tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14162253.post2785188990835407208..comments2024-03-28T18:57:15.124-06:00Comments on Wash Park Prophet: America's Tame Politics and Labor RelationsAndrew Oh-Willekehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02537151821869153861noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14162253.post-38588449089119209522010-12-21T16:52:34.614-07:002010-12-21T16:52:34.614-07:00"If there is any respect in which the America..."If there is any respect in which the American political economy differs from the European one, it is that Americans have far, far less economic security".<br /><br />Up to a point only (there are big differences within Europe in this aspect) and anyhow salaries are generally much higher in the USA. Less security is compensated with larger incomes overall. The lowest echelons are surely worse (though this has been compensated by nearly zero unemployment until recently) but the middle classes used to be solid and ample. <br /><br />"The facts seem a better fit to the hypothesis that insecure people are timid, while a more secure working class is willing to assert itself".<br /><br />A "more secure" working class is a self-made class. Nothing has been gifted: all has been fought for in many many struggles. <br /><br />A peculiar phenomenon of the USA is the lack of a labor party or even a "social" right (like Christian-Democrats and even fascists used to be somewhat). In the USA, somehow, the ideology of "socialism" (in its most ample sense) is taboo. While even in a similar electoral system as the British one, Labour soon replaced Liberals, in the USA the evolution has been the opposite: with Liberals becoming social-democrats in all but name (but also preventing a real Labor party from rising). <br /><br />Also the USA never experienced anything like the 1917-21 revolutionary wave that spread through half Europe (not just Russia but Hungary, Germany and even Norway and Spain). This probably put the bourgeois class on their toes for a good while (causing the spread of fascism in fact). <br /><br />Socialist parties were strong in all this period and Popular Fronts ruled in France and Spain just before WWII, in a context of extreme class war (fascism and such). <br /><br />After the war, when communist guerrillas were strong, poverty was widespread and the allies feared that one country after another could slide to the Soviet bloc: Greece experienced a civil war, while Italy was for decades ruled by anti-communist wide coalitions that blocked the largest party (the communists) from reaching power. Also in the 60s and 70s communist urban guerrillas were widespread. <br /><br />Not even mentioning strikes and unions, all kinds of demonstrations, civil disobedience, etc. What Europeans have is largely because Europeans fought for it (but also because European bourgeois classes decided in favor of social peace, specially in the North of the continent - welfare state).<br /><br />If in the USA you have the ideal of the "self-made man" in Europe I think we are more in the line of a self-made people, really. <br /><br />It all may begin in school maybe: pupils here have always tended to band together against the establishment (teachers), so cheating (seldom acomplished for long anyhow) is ok and you feel obliged to help your less bright or less hardworking buddy, not the system. Also we live in towns where you shop around the corner, not in some distant mall, so some neighborhood feeling exists, we do not need nor use cars so much, nor so early in life, we are not so incredibly religious... there are many differences in our ways of life. <br /><br />Not everything is ideal, not at all. But I think I can spot some sociological differences. <br /><br />Also the US mentality is very parochial, not in the neighborhood sense I said before for Europe but in the sense that only the USA seems to exist, the rest being nothing but exotic vacation destinies, often hard to place in a map. Unlike Europe, which has been defeated in wars or has otherwise declined from an imperial past, the USA feels still the center of the universe. Even miss splendid isolation Britain could not help being just a short trip away from the heart of Europe. The USA is far away from everywhere but Mexico.Majuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369840391933337204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14162253.post-78495522969890321202010-12-21T15:35:42.254-07:002010-12-21T15:35:42.254-07:00"the main reason why this has not resurfaced ..."the main reason why this has not resurfaced is surely that the system has been able to guarantee certain standard of living that has prevented so far people from going too radical."<br /><br />As plausible as this would seem, surely it isn't true. If there is any respect in which the American political economy differs from the European one, it is that Americans have far, far less economic security. We have no guarantees of any vacation days. A large share of terminated workers have no right to unemployment benefits at all, and those who receive any receive benefits that are meager and short lived. Our pensions are less generous or much more subject to market fluctuations. A large minority of the population has no health insurance (about one person in six, more in the case of the young). Foreclosures and evictions are much more common. Our criminal penalties are comparatively draconian and the likelihood of being a criminal or a crime victim is much greater. We have less social mobility, and virtually no protection against wrongful termination from employment. A large share of people have limited access to higher education dependent on large loans that make graduates less economicalyl secure and sucess in college savings investments.<br /><br />The facts seem a better fit to the hypothesis that insecure people are timid, while a more secure working class is willing to assert itself.<br /><br />I'm also inclines to see the Red Scare as a pretty minor part of the overall mix.Andrew Oh-Willekehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02537151821869153861noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14162253.post-15454228291503109982010-12-21T02:32:59.892-07:002010-12-21T02:32:59.892-07:00Good article, though I'd dare say that you foc...Good article, though I'd dare say that you focus too much in the issue of violence, what really hides the central issue of popular protests, be them in the form of strikes or demonstrations. <br /><br />AFAIK the latest huge demo in the USA was the One Million Men March organized by Martin Luther King and co. There are other demos (for example <a href="http://leherensuge.blogspot.com/2010/08/campaign-for-freedom-bradley-manning.html" rel="nofollow">I reported in August</a> one quite large in support of Bradley Manning at Quantico Bay) but in general this seems to a rare phenomenon. <br /><br />In fact, it stroke me as extremely odd that not even one demo has been held in relation to the criminal abuses in relation to the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, in spite of all the very real health aggression it is against citizens. It was with this that I really lost hope (at least by the moment) on US people being able to change anything. If you don't seem able to organize a simple demonstration at, say, New Orleans or Pensacola, on all this criminal state and corporate abuse, you don't seem able to resist any other abuse, much less revert it. <br /><br />I understand that a good deal of why things are this way is the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Scare" rel="nofollow">Red Scares</a>, which were true massive inquisitorial persecutions of the working class movement. However the main reason why this has not resurfaced is surely that the system has been able to guarantee certain standard of living that has prevented so far people from going too radical. <br /><br />This is not the case anymore, so I presume that eventually this situation will change. But I do not know how or when exactly.Majuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369840391933337204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14162253.post-11300864409194933592010-12-21T01:08:56.214-07:002010-12-21T01:08:56.214-07:00Notable US Public Sector Strikes in the last 30 ye...Notable <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_strikes" rel="nofollow">US Public Sector Strikes</a> in the last 30 years:<br /><br />1980 New York City transit strike (April 1980, U.S.) <br />Air traffic controllers' strike/Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (1981, U.S.) <br />1981 UPR strike (Puerto Rico) <br />Yale University Clerical Workers' Strike (1984, U.S.) <br />Los Angeles County Sanitary Workers' Strike (1985, U.S.) <br />Yale University Clerical Workers' Strike (1985, U.S.) <br />University of California strikes (2003, U.S.) <br />2005 New York City transit strike <br />2005 UPR strike (Puerto Rico) <br />University of Miami 2006 custodial workers' strike (U.S.) <br />2007 Orange County transit strike (U.S.) <br />Hayward teachers strike (2007, U.S.) <br />2008 Puerto Rico Teacher's Federation strike <br />2008 University of California strike (U.S.) <br />2010 University of Puerto Rico Strike <br />2010 Plymouth-Canton Community Schools Local#6094 (Michigan)Andrew Oh-Willekehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02537151821869153861noreply@blogger.com