A Different Kind of Shutdown: What if progressives took a page from the Tea Party?

[marmar]

from In These Times:



A Different Kind of Shutdown
What if progressives took a page from the Tea Party?

BY Bhaskar Sunkara


During the height of this fall’s government shutdown, Obama spoke to factory workers about Republican intransigence in Congress. He asked them: If they wanted a raise and more vacation time, would they just shut down the plant and walk off the job?

Telling the story to reporters, the president recalled, “I said, ‘How do you think that would go?’ They all thought they’d be fired. And I think most of us think that. You know, there’s nothing wrong with asking for a raise or asking for more time off. But you can’t burn down the plant or your office if you don’t get your way. Well, the same thing is true here. … The American people do not get to demand a ransom for doing their jobs.”

The thing is: They once did exactly that. Workers never got anything by asking nicely. They got it by striking, picketing, and yes, occasionally dynamiting their employers. But in an era of declining industrial action, when few are inculcated in the traditions of union solidarity and the strike, those memories have faded. Obama wants to see them completely forgotten.

During the height of New Deal-era militancy, nearly all of General Motors’ 150,000 production workers were involved in a workplace shutdown or factory occupation. “Every time a dispute came up,” one UAW member remembered, “the fellows would have a tendency to sit down and just stop working.” ........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/15798/a_different_kind_of_shutdown/

[MyshkinCommaPrince]

1. Hmm.

Comparisons of the government shutdown to workers going on strike trouble me. The former was an abuse of power by those who held it, the latter an effort by the relatively powerless to improve their situation. The responsibilities that come with holding power are ignored if we equate these two things. The difference in the validity of similar strategies when used by the powerful or the powerless is ignored. These points should be discussed. Otherwise the government shutdown seems validated by comparison with worker strikes, or worker strikes seem invalidated by comparison with the shutdown. The two cases may or may not involve similar strategies or tactics, but they are contextually quite different.

This is one of those areas where the Right is able to work a sort of inversion on us, by placing us on the defensive. We seem like the powerful establishment, they seem like the revolutionaries. They have the appearance of holding the cultural vanguard position, they seem more dynamic. Revolutionary techniques seem valid when they apply them, even if they apply them from their position as part of the powerful establishment, even though they seek not change as progress but as destruction of past progress. Their movement has immense wealth and power backing it, arguably more than our movements have, yet they make us seem like the conservatives who are resisting change. This helps them pull off various abuses of power without great risk of being called out for it. Every time they get away with an abuse of power, it becomes a precedent which can be exploited in their future efforts.

We really need to talk about power dynamics, the difference between progressive and regressive change, power and responsibility, and related matters. There is such a thing as "society", we are all in this together. In so many ways the Right has made great strides by undermining public belief in "society" as a valid concept. We are all citizens. Only those with money are consumers.

I sense that I may be somewhat incoherent. Umm. Apologies. Need more coffee.

[hootinholler]

2. The only page in the teabagger book I'm interested in

Is the one that says The End