At the World Economic Forum in Switzerland last month, the world’s leading politicians put their heads together in an effort to think of a solution to the crisis facing the world today, only to produce a dull thud on impact. Their efforts, however valiant, are hamstrung by the assumptions of the old way of thinking that got us into this mess in the first place.
Where, then, will new ideas come from?
We might first ask how we got here.
In the 1980 presidential election, Ronald Reagan upset incumbent Jimmy Carter to assume the presidency. Less than a year into his first term, Reagan and the regime lurking behind his million-watt smile showed their true colors.
On Aug. 3, 1981, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) struck, demanding, among other things, a 32-hour workweek. But, as Reagan’s campaign had claimed, it was now “morning in America.” Unions were a part of a dark night that Reagan sought to banish from our history. There would be no negotiations with economic terrorists. After a bitter stand-off, Reagan fired all but 1,300 of the 13,000 striking air traffic controllers. Neoliberalism, with its origins in the economic theories of Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, had arrived.
In one fell swoop, Reagan broke the back of PATCO and set the agenda for the three decades that followed. Today, more and more people work two or more jobs just to keep their heads above water. They can no longer take for granted benefits once guaranteed by unionized workplaces—health care, pensions, decent wages. We are living in the world Reagan created, a wretched, heartless place, comparable in our history only to the period immediately after the onset of the Great Depression.
In the wake of the Depression, however, powerful industrial unions, forged by workers and revolutionaries like the Industrial Workers of the World, emerged from the economic wreckage to fight back. The federal government responded with the promise of a New Deal for American workers, establishing as policy many of the benefits we’ve seen rescinded during the last 30 years.
But that wasn’t all workers at the time were fighting for.
At their best, they fought for a new society under their own direct control. The hiring halls longshore workers established along the West Coast in the pitched battles of the 1930s represented perhaps the height of this struggle. These gave workers direct control over the hiring and firing of their fellow workers.
Today, however, there will be no “New” New Deal.
The federal government is in no position to do anything remotely similar for working people, lacking both money and political will. Unlike the New Deal of the past, which resulted in concrete jobs and social programs for ordinary working people, any similar solutions today only seem to benefit insurance companies and Wall Street.
Similarly, workers today find themselves more often than not fighting against their unions to preserve the benefits workers in the past formed those unions to fight for. This comes as no surprise, as those unions now sit at the table with CEOs, as owners of the same companies they once fought against, with a vested interest in keeping workers quiet and working, rather than fighting the rollbacks CEOs demand.
In other words, in the eyes of more people than we can ever know, the government and unions, the two main guarantors of the New Deal of the past, have been discredited.
So where will the new ideas capable of solving the crisis society faces come from?
To paraphrase C.L.R. James, perhaps the most dynamic radical thinker of the 20th century, I do not propose here to do right what academics and other intellectuals have failed to do or do wrong. For a solution to this crisis, we must look beyond the ivy-strangled walls of the ivory tower.
We might begin with Dec. 30, 1936. On this day, the Flint sit-down strike began. Across ethnic and racial lines, across language barriers once seen as impenetrable, workers who at the start of the Depression seven years before could not have dreamed of struggling together fought one of the most heroic battles in U.S. labor history.
They fought to form a union able to address the injustices of their world; they provided for the common defense and promoted each other’s welfare. They fought not only for themselves but for posterity. Out of a hundred languages and variations in skin color, a single union was formed.
Their actions demonstrated that the problems of our society can only be solved by the creative actions of ordinary people acting with great courage and in massive numbers. Call it a revolution, if you like. It may be our last, best hope of a more perfect union.
Michael Stauch is a second-year Ph.D. candidate in history. His column runs every other Friday.
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