As history has repeatedly proven, organized labor, allied with a political party dedicated to its interests, is the best tool to push back against the rich. Nick French
in an article in Jacobin draws on the work of the sociologist Walter Korpi who examined the rise of the Swedish welfare state
in his book "The Democratic Class Struggle." Korpi detailed how Swedish workers, as French writes, "built a strong and well-organized trade union movement, organized along industrial lines and united by a central trade union federation, the Landsorganisationen (LO), which worked closely with the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Sweden (SAP)." The battle to build the welfare state required organizing—76% of workers were unionized—waves of strikes, militant labor activity and SAP political pressure. "Measured in terms of the number of working days per worker," Korpi writes,
"from the turn of the century up to the early 1930s, Sweden had the highest level of strikes and lockouts among the Western nations." From 1900–13, as French notes, "there were 1,286 days of idleness due to strikes and lockouts per thousand workers in Sweden. From 1919–38, there were 1,448. (By comparison, in the United States last year, according to National Bureau of Economic Research data, there were fewer than 3.7 days of idleness per thousand workers due to work stoppages.)" There are a few third parties including
The Green Party,
Socialist Alternative and
The People's Party that provide this opportunity. But the Democrats won't save us. They have sold out to the billionaire class. We will only save ourselves.
"As history has repeatedly proven, organized labor, allied with a political party dedicated to its interests, is the best tool to push back against the rich."
www.commondreams.org
