Doug Henwood's Blog, page 43

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October 4, 2018 Shamus Khan on the culture of entitlement at elite schools (op-ed here) • Thea Riofrancos on the fraying legitimacy of the ruling class and its possibilities for the left

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September 27, 2018 Anand Giridharadas, author of Winners Take All, on the win–win business- and plutocrat-friendly philanthropy of today’s nouveau riche

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September 20, 2018 Two socialist women run for office and win: Margaret Corvid, city council, Plymouth, England, and Julia Salazar, New York state senate, Brooklyn

Sadly, there is no strike wave

In a September 8 post to the Jacobin website, Eric Dirnbach announced that “US workers are striking again.” In the piece, he discloses:

That’s why it’s fascinating that in 2018, we’re seeing a dramatic increase in the number of large work stoppages. I count sixteen for the first half of the year, including one lockout, which if this trend continues, puts us on track for thirty-two for the full year. The number of large work stoppages has not been thirty or more since the year 2000.

It would be lovely if this were true, but it’s not.

Dirnbach makes it clear in this piece that he doesn’t understand the strike stats at all. (And precision demands noting that the Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS] calls the series “work stoppages,” because it includes lockouts.) He seems to think the stats are released only annually, but in fact they’re regularly updated and available on the Bureau‘s website.

That data tells us that from January through July (the most recent month available), there were twelve large work stoppages (meaning involving 1,000 workers or more). If that rate is annualized, that would work out to 21 stoppages this year [12/(7/12) = 20.57]. As the top graph below shows, that’s not all that much of a departure from recent experience. That’s just a bit above 2011 and 2012’s 19. It ties 2007’s rate and falls short of 2005’s 22.

[image error]

And by another measure, the share of workdays of “idleness” (gotta love the Calvinism of labor statisticians)—the number of workdays lost to stoppages (number of strikers times the length of the strike) as a percent of workdays throughout the U.S. economy—is barely off the 0 line, as the second graph shows.

Of course the year isn’t over yet, and anything could happen. But there’s no strike wave underway.

PS: Point of personal privilege—the article uses the lbo-news graph of union density from this article without credit. That’s not nice.

PPS: The Jacobin version was a reprint of a July Medium post. At least that version offered proper credit for the graph.

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August 30, 2018 Raven Rakia, a journalist with The Appeal, on the nationwide prison strike (more here and here) • Asad Haider, author of Mistaken Identity, on race and class

[the source of the info on the Shostakovich quartet is here]

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August 23, 2018 Rob Larson, author of Capitalism vs. Freedom, explores how the “free market” is a realm of unfreedom, and Keith Gessen discusses his new novel about contemporary Russia, A Terrible Country

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August 16, 2018 Christina Gerhardt, author of Screening the Red Army Faction, on the RAF’s history and artistic reception in the context of the German 1960s and 1970s

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August 2, 2018 Adam Tooze and Leo Panitch, separately, on globalization, Trump, the American empire, declinism, etc.

 

The Russia obsession

Some ambitious and generous person at The Raucous Rooster transcribed my radio commentary from yesterday. Thank you!

Good God, the Russia obsession!

It seems that Democrats are now incapable of talking about anything but Russian interference in our sacred elections.

The Trump administration is eviscerating environmental regulations, appointing horrific judges, prosecuting a grotesque war on refugees and immigrants, and we’re hearing about little other than Putin’s alleged hold over Trump, often expressed in grossly homophobic terms.

In doing so, they’re accepting uncritically the version of events proffered by cops, prosecutors and the CIA, organizations made up of professional liars who’ve been enemies of democracy and free expression at home and abroad for decades.

We’re seeing Dem pundits even accusing Bernie Sanders and other insurgents within their party of being Russian agents, witting or unwitting. Their indictments of Trump for treason make them sound like demented right-wingers at the height of the Cold War.

This obsession does relieve mainstream Democrats of concocting an attractive agenda that might win an election or two, but to do that they’d have to tack left, and Goldman Sachs wouldn’t like that.

This Russia obsession’s a win win for the establishment though – subdue Trump and the domestic left insurgency all at once.

I understand why those within a half a standard deviation of the center would embrace it, but why anyone further left would play along with it is beyond me.

Please stop.

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July 19, 2018 Rebecca Gordon explains why Nicaraguans are protesting the Ortega government (article here) • Alex Gourevitch on how the workplace is authoritarian, and why strikes are essential (article here)