Labor/The Union Label

...The share of GNP appropriated by the federal government has risen from 20 percent or so to 23 p e r c e n t . Yet the volume of bills with the picture of Benjamin Franklin on the front and the zeros on the corners has soared by 533 percent...

...it would inevitably clash with this class because of the latter's crucial position within the despised American system...

...Paul Weyrich, Richard Viguerie, and other New Right ideologues advanced the idea that blue-collar workers, with or without trade union leaders, could be convinced permanently to abandon their historical loyalties to a Democratic party now under the sway of new-class elitists incurably hostile to the traditional values of patriotism, family ties, and equality of opn n r t n n i t v and heedleq~ n f wnrk~rg' 38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1982 fears over economic insecurity and slow growth...

...In every issue you should find enough critical common sense to s a v e you from the purchase of at least onebook or the price of one movie...

...midterm party conference was the most united and noncontroversial party gathering in years...

...9 The standard comparison, of course, is Japan, itself a change in orientation...

...More recently, it is the Left that has r e a s s e s s e d its a t t i t u d e toward unions...

...And there is no effort to understand how the excesses of the Moral Majority could be a reaction to the excesses of a secular intelligentsia that wants sex in the classroom but not God, that...

...Today, of course, only the most obtuse Marxist sectarian would advance these arguments...

...right-wing authoritarianism...

...Now it is interesting to recall how these critics explained labor's persisting anti-Communist approach...

...they have learned that, where democratic politics is concerned, Marx is a more reliable guide than Marcuse...

...Perhaps most dramatic has been the influence of neoconservative skepticism about the limitations of domestic social policy...

...934 North Main SWeet | Rockford, Illinois 61103 | I wish to judge Chronicles of Cul| ture for myself...

...Yet it was not so long ago that liberals and those further left were either openly hostile toward labor or dismissive of it as an institution whose time had passed...

...In the past decade and a half, the inflationadjusted gross national product has risen by 46 percent and the consumer price index by 193 percent...

...Or that l a b o r ' s "knee-jerk" anti-Communism was a result of the large proportion of Roman Catholics within the rankand-file...

...Let's hope many of today's charlatans are then forgotten...

...This policy has never wavered, even during the salad days of d~tente, and even though it has not endeared labor to other forces in our society...

...The Vietnam war having ended, and the image of the valiant Polish workers defying a Communist police s t a t e dominating the free world's political consciousness, criticism of labor's international perspective of necessity has been muted...

...F o r whatever reason nowadays, the value of hundred dollar bills in circulation is g r e a t e r than the total of all currency outstanding in .1967...

...For example, the tax-wise plumber who charges $150 for a new washer might e n t e r t a i n an offer of $100 in cold cash...

...The reason for this no doubt has something to do with the prosperity of the world drug trade and with the unrest among foreigners, but surely a more fundamental cause is domestic inflation...

...Influenced by the writings of C. Wright Mills and Herbert Marcuse, the New Left set about to create a substitute proletariat encompassing students and the urban underclass...

...When we observe t h a t some p o p u l a r idea is, a t best, cons t r u c t e d of v e r y wet p a p i e r - m~che, we s t a t e so...

...His economic and social policies aside, many in the labor movement see Ronald Reagan as one who counts among his closest friends those who would prefer to see the unions here as powerless as the sham labor fronts of the Communist world...

...Six or seven years ago, the country that enlightened opinion said the U.S...

...Indeed, the role of Sadlowski's backers became pivotal after it was Arch Puddington is executive director of the League for Industrial Democracy and editor of Workers Under Communism...

...P u n e t a r i n g t h e l i b e r a l pontlflcaUon...

...Yet when one sliced through the populist, pro-worker phrases, one discovered a contempt for labor as an institution at least equal to that expressed by the McGovernites...

...As for the unions, their political orientation is to an increasing extent dictated by a series of new and unexpected problems...

...The problem was not simply union " m i s l e a d e r s " whose rigid conservatism prevented the working class from carrying out its preordained revolutionary mission, but the working class itself, grown fat and indolent on the fruits of capitalist exploitation and American imperialism...

...The abrogation of these rights is perceived as a violation of the rights of fellow workers...

...And although many corporations, notably the traditional giants of heavy industry, have reached a modus vivendi with labor through the years, this is certainly not the case with the emerging industries of the Sun Belt...

...Another shift has been in the form that the intelligentsia belittles U.S...

...For various reasons, labor's anti-Communism has earned the scorn of the Left, the business community, and the foreign-policy Establishment...

...businessmen were "socially irresponsible"mthat, in self-interested pursuit of filthy lucre, they mistreated workers, raped the environment, and deliberately made unsafe toys, cars, and tires in order to scrimp on costs...

...a cornerstone of his presidential effort was the concept of labor's relative unimportance to the Democratic party's future...

...If I'm not satisfied with my | first issue I'U write "cancel" on the | invoice and return it unpaid...

...looked the other way when discipline broke down in the schools, and that makes fun of religious beliefs that try to make some distinction between man and other animals...

...revealed that the bulk of his campaign contributions came from residents of Berkeley, Cambridge, Manhattan's Upper West Side, and other areas not noted for a heavy concentration of steelworkers...

...Where not so long ago labor's pragmatic and nonsocialist philosophy was credited as an important reason for the creation of the first prosperous working class in America, we are now told that " e x c e s s i v e " union contracts are the principal source of America's weakened competitive position in the world economy...

...The perennial rise of prices and incomes has t h r u s t millions of ordinary Americans into rarefied tax brackets...

...AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1982...

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...This unusual (and arrogant) intervention is but a striking example of a renewed interest in labor's political and institutional future...

...Alternatively, American workers were said to have benefited from our imperialist domination of the Third World, and thus opposed the Soviets out of fear of surrendering the fruits of this domination...

...Spokesmen from the "progressive camp" have been reduced to advancing the shabby argument that labor should refrain from lending any support to the A d m i n i s t r a t i o n ' s military and foreign policy positions because to do" otherwise is to extend aid and comfort to the enemynthat is, Reagan...

...This prediction came all too true in 1969, when construction tradesmen battled antiwar demonstrators in New York and other cities...

...Occasionally, the efforts to influence labor's course have graduated from theory to practice...

...Is Chronicles o f Cutture for you...

...Imagine...

...if anything, more crucial to the possibility of re-emergent Democratic party majority than they were ten or fifteen years ago...

...it is also seen as an institutional and economic threat to workers in the free world...

...It naturally followed that it was better to borrow and spend than to save, because money saved today would be worth less tomorrow...

...In one fundamental way, we s t a n d considerably removed from t h e herd...

...If we're talking about New Guinea cannibals or Amazon aborigines, then every effort is made to justify their moral systems as equally valid with any in the West...

...Whatever the case, democracy's s u p p o r t e r s can be thankful t h a t at least one institution in American society has had the courage to withstand the opprobrium of powerful and influential critics...

...It is a culture in which a nurse earns less per year than a cretinous, unwashed rock singer spends on dope per day...

...seen Chronicles,/t'$ " worth a/ook because it is such a refreshing change from the normal diet of humanisf cellulose...

...After this discovery Sadlowski's momentum collapsed, and he lost badly...

...Starting in the late 1960s, the value of bills of all sizes deteriorated, which gave rise to an article of faith...

...There is, in addition, an international dimension to labor's role as bulwark of American democracy...

...Early Warning System...

...As Deng Xiaoping told Shirley MacLaine when she described how a Chinese nuclear physicist, sent to a rural tomato commune during the Cultural Revolution, said he was much happier on the farm than in the lab: "He lied...

...This is an astonishing leap...

...As with so many other counterculture ideas, the notion of labor as marginal and reactionary inevitably worked its way into the general political consciousness...

...The .business-g0vernment cooperation so often praised by American commentators, for example, exists in Japan only in myth...

...What's going on here...

...It was the benighted union officialdom, many radicals had long agreed, which posed the major impediment to a massive transformation of American society...

...Today there is $57 billion worth...

...It is no longer assumed that " b o l d " new federal programs will solve the problems they are intended to solve, and there is much greater awareness that well-meaning programs such as national health insurance or rent control can impose high costs and lead to unintended side-effects...

...And it is the businessmen who run these industries who provide President Reagan with his most enthusiastic support within the corporate world, a fact which has contributed to l a b o r ' s animosity toward the Administration...

...What of our style and content...

...Over the short term, labor's determination to help rebuild the party has been a success...

...Bill me for $18.00 (12 monthly issues...

...More to the point is that American labor has never acquired the kind of general acceptance trade unions in other democratic countries have enjoyed as a matter of course for decades...

...Particular _9 attention is thus paid to the practices in Communist countries because Communism, as a system, rejects the very legitimacy of free trade-unions and promotes the concept of partystate hegemony over labor unions as a matter of high principle...

...That businessmen don't very much care for trade unions is nothing new, nor is this phenomenon limited to the United States...

...Simply for/f you heven...

...This is no small matter in a society where wealth and, even more significantly, education play the crucial roles in our social and political life...

...We are non-liberal...

...But the degree of antipathy toward unions is uniquely American...

...construction--which have traditionally provided labor with its numerical, political, and organizational strength that have suffered most severely from the economic downturn...

...Hundreds, by the way, are the largest bills currently printed...

...There is a long and ideologically diverse list of eminent critics convinced that they are better qualified to set the priorities for American workers than the labor leaders these workers elect as their representatives...

...Recently the rumor was hatched that the Treasury Department was going to print new hundred-dollar bills in yellow, declare the green ones void, offer to exchange the old for the new, and carefully take down the names and Social Security numbers of the people who came forward...

...In George McGovern, the New Politicos had a candidate willing to put these theories to the test...

...Unions not only protect the rights of workers - - a n d we need look only to the dramatic events in Poland to understand just how seriously workers take these r i g h t s - - t h e y also provide people of relatively humble origin with the means to achieve positions of influence and respect...

...It was that prices were bound to rise and the purchasing power of money to fall...

...radical Third World regimes are eagerly seeking capitalist investment...

...One f r a g m e n t , excerpted from Leopold Tyrmand's Editor's Comment which launches a recent issue, as he writes about t o d a y ' s liberal culture: One consequence of this culture is that a vast segment of the populaLion is forced to work hard to support a class of parasites, many of whom--thanks to economic priorities gone berserk--have turned their lives into a grotesque Grand Guignol of drugs and kinky crime and who provide their own troubadours with an obscure wealth...

...With the obvious exception of professional sports, probably no nongovernmental institution presents so inviting a target for armchair strategists as the labor movement...

...Law professors, judges, and their allies in the media continue to advocate sweeping social policy changes by judicial fiat, with virtually no concern for the empirical consequences of their actions...

...At last, there exists a journal worth reading for its originality, its zest, i t s willingness to examine books, film, music, theater, politics, the press and other instit u t i o n s - w i t h no concern for Consensus or Conventional Wisdom...

...For this culture we have nothing but the deepest contempt, and we want to make it known...

...But do it today, so we may send you our freshest issue immediately...

...is the author of a biography of Bernard M. Baruch (forthcoming next f all from Simon and Schuster...

...James Grant, who writes a weekly column on the credit markets in Barton's...

...In 1967 there was $9 billion worth of hundred-dollar bills in circulation...

...But there-is only mockery for the California insurance salesman who wants the biblical theory of creation taught in a social studies class...

...The hostility toward businessmen is still there, but now it's directed toward demeaning their intelligence and managerial ability, not their motives...

...There are almost two-and-ahalf C-notes for every man, woman, and child in the Republic, enough to be laid twice around the globe, end to end, if t h e wind d i d n ' t blow them away...

...The AFL-CIO's decision to become more intensely involved in Democratic affairs reflects a judicious evaluation that the party cannot revive i t s e l f without the moderating and disciplining influence of the unions...

...Check for $18.00 is enclosed...

...In the 1960s, the New Left took this argument a step further...

...We encourage you to find o u t - - a t no obligation...

...and indeed hardened as stagnation has supplanted growth as the overriding economic reality...

...the recen...

...For most of the last fifteen years, the standard criticism was that U.S...

...The estrangement between labor and the Democrats did not go unnoticed by the Right...

...While there have been periods of relative l a b o r / b u s i n e s s harmony, the attitudes that produced the violent industrial clashes of the Iq30s have lingered on...

...business executives...

...Tom Bethell The American Spectator ward the Subscription Request and Free Issue coupon...

...Had others not caved in so easily when the going was difficult, the prospects for world democracy might be notably better...

...am i am am ~ ~ me a l e me am me ~ am | ('hnmick, s ~4"('ultun...

...Succinctly, but, we hope, with a modicum of style...

...and ten-thousands rolled off the presses in 1969...

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...We a t t e m p t to s h o u t "hogwash," b u t in a distinguished manner...

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...The intelligentsia has also persisted in its arrogant dismissal of the moral values of ordinary Americans...

...This reflects the undeniable fact that unions are...

...That was what he had to say at the t i m e . " Instead the country to learn from now is Japan...

...Imagine...

...No less than the liberals they professed to despise, the New Right leaders proceeded on the premise that only they knew what was best for workers...

...The intelligentsia was wrong about Castro, wrong about the North Vietnamese, wrong about the aftermath of the Shah's downfall', wrong about the Sandinistas...

...Today egg is on the faces of all those gaga visitors who returned from China's Potemkin villages with enthusiastic stories of a happy, well-fed, unintimidated population...

...Not feeling particularly rich, some of these people have unilaterally adopted lower brackets by seekingpayment in large bills...

...The last five-hundreds, thousands, fivethousands...

...A publication t h a t begins with t h a t fresh perspective, and t h e n goes about t h e business of reviewing, criticizing, e s s a y i n g each month--in little danger of fraternizing with other magazines...

...Some of these are easily enough understood...

...That unions must still wage a Our alternative to me-too magazines is Chronicles o f Culture: W r i t t e n f o r an audience in search o f f r e s h , p r o v o c a t i v e , mind-jolting, original thought...

...Instead, it is fashionable today to bash American managers for taking too short-term a view of their profit opportunities--to knock them, in other words, for not being smart enough capitalists...

...and sophisticated anthropological documentaries will show that primitive superstitions and beliefs in magic are actually rational responses to the world around them...

...In fact, l a b o r ' s foreign policy orientation is dictated by a compelling combination of principle and self-interest...

...At the time, this proposition seemed self-evident...

...Central to labor's view is the right of work'ers everywhere to free trade-unions...

...The business community is clamoring for reductions in defense spending...

...It is these newer industries that will increasingly be the focus of union organizing campaigns...

...The reason is simple enough: With the collapse of the once-mighty big-city machines, and the unanticipated impotence of the reform forces, labor has become the only power within the Democratic party capable of mobilizing hundreds of thousands of voters...

...It has fulminated for weeks against a heinous massacre in Israeli-occupied Lebanon while virtually ignoring a much more heinous massacre of Syrians by their own government...

...Certainly the Democrats have not resolved their internal differences over America's future world role...

...In the 1930's a German antifascist by the name of Kurt Tucholsky, before he was tortured by the nazis in Dachau, addressed himself to his nation in one of his last warnings: "All I wish is for you to remember, I was againstl" So are we, when we face the travesty of humanness and the humiliation of reason in America...

...An Early Warning System e v e r y month on w h a t ' s worthwhile and w h a t ' s worthless in theater, film, books, and more...

...A Long Island bank recently was said to have done a brisk bu~siness of breaking large bills for people who'd heard the story and wanted to be on the safe side...

...In 1979, Ed Sadiowski achieved a degree of public visibility unprecedented for a middle-level trade union official thanks to attention lavished on him by the liberal establishment during his campaign for the Steelworkers' presidency...

...I n foreign policy, the intelligentsia, especially the media, persists in its double standard of bashing unsavory regimes allied to the U.S...

...It is a much more instructive model, with much to teach, even though some of the lessons being drawn are false...

...Nearly fifty years after enactment of the Wagner Act, the business community, or at least large and influential segments of it, continues to invest the struggle against unionism with the status of a cause...

...It is, for example, precisely those sectors of the economy--automobile," steel...

...Those who once denounced workers as semifascists are today, if they are still engaged in political work, pursuing their own electoral careers...

...All of which suggests thatthere is still enough humbuggery and hot air in the intelligentsia for The American Spectator to be kept busy for at least another fifteen years...

...Even before the last tenuous link of the dollar to gold was cut by President Nixon in 1971, the Federal Reserve System enjoyed 40 THE...

...while naively ignoring the even less savory intentions of the movements seeking to overthrow them...

...Ever since the end of World War II, the unions have maintained a consistent policy of opposing Communist totalitarianism and Soviet expansionism, and, a s well...

...should learn from was China...

...The old Roosevelt coalition of urban machines, the solid South, and bluecollar workers was now defunct, strategists like Fred Dutton intoned and the Democratic party's future rested with a new alliance of young people, minorities, and above all else, the educated middle class--a coalition dubbed the "conscience constituency" by Michael Hattington...

...The unions, it was said, supported the Cold War because of the prospect of increased employment in the armaments industry...

...It was so colossal in its misunderstanding of E1 Salvador that it failed to anticipate the large turnout in the election this spring...

...the Catholic Church is shifting from its once consistent hard-line stance...

...Remarkably, readers and editors come together in Cltronicles o f Culture to produce a vibrant, f r e s h approach to n o n - l i b e r a l journalism...

...Only in the legal profession has this skepticism failed to percolate...

...According to New Left tenets, this new revolutionary force did not just exclude the working class...

...Bht you can hardly accuse, say, auto manufacturers of being too obsessed with profit when they can't turn one anymore...

...The tumult of the past fifteen years of American finance--the age of the Great Inflationncan be clarified with two facts...

...Nevertheless, it is an unwritten law that left-of-center parties and movements inevitably divide over questions of international affairs...

...As a result, school systems, mental hospitals, and prisons across the country are a wreck...

...NAME | ADDRESS | CITY struggle for legitimacy a century after the founding of the American Federation of Labor poses a dilemma for our democratic system...

...Whether a long-term consensus on foreign policy issues can be realized has yet to be demonstrated...