A Vision for the Rights of Workers

When we speak of the rights of workers we may as well be speaking of the rights of humans, since the great majority of Americans and other peoples of the world must work in order to afford the basic necessities of life. Yet to hear right wingers discuss this subject, you’d think that workers constitute a “special interest” group.

Much of world history has entailed a mostly one-sided struggle between the wealthy and powerful trying to maintain their wealth and power advantages over the great masses of other people. To oversimplify the matter somewhat, there are the elite on the one hand, and then there are those who labor and provide the fruits of their labor to the elites. The greater amount of income equality in a society, the greater this oversimplified view approaches reality.

By the time the top 1% of individuals in a nation own 38% of its wealth and the bottom 40% own just 1% – when the average individual in the top 1% owns 1500 times as much wealth as the average individual in the bottom 40% – the situation has become grave indeed. It is then worth asking the question: Why? Do these people own so much more wealth than other people because they earn it by contributing to society in some way? Or are they predators? Or does the answer lie somewhere in between?

James K. Galbraith, in his book “The Predator State”, notes that the concept of a predator class is not new, and he introduces the concept by first discussing Thorstein Veblen’s “Theory of the Leisure Class”, published in 1899:


A major purpose of democracy is to avoid this type of situation, in which a wealthy and powerful elite maintain their wealth and power at the expense of everyone else. Our history has shown that democracy can indeed accomplish great things in this direction, with our high water mark beginning with the Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and continuing until about 1980.

Let’s consider a brief history of political and economic rights in our country, where we are now, the effects of right wing/corporate power, and a vision for the future:


A BRIEF HISTORY OF POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC RIGHTS IN THE U.S.

Political and civil rights

With the founding of our country, a major step was taken towards reducing inequality among human beings. The U.S. Declaration of Independence of 1776 established the philosophical foundation for a nation where all people were to have equal opportunities for a fulfilling life. The ratification of the U.S. Constitution 12 years later, and the subsequent ratification of our Bill of Rights, represented the initial attempts to provide a permanent legal basis for that philosophical foundation.

We made a great deal of progress since that time. From 1812 to 1856, property qualifications for voting were abandoned; passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to our Constitution in 1865-70 ended slavery and provided voting and civil rights to our former slaves; passage of our 19th Amendment in 1920 prohibited the restriction of the right to vote on the basis of sex; our 24th amendment in 1964 prohibited the use of poll taxes to restrict a person’s right to vote; and passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 went a long way towards facilitating enforcement of our 14th and 15th Amendments.


Economic rights beginning in 1933

Beginning with the Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933, our country began taking major steps towards economic equality in addition to voting equality. Prior to that time, great income disparity existed in our country, with the top 1% of individuals accounting for 17% of annual income and the top 10% accounting for 44% of annual income. But FDR initiated a wide range of policies – collectively referred to as the New Deal – which had the effect of substantially reversing income inequality for the first time in U.S. history. These policies included: Progressive taxation; labor protection laws; and several policies to provide a social safety net for Americans and otherwise reduce income inequality, including the Social Security Act of 1935, the GI Bill of Rights, and the development of several policies to facilitate job creation.

These policies were so successful that they lasted for several decades, despite tremendous opposition from the conservative elites whose wealth had been reduced. From 1932 to 1978, Americans voted for a Democratic President 8 times and a Democratic Congress 22 times, compared to a Republican President 4 times (The Republican Presidents of that era did not attempt to dismantle the New Deal) and a Republican Congress only 2 times. This 46 year bout of relatively liberal voting was accompanied by what Paul Krugman refers to as the greatest sustained economic boom in U.S. history, with median family income levels rising from $22,499 (in 2005 dollars) in 1947 (when accurate statistics first became available) to more than double that, $47,173 in 1980.


The right wing/Republican surge: 1980-2006

But then the gains in political and economic equality described above began to be reversed. Beginning in 1980, and for the next 25 years, except for some moderate growth during the Clinton years, there was almost no growth in median income at all, which rose only to $56,194 by 2005 (85% of that growth accounted for during the Clinton years).

The stagnation of median family income during this period of time was accompanied by a tremendous rise in the wealth of a tiny proportion of our population. This is vividly described by Jack Rasmus, who points out that “More than $1 trillion a year in relative income is now being shifted annually – from roughly 90 million middle and working class families to the wealthiest households and corporations.”

The consequences have been devastating for the middle and working class and the poor: By about 2006, 46 million Americans were without health insurance, which results in thousands of premature deaths every year, including thousands of infants; approximately 7 million Americans who want jobs were unemployed; 12% of American households lacked adequate food; approximately 3 million Americans were homeless in any given year; and 37 million Americans were in poverty, while the poverty rate continued to rise.

These reversals, which returned us to levels of income inequality not seen since pre-New Deal days, were accompanied by intense and largely successful attempts by conservatives to dismantle the New Deal. It is not coincidental that concurrent with the grim economic statistics noted above, we had a Republican President for 19 of 27 years and a Republican Senate for 17 of 27 years (though we did have a Democratic House for the first 14 years of that period).


Our current status

In 2006 popular disgust with right wing elites in general, and Republicans in particular, reached such a high point that the American people replaced both houses of Congress with a Democratic majority. In 2008 that Democratic majority was not only greatly increased, but we elected a Democratic President as well.

But to what extent these events will put us back on the road to democracy, equality and prosperity remains a very open question: Money plays way too big a role in our political process; the right wing controls most of our news media; way too many Americans have accepted a culture of nationalism, militarism, and war as a legitimate instrument of policy; way too many of us accept torture, the favorite tool of tyrants, as a legitimate instrument of policy; and we have gotten used to the idea that the mere mention of the word “national security” provides sufficient excuse for our supreme leader to classify just about any act of government as “secret” and beyond the access of the American public.

William Greider, in his book “Come Home America – The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of our Country”, summarizes the problem with corporate power in our country today:


The Republican Party – the corporate party – has so disgusted the American people that its approval ratings are currently in the high twenties, and they could very well soon become extinct. But the extinguishing of the Republican Party has resulted in a transfer of corporate attention from Republicans to Democrats, thus resulting in a more conservative Democratic Party. How long will it take the American people to catch on to this and vote out the corporate-favoring Democrats as well as the Republicans?


THE EFFECTS OF CORPORATE POWER ON OUR COUNTRY

The fall of the middle class

As the right wing has ascended, the middle class that was built up as a result of FDR’s New Deal continues to decline. Greider explains how the middle class was built in our country and why it is now in decline:



The effect on unemployment

The right wing elite complains that if unemployment gets too low, that will cause inflation to get out of control and destroy our economy. This theory provides an excuse for them to initiate measures, through the Federal Reserve, to keep unemployment at “acceptably high” levels. Despite their rationalizations for this, the deliberate raising of unemployment by the right wing financial elites is more likely a manifestation of class warfare, practiced by the elites against everyone else. Jared Bernstein, Vice President Biden’s chief economic advisor, explains how this works in his book, “Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed?”:



The effect on democracy

Perhaps worst of all, this spiral of corporate power in our country has had a very toxic effect on democracy. Greider explains (while Bush was still President):



Corporate predators and the fascist state

The end results of all this is that government and corporate power become so intertwined that it is hard to tell them apart:



A VISION FOR THE FUTURE

FDR and his New Deal brought our country out of the worst depression in our history, led to the development of a strong middle class, and went strong for almost five decades – until the right wingers began taking over. Since he was elected President in 1932, it was another 20 years before Americans elected a Republican President. Even then, President Eisenhower knew damn well that he’d better not tamper with FDR’s programs. This is what he wrote to his brother on the subject:


One of the best visions that I’ve ever seen articulated for the American worker – and American society in general – was articulated by Tony Mazzocchi, founder of the U.S. Labor Party, the man who allied with Karen Silkwood in her attempts hold her corporate bosses accountable for their abuses of the environment and their workers, and one of the greatest and most progressive labor leaders of the 20th Century. Mazzocchi fought all his life for his progressive vision of labor, while doing whatever he could to ally the U.S. labor movement with the environmental, anti-war, and universal health care movements, in the belief that we’re all in this together. He was the driving force behind the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA). Before he died of pancreatic cancer in 2002, at the age of 76, he articulated this vision:


Mazzocchi’s biographer, Les Leopold, sums up Mazzochi’s vision:

I wish I could say that we elected someone who had the balls to fight for us and put us back on the right track, but to be honest; I would have to say my vision of the future doesn’t look pretty for the working class; who is most likely looked at by the predators that be (TPTB) - i.e. the one who own us - as being too large and expensive of a heard to maintain. I’m not saying that things can’t be turned around if enough people knew what was going on, but we’re a long ways from that point, and I’m sure the psychopaths that run this world are well prepared for such a scenario, but that’s all the better reason to keep on fighting and informing.

K&R
Larry

I think we have two advantages over them: 1) We vastly outnumber them; 2) They need us to do the work that maintains their life style. I think therefore that the key is for the people to understand the reality of the situation, and then to unite against a common enemy.

And the last one is definitely the key; “getting people to understand the reality of the situation!” So what is that in a nut shell, or at least one aspect? Remember narcissism is the pathology that consumes society when psychopaths - who promise them the moon - take control; and steeling from and killing off other societies through empire building is how psychopaths reward those that put them in power; this continues until the empire is to big to control and eventually collapses, leaving in its wake untold death and destruction…

So are we at the point where we could ask, is their a window of opportunity to avoid going full cycle - prior to the end of the cycle i.e. total economic and social collapse, war and anarchy? We know, or at least we have a really good idea as to what the psychology is behind it all, but how do you wake someone up from their hypnotic trance in order to get them to understand, how do you do it when they have so much faith in the spellbinders who demonize the truth and those who speak it? I doubt that there is a single cure for authoritarian narcissists who love the things and the predators that feed their conditions, but it seems the window of opportunity is while their loosing faith because their narcissistic way of life is being threatened by the predators that promised them the moon. But alas as part of this cycle, a new good looking smooth talking predator savior with nice arms comes along too save the day; and nothing really changes for the better because there is always some new boogeyman that stands in the way of doing the right thing; but the clock continues to tick regardless…

Larry

I've never been able to peg Obama. I get upset with him, and I criticize him, but then I wonder what restrictions he's operating under. We know now for a fact that JFK had to fight like hell to gain some control over major decisions affecting the American people and the world. It's hard to believe that Obama would have any more control than he did.

I don't know if the window of opportunity has completely closed, but given the environmental problems that our planet is facing it certainly seems like it's closing rapidly.

In all honestly, no one on the outside can say for sure as to Obama’s true position, but there are many facts that say a lot about whose position he is amenable too. But what if we abandon the perspective of evidence and have faith in the caricature presented by people; what test do we then have to judge their character if not by the evidence of their actions?

JFK stood up too the Titans of Power and he publicly warned the people of their existence and danger, he was going to pay off and abolish the Federal Reserve and he wouldn’t be drawn in to unjust wars. The grand thieves that where running and looting this Country called him a liberal communist lover, and they cheered when the Washington insiders had him executed and then covered it up. His actions showed a character of compassion towards those that labored for a living, and contempt towards the status quo predators that stole for a living, and I see few characters of his (JFK) type in Washington now, but rather, for the most part all I see is caricatures who ask us to have faith in their promises while what they do sais something altogether different.

Larry

Apparently he wasn't afraid of death, and he certainly exhibited great courage in doing the things you mentioned.

But we can't expect all our presidents to meet those standards. And even if a U.S. president isn't afraid of death, he still needs to be careful to avoid being assassinated. You're absolutely right that we need to judge our leaders much more on their actions than on their words. But at the same time, I believe that it is entirely possible that Obama may be limited by similar forces to those that limited JFK's actions. He may be walking a very fine line that will take a lot of finesse to do. We need to continue to criticize him for doing what we think is wrong, but at the same time, IMO, recognize that he probably is not in full control of the situation. I am hoping that he will eventually overcome the forces that are alligned against him.

And had he not been executed he might have been one of the greatest leaders the world has ever known. And had he not been executed and served eight years, there might have been a standard set that would have at least stopped the big money influences over all our elections, and our political landscape might look a lot different today... Delusional pipe dream maybe, but one thing for sure, big money wanted him gone fast!

Hopefully we’ll get another chance, but there may be no chance at all if it means that whomever we elect is a powerless puppet head who is unable to control the situation and who’s only purpose is to foster the elusion of the unelected PTB’s monolithic class system and policies that serve the best interest of the predator class / status quo. Of course we would need a Congress, Senate, military leaders and a functional forth estate that would stand behind such a man.

But how do we get too that point from where we are today? A super majority of voters wising up would be nice, but what if the unelected powers that be don’t agree with the voters! Wouldn’t we then have to ask, just how much power do they really have, and how far would they go to ensure they remain in control?

K/R :kick: :pals:

:pals:

:grouphug: Very timely piece, TFC. Pun intended.

The corporate state has put a lot of time and effort into convincing you that you can't live without them.

Come on...I know you can do it!!!

.

And when enough people realize that, they'll demand it.

All very good and true. The question is how do you educate a population that views education as contemptible, believes that history is what has happened within their lifetime, and has no interest in even learning what really has been going on in that brief time?

Joe the (non)plumber is iconic of what we call average Americans. He is a product of the indoctrination of a mythology and not only believes what he thinks is true, but is completely closed to learning anything that doesn't correspond to those myths.
:kick: & R

I don't think that Joe the plumber is at all representative of the average American, notwithstanding how John McCain and Sarah Palin tried to paint him like that.

Most Americans are much more educable than that IMO.

Nevertheless, it will take a lot of education to dispell the many myths that the right wing movement has so much endeavored to create over recent decades. How to do that? I'm still working on that ;)

every day that make the non-plumber seem scholarly. People violently opposed to ideas and learning, even here on DU (although the violence is virtual here).
:kick:

BTW, It's coming along nicely, but slowly. Too many topics and resources, too much daily BS getting in the way.

It is very sad how successful our now multinational corporations have been in crushing the labor movement and dumbing down our society.

So much collusion in favor of transferring profits back to the top five percent.

If we really had a free market system our corporations would have demanded that the government provide single payer healthcare to our citizenry so they could have a more even playing field with their foreign counterparts.

But they did not oppose the growth of our for-profit medical industry.

Instead of balancing out the working conditions here to match those of their modern industrial competitors, they chose to retain the "burden" of paying for healthcare in order to keep our workers desperately tied to their jobs in order to get access to more and more expensive medical care.

I'm still very sad about how true the predictions have been of friends I thought were "too extreme" decades ago about the power and intentions of multinational corporations.

When I first read Noam Chomsky about 15 years ago I thought (but didn't feel certain) that his description of our shameful meddling in the affairs of other countries was "too extreme". I no longer believe that, in fact I find his dismissing of so-called "conspiracy theories" about 9/11 to be wrong in the other direction.

I had long appreciated Chomsky's exposes on the darker sides of our foreign policy, and illumination of propaganda techniques, so it was interesting watching which areas of focus particular scholars chose during the horrifying Bush Years. It may be that certain topics have so much toxic propaganda baggage (deliberately?) heaped upon them that to entangle oneself would do a disservice to their mission to facilitate problem solving in their primary areas of scholarship, so they steer clear.

I've been angry about some of their choices-- Election 2004 still chafes, as we've discussed before.

But back to your thread, thank goodness our brothers and sisters in the unions held on, battered and bruised as they have been, long enough so that millions more of us have seen the end game of predatory capitalism. Not only is it cruel, we can all now see that it is unsustainable.

Keeping all the profits at the top with shocking bailouts and throwing us a new Paris Hilton reality-TV series is just not going to cut it any more. When we try to grab all that shiny stuff we see on TV on credit, we're getting loan sharked and that just isn't right.

We are facing a world of dwindling resources and climatic disruption that will take a lot of nimble cooperation among countries, cities, towns and organizations of people. It is too late to carry on with a form of capitalism that needs warfare to support it, or even contains a for-profit weapons manufacturing industry. There are much greener, more sustainable ways of doing international trade, but they will require designing more flexible and equitable systems of distributing our dwindling industrial resources.

We need intense cooperation at all levels to accomplish a diversion from the collapse you all describe above. Seems like labor unions would be an effective source of leadership for those many teams.

So yes please, keep the labor news and aspiration points coming. Unions and other kinds of collectives (even as customers of local farms) can enrich our neighborhood lives. And show us how to build more strength to be vigorous voices at certain times, demanding urgent change.