I was just talking with a guy who comes in the coffeeshop before work for a quick read of the sports page and a caffeine boost. He’s a counselor at a community college here in California. He’s a big sports fan, and as he sat down I mentioned that I could win money betting on what section you open up first.
He laughed and asked me what the article was about that I was reading. I showed him the piece which was a report on this weeks primaries. This led to us both griping about the pathetic state of US politics. The amount of money is staggering.
“How can a political system be termed democratic when a candidate spends over $70 million dollars on TV ads”, he says. It’s democratic in the sense that anyone with $74 million can challenge her, or maybe $20 million but you can bamboozle the public less with less money. He is a decent guy, politically liberal and probably votes Democratic. But he said that he was thinking about not voting in the California governor’s race between Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay.
Working people as usual have no representatives. Brown, a Democrat and former governor is already boasting that he “twice faced down” state employee Unions. Public sector workers are in for a rough time ahead as the capitalist mass media blames us for the economic crisis, the reason for tax hikes and failed public schools. This offensive is made easier by the heads of organized Labor who accept that workers have to make concessions making it impossible for them to launch a counter offensive. California is a heavily Unionized state by US standards with all the vital industries organized, we have tremendous potential power, power to bring to a halt an economy that represents 12% or more of US GDP
The Union leadership’s failed strategy of supporting the Democrats has driven millions of workers out of the political process altogether. It also contributes to the mistaken view among many workers that all politics is bad, that all politicians are corrupt as opposed to the reality that they represent class interests and this dictates their actions; a political party does not exist in a vacuum, it represents social forces.
This week’s primaries brought more of the same from the political strategists atop organized Labor. In Arkansas they took sides in an intra party race between two Democrats and came out on the losing end of the deal as their candidate lost. They spent $10 million of their member’s hard earned dues money in that folly.
Ricky Belk, secretary -treasurer of the Arkansas AFL-CIO defended their decision, “This might sound somewhat Pollyanna-ish but we truly feel it is worthwhile if we’re out there doing what we believe to be on the side of working families.” The Arkansas loss is part of a historic list of losses. For working people, we lose even if they win.
The reason the heads of organized Labor worry little about this is they are safer than CEO’s when it comes to wages, benefits and job security. There was only one contested election for leader of the AFL-CIO throughout the entire 20th century. The president of my former Union, Gerald McEntee of AFSCME, has been in office since 1981. Any organization that has the same figure at the top for 29 years is an unhealthy one. With security like this they feel quite confident in their plans to spend another $150 million across 20 states in this election cycle.
I remember being at a Central Labor Council meeting one time and another delegate who was one of the few who was also elected and actually had their feet firmly planted in the rank and file, berated the leasership for never discussing these endless failures, the repeated pouring of worker’s money in to the Democratic Party coffers and providing foot soldiers for Democratic candidates; that was 20 years ago and they’re still at it.
Just think of all the hullabaloo around EFCA. Remember EFCA, the Employee Free Choice Act? That’s gone the way of the shorter workweek,* more vacations, jobs and wages, in to the dustbin of history. The failures are many. If the heads of organized Labor were CEO’s of private corporations they would have been fired long ago for failing to produce the goods. They don’t mention EFCA too much, or NAFTA, or Clinton and Gore’s savaging of public sector jobs and welfare recipients as they are deathly afraid of igniting a revolt from below.
My friend considering not voting is what millions of people have already done. It’s not apathy, as another friend tells me. Voting is not an exercise in civics. People vote in the hope it will make significant changes in their lives, when it doesn’t, they withdraw. Same with paying Union dues, when they go up and wages continue to go down; why support paying them? In the last analysis of course, we have won very little through the ballot box that wasn't already taken through mass action on the streets and in the workplaces, but it is important to defend the right to vote, it was a major concession that the working class fought hard for and won.
I told him that here in California I have an alternative so I vote for Peace and Freedom Party candidates, at least I vote, as Debs once said, for something I want even though I might not get it as opposed to something I don’t want and get that. It's program is not bad.
“At some point the dam will burst” I told my friend. At some point there will be a major upheaval and to an extent there are small pockets of resistance developing everywhere; the recent education struggles, school and university occupations are all examples of what is to come. The cooperation of the Union hierarchy with the employers holds back this development but it can’t do that indefinitely. It is inevitable that an independent, mass workers political alternative will emerge through a mass movement, this is a positive step on the road to controlling our own destiny and will change the balance of forces in the political arena as the strategists of capital, presently assured that candidates from one of their parties will be elected, will be forced to ask themselves, “What do we do if they all vote for them.”
*"It is time to reduce the standard workweek, both to provide more job opportunities for an expanding workforce and to resume the historic downward trend in working hours."
(From the AFL-CIO platform proposals presented to the Democratic and Republican conventions in 1984)
"Just because you don't take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you." Pericles, 430 BC
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