Unions & Class Struggle

Labor unions need to recruit fighters, and educate them about union history. We don’t just need more membership, we need educated fighters who understand how politics work, how politicians and corporate media manipulate what the working people are told. They need to understand the GOP and the Democratic parties and who supports these politicians and who donates money to them. The Art of War says you must understand your enemy as well as yourself in order to win any fight against that enemy. This is the time for union members to think critical thinking skills, to examine what they are told and to critique systems of power, culture and political assumptions; to ask the broader questions of meaning and morality once sustained by the humanities. The unions formerly concentrated on the class struggle, and in those days unions filled its leadership with people who sought broad social and political changes and rights for the working class, but now these positions have been transformed into negotiators for the corporations. If the unions and the liberal class loses the fight for workers rights, there will be just a corporate state that will bust all remaining unions, and we will lose all of our rights like an eight hour work day, Social Security, Medicare, pensions, work safety laws, and there will be no minimum wage. The people working from home as a 1099 (independent contractors) have no benefits whatsoever, and think they don’t need them until they do. Unions and their members need to get over the fear of the word “socialism,” which has been distorted by the GOP, and fight for a new New Deal, which the GOP with help from some so-called Democrats have been systemically dismantling these rights in the years after World War II because the GOP called these basic rights as scary socialism. The definition of unions should fall under the word of liberalism, which formed largely as a response to the dissolution of the feudalism and church authoritarianism, which argued for noninterference or independence under the rule of law. It incorporates a few aspects of ancient Athenian philosophy as expressed by Pericles and the Sophists, but was a philosophical system that marked a radical departure with both Aristotelian thought and Medieval Theory classical liberalism. Our union leaders need to educate all their people and their families so we can have a strong fighting force and be able to keep filling the ranks as the fight for our rights and a good standard of living. This is the best time to put a plan together for things will change so let’s change them for the better for workers. Unions could begin by creating a public relations campaign and if done right, not only would this campaign would it educate the members but the public as to the benefits of unions to not to the workers but the community at large.