[lbo-talk] AFL-CIO: War? What War?

[Michael Dawson]

I've been a state AFL-CIO officer.  The DP fealty is nearly automatic at
that middle level, and the message encouraging it comes from above, as well
as from the profoundly stupid way the unions spend their "political" money,
which is all on PACs.  I think the AFL-CIO tops simply anticipate and copy
DP positions, to keep the DP happy, on the counter-factual belief that mere
cooperation will someday make the DP snap out of its anti-labor slumber.
The DP clearly holds the upper hand in all this, as it essentially dangles
disappearing carrots to keep encouraging this rotten strategy.

The root of the problem is the Cold War.  Taft-Hartley neutered the unions
and saddled them with weird rules and regulations that establish a huge gulf
between "leaders" and the rank-and-file.  It also must have implanted tons
of Manchurian candidates and other secret shit we don't know about, since we
haven't opened our files as the Russians have.

-----Original Message-----
From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
On Behalf Of Jon Johanning
Sent: Sunday, October 10, 2004 6:25 AM
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] AFL-CIO: War? What War?

On Oct 9, 2004, at 5:08 PM, Michael Dawson wrote:


> Well, the DP gives AFL-CIO orders all the time, and I've never seen the
> AFL-CIO giving the DP an order.

I don't really understand the precise connections between the tops of 
the AFL-CIO and the DP -- would appreciate someone who has studied the 
subject clarifying it for me. But it seems to me that there is a 
substantial overlap between the groups forming the policies of the two. 
That is, I would suppose that the folks who formulated the Iraq 
position for the unions also formulated it for the centralist wing of 
the DP Kerry comes from (certainly not for the Dean-Kusinich wing -- a 
rather crippled wing, of course).

One of the big problems for both organizations is these old farts, no? 
The labor movement needs some really fresh thinking and so does the DP. 
The left supporters of Bush (there are such people, of course) argue 
that a defeat for Kerry would spur that development, but I doubt it, 
because the labor/DP aristocracy seems to have a Bush-esque dedication 
to "more of the same." Every time they are defeated, they just argue 
that they have to work harder doing the same thing next time. Would one 
more defeat trigger a revolution in these organizations from 
dissatisfied rank and file? I doubt it, but since the Bush-Kerry race 
seems to be dead even again, there's a 50-50 chance we'll get an 
opportunity to find out.

Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org
__________________________________
A gentleman haranguing on the perfection of our law, and that it was 
equally open to the poor and the rich, was answered by another, 'So is 
the London Tavern.' -- "Tom Paine's Jests..." (1794); also attr. to 
John Horne Tooke (1736-1812) by Hazlitt

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