Labor Day
by Alex Symington…….
As the annual celebration of the American worker and another Labor Day weekend fades into memory I am compelled to relate a telling moment I experienced during the holiday. I saw a shared meme (photo w/text) posted on Facebook of a cargo plane interior loaded with American flag draped coffins; casualties from an unspecified military conflict, wishing everyone a “Happy Labor Day”. This innocent enough posting implied the forty hour work week, fair wages, the eight hour work day, the end of child labor, paid sick leave and health care were due to our armed forces. I humbly beg to differ. All the above improvements to the American labor force were brought about by civilian organized labor and labor unions.
No drone strikes, no napalm, not even one single Raytheon 3.43 million dollar patriot missile was ever used to drag the reluctant management class kicking and screaming into doing the right thing for the worker in this country. These changes and improvements for the betterment of the American worker not only made life better for them, but their families and the over-all national economy, as well. One could even argue organized labor made the middle-class possible, but these improvements in the work place were hard earned. Many heads were broken by management goons and even murder wasn’t off the table to stop labor from organizing. The extremes business tycoons would go to in preventing labor from organizing are historic and brutal. The Ludlow Massacre a century ago is a prime example of an abomination that took place in this country to attempt to preserve an evil virtual slave system. Actually, in this case, the military was involved in that the Colorado National Guard help the management goons kill miners and their wives and children. Not a proud moment. (link below)
This brings me back to that Facebook posting and the marketing of war. We’ve all heard President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s prescient warning in 1961 of the coming Military/Industrial Complex; the business marriage of military interests and corporate interests. Dwight should know. He was a five-star general in the United States Army during World War II and served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe. He once said, “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity.” As president he had well founded concerns with the nation’s economy being too reliant on public monies going to military expenditures. Today every state is dependent and has lobbyists writing “defense” friendly legislation.
Another memorable insight to Eisenhower’s sentiments on war was, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.” That is some rare and insightful thought from a sitting president.
What Eisenhower warned us about has come to pass. World War Two gave us a taste of the war based economy and we liked it. Vietnam was a marketing nightmare from the standpoint of the Pentagon, but they learned from their mistakes. Today, for example, the draft (mandatory military service) has been replaced with endless re-deployment of “volunteers”, which utilizes what I call the “Niemöller Effect”. (If it ain’t happening to me, I don’t care.)
In journalist Chris Hedges latest column titled, “The Real Enemy Is Within”, he speaks harshly of the development of the US Military/Industrial Juggernaut. “[Currently] military expenditures bleed the federal budget—officially—[figures vary] of $598.49 billion a year, or 53.71 percent of all spending. This does not, however, include veterans’ benefits at $65.32 billion a year or hidden costs in other budgets that see the military and the war profiteers take as much as $1.6 trillion a year out of the pockets of taxpayers. The working and middle class fund the endless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and a host of other countries while suffering crippling “austerity” programs, massive debt peonage, collapsing infrastructures, chronic underemployment and unemployment and mounting internal repression. The war industry, feeding off the carcass of the state, grows fat and powerful with profits.” Raytheon – $24.9 billion, United Technologies – $58.2 billion, L-3 Communications – $15.2 billion, Finmeccanica – $24.1 billion, EADS – $68.3 billion and on and on and on and on. You get the idea. We have a war problem as bad as any alcoholic with a booze problem or any junkie with a dope problem.
In a 2009 report the Associated Press said this about the military marketing savvy developed since the Vietnam PR nightmare, “The Pentagon spends 4.7 billion a year [remember one patriot missile costs 3.43 million dollars] and has some 27,000 employees who work on recruitment, advertising, psychological operations and public relations.”
Now the Madison Avenue Military even co-opts national holidays that have ZERO to do with the military? The same marketing wizards have even altered actual military holidays to enhance our sense of loyalty and patriotism to the God of War. What was once a celebration of peace at the end of World War One, Armistice Day, has now morphed into Veterans Day, a celebration of war and warriors. Memorial Day was and still is a holiday to honor the fallen yet is indistinguishable in spirit from our Veterans Day glorification of the those same wars and warriors. Even our Fourth of July holiday celebrating the creation of the profoundly brilliant document, The Declaration of Independence, has become a generic celebration of US military might ignoring the powerful intellects and statesmen that created the foundation of our fading “representative” government.
What’s next, God blessing the Military for Halloween? Now before you go all torches and pitchforks on me I will say, of course, a military IS necessary for DEFENSE, but our military no longer plays a defensive role. It has become a public-to-private money black hole, self-promoting-out-of-control imperialist monster creating “employment”(read: invading forces) for itself and lining the pockets of its corporate masters at the expense of the people. We need to call it what it is, The Department of Offense.
Lastly, I think a more appropriate image to represent Labor Day would have been a photo of Cesar Chavez or an image of the Ludlow Miner’s Massacre.
Note: Stay tuned for the current on-going corporate engineered devolution of the labor movement.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair
http://www.aflcio.org/About/Our-History/Labor-History-Timeline
http://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942244/ikes-warning-of-military-expansion-50-years-later
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_tribute_to_one_of_occupys_intellectual_predecessors_20120229
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veterans_Day
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Day_(United_States)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Day
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007392
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/03/10/10-companies-profiting-most-from-war/1970997/
http://www.ct.gov/ecd/lib/ecd/futures/6._bloomberg_defense_spending.pdf
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_real_enemy_is_within_20150906
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hedges
well, that’s one way to look at the labor movement, rights fought and won by the people. another way to look at it is those “rights” and benefits were granted by the ownership class as placation to further increase productivity and profits. in much the same way henry ford’s $5/day wage had nothing to do with altruism, and everything to do with greed, and the evolution away from apprenticeships to “free” choice of profession had everything to do with productivity and not self determination and freedom of choice, so has the american labor movement been a sham and a means to an end. those who have power rarely relinquish it, and when they seemingly do, it is often just a masquerade for more power dressed up as something else. so, where has that 8 hour day, 40 hour week got ya? how many people, in our part-time economy, get that benefit? have wages kept up with productivity and profits? paid sick days? not for 39% of workers. and the jobs where all these wonderful, hard fought for benefits apply, where are they?
the “labor movement” was allowed because the powers that be deemed it to be in their interest, just as the destruction of labor, the subject of your next article, is in their interest. people don’t determine squat; our owners do.
now for Eisenhower. again, history is written by the winners. but cursory research will reveal that this “hero” and war “hater” was one of the great war criminals of the 20th century, most assuredly able to stand along side the best of them.
did you know that “Ike” reclassified german pow’s as DEF so as to deny them the rights that they should have otherwise enjoyed, like you know, food, medicine, shelter, innocuous stuff like that? this “great” man had these soldiers herded into pens without latrines, food, water, shelter, and simply allowed them to starve, and die of exposure and disease. this was a deliberate act by this “insightful” and “thoughtful” barbarian. it is estimated as many as 1.7 million german soldiers perished due to his orders.
you speak of the corruption and manipulation of our society in piecemeal terms, refusing to believe that it is ALL a sham. there is a truth out there, easy for all to see…
if you are willing to look, and accept.
Keysbum, I agree, the labor movement in America (and even to some extent in Europe too) has been absorbed by the status quo. But, it has accomplished many things in the past. Nobody is claiming that the empresarial class has given anything due to its “altruism”. Each side is trying their damndest to get what they want for themselves, and, at the very least, the workers need to have a way to wage this fight. ciao, Jerome
i guess what I was trying to say is that there are not two sides in this fight. people are given only what ownership wants them to have. and they just as easily take it away. the power imbalance dictates there be only one side, and it ain’t us. the labor movement accomplished nothing; the owner class bestowed whatever benefits on workers because it was in their interest. as we have seen in the last 30 years, it has been in their interest to eliminate those “benefits” and protections, and so they have. doesn’t matter what the people want, or “fight” for. the victories credited to the labor movement are just more fictionalized hyperbole to give you the illusion of “people power.” none of it would have happened without ownership’s planning and blessing.
Alex, What makes this war propaganda even worse with regard to labor issues, is that the people being used as fodder for these wars are almost always from the same social class as the workers. In other words, we love you workers out there, mainly because you fight and die in OUR wars. Good stuff Alex, thanks, Jerome
Keysbum, I hear you man, I hear you … but I still find more nuance than you do. The goons Alex talks about in this essay would not have been sent in if the owners did not fear the unions some. In today’s world “global economy”, the union busters are the global trade agreements seeking cheaper, 3rd world labor. It has simply become a more sophisticated game, but it has its real qualities. You seem to think this is cyclical. I don’t. It is ongoing and it is real. The owners have always had the upper hand, but hey, Serena lost yesterday. You never know. ciao, PCM
Mr. Symington:
I was just wondering if you have a comment as to Ike’s post WW2 behavior? I am assuming what I posted is new history to you, and if this revelation has mutated your thinking on this man? and how history is presented to you in general?