[p2p-research] Facing the Economic Crisis | Stanley Aronowitz

[Paul D. Fernhout]

http://www.stanleyaronowitz.org/new/facing-the-economic-crisis
"""
Since the 1950s, Organized Labor has hitched its fate to capital. During the 
Cold War it shed all of its socialist ideas and a good number of its 
militant socialist and communist activists as well. In fact, union leaders 
have come to believe that capitalism is in their and their members’ best 
interests and that full-blown systemic opposition is tantamount to political 
and economic suicide. This attitude was already encouraged during the heyday 
of the New Deal, but reached its apogee during the Cold War – when the 
permanent war economy and US global economic power enabled key sections of 
the American working class to achieve an unprecedented degree of job and 
income security. Of course, a major element in the new perception that 
workers were an integral part the corporate capitalist order was the 
initiation by the state and its financial partners of an extensive credit 
system that permitted working-class people to borrow money with which to own 
their homes, send children to college, go on vacations, and regularly update 
their cars. After the defeat of Congressional legislation that would have 
established a National Health Service and the stagnation of the social 
security (pension) system, unions in key industries (such as steel, auto, 
coal, electrical, communications, oil and transportation) negotiated a 
“private” welfare state with their employers, thereby taking the air out of 
efforts to enact a publicly-financed universal health care program and 
extend the welfare state. The bare truth is that since the passage of the 
Wage-Hour law of 1938, the only major extension of the welfare state was 
Medicare, passed in 1966. While the unions can take considerable credit for 
its passage, they were moved only to apply the necessary pressure after they 
found that “their” corporations refused to insure retirees.
"""

Key point: "a private welfare state".

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/