Who is it that we are being told is “coming to get us” or trying to “get something for nothing”? By this time in our course, you should be able to critically dissect and analyze such fear-mongering.

Who is it that we are being told is “coming to get us” or trying to “get something for nothing”? By this time in our course, you should be able to critically dissect and analyze such fear-mongering. How might you use the contents of the last chapters in Michael Zweig’s book to refute these Preconceived Notions and ideological beliefs… that are simply *not* substantiated by the economic and social facts?
Your task in these chapters is to read and understand the logic behind Zweig’s assessment. You may not agree with his position — BUT, I invite you to ask yourself *WHY* you hold the beliefs you do? Where do *your* beliefs about the role of government come from? How do you benefit from government actions? How do you think you are wounded by government actions? Are you a YOYO or WITT?
CHAPTERS 8 & 9 in Zweig’s book articulate a range of ways that working class people can mobilize to change our conditions of life: the quality of our jobs – (heck, just the existence and availability of jobs!) – the rate of wages & salaries, and the quality of our daily lives.
Zweig examines a wide range of working class mobilizations:
A. Independently, as workers – in trade unions:
1. at the work site, especially through collective bargaining negotiations with management
(the union contract) and through shop-floor activism and processing grievances
2. in political & community affairs, when workers mobilize as “the labor movement.”
B. In coalition with other constituency groups, including:
women, students, African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, native Americans, the LGBT community (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals & Transgender people), immigrants, and environmentalists
In Chapter 9, especially, Zweig stresses the importance of independent organization for working class people – separate from bosses, managers, supervisors or outside “consultants.” Why?
1. Working class people often do not see themselves as a group with common needs, interests and concerns. So, workers need to explore their situation, talk about their shared issues and find their voice– separate from the interests, power and influence of the powerful & wealthy. They need their own forum, their own organization – labor unions, and labor political parties.
2. When working class people unite with the wealthy and with their employers, the power differences too often determine the results. The extra resources, money, and sense of entitlement on the part of employers, managers, owners, and their lobbyists and lawyers shape the outcome. Working class people often fall silent, feel unsure of themselves, become passive, let “the experts” make decisions – in short, give up their power to the representatives of the more dominant sectors of society. (Those people seem to talk with confidence, they seem to “know it all”… and they can be very dismissive and impatient with working class people who try to articulate a different position.
3. Zweig argues that there are fundamental differences between the interests of working people and the interests of company owners, banks, corporations and the wealthy:
A. Working people want steady jobs, under safe working conditions, earning good incomes that will allow them to support themselves and their families.
B. The wealthy [the finance sector (bankers, investors and financial managers) and the owners of business] want to increase profits – by paying lower wages, cutting health care and other benefits, ignoring Occupational Safety & Health (OSHA) guidelines if they cost money to implement, AND *always* having the right to shut down their business in the U.S. and move to another state or another country where wages and environmental protections are cheaper.
Over the last few years, you have heard a lot about the 99% and the top 1% as a result of the Occupy Wall Street movement. This movement was protesting the immense difference in wealth between the top 1% of the population and the bottom 99% of the population. In New York City, tens of thousands of people participated in Occupy Wall Street. The encampment at Zucotti Park lasted for months. It was mainly young people, and mostly white people, but also older people – especially workers, trade unionists, African Americans and Latinos. These community allies – especially the labor unions who mobilized 20,000 strong – stopped police misconduct against the Occupiers on several occasions.
“Occupy Wall Street” became a nationwide movement in 2011 – far beyond the reaches of New York City. The movement set up encampments of tents and rallies and “happenings” in cities all across the country; five different Occupy encampments were set up in the state of Indiana. These lasted various time periods, ranging from a few weeks to several months – in cities like Bloomington, South Bend, Fort Wayne, Lafayette, and Indianapolis – together with large rallies in Gary. In my home city, South Bend, the Occupy Movement held onto their tent encampment for three and half months!
The Occupy Movement made the issue of profound income inequality a national concern. Social inequality became a front-page issue, from September 2011, through the Presidential Elections of November, 2012. The trend of increased income inequality in the United States began more than 30 years ago in 1980; every year since then, the wealthiest sectors of our society have increased their income and wealthy, while the purchasing power, salaries, and wealth of the middle class, working class and poor have diminished. (You read about this in the documents by Martin Wolfson, the economist from Notre Dame.)
Income inequality has been accomplished through various means, including regular tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Zweig reviews this process in detail in Chapter 9.
While the rise in income inequality has been a well-documented trend over the past 30 years, it was silenced or ignored until very recently. In the fall of 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement brought the issue to the Front Page of every newspaper, to the center of attention. It became a major issue in the presidential campaign of 2012. And this concern resonates with the issues Zweig raises in Chapters 8 & 9 – see for example Pg. 177 and the references provide by Zweig for this chapter.

Chapter 9 – Into the Millennium
The final chapter in Zweig’s book is significantly different and updated in the 2012, 2nd edition – this is the version of the book that you *should* be reading. In this chapter (Pp:174-75) , Zweig summarizes some of the major changes in U.S. society since the publication of first edition of his book in 2000, including:
* the emergence of China, India and Brazil as major world economic powers, coupled with diminished economic and political power for the United States.
* The attacks of September 11, 2001 and the related wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are the longest wars in U.S. history, draining billions of dollars from the economy, mobilizing [1.9 million military personnel deployed since 2002 (National Academies Press) http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12812&page=17; with the total cost of these wars estimated at $1.283 trillion, according to the Congressional Research Service http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf] We are now being convinced that our country will have to fund and deploy troops in “Forever Wars;” NEVER BEFORE WAS SUCH AN IDEA EVEN CONSIDERED – IT WAS JUST PREPOSTEROUS!
* Expansion of the Internet, social networking and the revolution in technology and communications associated with the digital age.
* Transformation of K-12 public education with “No Child Left Behind” legislation which emphasizes standardized tests over critical thinking and more in-depth discussion.
A few pages further, Zweig notes that the U.S poverty rate is the highest it’s been in 20 years, 1 out of 6 workers are unemployed, and millions of people have lost their homes to bank foreclosures (Pg 177).
“Yet, even as evidence of class divisions is stronger than at any time in living memory, the existence of class in the United States continues to be one of the great secrets” (Pg. 175).
Zweig then proceeds to trace the ways corporate and ruling class interests have mobilized to create a “coordinated and well-planned campaign” (Pg. 179). Zweig outlines a political, intellectual, and cultural movement determined to turn back the social advancements won by working class people since the New Deal of the 1940s.
These attacks have been on unemployment insurance, social security for retired people, access to affordable, quality healthcare, and government regulation & quality control over food and medicine production (FDA) .
Zweig considers these attacks to be a continuation of class warfare of the ruling class/elite against the working class majority.
[ATTENTION: I refer you back to the film, Class Dismissed from the beginning of the semester! Remember our author, Barbara Ehrenreich’s story about being accused of class warfare any time she opened her mouth to discuss problems of poverty & unemployment: “Why, you cant talk about that! That’s CLASS WARFARE!”]
Class warfare between striking workers and their bosses and hired guns, used to be bloody and violent in the United States, until the acceptance of unions and protection for collective bargaining by the federal government. This began during the Great Depression of the 1930s and 1940s, with passage of the National Labor Relations Act. This law legalized trade unions.
Today’s class warfare doesn’t take place on the streets outside mines and factories, but in the ideological campaigns and right-wing corporate think tanks like ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council, http://www.alec.org/) the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, Fox cable news, Dick Army and Freedom Works, the Koch brothers (David and Charles), and the Tea Party.
These groups call for massive cuts in social programs and less government regulation, arguing that businesses and Wall Street can regulate themselves. They want to curtail or eliminate the existence of trade unions and occupational safety & health regulations at the workplace. Zweig traces the development of this campaign back to the 1970s (Pp: 178-180).
Conservative, pro-business forces who call for these cuts, also project an intense insistence that *any* response from the left or liberals to increase working peoples’ standard of living is “class warfare.”
In response to all these assaults on the standards of working class people, Zweig reviews the fear campaign mobilized around the national deficit. He takes special note of the profound impact the ongoing U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have had on U.S. fiscal resources. Zweig notes that there has been little effective response on the part of the majority of U.S. citizens. Why not?
Zweig argues that many people have been convinced that personal liberty is at odds with government programs: “big government = less personal freedom.”
Even when the term “class” is mentioned in the press and by politicians, they only refer to the “middle class” which they say is “hurting” or “disappearing.”
1. The ruling class is not mentioned. Even after the financial meltdown of 2008 caused by bankers, hedge fund and Wall Street investors, the press only talked about a few bad individuals who should be punished (Pg. 175) – not the systematic, institutional structures of banking and investment companies, and the millionaires and billionaires who benefit from them.
2. The working class is not mentioned. Sometimes “the poor” are mentioned, but not the working class. It is assumed that everyone is middle class. And, that to say someone is working class would be an insult. The idea is to be “polite” and respect the aspiration and desires everyone has to become successful and achieve upward mobility, to become middle class. (Remember the point I made early on in the semester about the distinction between our aspirations and desires, and the structural reality of class – Zweig Chapter 3!)