Comments Elsewhere

Scott, well, the shorter version of what I said is: I don’t think the dispute is merely definitional. The kind of complications that Wilde’s pointing to are indications that there are more socioeconomic class distinctions than vulgar Marxism suggests, not that socioeconomic class isn’t a good tool for understanding the transit strike.

Kennedy: Then it would be nice to give an example of how the union did this in the case McArdle is talking about. I’ve yet to hear of anything the union did wrong in the transit strike.

Sure. As usual, a lot of libertarians tend to think that the word “union” is enough to summon statist demons. The attempted analysis is just lazy argumentation; I just think that it’s also the case that, even if it were a solid argument, it wouldn’t establish that class analysis isn’t useful for understanding social life.

Dave: This is because union dominated industries can’t compete forever with non union companies. Only if propped up by political power can unions survive.

There were a good six and a half decades between the foundation of the Knights of Labor, and the establishment of government patronage of unions under the Wagner Act. I conclude that unions can survive quite well without being propped up by political power, and that there’s nothing intrinsic to unions that’s antagonistic to market survival.

What you say above suggests that you think something about the market has changed such that unions might have been beneficial back in the day but aren’t anymore. But then you’d have to identify what it is you think has changed in the interim. What do you think made unions as such potentially beneficial then, but categorically inefficient now? (One thing clearly has changed: the organizational structure and tactics of unions. But that’s certainly something that it’s possible to change without giving up on labor unionism as such.)

Dave: Kennedy is right, the voters have only themselves to blame. You can’t blame the unionists for trying the same tricks that have always worked before.

I don’t think Kennedy’s point had anything in particular to do with voting.