Transcending Transcendence

Dennis R Redmond dredmond at oregon.uoregon.edu
Fri Oct 20 06:33:28 PDT 2000


On Thu, 19 Oct 2000 LeoCasey at aol.com wrote:


> base). Being an advocate of the view that democracy necessarily entials
> representation hardly means that you accept the institutional status quo. So
> why call attempts to improve it transcendence?

Because you're *changing* the structures of representation, deepening them, broadening them, making them more responsive to the represented. Unions in the US are dreadfully toothless, apolitical, and legislatively ineffective compared to our brothers and sisters in Canada, the EU and elsewhere, where labor has its own parties, a massive civic infrastructure, etc. To get from here to there will require an internal revolution, the kind which has been happening at Ground Zero of the grad union movement for some time.

Unlike some of the comrades, I don't blame the union leadership for this state of affairs; most union officials I've dealt with are honest, hardworking folks, who have their hands full just keeping the ship afloat and trying to fend off rabid Rightwing legislation and privatization. It's really a question of creating social movement unions which reach out into the community as much as they reach into the workplace -- the simple insight that the best defense is a good offense.

-- Dennis



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