rightwing populism fueled by the far right of the Republican Party and their spokespersons in the mainstream media. For them the economic crisis is the result of Obama and the “Left” as they see it.
As to organizing, Stephen David, Lafayette, urged activists to build off of the grassroots mobilizations of the Obama campaign and to use those that remain active to challenge “bureaucratic” top-down politics with “grassroots” bottom up mobilizations. April Burke, Purdue University graduate student and IWW member, reported that there are positive signs among young people attending colleges and universities, who are beginning to organize around workplace issues as well as in support of labor struggles generally. Beth Rosdatter, Lexington, pointed out that progressives need to include organizing temporary and unemployed workers.
Finally, Berenice Carroll, CCDS member in West Lafayette, added that all the issues discussed must also consider the particular effects of economic and political crisis on women. We should remember, she said, that building a progressive majority involves networking with women’s organizations as well as others that have been mentioned.
At the end of the discussion of the economic crisis and building a progressive majority, Ira Grupper, CCDS Labor Task Force coordinator, urged CCDS to expand its organizing work and to include discussions of causes in analyses of the economic crisis.
It was agreed that this report on building a progressive coalition, issues relevant to it, and activating the progressive majority should be passed along to the National Convention of CCDS for inclusion in discussion.
Friday, May 1, 2009
MAY DAY BRINGS THOUGHTS OF SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVES
Harry Targ
Sketching Today’s Global Political Economy
During the latest phase of monopoly and finance capital (1945- to the present) enormous changes occurred in the global political economy. First, the United States emerged as a superpower and in an effort to crush the threat of socialism around the world committed itself to constructing a “permanent war economy.” This permanent war economy would create the military capacity to destroy alternatives to global capitalism, stimulate and maintain a high growth manufacturing economy, justify an anti-communist crusade to crush the left in the United States, and co-opt and/or repress working class demands for change. In addition, the permanent war economy would occasion the perpetuation of racism and patriarchy in public and private life.
As the years passed corporate rates of profit began to decline as a result of rising competition among capitalist states, over-production and under-consumption, an increasing fiscal crisis of the capitalist state, and rising prices of core natural resources (particularly oil). With a growing crisis, global corporate and finance capital shifted from investments in production of goods and services to financial speculation. Thus capitalist investment steadily shifted to financialization, or the investment in paper-stocks, bonds, private equity and hedge funds and other forms of speculative investment. Financial speculation was encouraged by state tax policies, “free trade” agreements, an expanded international system of indebtedness, and increased reliance on consumer debt.
Multinational corporations which continued to produce goods and services sought to overcome declining profit rates. This, they concluded, could only be achieved by reducing the costs of labor. To overcome the demand for higher real wages, health and other benefits, and worker rights, manufacturing facilities were moved from core capitalist states to poor countries where lower wages were paid. Thus, in wealthier countries millions of relatively high paying jobs were lost while production of goods increasingly moved to sweatshops in poor countries. Wealthy capitalist states experienced deindustrialization.
Finally, assisted by technological advances, from computers to new forms of shipping, financial speculation and deindustrialization fueled the full flowering of globalization, or the radically increased patterns of cross border interactions-economic, political, and cultural. Globalization began to transform the world into one integrated global political economy.
In short, we may speak of a four-fold set of parallel political and economic developments that have occurred since the end of World War II, in which the United States has played a leading role: creating a permanent war economy, financialization, deindustrialization, and globalization.
Should We Be Thinking About Socialism Today?
A rich and vital set of images of a socialist future comes down to us from the utopians, anarchists, and Marxists, the martyrs of the first May Day, and the variety of experiments with socialism attempted in Asia, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. Extracting from the multiple reasons why individuals and movements chose socialism one reason stands out; that is, that capitalism historically is and has been a cruel and inhumane system, a system borne and fueled by slavery, genocide, super exploitation of workers, tactics of division based on race and gender, and an almost total disregard for the natural environment that sustains life. Building a permanent war economy, financialization, deindustrialization, and globalization are merely extensions of the cruel and heartless pursuit of profit which has been the fundamental driving force of the capitalist mode of production.
Drawing on the history and the images of a better future coupled with the brutality of the capitalist era, we might conceive of a 21st century socialist future that has four main dimensions.
First, we need to create institutions that are created and staffed by the working classes and serve the interests of the working classes. While scholars and activists may disagree about what “class” means in today’s complicated world, it is clear that the vast majority of humankind do not own or control the means of production, nor do they usually have an instrumental place in political institutions. Therefore, socialism involves, in the Marxist sense, the creation of a workers’ state and since most of us are workers (more than 90 percent of the US population for example), a state must be established that represents and serves the interests of the many, not the few.
Second, our vision of socialism is a society in which the working classes fully participate in the institutions that shape their lives and in the creation of the policies that these institutions develop to serve the needs of all the people.
Third, socialism also implies the creation of public policies that sustain life. Socialism in this sense is about good jobs, incomes that provide for human needs, access to health care for all, adequate housing and transportation, a livable environment, and an end to discrimination and war.
Fourth, socialism is also about the creation of institutions and policies that maximize human potential. A socialist society provides the intellectual tools to stimulate creativity, celebrate diversity, and facilitate writing poetry, singing and dancing, basking in nature’s glow, and living, working, and loving with others in humanly sustainable communities.
Today we remain terribly far from any of these dimensions of socialism. But paradoxically, humankind at this point in time has the technological tools to build a mass movement to create a socialist future. We can communicate instantaneously with peoples all over the world. We can access information about the world that challenges the narrow ruling class media frames about the human condition. We have in the face of brutal war, environmental devastation, enduring racism, super exploitation of workers everywhere mass movements of workers, women, people of color, indigenous people, and youth who are demanding changes. Increasingly public discourse is based upon the realization that our future will bring either extinction or survival. Socialism, although it is not labeled as such, represents human survival.
Where do we who believe that socialism offers the best hope for survival stand at this critical juncture? We are weak. Many of us are older. Some of us have remained mired in old formulas about change. Nevertheless we can make a contribution to building a socialist future. In fact we have a critical role to play.
We must articulate systematic understandings of the global political economy and where it came from: permanent war, financialization, deindustrialization, and globalization. We need to articulate what impacts these processes have had on class, race, gender, and the environment. In other words, we need to convince activists that almost all things wrong with the world are connected and are intimately tied to the development of capitalism as the dominant mode of production.
We need to take our place in political struggles that demand an expanded role for workers in political institutions. We need to insist that the working classes participate in all political decisions.
We need to work on campaigns that could sustain life: jobs, living wages, single payer health care, climate change etc. Our contribution can include making connections between the variety of single issues, insisting that participants in mass movements take cognizance of and work on the other single issues that constitute the mosaic of problems that require transformation. We must remember that in the end the basic policies that sustain life require building socialism. Most struggles, such as those to achieve living wages or a single payer health care system for example, plant the seeds for building a broader socialist society. We can incorporate our socialist vision in our debates about single issues: if we demand a living wage, why not talk about equality for example?
We need to rearticulate our belief that human beings have a vast potential for good, for creativity, and given a just society, we all could move away from classism, racism, and sexism. We could pursue our talents and interests in the context of a sharing and cooperative society.
By working for institutional incorporation (empowerment) and life-sustaining and enhancing policies we will be planting the seeds for a socialist society.
“In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,
Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold.
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old.
For the union makes us strong”
From “Solidarity Forever,” Ralph Chaplin lyrics, 1915.
Sketching Today’s Global Political Economy
During the latest phase of monopoly and finance capital (1945- to the present) enormous changes occurred in the global political economy. First, the United States emerged as a superpower and in an effort to crush the threat of socialism around the world committed itself to constructing a “permanent war economy.” This permanent war economy would create the military capacity to destroy alternatives to global capitalism, stimulate and maintain a high growth manufacturing economy, justify an anti-communist crusade to crush the left in the United States, and co-opt and/or repress working class demands for change. In addition, the permanent war economy would occasion the perpetuation of racism and patriarchy in public and private life.
As the years passed corporate rates of profit began to decline as a result of rising competition among capitalist states, over-production and under-consumption, an increasing fiscal crisis of the capitalist state, and rising prices of core natural resources (particularly oil). With a growing crisis, global corporate and finance capital shifted from investments in production of goods and services to financial speculation. Thus capitalist investment steadily shifted to financialization, or the investment in paper-stocks, bonds, private equity and hedge funds and other forms of speculative investment. Financial speculation was encouraged by state tax policies, “free trade” agreements, an expanded international system of indebtedness, and increased reliance on consumer debt.
Multinational corporations which continued to produce goods and services sought to overcome declining profit rates. This, they concluded, could only be achieved by reducing the costs of labor. To overcome the demand for higher real wages, health and other benefits, and worker rights, manufacturing facilities were moved from core capitalist states to poor countries where lower wages were paid. Thus, in wealthier countries millions of relatively high paying jobs were lost while production of goods increasingly moved to sweatshops in poor countries. Wealthy capitalist states experienced deindustrialization.
Finally, assisted by technological advances, from computers to new forms of shipping, financial speculation and deindustrialization fueled the full flowering of globalization, or the radically increased patterns of cross border interactions-economic, political, and cultural. Globalization began to transform the world into one integrated global political economy.
In short, we may speak of a four-fold set of parallel political and economic developments that have occurred since the end of World War II, in which the United States has played a leading role: creating a permanent war economy, financialization, deindustrialization, and globalization.
Should We Be Thinking About Socialism Today?
A rich and vital set of images of a socialist future comes down to us from the utopians, anarchists, and Marxists, the martyrs of the first May Day, and the variety of experiments with socialism attempted in Asia, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. Extracting from the multiple reasons why individuals and movements chose socialism one reason stands out; that is, that capitalism historically is and has been a cruel and inhumane system, a system borne and fueled by slavery, genocide, super exploitation of workers, tactics of division based on race and gender, and an almost total disregard for the natural environment that sustains life. Building a permanent war economy, financialization, deindustrialization, and globalization are merely extensions of the cruel and heartless pursuit of profit which has been the fundamental driving force of the capitalist mode of production.
Drawing on the history and the images of a better future coupled with the brutality of the capitalist era, we might conceive of a 21st century socialist future that has four main dimensions.
First, we need to create institutions that are created and staffed by the working classes and serve the interests of the working classes. While scholars and activists may disagree about what “class” means in today’s complicated world, it is clear that the vast majority of humankind do not own or control the means of production, nor do they usually have an instrumental place in political institutions. Therefore, socialism involves, in the Marxist sense, the creation of a workers’ state and since most of us are workers (more than 90 percent of the US population for example), a state must be established that represents and serves the interests of the many, not the few.
Second, our vision of socialism is a society in which the working classes fully participate in the institutions that shape their lives and in the creation of the policies that these institutions develop to serve the needs of all the people.
Third, socialism also implies the creation of public policies that sustain life. Socialism in this sense is about good jobs, incomes that provide for human needs, access to health care for all, adequate housing and transportation, a livable environment, and an end to discrimination and war.
Fourth, socialism is also about the creation of institutions and policies that maximize human potential. A socialist society provides the intellectual tools to stimulate creativity, celebrate diversity, and facilitate writing poetry, singing and dancing, basking in nature’s glow, and living, working, and loving with others in humanly sustainable communities.
Today we remain terribly far from any of these dimensions of socialism. But paradoxically, humankind at this point in time has the technological tools to build a mass movement to create a socialist future. We can communicate instantaneously with peoples all over the world. We can access information about the world that challenges the narrow ruling class media frames about the human condition. We have in the face of brutal war, environmental devastation, enduring racism, super exploitation of workers everywhere mass movements of workers, women, people of color, indigenous people, and youth who are demanding changes. Increasingly public discourse is based upon the realization that our future will bring either extinction or survival. Socialism, although it is not labeled as such, represents human survival.
Where do we who believe that socialism offers the best hope for survival stand at this critical juncture? We are weak. Many of us are older. Some of us have remained mired in old formulas about change. Nevertheless we can make a contribution to building a socialist future. In fact we have a critical role to play.
We must articulate systematic understandings of the global political economy and where it came from: permanent war, financialization, deindustrialization, and globalization. We need to articulate what impacts these processes have had on class, race, gender, and the environment. In other words, we need to convince activists that almost all things wrong with the world are connected and are intimately tied to the development of capitalism as the dominant mode of production.
We need to take our place in political struggles that demand an expanded role for workers in political institutions. We need to insist that the working classes participate in all political decisions.
We need to work on campaigns that could sustain life: jobs, living wages, single payer health care, climate change etc. Our contribution can include making connections between the variety of single issues, insisting that participants in mass movements take cognizance of and work on the other single issues that constitute the mosaic of problems that require transformation. We must remember that in the end the basic policies that sustain life require building socialism. Most struggles, such as those to achieve living wages or a single payer health care system for example, plant the seeds for building a broader socialist society. We can incorporate our socialist vision in our debates about single issues: if we demand a living wage, why not talk about equality for example?
We need to rearticulate our belief that human beings have a vast potential for good, for creativity, and given a just society, we all could move away from classism, racism, and sexism. We could pursue our talents and interests in the context of a sharing and cooperative society.
By working for institutional incorporation (empowerment) and life-sustaining and enhancing policies we will be planting the seeds for a socialist society.
“In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,
Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold.
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old.
For the union makes us strong”
From “Solidarity Forever,” Ralph Chaplin lyrics, 1915.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
CELEBRATING PROGRESSIVE CULTURE
Harry Targ
Social movements are defined in several ways; their leadership, their membership, their vision, their strategies, their resources, and their successes and failures. We often forget, however, that each of these elements are woven together by a culture. This culture can be poetic, dramatic, pictorial, or musical, or some of each. The culture provides a way for people in all different places, engaged in all different parts of the mass movement, to experience a common sense of themselves and what they share with others. It may be the case that a movement without a culture is a movement without a sense of vision, of shared purpose, of passion.
It is these thoughts that come to mind this week as we gear up to celebrate the 90th birthday of Pete Seeger, a man who has brought song to our hearts and minds for 70 years. Pete and those musicians who were inspired by him helped influence many of us to join the great twentieth century movements for social change: labor, civil rights, feminist, ecology. It was through his practice, getting sometimes thousands of fans to sing together in unison about building a better world, that people learned that working together is how change occurs.
And when progressives look back at the twentieth century and see a very mixed record of successes and failures, glorious victories and tragic defeats, it is the culture that reminds people of the nobility of the goals that social movements pursued and what still needs to be achieved. And no greater symbol of redemption of twentieth century progressive movements and cultures was evidenced than Pete’s leading 500,000 people in front of the Lincoln Memorial two days before the inauguration of President Barack Obama in singing Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.” Pete included the verses that delegitimized private property and celebrated the continued struggle for fundamental social change.
That performance reminded older people of the fundamental justice of the old movements and the need to create new movements with new cultures in the 21st century. Vital to that brief sing out also was the message that the old political culture should not be forgotten even as new politics and culture is created. The old and the new are like links in a chain.
Let’s all celebrate the life and work of Pete Seeger as he turns 90 and celebrate ourselves as well.
A few additional words:
Paul Robeson: Continued study and research into the origins of the folk music of various peoples in many parts of the world revealed that there is a world body-a universal body-of folk music based upon a universal pentatonic (five tone) scale. Interested as I am in the universality of (hu)mankind-in the fundamental relationship of all peoples to one another-this idea of a universal body of music intrigued me, and I pursued it along many fascinating paths.
Woody Guthrie: I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim. Too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood….
Pete Seeger: Imagine a big see-saw, with a basketful of rocks sitting on one end. That end is down on the ground. At the other end, up in the air, is a basket half full of sand. Some of us are trying to fill it, using teaspoons. Most folks laugh at us: “Don’t you know the sand is leaking out even as you put it in?” We say that’s true, but we’re getting more people with more teaspoons all the time. One of these days that basket of sand will be full and you’ll see this whole see-saw just tip the opposite way. People will say, “Gee how did it happen so suddenly?” Us, and our goddam teaspoons.
Social movements are defined in several ways; their leadership, their membership, their vision, their strategies, their resources, and their successes and failures. We often forget, however, that each of these elements are woven together by a culture. This culture can be poetic, dramatic, pictorial, or musical, or some of each. The culture provides a way for people in all different places, engaged in all different parts of the mass movement, to experience a common sense of themselves and what they share with others. It may be the case that a movement without a culture is a movement without a sense of vision, of shared purpose, of passion.
It is these thoughts that come to mind this week as we gear up to celebrate the 90th birthday of Pete Seeger, a man who has brought song to our hearts and minds for 70 years. Pete and those musicians who were inspired by him helped influence many of us to join the great twentieth century movements for social change: labor, civil rights, feminist, ecology. It was through his practice, getting sometimes thousands of fans to sing together in unison about building a better world, that people learned that working together is how change occurs.
And when progressives look back at the twentieth century and see a very mixed record of successes and failures, glorious victories and tragic defeats, it is the culture that reminds people of the nobility of the goals that social movements pursued and what still needs to be achieved. And no greater symbol of redemption of twentieth century progressive movements and cultures was evidenced than Pete’s leading 500,000 people in front of the Lincoln Memorial two days before the inauguration of President Barack Obama in singing Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.” Pete included the verses that delegitimized private property and celebrated the continued struggle for fundamental social change.
That performance reminded older people of the fundamental justice of the old movements and the need to create new movements with new cultures in the 21st century. Vital to that brief sing out also was the message that the old political culture should not be forgotten even as new politics and culture is created. The old and the new are like links in a chain.
Let’s all celebrate the life and work of Pete Seeger as he turns 90 and celebrate ourselves as well.
A few additional words:
Paul Robeson: Continued study and research into the origins of the folk music of various peoples in many parts of the world revealed that there is a world body-a universal body-of folk music based upon a universal pentatonic (five tone) scale. Interested as I am in the universality of (hu)mankind-in the fundamental relationship of all peoples to one another-this idea of a universal body of music intrigued me, and I pursued it along many fascinating paths.
Woody Guthrie: I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim. Too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood….
Pete Seeger: Imagine a big see-saw, with a basketful of rocks sitting on one end. That end is down on the ground. At the other end, up in the air, is a basket half full of sand. Some of us are trying to fill it, using teaspoons. Most folks laugh at us: “Don’t you know the sand is leaking out even as you put it in?” We say that’s true, but we’re getting more people with more teaspoons all the time. One of these days that basket of sand will be full and you’ll see this whole see-saw just tip the opposite way. People will say, “Gee how did it happen so suddenly?” Us, and our goddam teaspoons.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
30 YEARS OF NEOLIBERAL ECONOMICS; NEOCONSERVATIVE MILITARISM
Harry Targ
Developing a progressive political agenda often requires historical reflection. This should be true of our assessments of the consequences of the recently completed G20 summit in London.
Thirty years before the summit, 1979, US imperial policy experienced multiple challenges, challenges so dramatic that the Carter administration began a shift in overall economic and military policy back toward a global cold war. The new cold war reignited by Carter was fully expanded and institutionalized by Reagan, two Bushes, and Clinton (even with the cold war enemy gone).
In January, 1979, to the surprise of friend and foe alike the brutal Iranian dictatorship of the Shah was overthrown by a mass movement of workers, religious followers, students, and bourgeois nationalists. The impregnable Iranian regime, with the fifth largest military in the world and the keeper of the flow of Persian Gulf oil, was no more. The ouster of the Shah so shocked Washington that for a time some Carter aides advocated a US military operation to save this most critical of allies from revolution.
Later, the US empire was shaken by revolutionary ferment in the Western Hemisphere: the seizure of power of the New Jewel movement in Grenada, the Sandinista triumphant march into Managua, Nicaragua and a reform coup in El Salvador. In November, 1979, 55 US hostages were taken by students in Tehran (and held for 441 days) and the Soviet Union sent troops into Afghanistan to save a beleaguered ally from internal revolt. (Subsequently, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted that the Carter administration began funding Islamic rebels fighting against the Kabul government before the Soviet Union sent troops to save it.).
Paralleling geopolitical and military crisis in 1979, the US was mired in a recession, including both high unemployment and inflation (a combination that mainstream economists said could not happen at the same time). Analysts wrote about a US economy plagued with overproduction, underconsumption, declining rates of profit, and a state fiscal crisis.
The seeds were planted for the full flowering of new economic and military policies by the Reagan administration to stem the crises. “Neoliberalism” refers to the set of economic policies the new administration (through the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the G7 countries, and private banks) imposed on virtually every country in the world. These policies required that every country shift from state directed to “market” approaches to economic growth. Countries were forced to downsize, privatize, and deregulate their economies and to shift from the production of goods and services for domestic consumption to exports. First poor countries, then socialist countries, then European social democracies, and the United States itself were subjected to neoliberalism. And, of course, from Chile to Mexico to Eastern Europe, to many Asian countries, the policies generated growing economic inequalities, declining rates of growth, and increasing indebtedness to foreign banks. In Latin America, the 1980s became known as “the lost decade.”
Beginning with President Carter’s 1980 State of the Union address and dramatically expanded in the 1980s, and refined to a brutal art in the new century, president after president embraced a political/military policy referred to as “neoconservatism.” Neoconservative military doctrine, commonly associated with the Project for a New American Century, a group of political influentials assembled in the 1990s, was proclaimed earlier as the Reagan Doctrine which called for global domination (even before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc). Neoconservatism referred to the proposition that the United States was the last great hope for humankind, the city on the hill. As strategic doctrine neoconservatism evolved after the collapse of the Soviet Union asserting that nations that had military power should use it any time and any place to impose on peoples the “right” course for their development. Might makes right. The United States is the hegemon, neoconservatism proclaimed. The United States should use all its resources to dominate the world because it is the “last remaining superpower.”
Why go into all this? Because the character of President Obama’s participation at the G20 Summit three weeks ago suggested that modest changes in United States foreign policy, particularly in reference to neoliberalism and neoconservatism, had begun. Also President Obama’s words and actions at the Summit about new directions in US policy were enthusiastically endorsed all around the world. The new rhetoric has led to changed expectations which may translate into new demands (from governments and peoples) for change in the years ahead.
As to neoliberalism, it is clear to all that reliance on “the magic of the marketplace” has been and would continue to be a disaster for the global economy. A global economic stimulus package, for all its flaws, has replaced demands for government austerity programs characteristic of the era of neoliberalism. In addition, while the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank remain the primary agents of global economic policy, influential G20 countries have made it clear that these two international financial institutions must be reformed such that vast majorities of humankind have some formal representation in their decisionmaking.
As to neoconservatism, President Obama at G20 and elsewhere on his travels has articulated the very modest proposition that the United States is not perfect, that it cannot act without others, and that diplomacy (the rudimentary tool of international relations since the foundation of the state system) will play a significant role in United States interactions with the world. Since G20 Obama has mentioned dialogue with Iran and Cuba, and was photographed shaking hands with Hugo Chavez at the meeting of Western Hemisphere leaders in Trinidad.
These modest and largely symbolic gestures by the new President do not constitute an end to the US pursuit of empire. However, they do recognize the rise of resistance to forty years of US driven neoliberal economic policies and neoconservative military policies. As so often has happened in US politics the gap between rhetoric and reality still remain large. But signs of G20 rejections of forty years of neoliberalism and neoconservatism can serve as a basis for progressives to insist that rhetoric become reality.
Developing a progressive political agenda often requires historical reflection. This should be true of our assessments of the consequences of the recently completed G20 summit in London.
Thirty years before the summit, 1979, US imperial policy experienced multiple challenges, challenges so dramatic that the Carter administration began a shift in overall economic and military policy back toward a global cold war. The new cold war reignited by Carter was fully expanded and institutionalized by Reagan, two Bushes, and Clinton (even with the cold war enemy gone).
In January, 1979, to the surprise of friend and foe alike the brutal Iranian dictatorship of the Shah was overthrown by a mass movement of workers, religious followers, students, and bourgeois nationalists. The impregnable Iranian regime, with the fifth largest military in the world and the keeper of the flow of Persian Gulf oil, was no more. The ouster of the Shah so shocked Washington that for a time some Carter aides advocated a US military operation to save this most critical of allies from revolution.
Later, the US empire was shaken by revolutionary ferment in the Western Hemisphere: the seizure of power of the New Jewel movement in Grenada, the Sandinista triumphant march into Managua, Nicaragua and a reform coup in El Salvador. In November, 1979, 55 US hostages were taken by students in Tehran (and held for 441 days) and the Soviet Union sent troops into Afghanistan to save a beleaguered ally from internal revolt. (Subsequently, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted that the Carter administration began funding Islamic rebels fighting against the Kabul government before the Soviet Union sent troops to save it.).
Paralleling geopolitical and military crisis in 1979, the US was mired in a recession, including both high unemployment and inflation (a combination that mainstream economists said could not happen at the same time). Analysts wrote about a US economy plagued with overproduction, underconsumption, declining rates of profit, and a state fiscal crisis.
The seeds were planted for the full flowering of new economic and military policies by the Reagan administration to stem the crises. “Neoliberalism” refers to the set of economic policies the new administration (through the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the G7 countries, and private banks) imposed on virtually every country in the world. These policies required that every country shift from state directed to “market” approaches to economic growth. Countries were forced to downsize, privatize, and deregulate their economies and to shift from the production of goods and services for domestic consumption to exports. First poor countries, then socialist countries, then European social democracies, and the United States itself were subjected to neoliberalism. And, of course, from Chile to Mexico to Eastern Europe, to many Asian countries, the policies generated growing economic inequalities, declining rates of growth, and increasing indebtedness to foreign banks. In Latin America, the 1980s became known as “the lost decade.”
Beginning with President Carter’s 1980 State of the Union address and dramatically expanded in the 1980s, and refined to a brutal art in the new century, president after president embraced a political/military policy referred to as “neoconservatism.” Neoconservative military doctrine, commonly associated with the Project for a New American Century, a group of political influentials assembled in the 1990s, was proclaimed earlier as the Reagan Doctrine which called for global domination (even before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc). Neoconservatism referred to the proposition that the United States was the last great hope for humankind, the city on the hill. As strategic doctrine neoconservatism evolved after the collapse of the Soviet Union asserting that nations that had military power should use it any time and any place to impose on peoples the “right” course for their development. Might makes right. The United States is the hegemon, neoconservatism proclaimed. The United States should use all its resources to dominate the world because it is the “last remaining superpower.”
Why go into all this? Because the character of President Obama’s participation at the G20 Summit three weeks ago suggested that modest changes in United States foreign policy, particularly in reference to neoliberalism and neoconservatism, had begun. Also President Obama’s words and actions at the Summit about new directions in US policy were enthusiastically endorsed all around the world. The new rhetoric has led to changed expectations which may translate into new demands (from governments and peoples) for change in the years ahead.
As to neoliberalism, it is clear to all that reliance on “the magic of the marketplace” has been and would continue to be a disaster for the global economy. A global economic stimulus package, for all its flaws, has replaced demands for government austerity programs characteristic of the era of neoliberalism. In addition, while the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank remain the primary agents of global economic policy, influential G20 countries have made it clear that these two international financial institutions must be reformed such that vast majorities of humankind have some formal representation in their decisionmaking.
As to neoconservatism, President Obama at G20 and elsewhere on his travels has articulated the very modest proposition that the United States is not perfect, that it cannot act without others, and that diplomacy (the rudimentary tool of international relations since the foundation of the state system) will play a significant role in United States interactions with the world. Since G20 Obama has mentioned dialogue with Iran and Cuba, and was photographed shaking hands with Hugo Chavez at the meeting of Western Hemisphere leaders in Trinidad.
These modest and largely symbolic gestures by the new President do not constitute an end to the US pursuit of empire. However, they do recognize the rise of resistance to forty years of US driven neoliberal economic policies and neoconservative military policies. As so often has happened in US politics the gap between rhetoric and reality still remain large. But signs of G20 rejections of forty years of neoliberalism and neoconservatism can serve as a basis for progressives to insist that rhetoric become reality.
Friday, April 10, 2009
THE CUBS AND SOCIALISM
Harry Targ
In February, 2008 I sent an e-mail to some old high school friends declaring boldly that this was going to be my year: Obama would be elected president, Socialism would come to America, and the Cubs would win the world series. One dear friend responded by saying he hoped my nurse would be able to adjust my medication.
In years prior to my bold declaration, I would tell my students that Socialism would come to America before the Cubs would win the world series. Since they were on an awesome pace throughout the 2008 season I was sure we would achieve Socialism soon because the Cubs were going all the way in 2008. Alas my team was summarily eliminated from post-season competition by pitifully losing every playoff game.
The impact on my psyche was profound. Not only would I not be able to celebrate with those Cub fan survivors of 100 years of solitude but I would have to return to political activism to achieve Socialism because I could not count on the Cubs to get us over the hump. Even my wife, a heretofore Cub fan, said Basta! “60 Years is Enough.” When I asked her a week ago about going to the world series this year to root for the Cubs all she said was she would give me money for a hot dog.
I began writing this column Tuesday morning, just hours after the Cubs with smooth pitching from Carlos Zambrano and an Alfonso Soriano lead off home run defeated the Houston Astros. I even began to fantasize about a long winning streak, even 162 victories. Unfortunately, I did not finish the article before the Cubs lost game two in the tenth inning. There goes the perfect season.
What is behind my pathology. After all Ronald Reagan used to broadcast Cubs games, off of ticker tape reports so he had to make up stories about the game. Right-winger, George Will is one of the most famous Cub fans. And until quite recently the Cubs only played day baseball, thus prohibiting the attendance of most working people.
But there is another element, a kind of spiritual connection between the Cubs, working class Chicago, and all the down and out men and women who have struggled to survive and in the face of economic catastrophe continue to struggle to achieve wellbeing for themselves and their loved ones. Progressive Chicago cultural icons have had a soft spot in their hearts for the Cubs: for example newspaper columnist Mike Royko and folksinger Steve Goodman who wrote a song pleading to be buried in Wrigley Field.
In the end, when Ernie Banks, the Cubs Hall of Fame shortstop, says “wait ‘til next year” he is reflecting that hope and passion for victory that is the essence of all Cubs fans. Activists in the struggle for a new humane, really democratic socialist society also bear down, continue to organize and with full confidence say also “wait ‘til next year.”
In February, 2008 I sent an e-mail to some old high school friends declaring boldly that this was going to be my year: Obama would be elected president, Socialism would come to America, and the Cubs would win the world series. One dear friend responded by saying he hoped my nurse would be able to adjust my medication.
In years prior to my bold declaration, I would tell my students that Socialism would come to America before the Cubs would win the world series. Since they were on an awesome pace throughout the 2008 season I was sure we would achieve Socialism soon because the Cubs were going all the way in 2008. Alas my team was summarily eliminated from post-season competition by pitifully losing every playoff game.
The impact on my psyche was profound. Not only would I not be able to celebrate with those Cub fan survivors of 100 years of solitude but I would have to return to political activism to achieve Socialism because I could not count on the Cubs to get us over the hump. Even my wife, a heretofore Cub fan, said Basta! “60 Years is Enough.” When I asked her a week ago about going to the world series this year to root for the Cubs all she said was she would give me money for a hot dog.
I began writing this column Tuesday morning, just hours after the Cubs with smooth pitching from Carlos Zambrano and an Alfonso Soriano lead off home run defeated the Houston Astros. I even began to fantasize about a long winning streak, even 162 victories. Unfortunately, I did not finish the article before the Cubs lost game two in the tenth inning. There goes the perfect season.
What is behind my pathology. After all Ronald Reagan used to broadcast Cubs games, off of ticker tape reports so he had to make up stories about the game. Right-winger, George Will is one of the most famous Cub fans. And until quite recently the Cubs only played day baseball, thus prohibiting the attendance of most working people.
But there is another element, a kind of spiritual connection between the Cubs, working class Chicago, and all the down and out men and women who have struggled to survive and in the face of economic catastrophe continue to struggle to achieve wellbeing for themselves and their loved ones. Progressive Chicago cultural icons have had a soft spot in their hearts for the Cubs: for example newspaper columnist Mike Royko and folksinger Steve Goodman who wrote a song pleading to be buried in Wrigley Field.
In the end, when Ernie Banks, the Cubs Hall of Fame shortstop, says “wait ‘til next year” he is reflecting that hope and passion for victory that is the essence of all Cubs fans. Activists in the struggle for a new humane, really democratic socialist society also bear down, continue to organize and with full confidence say also “wait ‘til next year.”
Friday, April 3, 2009
Workers Built the Modern World
Harry Targ
The Grohmann Museum, a modern building with a cylindrical entrance way reaching up to the fourth floor, is nestled among a variety of interesting and renovated older buildings in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The museum is a block from an old Blatz brewery building that looks like it has been converted into high income condominiums.
Inside the Museum is an extraordinary collection of paintings, over 700, covering 400 years of artistry, all about work and workers. An additional visiting exhibit, “Cradle of Industry,” added paintings of German industrialization from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1960s and some recent documentary photos.
The paintings together illustrated the evolution of work, from agriculture, to crafts people (cobblers, blacksmiths, cork makers, glass blowers, and taxidermists), to miners and forgers, bridge builders, and steel makers. Additional paintings presented women picking hops for beer making, a seventeenth century accountant pouring over his books, and a surgeon opening up a patient’s head. Some of the paintings portrayed twentieth century factory work and a few documentary photos showed workers amassing in strikes against their bosses.
The paintings were collected by Dr. Eckhart Grohmann, a local entrepreneur who acquired and expanded a local aluminum casting and engineering company in Milwaukee. Grohmann reported that as a child he visited his grandfather’s marble processing company in Poland where he watched stonecutters and sculptors engaging in their craft. It was there, he reported, that he grew to appreciate hard work not as “an idealized concept but a principle of life.” Grohmann’s goal was to present in these paintings “a clear image of the honor of work.”
Viewing these many images of work, the viewer develops a profound appreciation of the centrality of human labor to the evolution of civilization. The paintings suggested how classical economists like Karl Marx could develop theories based on the idea that the value of all commodities came from the amount of work time that went into their production. In short, labor was the basis of all value.
Unfortunately, while the paintings powerfully underscore the basic Marxian idea about the value of work. contemporary politicians see work and workers as disposable. If they are organized in their work places they are impediments to human progress.
So goes the recent hint by the Obama administration that it will force General Motors and Chrysler into bankruptcy court. The New York Times wrote on April 1 what the consequences of this might be for workers: “In bankruptcy, companies can seek to persuade a judge to set aside labor contracts and terminate pension plans, by making a case that they are too expensive, forcing workers to rely on smaller government-provided retirement checks.”
In addition, Republicans, so-called moderate Democrats, Bank of America, Starbucks, Costco, the Chamber of Commerce and other representatives of big capital are marshaling resources to forestall the Employee Free Choice Act from becoming law. EFCA would make it easier, in the face of company pressures, for workers to form unions. If workers have a realistic chance of voting in unions they will do so. If they do have unions, wages and benefits will rise and workers’ basic quality of life and sense of security will rise. Finally, increasing numbers of workers with jobs at livable wages could stimulate economic growth.
Visiting the Grohmann Museum suggests the profound gap between the history of human civilization, built on the skills and energies of workers, and the way in which the contemporary political economy denigrates, marginalizes, and humiliates workers. Empowering and rewarding the working class must be central to progressive change in the days, weeks, and years ahead.
The Grohmann Museum, a modern building with a cylindrical entrance way reaching up to the fourth floor, is nestled among a variety of interesting and renovated older buildings in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The museum is a block from an old Blatz brewery building that looks like it has been converted into high income condominiums.
Inside the Museum is an extraordinary collection of paintings, over 700, covering 400 years of artistry, all about work and workers. An additional visiting exhibit, “Cradle of Industry,” added paintings of German industrialization from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1960s and some recent documentary photos.
The paintings together illustrated the evolution of work, from agriculture, to crafts people (cobblers, blacksmiths, cork makers, glass blowers, and taxidermists), to miners and forgers, bridge builders, and steel makers. Additional paintings presented women picking hops for beer making, a seventeenth century accountant pouring over his books, and a surgeon opening up a patient’s head. Some of the paintings portrayed twentieth century factory work and a few documentary photos showed workers amassing in strikes against their bosses.
The paintings were collected by Dr. Eckhart Grohmann, a local entrepreneur who acquired and expanded a local aluminum casting and engineering company in Milwaukee. Grohmann reported that as a child he visited his grandfather’s marble processing company in Poland where he watched stonecutters and sculptors engaging in their craft. It was there, he reported, that he grew to appreciate hard work not as “an idealized concept but a principle of life.” Grohmann’s goal was to present in these paintings “a clear image of the honor of work.”
Viewing these many images of work, the viewer develops a profound appreciation of the centrality of human labor to the evolution of civilization. The paintings suggested how classical economists like Karl Marx could develop theories based on the idea that the value of all commodities came from the amount of work time that went into their production. In short, labor was the basis of all value.
Unfortunately, while the paintings powerfully underscore the basic Marxian idea about the value of work. contemporary politicians see work and workers as disposable. If they are organized in their work places they are impediments to human progress.
So goes the recent hint by the Obama administration that it will force General Motors and Chrysler into bankruptcy court. The New York Times wrote on April 1 what the consequences of this might be for workers: “In bankruptcy, companies can seek to persuade a judge to set aside labor contracts and terminate pension plans, by making a case that they are too expensive, forcing workers to rely on smaller government-provided retirement checks.”
In addition, Republicans, so-called moderate Democrats, Bank of America, Starbucks, Costco, the Chamber of Commerce and other representatives of big capital are marshaling resources to forestall the Employee Free Choice Act from becoming law. EFCA would make it easier, in the face of company pressures, for workers to form unions. If workers have a realistic chance of voting in unions they will do so. If they do have unions, wages and benefits will rise and workers’ basic quality of life and sense of security will rise. Finally, increasing numbers of workers with jobs at livable wages could stimulate economic growth.
Visiting the Grohmann Museum suggests the profound gap between the history of human civilization, built on the skills and energies of workers, and the way in which the contemporary political economy denigrates, marginalizes, and humiliates workers. Empowering and rewarding the working class must be central to progressive change in the days, weeks, and years ahead.
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