Class War in America: the Book |
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to download this material for personal, not-for-profit, use. If you duplicate it for others, attribute it to Charles M. Kelly, and with a link to this site. Print copies are still available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and used copies are widely available on the internet. 9. The
Coalition from Workers’ Hell: Republicans
and Conservative Democrats When Harry Truman campaigned for president in 1948, he beat a coalition of Republicans and rebellious southern conservative Democrats by asking voters: “How many times do you have to be hit on the head before you find out who’s hitting you?” Of course, he answered the question and won the election, despite the common assumption that conservatives had been able to convince voters that they would be better for the economy and, therefore, better for workers. That
same coalition had previously passed the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 over
President Truman’s veto. Taft-Hartley allowed states to pass
“right-to-work” laws, which made it almost impossible for unions to gain a
foothold in them. The southern
and western states that passed these anti-worker laws were then able to
attract industry from other states that didn’t offer corporations a
union-free environment, with its guaranteed low wages and draconian
working conditions. Thus
began the exodus of industry from the North to the South, and the
degeneration of pay and working conditions in the North. This very same
coalition, Republicans and conservative Democrats, has done it to workers
again. NAFTA and the WTO are today’s equivalent of the Taft-Hartley Bill
of 1947. Except now, the strategy of pitting workers from different states
against each other has been extended to the world “free market.”
Apparently, today’s voters have been conned into believing that it is a
good idea to pit workers of the world against American
workers. Clinton:
A Moderate Republican
Truman
also attacked Wall Street, and “the profiteers and the privileged class.”
“Those Republicans are cold men...they want a return of the Wall Street
economic dictatorship.” He referred to them as “selfish men who have
always tried to skim the cream from our natural resources to satisfy their
own greed.” Contrast
the worker’s spokesman, Truman, with President Clinton, the new Republican
who won the presidency again in 1996. Since the Republicans also won
Congress, the continued growth of the wealth and income gaps between the
rich and middle-and-low- income Americans was assured. Those
who think it’s a stretch to say that Clinton is a Republican should go to
the November 7, 1996 issue of The
Wall Street Journal. According to A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard, Chairman of
the Securities Industry Association and head of Alex Brown, Inc.: “We have
a great Republican president now.” In
the same Journal article, read
the opinion of Hardwick Simmons, Chief Executive Officer of Prudential
Securities Inc.: “Here we are dead set in the center with a big long leash
around President Clinton.” According
to our number one daily conservative financial newspaper, voters wanted
Clinton to balance the extreme tendencies of both the Republicans and the
Democrats in Congress. In
other words, The Wall Street
Journal and America’s right wing have successfully changed our
definitions of balance and moderation. Traditional “Eisenhower
republicanism” (Clinton) is now considered moderation and is almost
nonexistent in the Republican party. Traditional “Truman liberalism” is
now considered extremist and is increasingly rare in the Democratic
party. This
means that corporations, Republicans and conservative Democrats (i.e.,
“big money”) have been able to convince the American voter that:
§
Workers’
wages are low, not because they lack power, but because they are
uneducated and poorly trained, and our economy isn’t growing fast
enough. §
Labor
unions are bad for workers, the economy and the
country. §
Unmanaged
free trade will eventually benefit all Americans. §
The
growing wealth and income gap in our society is good because it is fair
(the wealthy work harder, have more talent and better genes), and it will
eventually benefit everyone. §
The
more money our richest citizens take out of our corporations and our
society—and invest overseas—the better off everyone will be.
§
High
taxes on our richest citizens are unfair and would cause the economy to
slow down and would destroy jobs. §
And,
in general, people who don’t believe these absurdities are socialists or
even worse. If
current trends continue, America’s investors will continue to get richer,
they will give even more money to their propagandistic think tanks, and
America will continue its drift to the far right. Always
Two Parties in the South Contrary
to popular belief, there have always been two political parties in the
South.1 Prior to the 1960s, the two southern parties consisted
of the “Bourbon” Democrats and the liberal Democrats. The Bourbon
Democrats represented the interests of the land owners, the big farmers,
the corporations and the wealthy in general. The
liberal Democrats represented the interests of working-class Americans and
were more receptive to civil rights. The real election in the South was
not the national election; it was the primary election when voters chose
which kind of Democrat would represent the party. In
the ’60s, to take advantage of southern resentment, Republicans correctly
blamed civil rights legislation on liberal Democrats. To defend themselves
against such attacks—even to join in the attacks—the Bourbon
Democrats became Republicans and the national shift to conservatism began
in earnest. Not
surprisingly, many of the liberal Democrats who supported civil rights
lost their elections. By turning workers against the “biased liberal news
media” (who were supposedly telling lies about the deplorable conditions
for blacks in the South), “pointy-headed-liberals,” and the liberal
Democrats who supported civil rights, conservatives were able to sweep the
South. Unfortunately,
too many workers failed to realize that the politicians who fought for the
rights of minorities were the same ones who had always fought for
pro-worker legislation. Republicans and Bourbon Democrats—who had always
supported anti-worker, pro-investor legislation—became the workers’ newly
adopted anti-civil-rights heroes. As
a result, many of today’s southern Republicans used to be Bourbon
Democrats, and many conservative “Democrats”—who never switched
parties—are closet Republicans. They talk “worker” in their speeches, but
they practice “wealthy investor” in their legislation and their
policies. In
the areas of the financial markets, some aspects of big business and free
world trade, Clinton is a classic example of a closet Republican. The Wall Street Journal reported
on a meeting of frustrated Republicans who met in January, 1999 to seek “a
message and a messenger”: Imagine
Republicans’ funk. From all the states, party leaders have come here this
weekend seeking a message and a messenger, only to find that the closest
they can get is: President Clinton. “He has co-opted so much of
our agenda,” bemoans Michael Hellon, Arizona’s state party chairman and
member of the Republican National Committee. “You might say he’s the most
articulate spokesman we have for Republican
issues.”2 On
other popular 1999 issues, such as the environment, worker health and
safety, gun control, education, and social security, Clinton acts more
like a traditional Democrat. For example, while he supports more funding
for government programs such as OSHA, the Republicans continue their
strong opposition. Under the head, “Business Groups and Allies in Congress
Seek to Block OSHA Ergonomics Plan,” The Wall Street Journal reported
that: Mr.
Ballenger, [R., NC] a business owner who heads a House subcommittee on
workforce protection, said he and other House Republicans would vigorously
fight the OSHA plan unless “sound research” is presented to justify such a
move…. From 1996 to 1998,
congressional Republicans had passed spending restrictions prohibiting
OSHA from studying, drafting or implementing an ergonomics
standard.3 So,
while the Republicans are, and it looks like they always will be, totally Republican—Clinton is
wrong only half of the time. Of course, in the case of OSHA it was an easy
slam-dunk for him to be a traditional Democrat. After all, OSHA was
proposing the humane, moral, and economically sound protection of an
estimated 25 million workers in production jobs, as well as an
undetermined number of secretaries, data processors and others who work at
keyboards. And
the Republicans—after having denied the agency funding for research, then
opposed its ergonomics plan because of a lack of research—raised the
standard for sanctimonious hypocrisy to a world-record
high. Still,
despite their obvious anti-worker biases, Republicans and conservative
Democrats dominate American politics. How they’ve been able to appeal to
working-class voters and get them to vote against their own best interests
is a classic study of the demagogic effectiveness of deliberately
deceptive propaganda—and the subject of Part 2. Now go to:
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