As some of you know we have a reading group working their way through Ted Nace's Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy.
I just finished chapter 11) Survival of the Fittest: People Power versus a Social Darwinist agenda (1886-1937). It is essential reading for those trying to get a handle on the historical roots of our current labor relations. We currently face a role back through austerity measures, attacks on collective bargaining, and the global flight of corporations, to the conditions described in this chapter and, correspondingly, the chapter provides a look at the way in which earlier laborers fought back to achieve better lives and opportunities.
You can find the chapter here in the PDF for the whole book.
For a deeper understanding of the exploitation of labor on a global scale in our contemporary world, check out John Bellamy Foster, Robert W. McChesney, and R. Jamil Jonna's essay "The Global Reserve Army of Labor and the New Imperialism" in this months Monthly Review.
This is a provocative and impt piece from beginning to end. At the beginning, they quote Hymer: "Multinational corporations are a substitute for the market as a method of organizing international exchange." If we are going to help people deal with the neo-liberal shell game we have to stop taling about the "free market" of so-called laissez-faire capitalism as if it describes what really happens. It is a disguise, not a description. For example, a so-called free trade policy involves rules, structures, penalties, etc and these always operate in a field of unequal power. Herb Reid
ReplyDelete