>Hey, we got TV, what do we need night classes and political >meetings for?
Fact is, most workers, including most white collar >workers, would probably
prefer a longer workweek to night classes, >reading, or political meetings.
Especially political meetings. So >where does that leave us?
Linder addresses this by saying that the decay of collectivist thinking and rhetoric in the labor movement leaves workers in a role of purely individualistic calculators: the money's tempting, but it comes at a big physical and emotional price. "Prefer" is a very loaded word; under the present set of rewards and punishments, yes, but shouldn't we challenge that inheritance?
But this sort of voluntarism, as if all that was missing was the will on the part of the labor movement to be collectivist in its rhetoric and practice, is hardly very helpful. It is one more 'misleaders' of the working class arguments. If we were just led by class struggle unionists, all would be well.
One might look at Robert Putnam's _Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community_ for some more structural answers, although it is not without its critics. For example, suburbanization has clearly had an impact on community life: when you are spending a significant part of your day traveling to and from work, and when home is isolated from community centers where communal activities could go on, there are effects.
Would that the labor movement had the power to so significantly shape, by itself, the consciousness of working people...
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20010405/b5cf7fab/attachment.htm>