The First Amendment Doesn't Apply in the Workplace For a Reason

Richard Mellor

When I first came to the US, and spoke about how important a national health care system is, many workers thought that it was socialism or communism. I also had a hard time grasping the fact that US schoolchildren had drills where they hid under their desks as a safety measure in the face of a nuclear attack. It’s somewhat comical thinking hiding under a desk might save you from a nuclear blast.

 

In this video above, Marxist economist Richard Wolff gives an excellent explanation of the root cause of the hysteria surrounding the victory of self-described democratic socialist Zohar Mamdami in the New York City Democratic Primaries. He also explains that this present hysteria is an extension of the post WW1 propaganda about communist infiltration in US society.

 

Wolff gives a little history pointing out that that many cities in the US have had socialist mayors. The Socialist Party was a major factor in the period that Prof. Wolff covers here. In addition to his examples, I would mention Eugene Debs, one of the most prominent and respected socialists in US labor history. Debs ran for President in 1920 from his prison cell where he was serving a 10-year sentence for violating the sedition act by speaking publicly against war and sending young American’s to fight in them: “The sedition act was an anti-free speech measure passed at the behest of President Woodrow Wilson. The law made it illegal for a U.S. citizen to ‘willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the United States government’ or to discourage compliance with the draft or voluntary enlistment into the military” . (1) 

 

Yes, history is repeating itself. 

 

It’s likely that most members of the International Brotherhood of Carpenters are unaware that the union’s founder, and a prominent figure in the early decades of the US labor movement, P. J. McGuire, was also a socialist.

 

Listening to Prof. Wolff’s explanation about the ferocious objection of the capitalist class to any aspect of democratic rights that workers have won in society in general being introduced in the workplace they control reminded me of my experience with it in my role as a union steward. The First Amendment is cherished by most US workers but early on in my union experience I found myself having to make it very clear to those I represented that the First Amendment doesn’t apply in the workplace. It’s not just that you might not that promotion; it’s actually a direct challenge to the (god given)  right of the capitalist class to own and direct the labor process.

 

The social rights we have won over a few centuries of class warfare, that the capitalist class fought using all the resources at their disposal, the state, it’s police, it’s courts and at time private thugs like the Pinkerton’s, have been even more viciously opposed when these rights enter the realm of the labor process. This is why the bosses’ hate unions.

 

The idea that the capitalist owns the workplace and the right to direct the activity in the workplace is pumped in to society through the main institutions of capitalism; the mass media, the universities which are capitalist thinks tanks, the education system and their allies in the pulpit. They create the wealth is the propaganda and this system we call capitalism and the so-called free market is the only way society and the means of producing society’s needs can be structured. 

 

(1) Eugene Debs: When a prisoner ran for president