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"How I envy you in America, for you are in the belly of the beast." Che Guevara
It's hard for me to focus on problems that aren't just right under my nose. But whatever solutions we come up with for immediate problems might well be useless when we consider the larger scheme of things. A good example is wages and benefits in America. Since around 1980, the bosses have been singing the same song over and over: "You have to take a lower wage and fewer benefits because otherwise your employers could not compete with enterprises in other countries. Your enemy is the workers in the other countries. Your boss is your friend." It's amazing how many people, including major union leaders, who bought into that crap. The result has been steady decreases in our wages and benefits while our taxes, national and local, become a larger and larger share of total government income.
Fortunately, we have a few leaders who say it this way, "Your boss and the bosses in the other countries are making out like crazy while you, and the workers in the other countries, keep buying into the idea that you have to compete against each other by taking cuts in wages and benefits and increases in your taxes while the boss reverses the process. Their total wealth is skyrocketing while yours is plumeting. The answer is international cooperation among working people against our real enemies, who are the bosses making money off us at home and abroad."
I like the people who are straightening out this discourse, but I wish they would acknowledge that their point of view isn't something new. The old Congress of Industrial Organizing (CIO), prior to the big change of 1947, was always internationalist. They subscribed to an international labor organization, World Federation of Trade Unions, that had a serious program. After 1947 and before 1995, American trade union international policy was set in collaboration with the CIA. I'd like it if our union leaders would admit that and plot a clear course for the future. Meantime, though, I'm just glad to see the many progressive developments in the American union movement. There are several really good internationalist developments, especially among the metalworkers.
Back when I was picketing Shell gasoline stations to get Nelson Mandela out of jail, I was proud to see that the United Auto Workers were working with South African unions to end apartheid. I was pleased, too, when a lot of the African American trade unionists from the Postal Employees union came out to picket with our tiny group.
It's sad that most Americans, including most union folks, go along with whatever invasion the bosses come up with. Patriotism is more than just "the last refuge of scoundrels (Samuel Johnson)." It's an absolute menace to good thinking.
"Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy." -- George Bernard Shaw
My own view of patriotism is that it could be a good thing if it were understood, but it's misused in the hands of those who have power over us.
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