Geekout Bookmarks 9/1/2013 (tags)
This is an irregular experimental feature to gather the links which I've posted to facebook and twitter over the past few days into a short digest. Most of the links are mainstream. I'll try to do better next time. Enjoy.
The Left, Labor and Occupy (tags)
Barely half a year after it burst on the scene, the Occupy Wall Street movement is splintering left and right. This was inevitable in a movement that was united only in what it opposed and could never put forward a positive program, whether of reformist "demands" on the capitalist state or of revolutionary action against it. Liberals, who latched onto Occupy hoping it could pressure the Democratic Party in a more populist direction, want to expel "black bloc" anarchists. Reformist social democrats rail against "ultraleftists" in Occupy and cozy up to the labor tops. On the other side, many (but not all) anarchists oppose unions. Some are simply arrogant petty-bourgeois labor haters. Others are grappling with real problems, but with skewed analysis and dead wrong conclusions. Discussion of recent workers' struggles, from Wisconsin to West Coast longshore, underlines that the key question is leadership, but not just replacing one set of bureaucrats with another. Unions have always faced vicious anti-labor laws, but we have the power to defeat them. It is necessary to drive out the pro-capitalist bureaucracy, the labor lieutenants of capital, in order to turn the unions into instruments of revolutionary class struggle.
Remarks by Richard L. Trumka, President, AFL-CIO, National Press Club, Washington, DC (tags)
Our economy does not work without good jobs, so we must take action now to restore workers' voices in America. The systematic silencing of American workers by denying our right to form unions is at the heart of the disappearance of good jobs in America. We must pass the Employee Free Choice Act so that workers can have the chance to turn bad jobs into good jobs, and so we can reduce the inequality which is undermining our prospects for stable economic growth. And we must do it now—not next year, not even this summer. Now.
The War on Working Americans - Part I (tags)
Working Americans are losing out in the war waged against them.
Is Change to Win enough? (tags)
Changes are afoot in the mainstream labor movement. Are they enough?