Forgetting the Past

Brazilian mother finds
three year-old son
petting head of 5 foot alligator.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I believe this seemingly true statement can be attributed to George Santayana. I confess I wonder if Republicans (and those corporate interests who support them) cannot remember the past or are just so ignorant and uninformed they are not even aware of the past. If history is any guide it shows conclusively that every time capital (management) has tried to overly exploit labor, they have failed and, in fact, have had to eventually give in to the latter. I guess our current Republicans, like Governor Walker of Wisconsin, are unaware of the “Great Strike of 1877,” when, for the first time in history there was a nation-wide strike against the abuses of management: “The Great Strike of 1877 was unique in American history. Within a few days the pent-up frustration of the previous years poured forth in a spontaneous shout of ‘Enough!’ Within a week, some five hundred thousand workers walked off their jobs from New Jersey to San Francisco in the first nationwide strike in American history (Michael A. Bellesiles, 1877:2010:145). Similarly, I guess they are also unaware of the labor unrest, strikes, riots, and virtually unprecedented violence in the early 1900’s when fed-up laborers took the law into their own hands and blew up plants and often brought production to a standstill. Republicans, now supported by enormous corporate wealth and increased corporate arrogance, seem to have no knowledge of where our 8 hour work day came from, or the 40 hour work week, or various benefits that American workers now enjoy (still far less than many European workers enjoy). In every case workers were united by the excesses of corporate greed, repeatedly cutting wages, offering no benefits, and expecting labor to be content with wages that did not even allow them enough to feed their families: “We eat our hard bread and tainted meat two days old on the sooty cars up the road, and when we come home, find our children gnawing bones and our wives complaining they cannot even buy hominy.”(Bellesiles, 2010:146). Typically, if workers complained they were told they could just quit and find a job elsewhere. There was, in 1877, not even a suggestion that management should ever sit down and bargain with labor. When workers threatened to strike or did strike the immediate response was to overcome them with unremitting violence. Eventually, as we know, workers slowly did manage to win some concessions, better pay, better working conditions, better benefits and so on. These concessions from management did not come easily by any stretch of the imagination.

Of course we cannot say that the conditions of workers in the U.S. in the year 2011 are anywhere even nearly as bad as they were in the early 1900’s. The situation, however, is similar. We know that wages have not kept up with inflation, and, indeed, have actually gone down in recent years. We also know that corporate greed has remained as always if not grown even worse. The benefit s of technology and increased worker efficiency have not been shared with labor but have gone instead to the wealthy and corporations. Many workers have lost their pensions and in some instances even their homes, some have been unemployed for so long they cannot even draw unemployment compensation or even expect to find jobs. Millions of children live in poverty, thousands upon thousands are homeless. Unions have systematically been reduced in membership and importance. The distribution of wealth in the U.S. is more skewed toward the upper one or two percent than ever before, and corporations now possess more power than ever before. They also are making profits far in excess of ever before. A few people have fortunes measured in the billions, some traders on Wall Street make a billion a year. This is precisely the same situation that obtained in 1877 and again in the early 1920’s, with the unequal distribution of wealth, when workers united and brought about significant changes.

It is also precisely the conditions that obtain now, and it appears that workers are once again, so fed up with the injustices and abuses they are on the verge of once again taking action against them. This has been provoked by the actions of the Governor of Wisconsin, acting on behalf of billionaires and corporate interests. Not content with forcing financial concessions from the workers of that state, he insists they give up their hard-fought and basic right to collective bargaining. This has resulted in massive protests by unions and union supporters, not only in Wisconsin but also around the U.S. There are supposed to be demonstrations in all State Capitals tomorrow. Organizing such massive protests are now made much easier than they were in 1877 or 1900 because of the internet. Even if these protests do not appear large or completely well-organized tomorrow, having been put together very quickly, they should serve as a warning to those who would take away the rights of workers they will once again fail. I suspect that in fact union membership will begin to grow again, labor will once again acquire more influence, and eventually the greedy bastards will have lost once again.

LKBIQ:
Bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything, do not work."
Karl Marx

TILT:
The Carib language has been considered extinct since 1920.