A Quote by Sharan Burrow
Trade unions have stood at the front lines of struggles for democratic change and social justice throughout history. In many countries, we are the organized voice of oppositions to governments operating at the behest of corporate power and vested interests.
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The history of the labor movement needs to be taught in every school in this land. America is a living testimonial to what free men and women, organized in free democratic trade unions can do to make a better life. We ought to be proud of it!
Cutting the fiscal deficit is not popular. That is the experience of all governments in all countries. Expenditure cuts hurt certain vested interests, and they don't like it.
For over a century, popular struggles in the democracies have used the nation-state to temper raw capitalism. The power of voters has offset the power of capital. But as national barriers have come down in the name of freer commerce, so has the capacity of governments to manage capitalism in a broad public interest. So the real issue is not "trade" but democratic governance.
This is a struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party, which in too many cases has become so corporate and identified with corporate interests that you can't tell the difference between Democrats and Republicans.
Of all the anti-social vested interests the worst is the vested interest in ill-health.
You have countries that have lived beyond their means, with bloated governments, huge trade deficits, and people living off the government. Then you have others where poor people are working hard and underconsuming and their governments are buying all this debt and propping up the extravagant countries. All of this has to change. There's a tremendous moral hazard involved with this system.
I don't kid myself in thinking that I'm on the front lines. I know the people who are on the front lines. I mean there are people in some freakin' significant places making on-the-ground social front line change. I've marched. I've put feet on the ground for what I believe and what I'm against with no compromise. And there are people who are risking a whole hell of a lot more than me to make change, that's for damn sure.
With unfailing consistency, U.S. intervention has been on the side of the rich and powerful of various nations at the expense of the poor and needy. Rather than strengthening democracies, U.S. leaders have overthrown numerous democratically elected governments or other populist regimes in dozens of countries ... whenever these nations give evidence of putting the interests of their people ahead of the interests of multinational corporate interests.
The only real struggle in the history of the world ... is between the vested interest and social justice.
The continuation of authority has frequently proved the undoing of democratic governments. Repeated elections are essential to the system of popular governments, because there is nothing so dangerous as to suffer power to be vested for a long time in one citizen. The people become accustomed to obeying him, and he becomes accustomed to commanding, hence the origin of usurpation and tyranny.
This notion that we're going to prop up foreign governments, that we're going to invade other countries for some kind of perceived benefit where we're going to install somebody who's going to be supportive of American interests or American corporate private interests needs to stop.
On the one hand the world is getting more integrated and we should not dismiss social values as "Western" when they are actually modern values. On the other hand, individual countries have their own history and their own evolution. Trade unions, for example, don't play the same role in China as they do in Europe or the US.
I look back at history, and some of the worst governments we've ever had, you know one of the first things they ever did? They went after the trade unions.
The post-Second World War simple system of social democracy and organized labour has fragmented massively, but just because people aren't organized in workplace trade unions doesn't mean they aren't in associations with other people - work-based, place-based, culture-based, sport-based, faith-based - there's a bit of an old rainbow coalition argument.
A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests.
In the history of this country [USA], the reason we have never developed a social democratic base, the way they have in Europe - we're the only Western country without some kind of universal health care. There's a reason, and it is because corporate interests have divided the American people by race and ethnicity, the Irish from the blacks, the Germans from the German Jews.
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