Capitol Ideas/Solidarnosc Usurped

...In such ways the unions' labor monopoly is preserved...

...As Eleanor Smeal continued to bellow into the microphone, I couldn't help wondering how much she-and some of the other speakers on the platform -would, deep down in their hearts, concur with the editorial sentiments of Challenge and Worker's World...

...Another placard read: "Want to Outsmart the Russians...

...The increase of state power is the road to socialism, and this march, I felt, was little more than socialism on parade...

...In fact, as Luigi Barzini wrote in his elegant meditation, The Italians, the seemingly casual Italians behave with the utmost caution...

...Socialism is a system in which all workers are at the mercy of an all-encompassing state tyranny...

...While she spoke, I contented myself with perusing an armful of literature I had picked up en route...

...Trade unions are in rhetoric directed against "management...

...Restore Reagan's Education Cuts...

...Last month, I walked to and from a host of meetings with Roman notables all eager to explain to me the dark inscrutables of a nation whose people are one of Europe's most self-reliant, though their government is a paradigm for chaos...

...I am, at-any rate, fairly sure that they would agree with just about everything else published in these rhore-than-normally candid publica-tions...

...The pro-Western imperialist forces centered around the Solidarity union have used the recently concluded Solidarity convention in Gdansk to step up their plans to seize power . . . The only solution to the situation in Poland is socialist revolution...

...Why else would the labor-hating Wall Street Journal support them...

...Very interesting, especially those revealing words, "pro-Western...

...Then you should like us too because we are unions and we are here for Solidarity Day...

...How different is the situation in Poland...

...Monsignor George Higgins said a prayer for "justice and equity" (the new word for equality), while the sober-suited Lane Kirkland spoke eloquently of the need "to reaffirm the great goals that have drawn us together in solidarity," of "the rapacity of commercial enterprise," of his sense that "only the state faithfully expresses your will not to destroy the programs that feed the roots of a decent society," and of his desire to "build a new mandate...

...It is union strikers themselves who really are "unfair to labor," because they are in reality doing nothing more than protecting a privileged position...

...I watched them disposing of their picnic boxes, many of them containing one or even two pieces of completely untouched fried chicken...

...And from the same publisher (World View Publishers), I purchased a handy little booklet entitled Czechoslovakia: 1968 An Account of the Attempt to Restore Capitalism Under Cover of "Liberal Reform...

...Under the heading "Poland Quagmire," the editorial writer noted that: The struggle for political power inside Poland has sharpened up...

...How distasteful they seemed, conveying as they did an unmistakable sense of bitterness toward America-an angry, self-righteous resolve both to bite the hand that fed them and simultaneously demand they be fed larger and more frequent helpings...

...Why they do this I cannot say, but as one walks the streets, especially in the evening, one is in constant peril of having savory debris bounced off his head...

...at large with a cause and a placard: Ronald Reagan 3rd Rate President 2nd Rate Actor 1st Rate Scab The parade was beginning to take shape and form into a line on Constitution Avenue...

...This is called "workers' control, " "power to the workers," and so on...

...U.S.-style...

...The main , effect of this is to create unemployment on the margins and fringes of the economy...

...An announcer told the assembly that "the speakers will be expressing your desire for a concerned responsible government...

...Smeal had to say about the relationship between women and the state, bur I believe she would like state-sponsored privileges to be extended to the entire regiment of women...

...But in practice they are legal conspira-cies, specifically exempted from prosecution under antitrust laws, against other workers known as . "scabs," who might do the same by Tom Bethell work at the market price for labor...

...it then occurred to me that if only a few of the Polish Solidarity members could have seen this good food thrown away they would have understood how feloniously their name had been taken by these querulous, bitter, cantankerous, overfed public payrollers...

...Solidarity Day: The AFSCME fatties were billowing out of their buses, some with "Parade Marshal" or "Captain" on their arm bands, some wearing peaked caps and insignia, directing their troops across the road...

...Most Romans are intelligent and live in dignity...

...It is, of course, a genuine workers' movement, to the eternal disgrace of Karl Marx...

...That was the question that nagged at my mind...

...At whose expense...

...Unbuttoned, unplacarded, un-organized, and un-unionized, I suspected I knew the answer...

...For one thing, the National Labor Relations Board can rule that the strike involved "unfair labor practices" and thus "disqualify" such non-union hiring...

...Chicago Teacher's Union-AFT) "Save OSHA for Health and Safety...

...Our public servants were up off their bottoms and enjoying it, happy to be out in the open air, at last imbued with a sense of mission and purpose...

...Right now, as Italians settle back into the daily grind after their tradiby R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...

...The Soviet news agency Tass has accused Solidarity of harboring "antisocialist elements," and for once Tass is right...

...Does that mean it is impermissible to correct mistakes...

...Nonetheless, one can walk the street at night and suddenly, splat, the walker whom fate has fingered finds himself dripping with, say, fettucini in a nice cream sauce...

...Of course, you don't see the word "socialism" in America very often now that the Soviet Union has so rudely appropriated it...

...Does this mean that Romans abandon the streets at night...

...You like Solidarity...

...Otherwise how could the U.S...

...Most Americans associate that word with the courageous struggle of the Polish Solidarity Union movement to establish the first free trade unions in a Communist country.'' The ad then pointed out that "our primary concern on [Solidarity] day will not be the rights and well being of Polish workers...

...trade unions are pockets of privilege expressly granted by the state, thus extensions of state power...

...In the past 18 months in Poland, there has appeared a national uprising whose goal is to wrest some of this power and decision-making away from the state and restore it to individuals...

...When you see workers parading about with picket signs saying that such-and-such a company is "unfair to labor," the true message that is being .transmitted is to non-union workers: Don't try to take our jobs while we're on strike or we'll break a few bones...

...Likening those who enjoy the privileges of membership in an American trade union to Polish citizens (amounting to almost one-third of the population) who have shown the courage to defy government power and the threat of Soviet tanks hardly bears examination...

...occasionally worrisome liquids wash across the shoulders...

...published in New York, editorially confirmed my suspicions that Solidarity( was one thing but SOLIDARNOSC another: The truth is that the activities of Solidarity, the so-called independent union in Poland, are against the interests of the Polish workers and will untimately lead to a restoration of capitalist exploitation and imperialist oppression...

...Terrorism from the Left and the Right is in somewhat of a remission, though corpses do continue (continued on page 42) CAPITOL IDEAS SOLIDARNOSC USURPED The United Food and Commercial Worker's Union, the largest in the AFL-CIO with 1.4 million members, took out a quarter-page ad in the Washington Post on the day before Solidarity Day, the occasion of Lane Kirkland's mass rally on the Mall in Washington, D.C...

...away for a day from the dull routine of bureaucratic obstruction that is the soul of the public employee's daily routine...

...In addition, of course, there are the ugly midnight telephone calls, the threatened and actual violence which back up the lawyer's rulings...

...Then there were the speeches...

...The sheer decibel-level of the amplification prevented me from understanding most of what Mrs...

...And as my laundry bill increased I came to the conclusion that any political analysis of Italy has to take into account the insidious windows of Rome...

...Benjamin Hooks probably entered your homes via television with his observation that' 'in the name of fighting inflation the necessities of life are taken from the needy and given to the greedy," and he subsequently expressed his opposition to "turning the clock back...

...tional August holidays, there is a sense of foreboding...

...They walk the streets, generally without incident...

...Those who are both unemployed and genuinely seeking employment (no doubt a minority of the statistically unemployed) have trade unions and minimum wage laws to thank...

...Not at all...

...imperialists, the foes of all the world's workers, stand and cheer on the sidelines for strikes and other political developments in Poland...

...The economy is suffering an acute case of encephalitis lethargica: inflation at nearly 21 percent, industrial production down by 5.4 percent since last August, 1.5 million unemployed, the lira on the run, a projected government deficit of $31.2 billion, and a very bearish stock market...

...The attempt, as we know, failed, and such may also be the fate of the Polish attempt if the warning by Challenge ("published by the Progressive Labor Party in New York") is heeded...

...The first paragraph of the advertisement's text informed readers that "SOLIDARNOSC means 'Solidarity' in Polish...

...Worker's World ("workers and oppressed peoples of the world unite...

...Printing and Graphic Communications Union) "Srop Natural Gas Decontrol...

...What you do see are such slogans as "gay rights," "equal rights," "human rights," "preserving the environment," "social justice," "social change," and frequent uses of the word "building," as in "building a new society...

...Walesa's Solidarity is an attempt to fragment and disperse state power...

...The Daily World'had an article by the chairman of the Communist Party USA which I quickly glanced over, while the Socialist Worker is here to tell us that "socialism means freedom" (1984 is not far off), and that "we must begin to build for it...

...Rather, our members are responding to AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland's leadership in calling the Solidarity Day demonstration to show the concern of American workers for their rights and well being here in America...

...Lech Walesa has emerged as the leader of this movement, and he has (in an astute rhetorical maneuver) called Solidarity a "trade union" movement...

...Technically, striking private-sector union employees can be replaced by non-union workers, but in practice this very rarely happens...

...Graphic Arts Union) "Ronnie Hood Steals From the Poor and Gives to the Rich...

...I watched another group of AFSCME protestors struggle to their feet from the picnic area before setting off on the march...

...Anyway, you may notice that the common theme of all these messages is the demand that the power of government be increased...

...trade union members are a privileged group because, by a combination of legal protection, coercion, and threatened violence, they are able to extract from employers wages that are higher than the market would otherwise pay...

...Some people call this "Communism" but those who rule over such societies call it "socialism" and so let us use their term...

...Union labor is priced out of the market and then shoved back in again by force...

...But it is not a trade union movement as that term is understood in the West...

...As I walked down to the Mall, the better to observe Lane Kirkland's Solidarity Day, I reflected that it was really nothing more than an attempt to cash in on the prestige of the eponymous Polish movement by a group that sees its privileges threatened...

...American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees) In addition, there were numerous placards held aloft urging passage of something called the "equal rights amendment" (which I believe has something to do with finding work for unemployed lawyers...

...What we have been seeing there is a national rebellion against socialism-a system where the state is the sole employer, the only landlord, the owner of "the means of production," and so on...

...They walk the streets in gay hordes, but they do take precautions...

...The Solidarity movement does not reflect this in any way...