Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>
> Again, though, the unions are an important part of what makes
> something politically feasible or not. If they signed onto single
> payer en masse, it would completely change the balance of forces.
I very much hope that I'm completely wrong in what I'm about to argue, but it is a possibility to which leftists and friends of labor (meaning the persons who labor, not the organizations that 'represent' them) ought to give serious thought.
Unions are actively progressive only during the stages in which the primary struggle is to achieve recognition and legality. Once established they are (with marginal exceptions) merely more or less effective bargaining agents for more or less marginal gains of a minority of the total work force. And in the U.S. they have become (again with only marginal exceptions) ineffective even for these purposes and, on the whole, agents of reaction at best a lesser evil rather than a minor friend of the working class. I offer Nathan's arguments in this and related threads as evidence for this. I hope I'm wrong.
Carrol
>
> Doug
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