Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate

 The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 had the champions of capitalism crowing that history had ended, that there was no alternative to the “magic of the marketplace.” Historical developments since then have given some credence to this view, as even China has rapidly moved from socialism to capitalism and in the process become a global economic powerhouse. But while the triumph of capitalism over socialism appears to many to have marked the final demise of the radical project, appearances can be deceiving. The disappearance of the Soviet Union weakened the strength of our most powerful ideological construct—anti-communism. Practically every dimension of life in the United States has been organized around fear of and opposition to communism. Any critic of capitalism was charged with being a red or having communist sympathies and could not hope to have much influence. Radicals were purged from the schools, from the government, from the unions, and they were denied access to the media. Communism was the embodiment of evil, and those who were communists or in any way sympathetic to its ideals were evil people, deserving of public scorn, prison, or, if necessary, death. Read More

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 I began teaching, at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, in 1969. I was twenty-three years old. Like all new employees, I had to fill out employment forms. One of them concerned my pension. I had to mark my expected retirement date. Everyone then considered sixty-five to be the normal retirement age, so I added sixty-five to my birth year of 1946 and wrote down 2011. Read More

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 In the United States, radical labor education had great vitality from the heyday of the Socialist Party and the IWW before the First World War until the end of the Second World War. In fact, much of the impetus for labor education came from the left, and a good deal of what was taught had an explicit or implicit anti-capitalist bias.  This reflected the fact that there were strong progressive currents within the labor movement throughout this time.  Even the conservative American Federation of Labor, which was usually strongly opposed to any critical labor education, sometimes supported schools with a radical focus.  Socialists and communists found havens in the left-wing political parties and the industrial union movement, and their students did the same. Read More

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  While unions are indispensable organizations of the working class, they are not likely to lead a radical social transformation. They face inherent constraints. First, unions may replicate already existing divisions within the working class. Many occupations are segregated by gender. Nearly all coal miners are men. A union of coal miners is unlikely, therefore, to attack gender discrimination. It is more likely that sexism will become deeply rooted in the union itself. The same can be said about racial divisions. Black and white workers may cooperate in a strike and may work side by side, but this does not mean that the union will actively confront the racism that is pervasive in the United States. Second, unions are defensive organizations. In their day-to-day operations, they will be inclined to accept capitalism as a fact of life and try to do the best for their members within its confines. A union may begin with a radical perspective, but over time it is likely to accommodate itself to capitalism and “pragmatically” maneuver within it. In fact, acceptance of capitalism may become the ideology of a labor movement, as is true for most unions in the United States. Not only do U.S. labor leaders accept the system, but they have collaborated with employers to undermine attempts by workers here and abroad to forge radical labor organizations. Read More

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  We are on our way to Amherst, Massachusetts, where I will be teaching a two-week course in labor economics to labor union brothers and sisters.  I have been a labor educator for thirty years. I have taught working people, mostly union leaders and members, a wide variety of courses in all kinds of settings. I have taught economics to auto workers in eight-hour seminars held in motel conference rooms, collective bargaining to local workers throughout Western Pennsylvania in six weekly three-hour classes meeting in smoky union halls, labor economics to union leaders in an MA program at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and online classes at other colleges and universities. Read More

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