Susan's blog

War in the House of Labor

by Susan Rosenthal

The American medical system ruins people’s lives for profit. Fortunately, union organizing drives in the medical industry are enjoying a higher-than-average rate of success. Unfortunately, two major health workers’ unions, the California Nurses Association (CNA) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), are at war – a term used by both sides. CNA accuses SEIU of making deals with management that hurt workers, and SEIU accuses CNA of sabotaging its union drives.

This is a real battle. The CNA website posts a sign on its home page, "Had it with SEIU? Work for a REAL union." To protest the CNA, hundreds of SEIU members physically stormed the Labor Notes conference in Detroit on April 12.

Cynics view this war as reason to dismiss all unions. That’s a huge mistake. Workers need unions to counter the relentless greed of business. Employers, politicians and the mainstream media consistently attack unions because even the worst ones block bosses from having complete control of the workplace.

Statistics show that unionized workers are more likely to have medical coverage, pension benefits and protection from sexual harassment and wrongful dismissal. Areas with more unions enjoy higher wages, longer life spans, lower infant death rates, better education and less poverty.

The Issues

American unions were so powerful in the 1930s that employers needed Washington’s help to crush them. Today, after decades of union busting, fewer than eight percent of private-sector workers are in unions, the lowest rate in over a century. Moreover, the remaining unions have been transformed from fighting organizations controlled by workers to bureaucratic organizations dominated by middle-class professionals. For most Americans, the result has been a steady decline in working and living standards.

The battle between SEIU and CNA arose in the context of renewed efforts to defend workers’ rights and centers on three disputes over how to organize:

Should medical facilities be organized wall-to-wall (SEIU includes all health workers) or by trade (nurses in one union and support staff in another)? Wall-to-wall or industrial unions have more power to fight management than craft-based unions. However, in practice, workers organize as best they can in the particular circumstances they face.

Another concern is whether management should be involved in the process of union certification. Labor-management collaboration is generally opposed because it favors management. However, every union contract is a form of labor-management collaboration. SEIU and CNA differ in where to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable degrees of collaboration.

The third issue is the extent to which unions should be controlled from the top-down or the bottom-up. A rank-and-file rebellion inside SEIU, United Health Workers-West (UHW) is pushing for more democracy through one-member-one-vote. CNA is using this split to press its case that SEIU is a business union that doesn’t represent workers’ interests. However, UHW also condemns CNA for its top-down sabotage of SEIU union drives.

Instead of debating these issues in a way that would benefit all workers, the leaders of SEIU and CNA are conducting a divisive turf war that is harming the entire labor movement.

Taking Sides

In any conflict, there is pressure to take sides. Supporters of CNA insist that it is a more progressive and democratic union than SEIU. The leaders of CNA talk left and have taken a public role in fighting for national medicare. However, in Ohio and on other occasions, CNA leaders have gone over the heads of SEIU rank-and-file workers to dictate what should happen in a particular workplace. That’s not democratic.

Those who favor SEIU point to its proud history of organizing immigrant workers (Janitors for Justice) and supporting social reforms. However, top leaders in SEIU have also functioned undemocratically. The split inside SEIU was provoked when head office moved to silence debate within the union.

Recent labor coverage has favored CNA, especially after busloads of SEIU members stormed the recent Labor Notes conference. A good example is Steve Early’s article in Counterpunch (http://www.counterpunch.org/early04152008.html ). Early begins by calling SEIU protestors a "rowdy, punch-throwing, rent-a-mob."

I was inside (and later outside) the Labor Notes banquet hall when SEIU members tried to break through the doors. Such tactics must be condemned. However, this was no "rent-a-mob." Most were ordinary union members, including families with small children, most looking poor and many of them Black. I am certain they boarded those buses to defend their union. If they knew they were going to be in a fight, they would have left the kids at home. One SEIU member died of a heart attack, and another union militant suffered a head wound.

This tragedy was created by the leaders of both unions, who are pitting their members against one another.

I attended several meetings at Labor Notes, where activists from SEIU and CNA expressed their grievances against each other’s unions. I concluded that both sides have legitimate concerns. At the end of his article, Early acknowledges the same, by favorably quoting a member of UHW,

Many participants, who can fairly be described as members of the labor left and generally suspicious of top union leaders, were actually very sympathetic to the SEIU’s grievance against CNA surrounding the events in Ohio.

Sadly, Early concludes by returning to his condemnation of SEIU as the moral loser of the latest round in a continuing battle. However, he never mentions why the Labor Notes conference was attacked.

Labor Notes invited the President of CNA to be the keynote speaker at its conference banquet. By promoting CNA, Labor Notes invited the rage of SEIU.

To preserve good relations with both unions, Labor Notes should have invited representatives from both unions to speak and encouraged organized debate on the issues that divide them. Instead, Labor Notes made the same mistake that most of the left is making – taking the liberal position of choosing between right and left bureaucrats.

In any union, leaders should be supported ONLY so far as they represent the interests of the rank-and-file. By this measure, the leaders of SEIU and CNA both fail because their ongoing battle has crippled organizing efforts at several sites, to the benefit of management.

Moreover, the polarization created by this conflict has undermined democratic forces in both unions who are accused of being "on the other side."

The only real alternative is to stand up for rank and file unity, for class solidarity.

Class-Divided Unions

Today's labor unions are cross-class organizations, being both working-class organizations of self-defense and part of the management system of capitalism. Most union members are working-class (the rank and file), while most union officials are salaried professionals who negotiate with employers to set the terms of exploitation. Turf wars for union recognition arise from this class conflict.

Because most unions are run like businesses, from the top down, more members means more money and more power for union bureaucrats. They want this power to gain more leverage at the negotiating table. That’s why leaders of different unions compete to represent a workplace or group of workers instead of pooling resources and cooperating. Inter-union rivalry is usually justified by claims that one union is better at representing workers than the other. However, divisions between unions only weaken the ability of all workers to stand up to management.

Over the past few decades, rank-and-file workers in different industries have pushed for more militant and democratic unions controlled by members, from the bottom up. Such worker self-organization is opposed by bureaucrats because their power to negotiate with management rests on their ability to control the ranks.

Struggles for rank-and-file control of unions offer a different kind of power, one that rests on the ability of workers to stop production. Because all workers have similar concerns, worker-controlled organizations have the potential to unite workers across divisions of union, workplace and industry and do what bureaucrats have never been able to achieve: build a labor movement strong enough to reverse decades of defeats and concessions.

Rank-and-File Unity

During the Labor Notes conference, as accusations flew between CNA and SEIU, Patricia Campbell of the Independent Workers Union of Ireland (IWE) stated. "You must stop fighting among each other and unite. You need to kick out the bureaucrats in both your unions. That's the only way you can advance your struggle for patients’ and workers’ rights."

She is right. In each workplace, rank-and-file workers must decide how they organize: whether in wall-to-wall groupings or by trade; and the extent to which they collaborate with management and with other unions. Free and full debate must be encouraged, with votes binding on all. Such self-organization is critical to build workers’ confidence and create unions powerful enough to win real gains.

Of course, people make mistakes in any process. That is no reason to deny them the right to decide what happens at work and in their lives.

Right or wrong, and regardless of their intentions, no union official has the right to IMPOSE policy on rank-and-file workers without their consent. This is just as true for CNA as it is for SEIU. To move forward, workers in SEIU and CNA must build on-the-ground unity, based on common class concerns.

For a more detailed class analysis of unions, see POWER and Powerlessness, Chapter 13. "Decide Which Side You're On." Available at www.powerandpowerlessness.com

How Capitalism Turns Intimate Relationships Into a Battleground: Part II: Domestic Violence

by Susan Rosenthal

When you hear the phrase "domestic violence" or "spouse abuse," you probably picture a man assaulting a woman. During the 1970s, the women’s liberation movement drew needed attention to domestic violence. However, the feminist wing of the movement attributed the problem to "male power." As a result, violence perpetrated by women is typically dismissed as self-defense and the fact that women are more likely to maltreat and abuse children is swept under the carpet.

While there is more awareness of female-perpetrated violence today, it continues to be under-estimated. Women are more likely to report spousal violence than men who are ashamed to admit they were assaulted by women. The belief that males are naturally more violent has caused most research to examine male perpetrators and female victims. Most studies do not distinguish between minor assaults, perpetrated by both men and women, and serious assaults that are more commonly perpetrated by men. These factors combine to give the mistaken impression that domestic violence is always serious, if not life-threatening, and that women attack men only in self-defense.

In reality, domestic violence does not result from any "battle of the sexes" because same-sex relationships are equally afflicted. Men in relationships with men are battered as often as women in relationships with men. And between 17 and 45 percent of lesbians report being the victim of at least one act of physical violence perpetrated by a female partner.

I have provided medical treatment for battered women, abused men, and adults of both sexes who were maltreated in childhood by mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters. It doesn’t help to argue whether men or women are more responsible for domestic violence. All victims deserve support, and all perpetrators need treatment. The overriding need is to eliminate the social roots of family violence.

Stress and shame drive interpersonal violence. Stress escalates when people feel trapped in relationships they would rather leave. Women’s low pay keeps them financially dependent on men, especially when they have children. The State insists that men support women and children regardless of their ability to do so. People who feel trapped are more likely to attack one another. Not surprisingly, domestic violence increases as income levels fall.

Shame is the intensely painful feeling of believing one’s self to be unworthy or unacceptable, a loser. The primary source of shame is the social hierarchy that divides people into a few winners and many more losers. The lower down the pyramid you stand, the harder it is to feel good about yourself.

Intolerable shame transforms into rage that can be directed at one’s self or someone else. Rage and shame can re-enforce each other in a downward spiral of violence.

Powerlessness corrupts

Those most likely to injure their partners are not the ones who feel most powerful, but the ones who feel most powerless. Abusive men are more likely to feel like failures, to be unemployed or intermittently employed and to have less than high-school education. Their desire for complete control over the partner is directly related to their sense of unworthiness and fear of loss.

On the surface, wife-battering looks like a display of male power. In reality, most men who batter feel extremely dependent and deeply ashamed of their dependence. Female batterers experience the same inner conflict.

A "battering cycle" can result when shame at feeling unworthy builds to an explosion of rage that drives the partner away. The terror of being abandoned leads to acts of contrition to draw the partner back. The return of the partner revives the fear of being rejected, and anger builds again. These people are at their partners’ throats one minute and at their knees the next.

Men are most likely to murder their partners when they feel least powerful, when the partner leaves or threatens to leave. Those who kill their partners often kill themselves at the same time. Such tragedies do not result from male power but from powerless rage.

Capitalism creates an impossible bind for both sexes. Because meeting human needs would cut into profits, people are deprived of what they need and then shamed for feeling needy. The more difficult life becomes, the more we expect love to compensate us. Of course, it cannot. As needs go unmet, resentment builds, and we punish our loved ones for failing us, as fail they must.

By putting profits before people, capitalism transforms our most intimate relationships into a battleground. We must stop fighting each other and start pulling together to demand what we all need and deserve.

For more on this subject, read POWER and Powerlessness, Chapter 7, "Burden the Family." Available at www.powerandpowerlessness.com

Information on the sexual abuse of males can be found at http://www.canadiancrc.com/female_sexual_predators_awareness.htm

How Capitalism Turns Intimate Relationships Into a Battleground: Part 1: The Vulnerability of Men

by Susan Rosenthal

Relationship conflicts are a universal source of pain and confusion. I frequently counsel couples in distress where the woman is angry and the man is depressed. The woman cannot understand why the man won’t fix the problems in the relationship. The man feels inadequate. Nothing he does is good enough. The woman cannot understand how any man could feel inadequate, because men are supposed to be superior beings. In her mind, he has simply stopped caring about her.

The vulnerability of men is one of society’s best-kept secrets. Men are expected to provide and protect and solve all problems. They aren’t supposed to feel needy, vulnerable or inadequate like women. Yet, in some ways, men are more vulnerable than women.

As early as five years of age, males are more likely than females to kill themselves. This difference increases through life. By age 22, men are six times more likely and by age 85 fifteen times more likely to kill themselves. When a relationship breaks up, the man is 11 times more likely than the woman to commit suicide.

Capitalism demands that men be tough to compete and endure hardship, while denying them the emotional support necessary for genuine inner strength.

To "toughen" males, society directs an astonishing level of violence against them. The most sensitive parts of their bodies are singled out for attack. Parents are pressured to circumcise infant sons in the first week of life, a traumatic procedure that is commonly performed without anesthetic. The same surgery done on female infants (removing the skin around the clitoris) is illegal in North America and generally condemned as cruel and mutilating.

More than 13 percent of boys have experienced assaults directed at their genitals, and 10 percent of boys have been kicked in the groin before junior high school. Boys subjected to physical violence are prohibited from expressing pain. In films, a man being kicked in the groin is typically presented as comical, despite the excruciating pain of such trauma.

Laughing at someone’s pain is a sign of dissociation, and both girls and boys learn to deny male vulnerability from an early age. One woman found herself laughing while reading a description of a woman battering her husband until she realized that, if the roles were reversed, she would be "screaming bloody murder."

Sexist stereotypes depict real men as strong and powerful, not victims. To be a victim is to be without power, like a woman, and the most important thing for a man is to not be a woman.

Taunts like "Don’t be a cry-baby" and "Don’t be a girl" shame boys for feeling scared or hurt. The expectation that even very young boys should be tough causes them to be separated from their mothers much earlier than girls. While sons need their fathers’ affection, fathers consider it their duty to toughen their sons to help them succeed in life. Fathers have learned to suppress their emotions, and they expect their sons to do the same.

While men are discouraged from expressing "women’s" emotions (hurt, need, fear), anger is seen as a manly emotion because of its power. Consequently, boys learn to respond with anger, even rage, when they feel vulnerable or detect vulnerability in other males. Homophobic bullying is a common way for boys and men to bolster their masculine identity.

During school initiation rituals, violence against male students is condoned as "character building." At Columbine High School, site of the 1999 shooting massacre, sports initiation rituals included senior wrestlers twisting the nipples of newcomers until they turned purple and older tennis players slamming hard volleys into the backsides of younger ones.

Sports train young men to hurt others, and to risk being hurt, in order to win. When a head-injury prevention video was developed for hockey players aged nine to ten, 22 of 34 minor-league coaches refused to show the video because they thought it would "make players think they will hurt other players on the ice" and "decrease competitive success in the game."

Recreational play is transformed into war-games where there is no gain without pain, preferably the other guy’s pain. More than one young athlete has been killed or permanently crippled by assaults committed in the course of "the game."

Crushing expectations combine with a lack of emotional support to create an inner despair that many men cannot communicate in words. Instead, they withdraw from intimate relationships, drink to excess, strike out in rage and kill themselves.

Much has been written about how the female role is profitable for capitalism. Women provide unpaid labor in the home to raise the next generation, and they are paid lower wages outside the home.

The male role also serves capitalism. Huge profits flow from shaming male workers to compete to produce more, to accept oppressive conditions ("only wimps complain"), and to serve as cannon fodder for imperial wars.

For more on this subject, read POWER and Powerlessness, Chapter 7, "Burden the Family." Available at www.powerandpowerlessness.com

Information on the sexual abuse of males can be found at http://www.canadiancrc.com/female_sexual_predators_awareness.htm

Whose Property?

by Susan Rosenthal

Private property is the foundation of capitalism. It is therefore very confusing when a self-proclaimed Communist country like China enshrines private property in its constitution. How could this be? The answer lies in a deeper understanding of private property.

Human history dates back more than 150,000 years. For most of that time, no one owned the land and its resources or the knowledge that was handed down through the generations. 

The original inhabitants of North America lived in sharing societies where they took care of one another and decided matters together. This pre-industrial communism was alien to the European conquerors who came from class-divided, non-sharing societies. They seized control of the land and declared it to be their private property, for their exclusive use.

More and more resources have become private property including ideas, methods and machines. Seeds, plants, animals and even genes have been patented. Nations claim ownership of water and air space. There are even disputes over who owns the moon. Only the national debt is collectively owned.

Because most of the world’s wealth is now owned or controlled by a tiny capitalist class, everyone else must scramble to survive. One in five people lives on less than one dollar a day; one billion people do not have adequate shelter; more than two billion people do not have proper sanitation; and more than one billion people lack safe drinking water.

As inequality grows, the pressure increases to return private property to common control. The State was created to prevent this from happening.

The State enforces a legal system that upholds the "right" of property owners to dictate what happens to "their" property. Police and armies are employed to protect private property, and the penal system maintains this unjust social arrangement.

Force alone is not enough, because the have-nots far outnumber the have-lots. So an army of propagandists is paid to praise the private property system and attack all who criticize it.

Personal property is not private property

Private property should not be confused with personal property. People have always had personal-use items (homes, clothes, toys, tools, etc.) that they kept, shared or traded, and they will always have them, regardless of the type of social system. The important question is who owns the natural resources, tools and technology that people need to survive.

To promote loyalty to the system of private property, ordinary folks are encouraged to view their personal possessions as "private property." In reality, private property consumes personal property. The Supreme Court recently ruled that cities can seize and demolish people’s homes to make way for shopping malls and other businesses.

Public property is private property that is owned by the State. Because the State claims to represent all the people, State or public property is assumed to be commonly owned. It is not. Common ownership means that common people are in control. Public ownership means that State officials are in control. And under capitalism, the State serves the capitalist class.

State capitalism

There are no socialist or communist economies in the world today, no nations where ordinary people share control of society. No, not any — not even close

In 1917, the working class took power in Russia but wasn’t strong enough to hold onto it. In the 1920s, Russian capitalism was restored in the form of State capitalism. The State controlled production, and everyone worked for the State.

The Cold War was not a conflict between American Democracy and Russian Communism, but a power struggle between two capitalist super-powers to determine which would rule the world. Democracy had nothing to do with it and neither did communism. The State was heavily invested in both economies, and neither nation exposed its top decision-makers to the risk of popular elections.

Portraying the United States as democratic and Russia as communist served both forms of capitalism. Because conditions for Russian workers were so oppressive, Washington could claim that capitalism was better, despite racism and inequality in America. Because conditions for American workers were so oppressive, Moscow could claim that communism was better, despite mass oppression in Russia.

If State control makes a nation communist, then the U.S. is just as communist as China, because both States control an estimated 30 percent of their economies. China’s shift from public (State-controlled) property to private property is simply a change in the form of capitalism. Russian capitalism made the same shift during the 1990s.

Genuine socialism would transform all private property into shared or common "property," which is not property at all because no one would own it. People would continue to own personal-use items; however, no one would be allowed to own the means of survival and thereby gain power over others.

Abolishing private property will end the class division of humanity and all the problems it creates. Humanity’s greatest strength has always been our ability to cooperate. By sharing life’s ups and downs, the good and the bad, we can solve life’s problems together.

For more on this subject read POWER and Powerlessness, Chapter 14, "Seize the Power." Available at www.powerandpowerlessness.com

Defining Class

by Susan Rosenthal

How do you define class? According to the 2006 General Social Survey, most Americans view society like a giant football, with a small group of rich people at one end, a small group of poor people at the other end, and the majority filling out the middle.

While class is commonly defined on the basis of income, wealth, education, and occupation, these individual characteristics tell us nothing about people’s social relationships.

A social definition of class would measure two variables: the control that people have over their work and the control that they have over other people’s work. Using these criteria, society can be divided into three classes: the class that rules (the capitalist class); the class that obeys (the working class); and the class in between (the middle class).

This definition would structure society like the typical workplace — a pyramid with a boss at the top (the capitalist class), a layer of middle-managers or supervisors (the middle class), and the majority who do the actual work and are unemployed from time to time (the working class).

The class that rules

The capitalist or ruling class has the most power because it owns or controls the natural resources required to create wealth, the process of creating wealth, and the wealth that is created. Because it controls all these things, the capitalist class decides the overall direction of society, determining what will be produced, how it will be produced, and who will have access to the resulting goods and services.

The capitalist class includes CEOs of the largest corporations, presidents and directors of the largest universities and banks, and the highest-ranking politicians, government bureaucrats, judges, and military officers. Each nation has its own capitalist class, and together they form a global capitalist class.

Capitalists compete constantly for capital. Larger corporations swallow up smaller ones and grow larger. Stronger nations dominate weaker ones and grow stronger. Ceaseless competition has caused the ruling class to shrink in size while it grows in wealth and power. By 2005, one percent of people at the top of society owned one-third of America’s financial wealth.

The class that obeys

The capitalist class controls the means of production, but the working class sets it in motion. The working class creates all the wealth in society, yet has the least power. People in the working class own no land, no factories, no machines, no businesses, nor any other means of making a living. (They can, of course, own personal property such as homes and vehicles.) Workers survive only by selling their ability to labor in exchange for a wage. They have no control over how they produce and what they produce. They have no control over the labor of others.

While the ruling class has shrunk over time, the working class has expanded. More than half the global population is now urban working class (with the next largest group being small farmers who are middle class because they own a little land). In the U.S., about 80 percent of the population is working class — the vast majority.

Rising productivity has made it possible to accumulate more surplus from fewer workers. Some of this surplus has been used to expand the service sector — finance, transportation, communications, hotels, restaurants, and the education, medical, and penal systems. While the working class as a whole has continued to expand in size, the proportion of industrial workers has declined while the proportion of service workers has increased.

The class that obeys has the option of not obeying, of taking collective control of production and reshaping society to meet human needs.

The class in the middle

The middle class is the second largest social class. Forming about 20 percent of the North American population, the middle class sits between the two other classes, blending into the capitalist class at one end and the working class at the other end.

People in the middle class have an intermediate level of power, having some control over their own work and some control over the work of others. The middle class owns or controls some means of production: the small farmer owns some land; the self-employed artisan owns some tools: the corner-store retailer buys and sells some produce. Sections of the middle-class employ and exploit workers — on a small scale.

The 18th-century middle class was composed of small farmers and fishermen, artisans, entertainers, lower-level clergy, traders, and owners of small businesses. The process of capital accumulation obliterates the traditional middle class. Agricultural corporations swallow family farms and fast-food chains replace family restaurants.

While squeezing out the traditional middle class, capitalism creates a layer of middle-class managers to supervise the working class. The capitalist also needs middle-class financial, legal, scientific, design, and technical experts to find ways to increase profits. While ordinary workers are micro-managed, salaried professionals are encouraged to think creatively and act independently, within the limits set by the boss.

Middle-class managers and professionals can be distinguished from waged workers by the amount of control they exercise in the workplace. A unionized electrician on a construction site could be more educated, more skilled, and make more money than the site supervisor. However, the supervisor tells the electrician what to do.

The grey zones

An indeterminate number of people inhabit the two grey zones on either edge of the middle class. The zone between the middle and ruling classes includes members of the ruling class who perform upper-level managerial functions, and upper-level managers who are occasionally invited to make big decisions.

There is a much larger grey zone between the middle and working classes. At the one end are middle-class professionals whose degraded working conditions resemble industrial assembly lines. Physicians working for Health Management Organizations (HMOs) are permitted to order only those tests and provide only those treatments that the employer approves. By removing their decision-making functions, HMOs force doctors into working-class conditions. In response, thousands of doctors have joined unions and organized collective bargaining units recognized by the National Labor Relations Board.

At the other end of the zone between the working and middle classes are waged workers with small businesses on the side and blended-class families that form when middle- and working-class people marry. Changes of fortune also create blended-class families: the disbarred lawyer takes a job at the post-office and the steel-worker’s daughter goes to medical school.

The grey zone also includes workers who perform managerial functions — salaried social workers, nurses, grade-school teachers, low level government workers, and prison guards. All are working class because they have little or no control over their own working conditions. At the same time, their jobs give them some control over other people.

Ordinary soldiers are working class because they have absolutely no control over the conditions of their work. At the same time, the soldier has a middle-class function — to control others. Soldiers are not in the same class as police officers. The working-class soldier is drilled to follow commands without thinking, while the police officer is a middle-class professional who is trusted by the higher-ups to know who to target, who to charge, who can be roughed up, and whose life has less value.

When it is difficult to decide if someone is middle or working class, that person probably inhabits the grey zone.

This material was excerpted from POWER and Powerlessness, Chapters 13 & 15. Available at www.powerandpowerlessness.com. For a class analysis of unions, see "Class-Divided Unions," March 23, 2007

It’s a Bully’s World

by Susan Rosenthal

Our world is saturated with bullying — from the public realm of international relations to the private domain of the family. Bullying dominates all levels of government, the marketplace, the workplace, and the school system.

We all know about school bullying. From one-third to one-half of grade-school students report being bullied and bullying others. However, bullying does not start in school. Children learn by mimicking adults.

"I’m the king of the castle, and you’re the dirty rascal."

This is George Bush’s boast to the world. And every other head-of-state dreams of replacing him in the winner-take-all competition of capitalism.

To prepare for a world of winners and losers, pre-school kids play games like "king of the castle." Every child has proudly crowed on top of the tallest mound and been humiliated by someone who got there first or who was strong enough to push them off. Playing "cowboys and Indians" teaches similar lessons. Such "play" prepares youngsters for a school system that will evaluate and rank them, advancing the winners and discarding the losers.

Who are the bullies?

In 2002, four police officers beat a handcuffed Black youngster, dragged him along the ground and slammed him against a police car. Apparently, the officers became enraged when Donovan Jackson, who had hearing and speech problems, did not respond quickly enough to their verbal commands.

Authorities demonstrate that the powerful have the right to use violence against the less powerful when they excuse police brutality, build barbaric prisons, advocate torture, and attack immigrants. Children learn from this. Even hamsters do. When normally placid hamsters are threatened or attacked as youngsters, they grow up to be cowards when caged with larger hamsters and bullies when caged with smaller ones.

Childhood bullying is a "copycat" response to the social practices of divide-and-rule and might-makes-right. In the world, stronger nations dominate weaker ones. In the classroom, teachers humiliate one student to discipline them all. In the workplace, management targets one worker, or one group of workers, to control the rest.

The intense pressure of the social hierarchy finds expression in family bullying. The boss kicks the worker, who goes home and kicks the kid who kicks the dog. More than one-third of Americans have witnessed domestic violence, and almost one in three adults was physically or sexually assaulted in childhood.

The media condemn bullying among children and in families, but not in presidents, politicians, judges, generals, CEOs, and supervisors. In a society that promotes the most vicious competition, inter-personal bullying should be no surprise. What is surprising is how many people refuse to step on others to get ahead.

Societies based on cooperation, sharing, and equality do not tolerate any kind of bullying. They rightly view it as a threat to the social bonds that protect them. If we want to eliminate bullying, we must reject a social system that sacrifices the many to serve the few.

For more on this subject read POWER and Powerlessness, Chapter 6, "Compete or Die." Available at www.powerandpowerlessness.com 

Impressions of Northern Ireland

by Susan Rosenthal

After Patricia Campbell reviewed my book, POWER and Powerlessness, she invited me to address the annual conference of the Independent Workers’ Union of Ireland.

On arriving in Belfast, we took a taxi to dinner. A soccer match between England and Israel was playing on the radio. When we asked the driver which team he favored, he replied, "I’d blow them both off the field." And so my political education began.

Many Irish feel a kinship with Palestinians. I saw wall murals depicting Palestinian resistance painted next to symbols of Irish resistance. At one time, the British occupied both lands until it devised the Ulster solution — planting loyal regimes in its colonies to minimize the cost of military occupation.

The creation of a loyalist-dominated Ireland in the 19^th century was the model for the establishment of Israel a hundred years later. As the British governor of Palestine wrote at the time, a Jewish state would provide for England, "a 'little loyal Jewish Ulster' in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism."

How hostile are the Irish to their British masters? I asked one Dublin taxi diver who replied, "we’ve gone beyond all that." A moment later he was cut off by a driver sporting British license plates. He raced after him yelling, "You’re a bully! You’re a bloody British bully!" I thought he would haul him out of the car and beat him up. So much for being beyond all that.

The morning after Sinn Fein and the DUP announced their power-sharing agreement, I was scheduled to speak about my book on Radio Ulster. When asked what I thought of the new political arrangement, I responded that it seemed similar to the two-party system in the United States — one talks right, the other talks left, and they both do the same thing. I think the host disliked my answer, because he cut the interview short.

Civil war isn't good for business

Many Republicans could not fathom how a party that stands for Irish independence could join with British loyalists to administer Northern Ireland for Britain.

The answer to this betrayal lies in economics. Ireland, including Northern Ireland, is experiencing an economic boom, and civil war isn’t good for business. When Britain refused to consider Irish independence, the Irish middle class did what it always has done — it chose prosperity over principles.

I was introduced to Republicans who had lost loved ones in the fight for liberation. Their bitterness and anger at Sinn Fein’s betrayal was palpable. Many young Republicans still languish in jail as political prisoners with no hope of release. I saw buildings demolished by fire and others riddled with bullets. I learned of youngsters who had been tortured and killed. I met one old soldier whose vacant eyes seemed fixed on some distant horror.

Patricia drove us through several working-class areas in Belfast. Catholic and Protestant housing complexes sat side-by-side, their painted wall murals taunting each other with giant figures of masked gunmen and fallen martyrs. The chilling 100-foot-high wall dividing two of these neighborhoods stood as a menacing monument to British imperialism. Ironically, it was extended with barbed wire after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that was supposed to end the civil war.

The middle-class areas of Belfast had no dividing walls, no patriotic bunting, no curbstones displaying the colors of the opposing sides. Capitalism doesn’t need to divide the middle class; its loyalty is assured. In contrast, the working class must be divided. They are the majority, and their unity is what the capitalists most fear.

The Independent Workers’ Union conference was the highlight of my trip. I’ve attended many labor gatherings, but this one held a special meaning. After so much sacrifice, loss, and betrayal, people still wanted to fight! I was moved to tears.

We met fishermen from Lough Neagh who had been dealt a setback and chose to keep fighting. A fired social worker was also fighting back. One activist reported on a protest against the sale of common lands. Another informed us of the campaign against water charges. There were veterans of the class war and young workers with babes in their arms.

I had been invited to give the keynote address. All week I wondered what a Canadian doctor could say about power and powerlessness to a people who had lived these things for generations. So I told them that they had the power to change the world, because they do. And I went home with hope in my heart.

As long as there is no justice there will be no peace. As long as any one of us remains oppressed, none of us can be free.

For more on this subject read, POWER and Powerlessness, Chapter 11, "Divide and Rule." Available at www.powerandpowerlessness.com

Mayonnaise and the Middle Class

by Susan Rosenthal

According to the 2006 General Social Survey, most Americans think that society is structured like a giant football, with a small group of rich people at one end, a small group of poor people at the other end, and the majority filling out the middle. This model tells us nothing about the relationships between these three groups.

It is more useful to view society as a pyramid, like the typical workplace. There is a boss at the top (the capitalist class) and a layer of managers or supervisors (the middle class). The majority do the actual work (the working class), with a portion of the workforce being unemployed at any given time (the poor).

The capitalist class and the working class are like oil and water; they have opposite goals and conflicting values.

Bosses want workers to produce more and faster. Workers want to slow down to preserve their health. Bosses want lower wages so they can boost profits. Workers want higher wages so they can pay their bills.

The drive for profit shapes values of the capitalist class — greed, corruption, and the hunger for power.

Workers can resist the demands of the capitalist class only by pulling together (united we stand; divided we fall). This need for solidarity shapes the values of the working class — common interest (an injury to one is an injury to all) and mutual aid (one for all and all for one).

What prevents these incompatible classes from flying apart?

The capitalist class employs a managerial middle class to keep workers under control. Like the egg that holds oil and water together in mayonnaise, the middle class functions like an emulsifier, binding bind workers and capitalists in the social arrangement of capitalism.

At work, middle-class managers impose the will of the boss on the workers. In society, the middle class imposes the will of the capitalist class on society. When ordinary people rebel, the middle class condemns their demands as "unrealistic" and promotes compromise with the way things are.

The middle class is the loyal lieutenant of capitalism. Without the middle class, the other two classes would battle over who should rule society, and the advantage would go to the working class with its superior numbers and its control over production.

The working-class majority has the power to replace capitalism with a sharing society that puts human needs first. What it lacks is the confidence to reject the goals and values of the other two classes.

For more on this subject see POWER and Powerlessness, Chapter 13, "Decide Which Side You’re On." Available at www.powerandpowerlessness.com

We Are All Africans

by Susan Rosenthal

Racism is the primary tool of divide and rule, despite the fact that people’s similarities far outweigh their differences. Compare any two people in the world and you will find that 99.8 percent of their genetic material is identical and only 0.2 percent is different.

People are so similar because our species has one origin — Africa. From a genetic perspective, all human beings are Africans.

As people migrated from the Mother Land, isolated groups developed minor physical variations. Skin and eye color, the shape of eyes, nose, and mouth, and the color, texture, and distribution of hair are biological variations that vary from region to region, but they do so independently, not in packaged sets.

Most people who live in Asia have skin folds on their eyelids, as do the Bushmen of southern Africa. Both Blacks and Whites can have kinky hair and poker-straight hair. There are Black people with thin lips and narrow noses, and White people with full lips and broad noses. As people migrate through the world, even these regional variations are disappearing.

The Human Genome Project discovered that so-called racial differences make up only 0.01 percent of the body’s genes. These differences are so superficial that someone who looks very different from you and lives on the other side of the world could be a better organ donor for you than someone who resembles you and lives on your street.

The concept of race has no scientific basis, but it has a very important political function — to divide people by maximizing their differences and minimizing their similarities. For example, the political designations of "Black" and "White" exaggerate differences in skin color.

White people are not really white, they are various shades of beige. This can be demonstrated by holding a sheet of white paper against the skin. Similarly, Black people are not really black, they are various shades of brown, including beige. It would be more color-accurate to use the labels "Brown" and "Beige." Using the terms, "Black" and "White" implies polar opposites, when all human beings are actually shades of the same color.

How natural is the tendency to classify people by skin color? A clever two-part experiment set out to answer this question. In the first part of the experiment, volunteers were shown photographs of individuals that were matched with specific sentences. Then the sentences were shown out of order and the volunteers had to reunite each sentence with the photograph of the person it was originally paired with. The volunteers tended to connect sentences with individuals based on their skin color.

In the second part of the experiment, individuals and their matching sentences were grouped in two color-coded teams, one wearing gray shirts and one wearing yellow shirts. Both teams contained Black and White members. This time, volunteers matched the sentences to their owners by shirt color more than by skin color. The researchers concluded that "less than four minutes of exposure to an alternate social world was enough to deflate the tendency to categorize by race."

Racial categories are so artificial that they must be constantly reinforced to keep us divided. In reality, there is only one race — the human race — and we are all Africans.

For more on this subject see POWER and Powerlessness, Chapter 11, "Divide and Rule." Available at www.powerandpowerlessness.com 

Class-Divided Unions

by Susan Rosenthal

Who needs a union? You do!

Unionized workers are more likely to have medical coverage, pension benefits, and protection from sexual harassment and wrongful dismissal. Unions raise living standards. Areas with more unions offer higher wages, higher life expectancy, lower infant mortality, better education, and less poverty.

American unions were so strong in the 1930s that Washington helped employers to crush them. By 2005, the percentage of private-sector workers in unions had dropped to less than eight percent, the lowest rate in more than a century. The remaining unions have been transformed from fighting organizations controlled by workers to bureaucratic organizations dominated by middle-class professionals.

Today’s unions are cross-class organizations, that is, they are working-class organizations of self-defense and part of the management system of capitalism. While most ordinary union members are working-class (the rank and file), most union officials are middle-class professionals who help employers to manage the workforce.

Union bureaucrats and company bosses have the same goal — to keep the company in business. And that means keeping it competitive.

The AFL-CIO boasts that "Unions Are Good for Productivity." However, productivity can increase only by making people work harder for less.

Instead of opposing rising exploitation, union bureaucrats lower their members’ expectations of what can be achieved. At times, union officials will talk tough and even lead struggles for workers' rights. However, they inevitably sell out because they are afraid to unleash the power of the rank and file. When workers organize wild-cat strikes, union officials join with employers and governments to push them back to work.

Just as union bureaucrats partner with bosses to manage the workplace, America’s top union bureaucrats partner with the American State to manage the world.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told one top labor executive meeting, "When you undertook your lives as labor leaders…becoming a part of the U.S. Government may have not have been something that you intended…but I do think it has been a very important partnership. I think that is the best way to describe it."

Without the awareness or consent of their members, AFL-CIO executives have helped Washington overthrow democratically-elected governments, prop up anti-union dictators, and support right-wing unions against progressive governments.

Many people say that unions are corrupt and useless and not worth defending. This is a big mistake. Employers, politicians, and the media continue to attack unions because even weak and corrupt unions prevent bosses from having complete control over the workplace.

Workers ARE the union. To build strong unions we must take collective control of them and join together to fight for all workers’ rights.

For more on this subject see POWER and Powerlessness, Chapter 13, "Decide Which Side You’re On." Available at www.powerandpowerlessness.com