<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT SIZE=3>Justin Schwartz wrote:
<BR>
<BR>>Hey, we got TV, what do we need night classes and political >meetings for?
<BR>Fact is, most workers, including most white collar >workers, would probably
<BR>prefer a longer workweek to night classes, >reading, or political meetings.
<BR>Especially political meetings. So >where does that leave us?
<BR>
<BR>Linder addresses this by saying that the decay of collectivist thinking and
<BR>rhetoric in the labor movement leaves workers in a role of purely
<BR>individualistic calculators: the money's tempting, but it comes at a big
<BR>physical and emotional price. "Prefer" is a very loaded word; under the
<BR>present set of rewards and punishments, yes, but shouldn't we challenge that
<BR>inheritance?
<BR>
<BR>Doug</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BR>
<BR>But this sort of voluntarism, as if all that was missing was the will on the
<BR>part of the labor movement to be collectivist in its rhetoric and practice,
<BR>is hardly very helpful. It is one more 'misleaders' of the working class
<BR>arguments. If we were just led by class struggle unionists, all would be well.
<BR>
<BR>One might look at Robert Putnam's _Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of
<BR>American Community_ for some more structural answers, although it is not
<BR>without its critics. For example, suburbanization has clearly had an impact
<BR>on community life: when you are spending a significant part of your day
<BR>traveling to and from work, and when home is isolated from community centers
<BR>where communal activities could go on, there are effects.
<BR>
<BR>Would that the labor movement had the power to so significantly shape, by
<BR>itself, the consciousness of working people...
<BR>
<BR>Leo Casey
<BR>United Federation of Teachers
<BR>260 Park Avenue South
<BR>New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
<BR>
<BR>Power concedes nothing without a demand.
<BR>It never has, and it never will.
<BR>If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
<BR>Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who
<BR>want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and
<BR>lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
<BR><P ALIGN=CENTER>-- Frederick Douglass --</P></FONT></HTML>