I stuck in a couple articles from the vast library of all those things one could look up on CHEAP LABOR. This is seems like one heck of an end around, hitting this subject like this. It is so plain, cut and dry on how all of us everyday folks and even a lot of some non-regular people are sliced up through the very labors that support us all. This sounds like the gift phrase that just keeps giving
Put these articles in there because they seem to be so far a field (yes eclectic) but are on the same subject really, more populated ideals are a foot I am sure.
http://www.takelifeback.com/oto/otoh169.htmOn the Other Hand...
Abolition, not "Reform"
by Jim Davies
(snip)
Slavery today is more than four times more prevalent than it was a century and a half ago. Then, some 10% of the population lost 100% of the product of their labor, so you could say America was 10% enslaved. Today, 100% of the population loses 45% of our labor (in taxes, to federal, state and local governments) and so by the same reckoning America in 1996 is 45% enslaved. And even that says nothing about the enslavement caused by the way our Owners spend our money to curtail our personal, non-financial liberties.
So if Abolition was a just cause then, and it certainly was, Abolition is at least four and a half times more urgently needed now. If Reform would have been wrong and irrelevant then, it's at least four and a half times more wrong now.
Practical, Too
The moral argument against slavery is so powerful as really to need no other; but today we Abolitionists are all but drowned out by all the cacophany of Establishment opinion, so it will do no harm to point out that for practical reasons too, Reform is irrelevant and impossible. For all their many great faults, I do believe that every politician ever elected went to his office with the wish to reform things somewhat; to eliminate some waste. Their utter failure testifies to how futile is the idea of reform; even if our little Texan friend got to the White House, four years later we'd be no better off - worse, in that any improvements would have been introduced with the cracking of a whip. Recall: the most efficient government of modern times was Adolf Hitler's.
So the practical argument against modern slavery is that government doesn't work. They harder the try, the more they fail. That's the title of the book by Libertarian Presidential Candidate Harry Browne; he systematically demonstrates that every major social problem tackled by government has been made worse, not better, and explains why it must always be so, because of the very nature of government. You really ought to read it, before watching even one more complacent commentary by a TV Talking Head. (snip)
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=02/05/13/1950526An Anarchist Program For Labor
by Wayne Price (NEFAC-NYC)
(snip, near the bottom)
Similarly, in the 1990s, the government pressed racketeering charges against union officials of the Teamsters and decided to oversee elections. A decent reformer, Ron Carey, was elected, with the support of the reform group, Teamsters for a Democratic Union.
It is a mistake to call for or support state intervention in the unions. Despite apparent advantages, it means letting an agent of the ruling class make internal decisions about the workers' organizations. The union bureaucracy is also an agent of the capitalist class and the State, but the union is one of the few organizations still "owned" by the workers. Their aim should be to get rid of the bureaucracy, not to increase State intervention. Rank-and-file organizations should be built to fight the bureacracy, rather than relying on reformist labor lawyers.
If the State does intervene, anarchists must decide how to relate to the union reformists. The reformists' willingness to use State intervention is one issue but not the only one (considering that the incumbent bureaucracy is also an agent of the capitalists). Often we may support the oppositionists, in order to open up the union and make room for more militancy and democracy - which should have been done in the miners and the Teamsters' elections just mentioned. But anarchists must warn of the limitations of the reformists' program (including its support of the State, as well as other limitations).
The danger of relying on the State was demonstrated in the Teamsters' Union. After helping Carey get elected, the government overseer of elections banned him from running in the next national election, even though he may have been the most popular candidate! The excuse was his use of some financial tricks to aid his re-election - not nice, but not remarkable in the unions. This guaranteed the election of James Hoffa, Jr., the candidate of the conservative bureaucracy. What the State gives with one hand, it can take away with the same hand.
(snip)
on edit and btw I was not trying to make anything stick on as a name per say, just the terminolgy fits, so just reiterating the facts, thanks for maybe thinking about it.
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