Arkansawyer

Michael Yates posts infrequently, and when he does, it’s meaty:

Economists never say much about work. They talk about the supply of and the demand for labor, but they have very little to say about the nature of the work we do. Like most commentators, they seem to believe that modern economies will require ever more skilled work, which will be done in clean and quiet workplaces, by educated workers, who will share in decision-making with managerial facilitators. We should disabuse ourselves of such notions. In the world today, the overwhelming majority of workers do hard and dangerous labor, risking the health of their bodies and minds every minute they toil.

Sound like empty rhetoric? Hardly. It’s followed up by example after example, some recent, some from well in the past, of people being worked to misery, exhaustion, and death.

Here’s another:

Soon after taking power, the Reutherites signed the “Treaty of Detroit,” a long-term contract with General Motors that gave the workers considerable wage gains, but conceded the management of the corporation to the bosses. What this meant, in effect, was that the union agreed to confine bargaining to the terrain of the labor market, demanding only that the companies pay a high price for the labor the workers had to sell. There were work rules, of course, and a worker who thought these were being violated by the company could file a grievance, which wold be handled by a union staff person, often with little input from the aggrieved member.. But the nature of the product, how the cars were produced, the speed of the assembly line, the prices of the automobiles, and most importantly, the nature of the work that the employees performed, were all off limits in the bargaining, the sole prerogative of the employer. So, the mechanisms of control described in the first quote above were beyond the reach of the union. Whatever human qualities the work had were stripped away to enhance managerial control, and whatever human qualities the work might have been made to have were not even considered. This not only alienated the workers along the never-ending assembly line, but it also denied them any chance to develop their capacities to run the industrial machine themselves.

And since Iran is the trendy topic of today:

What should we make of all this? First and notwithstanding the fact that millions did vote for the current president and have rallied behind him, this is indeed a popular uprising, aimed at creating a more democratic and less oppressive society. As such, it should be embraced by all radicals and progressives. No one should doubt that the United States has been trying to destabilize the Iranian government for many years and has agents inside the country to help this along. But the demonstrations have been too large and spontaneous to have been the product of CIA machinations. Second, we should abandon the argument that supporting the demonstrators gives aid and comfort to the imperialists. It may be that Mousavi would be as bad as Ahmadinejad, but it would be a mistake to believe that he would have become a stooge of the United States. This isn’t possible in Iran today. And in any event, Ahmadinejad’s anti-imperialist rhetoric has always rung a bit hollow, more for domestic consumption than a matter of principle. Plus, we must recognize that it is up to the Iranian people, not us, to decide what to do now. I used to work for the United Farm Workers union. Cesar Chavez ruled with an iron hand, brooking no dissent either from staff or rank-and-file farm workers. When workers pushed for control of their own union, Cesar crushed them. Was it wise for some who should have known better to stifle their concern about what Chavez was doing because his allies said that openly criticizing him gave aid and comfort to the growers? The internal collapse of the union tells us otherwise. Those who use a parallel argument now for Iran will be judged harshly by the Iranian people.

He’s got the left-wing case for supporting the protests in Iran nailed. It’s a good analysis, and I’m with it.

So: Michael Yates. Check him out.