I’d say more that there’s no such thing as a fair share as long as bosses exist. But yeah, also true: to take real steps in the right direction definitely requires exerting power, not begging.
Its crazy for me to think that there is a first world country with big companies that have no unions. In europe this is practically unheard of as far as I know.
German here. The percentage of unionized jobs has fallen to around 18% here. So it’s not as great as you think. We didn’t see any real raises (corrected for inflation and productivity increase) for many years. Might be one of the reasons the far right is on a rise here.
Who would guess that by the end of the Merkel Chancellorship, unions would emerge weak?
She was always going on about the need to build strength for the working class, and to protect welfare and wages by fighting against the austerity narrative propagated by elites.
Pole here. Only about 10% of workers are in a union. Most of them are in Solidarność which is notoriously a right wing union and a comprador to capitalists and capitalism.
It’s very, very anti communist. And a socdem-ish union like Związkowa Alternatywa is being threatened and attacked by the government constantly, wasting their resources.
So I’d say the figure of truly unionized workers is even lower… not to mention our weak labor laws…
My view of their argument is, you can’t have a ‘fair’ share while you have a boss that controls the productive forces, while you are forced to either work under their employ or starve. The arrangement itself is unfair. Though I definitely still would advocate for better worker’s rights, wages and such right now.
Maybe I am misunderstand this whole conversation haha, but it seemed you thought it was a pessimistic view that the bosses won’t pay a fair share, so I was replying that it seemed like a realistic view because in the position that bosses have, there is little incentive for a proper fair share. Though on reflection their comment was doomer-y regardless of the underlying intention.
I’m not quite sure what it means for someone not to act as forced.
I don’t understand what you mean by this.
You seem to be negating the possibility of advancing beyond the status quo
Some things can be advanced beyond the status quo, for example degrees of exploitation. Some things can’t be advance beyond the status quo, for example the existence of exploitation.
It’s how your original comment and the clarification both read for me. Advancing past the status quo of oligarchs exploiting workers is what you have seemed to me as rejecting as impossible.
Exploitation is universal amongst humans. There are no divisions, such as class, that distinguish between humans who exploit others and humans who don’t exploit others. There are no groups of humans without exploitation. There are no humans who don’t exploit others.
Socialists understand exploitation as the relationship by which one societal class, called owners, claims as profit value generated by the labor provided by another class, called workers.
Such kind of relationship is particular to historical periods, and is not universal or inevitable within any human society generally.
Socialists have found class analysis to be the most broadly useful framework to understand social systems.
Socialists understand exploitation as the relationship by which one societal class, called owners, claims as profit value generated by the labor provided by another class, called workers.
Exploitation is simply a term chosen to describe a kind of relationship that has appeared on our current economic systems.
You are free to use the same word in other contexts, but your objection is not particularly meaningful in juxtaposition to your previous ones, and your complaints are obviously more directly motivated for obfuscation than by sincerity.
I don’t take that as a doomer view at all. It’s the view that we must eliminate bosses. Which, to me, is actually a far more positive view than the one that sees having bosses as inevitable, but simply wants slightly higher compensation from the slave masters.
Biden’s performances might help build sympathies for unions from among those who have been doubtful, for those who are on a journey away from neoliberal ideology, but the actual power of unions comes from within them and from their allies.
It is best to encourage everyone to continue fighting on the ground, and not to be distracted by elite pageantry.
At least in regards to the UAW, I think he is actually genuine. It’s actually a major historic landmark for a president to join a picket line. I know some people that are organizers for the historic unions in the games industry, they were invited to the white house to discuss labor and the working class. The one and only major blow to this historic support was shutting down the rail workers. To me, he’s meeting the incredibly low bar of being “the most pro union president”, however the way the rail workers were forced to accept their contract highlights that he is still a center-right liberal.
It’s a good view right now in this instance, and although historic what is the concrete effect of him joining a picket line? He can easily still be working against the ultimate goals of the unions. Though the backlash if he took obvious action against the unions could be much worse now that he has been seen in such a way. But yeah, we shouldn’t be too critical because it is still above what most politicians do in regards to unions.
I agree with the comment currently below mine not to let this sort of gesture diffuse the drive for deeper changes.
What do you think it means, though, for Biden to be genuine?
Capital consistently uses all its muscle to press political leaders to strengthen corporations and to repress workers. F. Roosevelt is often credited with building the welfare state in the US, but did so only once labor had become strong enough that he and other capitalists feared a revolution. Later, the dismantling of welfare and unions occurred in tandem. For politicians to apply their power in favor of workers, we must have the power to press them even more strongly than capital.
Is it really possible that Biden can help achieve worker objectives impelled merely by his own personal conviction?
I think that Biden believes he is personally doing what he believes is right to support US workers, which is what makes him genuine. As someone previously confined to the liberal mind prison, I can also see how a liberal would justify breaking the rail workers strike. FDR was evolutionary in capitalist society with SocDem. At the time, we moved away from resource backed currency to fiat currency. This liberated the US from debt, as the money essentially had the same amount of worth as the resource and labor capital available to the state. The federal government was completely and fully aware of this, and the first red scare confined workers to liberal ideas of labor-capital relations. Biden is also evolutionary in this situation. He is not doing anything to directly or materially improve conditions for workers, but he is instilling into the minds of future generations that organized labor is the only way forward.
I think he may be “personally doing what he believes is right”. Only, I feel doubtful that such a characterization has any significance for future events. POTUS may be more powerful than others, but his power, like all power, comes from within a system of power. Development of the broader structure with the overall system seems to me far more interesting and relevant than what Biden believes is right.
Ultimately whether it is genuine or not is irrelevant. This is politics so the real question is: what effect will it have on the movement? How will it affect the negotiations going on?
How about making any kind of move to reverse “right to work” laws that make it essentially impossible to even try to unionize? I’ll pay attention when someone is willing to go to bat against these anti-worker abominations.
The party of unions in the US is a massive coalition party. I’m not a Democrat, but it’s really the only option that isn’t actively regressive. Just remember that you get your guns back when you move far enough left
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