Guest Author
Today is the U.S. Labor Day. It’s not, by the way, American Labor Day. People in other countries on the two American continents celebrate workers on other days in other ways.
But today is our Labor Day and I, like many of you, have received from a politician a peppy greeting of Happy Labor Day this morning. “Oh good,” I said to myself. “Let’s see what policies this politician is proposing in order to support workers.”
Oops, no. Just platitudes; things I call Bulworthian bromides of little value.
In the back window of my car there’s a “bumper sticker” that reads “Workers of the world, admit it.” It’s a request for unity across all identities and employment categories of those who work for a living to inadvertently or purposely enrich the most wealthy in our country and the world. It’s a request to acknowledge class politics as being crucial to progress for all of us.
Since the mid-‘70s, the investor class, industry leaders and global corporate executives have organized themselves to successfully dominate the political system. It creates laws and policies facilitating the redistribution of the largest share of gains of the economy to their control.
That wasn’t always so and isn’t some sort of inevitable result of a mythical invisible hand. It’s the result of organized political pressure using extreme wealth to pursue legal bribery in our corrupt political system.
Working people far outnumber those of extreme wealth and the super executive class. Their weakness, though, is caused largely through distraction, willful ignorance, lethargy and an unwillingness to prioritize issues in order to deal with the core problems of our political economic system.
If the oppressive wealthy and various types of bigots have any fear it has always been that people of all races, ethnicities, genders, orientations, ages, education levels and employment categories might organize together to strengthen democracy and build a just nation with an economy for the whole people and an environment impervious to the vicious degradation of industrial technology.
History has shown no other way.
Organized political action with shared, clearly stated goals based on principles of justice and equity have worked effectively since the founding of our country. Think of the successful use of the revolutionary principles that created the United State as they have been applied in movements for the abolition of slavery, the labor movement, populism, black liberation, the women’s movement, and the LGBT movement.
Great progress has been made, but much needs to be done. It’s now time to “admit” that we’re in this together, to organize, to move forward, and to act as a people for the common good.
Pat Fowler is a retired social worker who reads books, writes some and is a secular, socialist preacher. He lives in Tallahassee, Fla. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
