On 9/20/2010 5:29 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
>> Liberals in the US - and I'm thinking especially about American Prospect types like Tom Geohagan - do idealize Europe. But the problem isn't that they depict it as being much better off than the US; it is much better off, and in almost every way. The problem is that they show Europe without the politics. These strong unions, big welfare states, and (relatively) civilized political discourse "somehow" just got there in some mysterious way.
> Does Geohagan do that? He's Mr Union, Esq., no?
>
Oh sure, he's obviously not anti-union. But it seems to me (though it's been years since I read Which Side Are You On) that on the one hand he loves the idea of big strong stable institutional unions with bargaining muscle and the ability to force consensus arrangements. But on the other hand he'd rather not talk too much about where these things came from (i.e., militant, revivalistic, labor uprisings animated by radicals) or the long-term oppositional ideology necessary to defeat the period efforts to roll them back. It's like this standard liberal nostalgic trope about how unions "built the middle class" - well, isn't that a big part of the reason why they soon crumbled? Because they whole-heartedly embraced a system-supporting ideology that necessarily left them defenseless when the system turned against them?
I don't think it's because these people are living an illusion, it's because they think their audience doesn't want to hear about it.
SA