Empire:
No doubt one is a wretched plebian harassed by debts and military service, but to make up for it, one is a Roman citizen one has one’s share in the task of ruling other nations and dictating their laws, according to Sigmund Fraud in The Future of Illusion, 1927.
This is the thinking of the GOP’s Tea Party people, who believe we are the best country in the world and all other countries should be like us. These people they are a part of an empire and think it will never end. This is again an illusion told to the uninformed GOP followers who blindly listen to the talking heads who are funded by the oligarchies. The GOP Tea Party members are not the only people with an illusion of an empire.
Our union leaders also fall into this trap by not voicing their opinion on U.S. trade and foreign policy for it is usually so bad and explosive that is normally avoided in polite company within the union movement. Every action or failure to act has consequences and labor silence on questions of empire building has made the movement largely complicit in the actions of the U.S. government and the world stage. This collusion has come at a great cost at home and abroad yet the labor movement sees foreign policy as irrelevant.
Labor needs to fight for social justice and get over the illusion of the USA as a worldwide empire and focus on our needs at home like a living wage, pensions and good healthcare, free education and the protection of our commons. The unions could start by getting behind the $15 to $18 an hour minimum wage which would set the wage bar and force the Walmart-type businesses to do the same. Then maybe you could think about the U.S. being an empire in social justice if other countries followed.
To change the abundance of labor in the world is to put more money in the pockets of the laborer to buy the products their fellow workers are making. Otherwise, when there are more products than money, there is slump in the economy. Austerity policies, low wages and automation (robots) were also of concern in the 1950s when Henry Ford II, CEO of Ford, took Walter Reuther, head of the United Auto Workers Union, on a tour of a new engine plant.
Ford gestured to a fleet of new machines and said, “Walter, how are you going to get these robots to pay union dues?” The union leader turned to Ford and said, “Henry, how are you going to get robots to buy your cars?”
This type of change in the labor has created a new type of working class that swings from task to task in order to make ends meet while enduring the loss of labor rights and bargaining rights. They are called “precariat” workers, a group of workers who live on the verge of collapse due to the instability of the nature of their job…