On May 1, 2009, at 4:07 AM, James Heartfield wrote:
> I have to say that I read Said Sayrafiezadeh's memoir (referred to
> by Sheldon, clipped below) when it was in Granta, too (my dad gave
> it to me), and laughed like a drain. He is a very funny writer, and
> it is an excellent story. When he says
>
> "I don't need society to be dismantled. I don't want to feel guilty
> about the things I have. I have a 32-inch high-def flat-screen TV. I
> fucking love that thing, man"
>
> That strikes me as not a wholly wicked sentiment. Since when did
> Socialism come to mean wearing a hair-shirt?
> Samuel Gompers said that the whole of trade unionism could be boiled
> down to the single demand: more! 'We do want more, and when it
> becomes more, we shall still want more. And we shall never cease to
> demand more until we have received the results of our
> labor.' (Gompers, 1890)
I agree with a lot of what you say, until you get to Gompers. His attitude is the ancestor of modern American business unionism, which has given us a depoliticized and shrinking labor movement. "More" and no more got us where we are.
Happy May Day, otherwise.
Doug