> Marvin: I have to disagree with your fatalism. In fact, the global
> economic changes do not rule out rebuilding the labor movement in the
> US...
[...] ========================= I'm not fatalistic, Jim. I think people are as changeable as the historical circumstances they find themselves in, and I certainly would not rule out the revival of the US labour movement in line with global trends. In fact, the most recent economic developments would seem to point in this direction. But we sometimes mislead ourselves into thinking that people are always as ready for change as we are or that their definition of change goes as far as our own. This strongly colours our perceptions of the trade unions and the mass of unorganized workers in general, whose political quiescence is less attributed to "objective conditions" than to the treacherous and cowardly union bureaucrats and politicans who are holding them back. In its own way, for those who are active (or, like myself, used to be) this can be as self-defeating in its own way as the opposite error of not recognizing and responding with encouragement to any signs of political motion, even the most modest as around the Obama campaign, or what is happening today in parts of Latin America.
So, no, I would not say I am not a fatalist, but in the current political climate, I can understand how some people could be.