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What’s Wrong With Labor?

May 3, 2020
strategy, unions
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Not much of anything is wrong with American labor. Hardly anything. If you tuned in to any of the American-labor-produced MayDay events, you must have been awed by their progressive declarations of militancy and international solidarity. They said things like “We have to go beyond the National Labor Relations Act,” and “We need a new organizing model.” Great stuff! Hardly anything wrong. Just a little bit. Maybe a smattering.

Proud American unions

Okay, here’s what I think is lacking: they really do need a new organizing model and I think they know it, but they haven’t come up with one. Or, if they have, they haven’t announced it.

New Model Already Exists

For a couple of decades, the AFL-CIO has had “Working America.” https://www.workingamerica.org/. Everyone can join on-line for free with one single click. Everyone should. The AFL-CIO’s on-line organization came about just when MoveOn was showing overwhelming success. Unlike MoveOn, though, Working America wasn’t just a handful of extremely talented techies. They were the great American labor movement on-line.

Also unlike MoveOn, Working America never really did anything. While MoveOn ran major campaigns and established regional centers across the country and began having a profound effect, Working America languished. They became a for-hire nonprofit that will join a campaign for a price. Same thing ACORN was, more or less.

ACORN, as you know, imploded after an internal scandal and a vigorous persecution backed by the powers-that-be. MoveOn dropped its national organizing model to the mystification of all. The local versions of MoveOn in my area were taking up every radical cause that came along, much like the Occupy Movement, and exhausted themselves running every whichaway. They didn’t have a plan. Eventually, they fragmented away. I guess the best of them are in one or more of the Bernie Sanders groups now.

The Bernie supporters do have a plan. Their plan is to take over the Democratic Party. If anybody ever could accomplish that takeover, it’s Bernie Sanders and his many supporters. I hope they succeed, but I don’t think they will. Since the 1890’s, lots of people have tried and failed.

The labor movement is the strongest framework for building a massive political movement in America. If the labor movement employed the tactics that MoveOn pioneered, they would be unstoppable.

So that’s my criticism of the American labor movement today. They haven’t fully employed Working America. They could. It’s right there. I hope they will.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON radio’s “Workers Beat” program every Saturday at 9AM Central Time. They podcast the radio program and “Workers Beat Extra” additional interviews and comments. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site

Our Biggest Mistake

May 2, 2020
democracy, economy, history, politics, strategy
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Serious groups and individuals are trying to find a way forward during this crisis, but many of us come up with different answers. The reason is that we don’t really understand the problem. That’s our biggest mistake.

It’s popular now to blame President Trump for everything. Since Bernie Sanders cancelled his campaign, some of my friends are blaming Joe Biden. In a more general sense, some blame the Republicans. Some still blame the Democrats. Some blame the people who vote wrong, some blame the people who don’t vote at all. Some blame the Chinese and others say we should be more like the Chinese.

All of them are only partially right.

The economic/ecological/financial/medical/political crisis is not the fault of the Chinese, not the fault of the pandemic, not Trump’s fault, not Obama’s, and not Adam Smith’s. If we were going to blame one of them, we should probably single out Adam Smith. He’s the one who promoted our big mistake by spreading the horse-hockey theory that capitalism was a rational system.

Keynes explains capitalism
Keynes explains capitalism

Capitalism is not a rational system. Never was, still isn’t, never will be. Capitalism really isn’t even a system. The best way to define capitalism is to say that capitalists are running things. The capitalists replaced the aristocrats mostly in the 17th and 18th centuries. The aristocrats had replaced the slave owners in a long process before that. Aristocrats were more productive than the slave owners. Capitalists were more productive than aristocrats, but they still hadn’t evolved up to a rational system.

Even Adam Smith didn’t actually claim that capitalism was guided by rational thinking. He said it was guided by an “invisible hand” that made it good for everyone. He didn’t say that the invisible hand was rational, so that’s to his credit. He should have said, though, that it’s a crazy hand. A psychopathic hand. That would have been more honest.

Capitalists work from a national framework. They take over other, less efficient, economies. They don’t prefer to use their national armies, but they will. When there are no more territories or peoples to take over, they have to face off against one another. That was the situation in 1914 when the big capitalists made us go to war.

If the capitalists were in control of a rational system, they might have found some other kind of solution. I don’t think that individual capitalists, for the most part, really wanted to go to war. Well, maybe Winston Churchill, but not a lot of the capitalists.

After the War to End All Wars and a brief period of prosperity to replace everything they had broken and to grow some new cannon fodder, the capitalists extended their crisis into the Great Depression. Another World War and another prosperous period of replacing broken things brought them into their present crisis.

During and since the Great Depression, the capitalists have been using their power over the government to bail out their failed businesses. In 2007, armored trucks full of money scurried from government agencies to banks and big business. They are doing it again now, and they will have to do it again in future if they are going to stay in power.

What If We Had a Rational System?

Let me change the direction of the argument slightly. Let us suppose for a moment that we actually were living under a rational system. One aspect of a rational system would be to avoid overpopulating our planet. The basic reason for overpopulation is government policies to encourage high birth rates. Presently, nations need high birthrates in order to compete with one another in an irrational world. In a rational world, they wouldn’t.

Pandemics would be less of a threat. Famine would be less of a problem. If an epidemic threatened in some part of the world, the rest of the world could mobilize to isolate and stop it. In a rational world.

Our biggest mistake is blaming individuals, nations, ideologies, or circumstances for our problems. We should blame the capitalists who run our irrational system, and we should democratically replace them with rational leaders. That simple!

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON radio’s “Workers Beat” program every Saturday at 9AM central time. They podcast the weekly program and “Workers Beat Extra” on Wednesdays. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site.

Labor Steps Way Up!

May 1, 2020
democracy, economy, history, politics, strategy, unions
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I was blown away when the AFL-CIO promoted an extremely progressive May Day, 2020! I think it may be their first one since 1886, and it is amazing!

Couldn't have thought of a better slogan
AFL-CIO slogan for 2020 May 1st events

For May 1, 2020, the AFL-CIO promoted a daylong list of progressive activities. The best one was probably their own 10AM on-line meeting. Mayday with AFL-CIO was a quick look at our working class around the world during International Worker Solidarity Day. Special emphasis was on undocumented workers, refugees, and the “informal economy.” The importance of women was double underlined because all of the speakers were women.

Cathy Feingold ofAFL-CIO
Cathy Feingold of AFL-CIO

The host was Cathy Feingold, International Director of the AFL-CIO and Deputy President of the International Trade Union Confederation. ITUC claims 200 million members worldwide. Speakers were from Morocco, Honduras, Bangladesh, and Europe — Brussels and Geneva. These were top union leaders and experts.

I was thrilled with the theme. We want a new social contract! The best part of the entire event was when Feingold said, “We don’t want to go back to normal!” We want a better world.

The ITUC has a petition for a new social contract: http://petitions.ituc-csi.org/let-s-build-resilient-economi… I hurried to sign it.

A slogan at the end of the AFL-CIO's meeting

They Keep Getting Better

During the meeting, I was made aware of two slight distractions. One was an anti-communist named Anibal something. Anti-communists hate unionism. He/she had to add overthrowing Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua into the mix. I wrote back, “Great Anibal, just what we need, more divisions!”

The other distraction was more serious. A good friend of mine texted heavy criticism of the event, not because of anything about the event, but because it was sponsored by the AFL-CIO. He said the AFL-CIO was part of American imperialism.

On the upside, the guy agreed with me that the May Day meeting was a really good thing for the world working class, and a good thing for the working class is a good thing all around. But he made me want to share my perspective on the American labor movement and international relations.

I Remember When

I can remember when the AFL-CIO really was part of American imperialism. We used to call them the “AFL-CIA” because they took big bucks from the CIA and carried out their wishes. Their International Department was run by a guy named Jay Lovestone. Lovestone was a rogue Communist Party leader turned rabid anti-communist.

The President of the AFL-CIO was the last major American political figure to stop supporting the war in Vietnam. He persisted even after Nixon gave it up! He encouraged “hard hat” hooligans to beat up anti-war protesters!

I actually saw the “AFL-CIA” in action in 1979 when I first visited revolutionary Nicaragua. No sooner had the Sandinistas defeated the dictator Somoza than the AFL-CIA showed up with big money and an effort to organize “independent” unions. They meant independent of the revolution, but dependent on more money from the United States. Apparently, that was standard operating procedure for the AFL-CIA.

But some amazing changes started taking over the American labor movement in 1987. In that year, five of the most progressive unions met and formed Jobs with Justice. They used it to practice progressive unionism, and it was great. But that was only the beginning.

In 1995, for the first time in over 100 years, the outgoing AFL leadership did not pick its successors. Progressive leaders led by John Sweeney, Richard Trumka, and Linda Chavez-Thompson (of Texas) beat the status quo leaders out. Then they really started making changes.

In 1997, they took the anti-communist clause out of their constitution. I was there for that one, and I was floored! Sometime before 1999, they ditched their old International Department and replaced it with Solidarity. In 1999, I remember when they quit calling, as they had for 100 years, for deportations and started trying to organize the undocumented. Today, they are the best advocates that undocumented workers have. Their May Day event was all about workers without papers.

I’m not positive about this date, but I believe that it was in 2002 when imperialism was able to get the Venezuelan elite to kidnap President Hugo Chavez. The AFL-CIO joined in condemning the act and called for Chavez’ release.

I wish the present leadership of AFL-CIO would acknowledge their egregious mistakes of the past, and I don’t exactly blame young radicals who don’t realize how much they have changed, or even those who believe that everybody who doesn’t embrace their revolutionary ideas must be some kind of enemy. But those are minor gripes. Unions aren’t revolutionary, but they are working class. That’s worth remembering!

The fact is that the American AFL-CIO is a front-line progressive organization of the working class. I couldn’t be more proud!

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON radio’s “Workers Beat” program at 9 AM Central Time every Saturday. They podcast it along with some of my other audio events (Workers Beat Extra). If you are interested in what I really think, check out my personal web site

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