Adams! Hamilton! This must be 250 year high School reunion!
The rulers are very happy with socialism wherever they can implement it. It's how they get their money. Through the redistribution of the wealth of the producers.
Too bad for them, capitalism and it's free market is gaining too much ground for them to actually win at this. It's pretty much over. Just wait for the moment when they realize it. Make sure to freeze frame those faces.
Didn't realize you were from Gawker, it makes sense though because I adored that site more than anyone living in Louisville, KY could be anticipated to love it. I also think that much of our current nightmare has been less surprising (not less awful, more drawn out though) to people who watched what happened to Gawker and how it was orchestrated. Thiel's training wheels, so to speak. I have been thinking a lot lately about guns and violence and how the people that abhor violence are going to have to decide if violence is ever justified. Your arguments about harnessing the potential of labor are spot on. Even if every worker in every industry in every state became organized it feels like violence is still a possibility coming from the current "leaders". I don't want violence but it seems unwise to refuse to consider categorically since what I want, what many of us want, is absolutely not being factored into Thiel's/Musk's/Trump's plans for the country.
the history of policing and the suppression of labor movements says that absolutely they will use violent force, theyve done it before and the apparatus exists precisely to do so again
Yes, that people died fighting for the right to have unions and the workers protections gained from organized labor is another part of history that's been (probably intentionally to a large extent) by Boomers and the following generations. The warped success of unions for various law enforcement and corrections officers to circumvent accountability while the true labor movement stagnated for years. There are a lot of historical precedents that might finally be interesting to the people who sleepwalked us into this hellscape. I'm not optimistic they're going to care in time to prevent more and worse problems that will effect all of us.
Hamilton, thanks for making this important point so clearly. I would broaden it to say that people organizing -- creating co-ops, directing their votes together, etc. can also make important changes. Our strength is in our numbers and how we recognize and use them for the common good.
Haven't we (we should know "we" by now) known ourselves to not be seekers of real power for whom "power" is, subliminally, a dirty word. We seek the ineffable force called justice to do its disembodied work. That is an aspect of equating the good with innocence, and power with malevolence. Isn't it true that nearly all popular and folk narratives teach us this orientation. We're watching the cultivation of moral illness as facilitated by wealth, which tried, forever, to promote wealth as a sign of virtue.
Organized labor as a power on our side has major weaknesses: The leaders are corruptible by union money that shift their politics to the other side. Many workers are not amenable to unionizing unless you're like the NYPD which is the secret, permanent government of NYC. Unions aren't political organizations in that their interests, their mission, is very narrow. A union can only exist as long as their industry exists, not being independent from the hand that feeds them. This isn't an anti-union rant.
There is something else, as you suggested, that can be advanced by using the crisis developing now: Developing ordinary citizens' class consciousness toward a solidarity of interests. It'll take education, art, relationships, community, nearly everything that makes life worth living in opposition to the consumerism we're trained to practice. This proposition has been well articulated but suppressed. It does, however, involve abandoning distractions like sports and mindless amusements and placing one's attention where the real sport is- the politics called for in that famous Franklin quote. Making that, not optional, but a necessity of life. That would be the kind of union that isn't merely about wages and benefits of a limited group, many of whom, BTW, are not with us if they're simplemindedly comfortable enough.
The problem that glares at us now is that we're lacking a political party that represents collectively ordinary citizens in a broad sense. The raw material is there but the opposition propaganda and mythology are vast.
I appreciate what you're saying, although I don't think all of us buy into the notion that power is bad. I've had many positions of personal power, and feel fine about that. And I have a lot of respect for people who wield power in ways that benefit the greater good. It's a myth that prevails, though, and is worth busting.
And, ya, I agree that we have to empower ordinary people so that we can transform our communities.
As much as I support unions, I agree that some are problematic.
The political party issue is huge, and all over the western world there are very few parties that represent ordinary citizens. Here in Canada, when we have a powerful candidate who supports our interests, the parties -- and I'm talking Green and NDP here, although I'm sure it's the same with Liberals and Conservatives -- aren't allowed to run.
I'd like to see an international left party, since the conservative agenda is so consolidated, and it would be great to be able to support each other between countries. I've fantasized about a party called 'Solidarity' or something like that.
We're in a very desperate situation, and I hope we're able to organize and do a major course correct.
We can't forget that BRICS is working for the same kind of thing, except with global majority countries. We have allies, just not in western countries.
Heartily agree with both Hamilton and Diana. The one weakness with the post is the word "only" unions can make a change. Pointing out the unmatched, actual, concrete power is one thing, but other actions have effects too.
I said this on Bluesky in response to Scocca's post, and I'll say it here: How were so many Good And Cool Websites headed up by a guy who apparently fits neither of those definitions?
This is brilliant, thank you! I'll be forwarding it along. I can say that, on a personal level, the union I belong to has been the only reason we adjuncts finally have health care benefits, after many years. This power is real.
I feel lost about how to get involved, particularly because I work at a small, community nonprofit. However, I recently got the contact info for a local UFCW rep, so I reached out today to do *something*.
"A strike is not a request; it is a physical fact of the world. It is a roadblock to the other side’s will. It is the strongest move that we have. … Our power is that the world can’t run without us." Totally agree, all very true, as indeed you have cogently said many times. So, what will have to happen so that those strikes happen so the world will see that things have stopped running?
It will take a lot of organizing which is sometimes difficult day to day work that has to be done. We can't just wait for the big magic general strike without doing the hard work of organizing to build the foundation.
Gregg, Worker-to-Worker organizing as espoused by the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) and Eric Blanc in his recently published book, We Are the Union, may enable us to more quickly to unionize the workforce - if we can get big labor to employ this organizing model also. There are a lot of problems with big unions, but many have reform caucuses forming within them (for example, Teamsters for a Democratic Union or TDU). I'm part of a group that's trying to get an EWOC started within our local Labor Council (members are all from local big unions). We're forming a nonprofit and would jointly sponsor the EWOC with the labor council, looking to them for funding and meeting spaces.
Those all sound like excellent grassroots things. I've not heard of any of them before, which perhaps is an indictment of my news consumption habits as much as anything, but all the same getting our business-as-usual media to pay attention to anything other than the administration's latest flood of lies, sports, and the Kardashians must be a thankless job.
I have only recently read your articles. They have had a profound effect on my thinking. I have realized through them the left is trying to changed things from a position of weakness. As a person who protests I have been trying to come up with a succinct phrase to write on the my sign. I wonder if you might have any suggestions? I think more people on the left need to be made aware that organized labor equals power. That is a game changer in m y opinion. Thank you.
As a retired professor and former Union member, I’ve been wondering why AAUP hasn’t organized nation-wide protests against the government’s attacks on Columbia and other universities. All universities should be erupting with outrage at the oppression of student protestors and suppression of academic freedom.
Hamilton, in thinking further about my previous comment I ask myself what human endeavor can possibly resist vast wealth and unyielding power. I don’t see organized labor as the answer unless we hurry the fuck up.
I think the one thing they cannot co opt might be art. I mean, they don’t need you to write an article when they’ve got chat bot or whatever that thing is and they don’t need me to produce “artistic “ wood work when they’ve got CAD and robotics.
But there is something in true art that can move humanity and we have seen it change the world and almost always for the better.
Am I a fool for thinking this could ever be applied ? Maybe. It would require a new paradigm.
But we all know the trouble there is you’re still a nickel short of a quota.
I'm about halfway through Erica Chenowith's 'Civil Resistance,' and this piece dovetails beautifully with much of what they write about work stoppages, strikes, and people power more broadly, as linchpins of successful campaigns to undermine and uproot repressive/autocratic regimes. Thank you for all of your writing, and for making an appeal to upgrade. I realized that yours is one of the few newsletters that I read almost immediately on receipt, and that I ought to be supporting your essential work. Cheers.
As the song goes…”there is no power greater anywhere beneath the sun” and “without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.” The rich got rich by a combination of underpaying workers and over charging consumers. The sharpest stick we have is to withhold labor and we need agitation from the grassroots to help leaders lead or find new ones. There are other forms of power that have valuable impact and can be entry points for activism (rallies, boycotts, confronting execs that care about their reputations). Union organizing starts with conversations, card signing and button wearing- escalation is key. But the ultimate power is control of our labor- keep telling it like it is!
I read your book “The Hammer” and really enjoyed it. Labor is the only real power on the left. Unless the left forces a redistribution of wealth, the oligarchs will only get richer and make life more miserable for the rest of us.
Insightful as always Hamilton, but I just wanted to show appreciation for the use of GGG to illustrate power. That guy hit like a freight train in his prime.
Thank you for writing this. I have been that person misapprehending the position that organised labour holds in our movement. Not that I have ever been a scab, in deed or in spirit – in fact, I have been at the sharp end of several strikes throughout my time as a university student, and I have always have supported my lecturers during their action. I've even made sure to let them know, as several of my classmates have been entitled little shits about it 🙄
On a lighter note, I find it fascinating that you describe Nick as "[having] a strong British accent, which meant I could only catch around three of every four words he used, as a baseline." He and I are from the same region of England for accentual purposes, and the only major difference between our accents is that he shows a lot of American influence which I don't have from where I've never lived there. I would have said that we have the most intelligible kind of British accent, and it's very interesting that you disagree. Divided by a common language indeed. (To tell you the truth, it's quite nice to inhabit the role of "strong accent haver" for once! British culture very rarely codes my kind of accent as marked, which is a shame because all accents are marked from the standpoint of linguistics.)
Hamilton, this fact that organized labor is viewed as a threat to the uber rich explains in part their investing in AI and robotics don’t you think?
Absolutely although I think the primary motivation is just cutting labor costs (to zero) which inherently weakens labor power also.
Adams! Hamilton! This must be 250 year high School reunion!
The rulers are very happy with socialism wherever they can implement it. It's how they get their money. Through the redistribution of the wealth of the producers.
Too bad for them, capitalism and it's free market is gaining too much ground for them to actually win at this. It's pretty much over. Just wait for the moment when they realize it. Make sure to freeze frame those faces.
Didn't realize you were from Gawker, it makes sense though because I adored that site more than anyone living in Louisville, KY could be anticipated to love it. I also think that much of our current nightmare has been less surprising (not less awful, more drawn out though) to people who watched what happened to Gawker and how it was orchestrated. Thiel's training wheels, so to speak. I have been thinking a lot lately about guns and violence and how the people that abhor violence are going to have to decide if violence is ever justified. Your arguments about harnessing the potential of labor are spot on. Even if every worker in every industry in every state became organized it feels like violence is still a possibility coming from the current "leaders". I don't want violence but it seems unwise to refuse to consider categorically since what I want, what many of us want, is absolutely not being factored into Thiel's/Musk's/Trump's plans for the country.
the history of policing and the suppression of labor movements says that absolutely they will use violent force, theyve done it before and the apparatus exists precisely to do so again
Yes, that people died fighting for the right to have unions and the workers protections gained from organized labor is another part of history that's been (probably intentionally to a large extent) by Boomers and the following generations. The warped success of unions for various law enforcement and corrections officers to circumvent accountability while the true labor movement stagnated for years. There are a lot of historical precedents that might finally be interesting to the people who sleepwalked us into this hellscape. I'm not optimistic they're going to care in time to prevent more and worse problems that will effect all of us.
Hamilton, thanks for making this important point so clearly. I would broaden it to say that people organizing -- creating co-ops, directing their votes together, etc. can also make important changes. Our strength is in our numbers and how we recognize and use them for the common good.
I find you're comment worth expanding Diana.
Haven't we (we should know "we" by now) known ourselves to not be seekers of real power for whom "power" is, subliminally, a dirty word. We seek the ineffable force called justice to do its disembodied work. That is an aspect of equating the good with innocence, and power with malevolence. Isn't it true that nearly all popular and folk narratives teach us this orientation. We're watching the cultivation of moral illness as facilitated by wealth, which tried, forever, to promote wealth as a sign of virtue.
Organized labor as a power on our side has major weaknesses: The leaders are corruptible by union money that shift their politics to the other side. Many workers are not amenable to unionizing unless you're like the NYPD which is the secret, permanent government of NYC. Unions aren't political organizations in that their interests, their mission, is very narrow. A union can only exist as long as their industry exists, not being independent from the hand that feeds them. This isn't an anti-union rant.
There is something else, as you suggested, that can be advanced by using the crisis developing now: Developing ordinary citizens' class consciousness toward a solidarity of interests. It'll take education, art, relationships, community, nearly everything that makes life worth living in opposition to the consumerism we're trained to practice. This proposition has been well articulated but suppressed. It does, however, involve abandoning distractions like sports and mindless amusements and placing one's attention where the real sport is- the politics called for in that famous Franklin quote. Making that, not optional, but a necessity of life. That would be the kind of union that isn't merely about wages and benefits of a limited group, many of whom, BTW, are not with us if they're simplemindedly comfortable enough.
The problem that glares at us now is that we're lacking a political party that represents collectively ordinary citizens in a broad sense. The raw material is there but the opposition propaganda and mythology are vast.
Hi Mario,
I appreciate what you're saying, although I don't think all of us buy into the notion that power is bad. I've had many positions of personal power, and feel fine about that. And I have a lot of respect for people who wield power in ways that benefit the greater good. It's a myth that prevails, though, and is worth busting.
And, ya, I agree that we have to empower ordinary people so that we can transform our communities.
As much as I support unions, I agree that some are problematic.
The political party issue is huge, and all over the western world there are very few parties that represent ordinary citizens. Here in Canada, when we have a powerful candidate who supports our interests, the parties -- and I'm talking Green and NDP here, although I'm sure it's the same with Liberals and Conservatives -- aren't allowed to run.
I'd like to see an international left party, since the conservative agenda is so consolidated, and it would be great to be able to support each other between countries. I've fantasized about a party called 'Solidarity' or something like that.
We're in a very desperate situation, and I hope we're able to organize and do a major course correct.
We can't forget that BRICS is working for the same kind of thing, except with global majority countries. We have allies, just not in western countries.
Heartily agree with both Hamilton and Diana. The one weakness with the post is the word "only" unions can make a change. Pointing out the unmatched, actual, concrete power is one thing, but other actions have effects too.
I said this on Bluesky in response to Scocca's post, and I'll say it here: How were so many Good And Cool Websites headed up by a guy who apparently fits neither of those definitions?
This is brilliant, thank you! I'll be forwarding it along. I can say that, on a personal level, the union I belong to has been the only reason we adjuncts finally have health care benefits, after many years. This power is real.
I feel lost about how to get involved, particularly because I work at a small, community nonprofit. However, I recently got the contact info for a local UFCW rep, so I reached out today to do *something*.
Great. You could also try NPEU: https://npeu.org/
Or if you're having trouble getting an organizer to help you, contact EWOC: https://workerorganizing.org/support/
Thank you!!
excellent, Hamilton, so true!
"A strike is not a request; it is a physical fact of the world. It is a roadblock to the other side’s will. It is the strongest move that we have. … Our power is that the world can’t run without us." Totally agree, all very true, as indeed you have cogently said many times. So, what will have to happen so that those strikes happen so the world will see that things have stopped running?
It will take a lot of organizing which is sometimes difficult day to day work that has to be done. We can't just wait for the big magic general strike without doing the hard work of organizing to build the foundation.
Gregg, Worker-to-Worker organizing as espoused by the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) and Eric Blanc in his recently published book, We Are the Union, may enable us to more quickly to unionize the workforce - if we can get big labor to employ this organizing model also. There are a lot of problems with big unions, but many have reform caucuses forming within them (for example, Teamsters for a Democratic Union or TDU). I'm part of a group that's trying to get an EWOC started within our local Labor Council (members are all from local big unions). We're forming a nonprofit and would jointly sponsor the EWOC with the labor council, looking to them for funding and meeting spaces.
Those all sound like excellent grassroots things. I've not heard of any of them before, which perhaps is an indictment of my news consumption habits as much as anything, but all the same getting our business-as-usual media to pay attention to anything other than the administration's latest flood of lies, sports, and the Kardashians must be a thankless job.
I have only recently read your articles. They have had a profound effect on my thinking. I have realized through them the left is trying to changed things from a position of weakness. As a person who protests I have been trying to come up with a succinct phrase to write on the my sign. I wonder if you might have any suggestions? I think more people on the left need to be made aware that organized labor equals power. That is a game changer in m y opinion. Thank you.
As a retired professor and former Union member, I’ve been wondering why AAUP hasn’t organized nation-wide protests against the government’s attacks on Columbia and other universities. All universities should be erupting with outrage at the oppression of student protestors and suppression of academic freedom.
Hamilton, in thinking further about my previous comment I ask myself what human endeavor can possibly resist vast wealth and unyielding power. I don’t see organized labor as the answer unless we hurry the fuck up.
I think the one thing they cannot co opt might be art. I mean, they don’t need you to write an article when they’ve got chat bot or whatever that thing is and they don’t need me to produce “artistic “ wood work when they’ve got CAD and robotics.
But there is something in true art that can move humanity and we have seen it change the world and almost always for the better.
Am I a fool for thinking this could ever be applied ? Maybe. It would require a new paradigm.
But we all know the trouble there is you’re still a nickel short of a quota.
I'm about halfway through Erica Chenowith's 'Civil Resistance,' and this piece dovetails beautifully with much of what they write about work stoppages, strikes, and people power more broadly, as linchpins of successful campaigns to undermine and uproot repressive/autocratic regimes. Thank you for all of your writing, and for making an appeal to upgrade. I realized that yours is one of the few newsletters that I read almost immediately on receipt, and that I ought to be supporting your essential work. Cheers.
Thanks for the support Gabriel.
As the song goes…”there is no power greater anywhere beneath the sun” and “without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.” The rich got rich by a combination of underpaying workers and over charging consumers. The sharpest stick we have is to withhold labor and we need agitation from the grassroots to help leaders lead or find new ones. There are other forms of power that have valuable impact and can be entry points for activism (rallies, boycotts, confronting execs that care about their reputations). Union organizing starts with conversations, card signing and button wearing- escalation is key. But the ultimate power is control of our labor- keep telling it like it is!
I read your book “The Hammer” and really enjoyed it. Labor is the only real power on the left. Unless the left forces a redistribution of wealth, the oligarchs will only get richer and make life more miserable for the rest of us.
Insightful as always Hamilton, but I just wanted to show appreciation for the use of GGG to illustrate power. That guy hit like a freight train in his prime.
One of my favorites.
https://deadspin.com/the-scariest-man-alive-wears-a-cardigan-a-day-with-gen-1252868052/
HA! I remember this!
"Golovkin" is a word long invoked in boxing gyms in the same way that "Keyser Soze" was invoked in The Usual Suspects.
So good.
Thank you for writing this. I have been that person misapprehending the position that organised labour holds in our movement. Not that I have ever been a scab, in deed or in spirit – in fact, I have been at the sharp end of several strikes throughout my time as a university student, and I have always have supported my lecturers during their action. I've even made sure to let them know, as several of my classmates have been entitled little shits about it 🙄
On a lighter note, I find it fascinating that you describe Nick as "[having] a strong British accent, which meant I could only catch around three of every four words he used, as a baseline." He and I are from the same region of England for accentual purposes, and the only major difference between our accents is that he shows a lot of American influence which I don't have from where I've never lived there. I would have said that we have the most intelligible kind of British accent, and it's very interesting that you disagree. Divided by a common language indeed. (To tell you the truth, it's quite nice to inhabit the role of "strong accent haver" for once! British culture very rarely codes my kind of accent as marked, which is a shame because all accents are marked from the standpoint of linguistics.)