[lbo-talk] Obama: let my Teamsters go!

[Jerry Monaco]

On 5/6/08, Joseph Catron <jncatron at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 4:19 PM, Jerry Monaco <monacojerry at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >  If this were a principled stand on Obama's part it would be
> supportable.
>
> When has any politician ever taken a principled stand?



Well, I get your point,



> (All right, someone will probably unearth a dusty example.)


(A really dusty and quite old example: Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, circa
130 BCE & circa 121 BCE.)



> But aren't consequences more important than motivations?


Yes. If you want to get serious then what are the consequences of quid pro
quo state favoritism to one union?  Does that mean we should encourage
unions to rent-seek with bourgeois politicians in the same way that
corporations do? I'm not saying that unions don't act as rent-seekers in a
capitalist context, because they do.  But this is something that those of us
who are radicals (or revolutionaries?) inside the labor movement should
oppose, not because it is unsuccessful, but because it works: It works to
tie union politics closer to ruling class politics.  It works to divide the
working class by setting union against union in a bidding war for capitalist
politicians.  It works to allow one union to pursue an internecine struggle
with another union, or with internal union dissidents, through the state or
through the bourgeois politician.

I think now is the time I should say something about Andy Stern.  He is the
classic rent seeking union leader.  I have not spoken out against him before
because, qutie frankly he is simply doing the job that most of the union
leaders wish to do only better, so I felt no need to single him out for his
success.  But often the way that Stern and company go about "organizing" the
unorganized is above the heads of the workers themselves and through
political deals.  This is understandable given the roadblocks to actual
organizing campaigns.



> Shouldn't we support good policies regardless of their origins?


Part of my point above is that a policy of favoritism to one union by one
ruling class politician is not a good policy for the working class movement
as a whole, no matter how much it is to the advantage of the particular
union.

Jerry


--
> "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure
> mægen lytlað."
>
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-- 
Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is
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