Movie Review: “Parasite,” Directed by Bong Joon-ho, 132 minutes
People who don’t appreciate important movies, who only go
for the entertainment and distraction, may not like this one. Or at least they
might not like this one if they don’t have time or just aren’t in the mood to
look at something that matters. It’s long and in Korean with subtitles. For the
rest of us, though, this one’s a keeper.
If you saw his “Snowpiercer” a few years ago, you already
know that this writer/director is not afraid to take on important social issues
in the most graphic way. In that one, the great unwashed poor were in a
life-or-death struggle to get to the front of the train, where the rich people
rode.
Arguably, the biggest social issue in the world today, Korea
or anywhere else, is inequality.
It’s a story of two families, maybe two-and-a-half families,
of great difference in income and wealth. One of them has a fancy house
surrounded by thick trees to block out all view of anything but comfort. The
other family is crammed into a sub-basement, mostly underground, where the only
window looks up into a dismal alley where drunks come to piss and puke.
The plot unwinds meticulously as the families come together.
The first half could be compared to one of Shakespeare’s comedies, where
everybody thinks everybody is somebody else. But it’s hard to tell the story of
shameful inequality in a comedy, isn’t it?
In a comfortable, easy-to-watch movie, good and bad are well
delineated. There’s always somebody to like and, nearly always, somebody to hate.
The ending is comfortable and pleasant with a musical fanfare and, if you’re
fortunate, an extra little joke in the middle of the credits. “Parasite” isn’t
one of those.
—Gene Lantz
I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” talk show every Saturday at 9AM central time. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site
Movie Review: “Harriet,” Directed by Kasi Lemmons, 125 minutes
If you study Harriet Tubman’s life and accomplishments, you’ll wonder how the film makers thought they could cram it all into a mere two hour movie. I heard a radio review with the director, who said that she wanted to make sure that people didn’t see the film as a mere biopic.
It is a biopic, though, complete with those little written sub-headings that
show the times and places where important events took place. There was probably
no other way to do it, because Harriet Tubman was not a one-time heroine. Her
personal exploits in saving people from slavery and in actually ending slavery
spanned decades in time and hundreds of miles in distance.
We really loved this movie, but my movie buddy and I love
history and the civil rights movement. We think of the American Civil War not
as a meaningless tragedy as it is usually portrayed, but as a giant leap
forward for all of us. Those who agree are really going to like “Harriet.”
So get comfortable for a long and edifying experience when
you go to this one. It’s worth it.
I learned to type almost 70 years ago, and I still communicate with typing every day. But I also talk to Alexa, and she (it) talks to me. We are only scratching the surface.
For decades, scientists have been able to detect brain waves outside a person’s head. Any waves that can be detected can also be amplified and transmitted.
It is only a
matter of time until someone interprets those waves into something a computer can
read, and then a whole new wave of communications revolution will begin.
If a computer can
read brain waves, it can pass the information along to other computers,
sensors, and robots. Utilizing his/her brain waves, a person could theoretically
run a factory. It’s probably possible now.
If a computer can
read brain waves and translate them correctly into instructions for other
machines, it could also translate them into new information to be passed to the
brain of another human. At first, the machine might simply translate into
language, just as Alexa does now. But later, a human and machine could learn to
understand one another directly without the need for language. The technology
is within our grasp. As soon as somebody figures out a way to monetarize the project,
it will take off!
In the 1960s, a lot of long-haired hippies liked to wear headbands. It was partly practical, because lots of people wore their hair long. But it was also a fashion reflecting something about their outlook. I envision a future where lots of us wear headbands or turbans, depending on the size of the technology we need to send and receive information without using language.
Just as today’s
information explosion is changing everything about the ways we live and work, this
big new improvement in communications will have social effects. It is obvious,
for example, that we can’t go on working some people for long hours while condemning
others to unemployment and poverty. We should have shortened the workday decade
ago, and we will certainly have to in the future.
I look forward to
new and better ways to transfer and process information. There is a
relationship between truth and opinion, between science and superstition. Even
today, while politicians mobilize millions of dollars and the highest of
technology to deny the truth, truth tends to win out. Opinions, outright lies,
and superstitions are everywhere, but they are wound around a core of science
and truth.
As humans gain and process more information, we will discover more truth. Eventually, we will tend to become ungovernable by others, and capable at last of governing ourselves. It isn’t that far away.
—Gene Lantz
I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” talk show every Saturday at 9 AM Central Time. They podcast on knon.org. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site
It’s a peculiar thing for an activist to deliver such bad news, but there really aren’t any solutions for working people within our nation. Here’s why: If we won decent treatment for American working families , the cost of labor in the United States would go up. That’s exactly what the bosses keep telling us, but it’s true.
If the cost of labor went up in the United States, then the nation would suffer competitively with other nations. Eventually, the other nations would take over whatever goods and services we now offer to the world.
It’s a little bit easier to see in microcosm. Take, for example, the American auto industry. During the General Motors strike just concluded, management argued all the way through that they couldn’t afford to be less competitive with the transnational companies, like Nissan and Volkswagen, that are producing good cars in the United States for the United States market cheaper than General Motors. They claimed, I think, that they pay $10-$13 more per hour in unit labor costs.
Nobody really disputes that. It’s the handwriting on the wall. Eventually, those companies with the lower labor costs could drive General Motors out of business, unless we do something.
So it is in international affairs. The nations with the lowest labor costs tend to take over from those with higher costs. A lot of us would like to think that the Chinese economy has grown because of socialist planning, and maybe good planning had something to do with it, but I imagine that their unit labor costs deserve a lot of the credit. The same is true of the other rising Asian star, Vietnam.
As long as workers live in separate nations and compete with one another, then there will be pressure to drive down unit labor costs. That’s us, you and me, unit labor costs.
So there is no solution within the United States or within any of the competing nations.
That’s the bad news.
Want the Good News?
The good news is that our present idea of nation-states can be overcome with internationalism. Capitalist nation-states are fairly new in human history, and they can be overcome. The good news is that internationalism is making progress. Unionists allied with the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) recently held a big conference in Nepal. They went over the same kinds of problems that we might have discussed at an American trade union conference, but their solutions are different. Their solutions are internationalist.
More and more, we are seeing the AFL-CIO unite the progressive forces in the United States. They are also doing some good outreach in other countries. President Richard Trumka recently honored the leading Brazilian leader, Lula da Silva, even though he’s in prison. Tomorrow, American trade unionists are meeting with Mexicans in El Paso to discuss problems concerning immigration. Those are marvelous developments. They point the way forward. It’s what we need. It’s what we must have.
How Do We Get There?
Working families struggle at every level. Contract fights, elections, legislative battles, and whatever else comes up. Working families have a big stake in everything that happens, and they have to fight to get anything at all. More and more, we are seeing people fight for one another. It’s called solidarity, and it’s growing nicely.
The fights will continue and so will the solidarity. It will grow into international solidarity, too. Keep going, everybody, you’re doing great!
–Gene Lantz
I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” program every Saturday at 9 AM Central Time. They podcast it on knon.org. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site
Movie Review: “The Laundromat,” directed by Steven Soderbergh, 96 minutes
Some stories are too big, too complicated, and too world shaking to be covered in a single movie. The scope of the crimes revealed by an unknown whistleblower in the Panama Papers is more than one can comprehend in a single sitting.
Eleven million documents from the law firm of Mossack Fonseca showed how filthy and how rich some of the filthy rich are, and a little bit of how they hang on to their riches and filthiness without paying taxes. I would suggest two long-running TV shows: a drama about how it works and a series of legal proceedings to bring the thousands (millions?) of filthy culprits to justice.
But Director Soderbergh, bolstered by terrific film
actors Meryl Streep, Gary Oldham, and Antonio Banderas, did what he could in
one film. Faced with tragedy of this amazing extent, the only way to tell it in
brief was with a comedy. Oldham and Banderas play the two lawyers, Streep plays
one of their many victims.
“The Laundromat” calls attention to a great problem in our world of skyrocketing inequality, but it’s not really a good movie. That is, it’s not entertaining. It’s more of a moral sermonette. What happened, what is happening, is too big and too awful to be a good movie.
You can see it in theaters and on Netflix.
–Gene Lantz
I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” program every Saturday at 9 AM. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site
Those of us who
have been pulling for the General Motors strikers might begin today to evaluate
what we have learned.
Striking can pay off in the current economic and political situation
General Motors employees showed incredible gumption
Union solidarity is terrific
Public solidarity with union members is rising
Union-busting can be beaten
We could have done a lot more than we did
The American people are learning which side they are on and what to do about it
On the day before voting is supposed to end, it looks like at least a 60% ratification vote.
That’s Courage!
There’s a lesson
right there. Apparently, 40% of the union members were willing to continue the
strike beyond its 6th week! Being on strike is really, really hard! Whether
one agrees with them or not on the contract, one surely must concede that they
really have guts!
The contract summary is on http://uaw.org. Some of the newspersons have written that it comes up short in providing job security and in bringing the “perma-temps” into full-time employee status. But the people who actually know what they’re talking about consider it quite a victory.
We Win!
The top American union leader, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, wrote:
“I’ve never felt prouder to be a union member. Backed by millions of brothers, sisters and friends across the country, UAW members stood together to win the fair treatment that they’ve earned over years of selfless sacrifice. I commend the UAW’s national negotiators for standing firm to deliver on what their members demanded and hope this will bring an end to one of the most courageous fights I have ever seen. This is the latest victory in a wave of collective action happening across America. Working people won’t allow greed to dictate our lives, and we won’t tolerate a system that’s been rigged against us. Bosses everywhere should take note—we’re not going to take it anymore.”
On the picket
line on day one, it was like a carnival! There were any number of people who
were not UAW strikers. Some were from other unions, but some were not union
members. Many of the passing cars honked approval.
Social media
started spouting all kinds of solidarity messages. Some of them came from the
union, but a lot of them were home-made. Political office holders and
candidates started posting “I stand with the strikers” and proud pictures of
themselves on the picket lines. Several presidential candidates were among
them.
A lot of people
were asking how they could help. Cases of water were stacked up. People brought
cookies and other snacks. In my area, one AFL-CIO unit started raising money to
help strikers with financial problems through United Way. They weren’t asked by
the union, and they didn’t ask the union. They just did it!
Yard signs of
solidarity started going up, and lots of people were asking how to get one.
Beating Union
Busting
The newspersons talked
more about this strike than they usually talk about anything to do with the
union movement. They completely missed the important part, though.
What they could
have said was that the 2019 General Motors strike represented an all-out union
busting effort by General Motors, other corporations, right-wing ideologues,
and the federal government. The result was an historic victory for working
families!
Most of the
coverage came from two Detroit newspapers. Every article and opinion piece
always included the government’s investigations of top UAW leaders on charges
of corruption, money laundering, and embezzlement. Investigations had been
going on for a while, but they really hit the news on September 15, when the
strike began!
Writers on our
side, people like me, didn’t talk about these investigations because we
recognized them for what they are: union busting. They were hoping to divide
the strikers from one another, from their leadership, and from their growing
public support. Now that the strike is over, I expect the fanfare to fizzle.
We Could Have
Done More
I am a long-time UAW member from the aerospace section. I did not expect the UAW leadership to utilize the lessons that won unprecedented victories for the teachers of West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona. I hoped they would, but I didn’t expect it and, unfortunately, they met my low expectations.;
Basically, all
the UAW leadership did was call a strike and set up the financial structure to
pay the members who carried out their strike duties. What might they have done?
They
could have organized their retirees and other supporters to join the pickets
and carry out other solidarity actions
They
might have suggested that supporters could carry out informational pickets at
car dealerships
They
might have had an ongoing union educational program for off-duty strikers
They
might have had social events for strikers, and even for supporters
But, as far as I
could tell, they didn’t.
Contrast the General Motors strike with the Chicago Teachers strike that started just as the autoworkers were winding down. The Chicago Teachers held a national solidarity day, today, in which everybody published selfies of themselves or their organizations. Their hashtag, #putitinwriting, will give them thousands if not millions, of contact information for supporters all over the world! If they should decide on expanding the strike or, for example, on raising money, they now have an incredible base of support!
If the Chicago
School Board doesn’t cave soon, we are likely get a real lesson in modern
fighting tactics from the Chicago teachers!
Summing Up
News coverage of
the 2019 General Motors strike will continue to nit pick over the contract
details. A few of them might discuss the strike tactics. But they will continue
to miss the historic importance: The American people are ready to fight, and we
are learning how to win!
–Gene Lantz
I’m usually on http://knon.org/workers-beat every Saturday at 9AM, unless a tornado destroys the studio. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site.
Today, while
Corporate America, dark money, and an even darker government are trying to
destroy the United Auto Workers, it would be good to consider what it means for
all of us. To do that, look back in American history to a time before the UAW
became the first great success of the Committee for Industrial Organization.
In 1935, nearly all American unions were weak. They were divided by craft. Only the most elite and skillful, nearly all white men, were even considered for union membership. The few unionized African Americans were isolated in segregated unions. White and black unions in the same workplace even scabbed on each other! The many child laborers, of course, had no union representation at all.
Color and gender lines were broken once and forever in the union. The UAW organized industrially. That is, everybody who worked in the industry was a candidate for membership. Their anti-discrimination pattern and their militant action were followed in the great upsurge that followed, and working people in America gained unprecedented power.
Everything we have won can be taken away from us if we don’t fight
The UAW never limited itself to contract battles. They threw themselves into the political fight against the fascism that was growing in America and around the world. In the 1960s, the UAW organized its retirees into a national organization that fought for, and won, Medicare and Medicaid!
The civil rights we won are being shredded today
The explosion of
worker power went far beyond improving wages and benefits. America’s civil
rights also surged forward, and the UAW was more than just a great example to
follow.
The UAW supported
the civil rights movement. If you have looked at photos and videos of the
American civil rights movement that began in 1954, you may wonder who was that
white man in the front ranks? He was the President of the United Auto Workers!
The first version of Dr King’s “I Have A Dream” speech was written in his
Detroit office, which was in the UAW’s Solidarity House. The United Farm
Workers’ first big contribution was $10,000 delivered to Cesar Chavez and
Dolores Huerta in California by UAW Representative Pancho Medrano of Dallas,
Texas!
Before the UAW, most American workers were no better off than day laborers. Corporate America has never forgiven the union for its part in bringing dignity into our workplaces. They would like nothing better than to destroy the UAW and the entire American labor movement. That’s why we have to fight!
–Gene Lantz
I’m on KNON radio’s “Workers Beat” at 9 AM Central Time every Saturday. They podcast on http://knon.org. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site
Yesterday, I met with a futurist researcher named Mike Courtney. He wanted to interview me, he said, for a paper he’s writing on “unions and automation.”
Me and Mike Courtney having coffee and opinions
I gave Courtney fair warning. I told him that my views don’t represent anybody but me, but I have AN AWFUL LOT of opinions.
This futurist said that some automation is apparently “good,” but some of it is also “bad.” He wanted to try to find the line distinguishing “good” from “bad” automation. He figured a union man’s opinion would assist.
I told him that unions usually oppose automation, but we’re wrong when we do. As far as I can tell, unions either do nothing about automation or they try to negotiate with corporations to ease the pain when automation is inevitable. Good examples, I told him, were probably the Mine Workers and the Dock Workers on the Pacific Coast. I understand that both of them were decimated by automation, but not until after they had negotiated as good a deal as they thought possible. In my own local union, our Negotiating Committee Chairman once set up a “New Technology Committee” to try to advise negotiators what to do about automation. I consider that just about as good as any union does nowadays. At least they tried.
I could have told him that the machines I started running in 1978 replaced 16 conventional machines and, thus, 15 jobs. The machines that eventually replaced mine, as I retired, each replaced six of the ones I ran. Five more jobs lost to automation.
I did tell him what I did as an accountant. This was back before IBM introduced their 360 mainframe to take over jobs. I started a process of bill-paying that was all computerized. The machine compared what we thought we should pay with what the vendor was requesting. If they agreed, the bill was paid as soon as it was due. If they didn’t agree, then the accountant had to reconcile them and stick reconciliation data, positive or negative numbers, back into the machine. The machine just compared two sets of data and kicked out the ones needing reconciliation. I guess I would have seen the Accounting Department decimated if I hadn’t gotten bored and quit.
I think that Futurist Courtney was a little bit surprised when I insisted that unions were wrong to oppose automation. After all, I said, automation does what capitalism does best — lowering the unit price of the products we need or want.
The only problem with automation is how its benefit is allocated. Right now, all the benefit accrues to the capitalist in charge. Workers get nothing but layoff notices or, if they are lucky, they get to stay at work and do something even more mindless and boring than what they had before.
The automation genius of today is Jeff Bezos of Amazon. He has tens of thousands of employees worldwide. They do pitifully repetitious tasks and get paid very little. Besos, last I heard, makes $215,000,000 a day!
The solution to the problems that automation causes is not to oppose it. The solution is to grab some of the benefit. The way to do that is to shorten the working day every time productivity goes up. It’s the amount of wealth that an average worker produces in an average hour. Productivity is a statistic that the Bureau of Statistics gives out, I think, every quarter. It’s often around 2%.
Productivity aggregates, like a saving account aggregates. If you put the quarterly increases into a spreadsheet, you would see that an American worker today makes more than 4 times as much wealth in an hour than he/she did at the end of World War II. If the unions had known what they were doing, they would have demanded cuts in the working day so that they wouldn’t have lost 70% of their members, as they did.
The worst part about it, I told the futurist, is that union leaders figured this out long ago. From 1937 to 1947, the heyday of the Congress of Industrial Unions (CIO) they demanded “30 for 40 with no cut in pay” every time they negotiated a contract. It meant that workers should work only 30 hours a week but continue to get paid the same that they made in 40 hours.
My own CIO union, the Auto Workers, had resolutions for “30 for 40” in every convention up to 1957. Then it disappeared. If you asked union leaders today about cutting working hours, I don’t think they would know what you are talking about.
My friend Tom Berry knows. He does a forum in North Dallas every Saturday evening. And every Saturday evening he gets up and says that Americans should demand a 6-hour day. It works out mathematically, you see: instead of 3 8-hour shifts we would have 4 6-hour shifts. Unions would be bigger and periodic unemployment would be less of a problem.
There are other advantages, too. Some researchers think that shortening the working day, completely by itself and for no other reason, would increase hourly productivity. People would just do their jobs better.
Another advantage might be that people with more leisure time might create even better ways to improve our quality of life.
Historically, the fight for shorter hours defined our worldwide labor movement. Getting the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1935 was the best thing we ever did. It said that employers had to pay their blue-collar workers overtime if they worked us more than 40 hours in a week. That’s all it said, but it was great.
But shortening the working hours has passed completely out of our collective consciousness. Most of the workers in my union don’t even want shorter hours. They grab up all the overtime they can get, just to pay their bills. A major social change like shorter working hours just doesn’t seem real to them, and that’s the union’s fault. Automation is killing American labor, and we have no program to deal with it.
–Gene Lantz
I’m on KNON Radio’s “Workers Beat” talk show at 9 AM Central Time every Saturday. The podcast it on knon.org. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site.
I have to point out that, regardless of his intentions, Mr Adams’ piece has to be seen as part of the overall political and economic assault against the auto workers. It’s no coincidence that so much juicy scandal about UAW leaders reached its peak just as the contract expired and 49,000 workers were forced out on strike.
Nor is it a coincidence that the strike is starting its second week. The last one, in 2007, lasted only two days. General Motors is not giving the UAW leadership anything that they can take back to the membership with any hope of contract acceptance. it is entirely possible that they won’t.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the government and General Motors, and probably Ford and Fiat-Chrysler, are out to finally destroy the union that they have so carefully weakened over the last 4 decades.
Before all that, the auto workers union was the pride of the union movement. They were the first major success of the Coalition for Industrial Organizing that was begun in 1935 specifically to organize a different industry (steel).
They were the biggest union to break through divisive color and gender lines. Even after 1947, when the most progressive elements were kicked out, the UAW continued generally as the progressive end of the American union continuum. Their newspaper editor opposed the war in Vietnam. Their president marched with Dr. King. They stood against South African apartheid.
I am not saying that Thomas Adams’ criticisms aren’t true. For a lot of it, I was there, and I can vouch for some of the events he reveals. Certainly, the union made a gigantic mistake in joining management under the mistaken assumption that the main enemy of American workers was foreign workers.
The enemy then and now is and was corporate management and their stooges in government. That’s who we have to fight, not each other.
–-Gene Lantz
I’m on KNON radio’s “Workers Beat” program at 9 AM Central Time every Saturday. If you are curious about what I really believe, check out my personal web site
genelantz 