Mike P.:

Of course any individual can strike on their own. But for a labor union to do so every individual would have to voluntarily agree to be a member of that union and every single other person on earth would have to voluntarily agree to not cross the picket line and work for the company at union busting rates.

Come on; this is silly. In a shopfloor strike, labor unions do not need universal participation to get the job done; they just need enough participation that it is more costly for the boss to replace all the striking workers and try to carry on with business (in spite of pickets, boycotts, etc.) than it is to come to terms with the union. Now, it may be the case that everyone in a shopfloor does agree to join the union (there’s no reason why this would be impossible; organizations of tens or hundreds of members can be formed voluntarily). But if not you don’t need everyone. You just need enough to make it costly and difficult on the margin for the boss to keep on going as before.

Perhaps you think that the transaction costs of replacing a striking shop are neglible, but I don’t think history bears you out on this. (See, for example, the victory in the Lawrence Textile Strike of 1912, which was won more than 20 years before the NLRB existed; the Delano grape strike in 1965, which the UFW won without NLRB assistance, as farmworkers aren’t eligible for NLRB recognition; and a lot of much less famous, much smaller-scale actions.)

In any case, I’m not sure why you think the only tactic available to a voluntarily organized union is a shopfloor strike. I already mentioned the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, for example, a union which operates primarily through mutual aid provision at home and secondary boycotts of retail purchasers. Other folks suggest tactics of direct action, “open mouth sabotage” (basically, airing the dirty laundry and rallying public pressure), work-to-rule and other forms of slow-downs, etc. The IWW is especially interested in “minority unionism,” which involves the use of tactics that don’t depend on having a voting majority or NLRB recognition; see Kevin’s “Ethics of Labor Struggle” for some general discussion of all these issues.

The primary victim of labor unions is other workers, not capitalists.

Look, I think this is false, and we could dick around about why. (*) But suppose I granted that this were true: that labor unions gain what they gain at the expense of non-unionized workers. Well, so what? Do you think that an association of workers needs to feel obliged to go out of its way to improve the wages and conditions of workers who aren’t members of the association? If so, do you also expect Ford to build cars for GM?

I see that you have an advertisement for the IWW on your site.

Well, it’s not an “advertisement.” It’s a union bug. It’s there because I’m a member of the union.

That’s nice. the IWW absolutely does resort to legal threats and threats of force from the state as we can see just by looking at their site.

Some locals do this. Others do not (either because they cannot, or because they considered it and decided not to.) I certainly do not agree with the use of legal threats and NLRB actions in, e.g., the recent Jimmy Johns campaign or the occasional use of it in the Starbucks campaign. I think it sucks, and that it’s contrary to the historical spirit and principles of the union, and I tell my FWs so when it comes up. I’ve also worked for employers that I thought were doing things that were wrong (including accepting state money, state privileges, etc.). As for the union, this is hardly the only way the IWW operates. In fact, it’s pretty rarely how the IWW operates (I know, because as a member of the union I get pretty frequent reports and action alerts). What’s rather more common is to do things like this or that or this.

So the IWW could not exist without threats of force from the state,

This is nonsense. The IWW was founded in 1905. It existed — and enjoyed something like 100 times the membership it currently enjoys — for three decades without any state backing. In fact, it was rather frequently the victim of massive state violence (from the use of “criminal syndicalism” laws in the early 19-aughts, to the assaults on free speech in Spokane and other Western towns during the period of the free speech fights, to the mass “sedition” show trials, the Palmer Raids, and mass deportations during World War I and the Red Scare). Since the IWW existed for more than 20 years without the backing of state force, I conclude that it can exist without threats of force from the state. As for the threat of NLRB action against retaliatory firings, some IWWs try to use it. It mostly doesn’t work. Walk-outs and phone zaps have generally had a higher success rate at getting workers reinstated.

The IWW is pretty much a joke though. Its not really a union, more of a social club for leftist college kids.

The IWW is certainly much smaller than it used to be, and certainly tiled towards leftist activists. You do know that, prior to the Palmer Raids and the Wagner Act, it was one of the largest unions in the United States, yes? (The primary base of support at the time being among Western miners, loggers and migrant farmworkers, with another significant base of support in the Eastern seaboard textile industries.)

I’m not even sure if they have ever successfully organized a single workplace.

Well, Christ, your ignorance on this is not really my problem, is it? Besides deliberately activist worker co-ops (like, say, Red and Black in Portland), which were “unionized” without any struggle because they were founded by people who were already in or favorable towards the union, there are also IWW “job shops” organized in a number of US cities. For examples, check the directory for the San Francisco Bay Area. The Starbucks Workers Union backed off of attempts to win NLRB recognition (a move which I applaud), but they have clear majorities at some individual Starbucks locations and they have enough general membership to have won a number of victories (including getting fired organizers reinstated through walk-outs, winning holiday pay increases for all Starbucks employees, etc.).

Of course, the organizing that is done now is nothing like the organizing that was done at the height of the union in the 1900s-1910s, when, to put it rather mildly, they did succeed in organizing a few shops here and there.

(* For one thing, my view is not that union’s long-term goals should be to strike deals with capitalists so as to increase wages or bennies, but rather that workers’ organizations should be moving towards nonviolently replacing capitalists with worker-controlled mutual aid funds, and worker-directed and worker-owned enterprises. For another, I think that hard bargaining under free market conditions serves an informational purpose, which improves economic calculation and thus benefits a lot more than just the unionized workers. Etc.)

... Mike, Well, no, that's not what I said. I'd correct you about what you got wrong (it has to do with the difference between psychiatric "symptoms" and

... That depends on what you're trying to determine. I think that the kind of knowledge psychiatrists claim to be expert in is actually a mish-mash of

... I agree that some people may be systematically better at doing, or at thinking about, morality and ethics than other people. Maybe this is "expertise" in a

... Well, if psychiatry necessarily means medical psychiatry and an illness model, I agree with you that there are philosophical problems with that, just as

Bystander:

Now, if someone were to do the same thing to the US State Department or to BP, I would not consider it to be an immoral act, for a number of reasons, primarily having to do with the illegitimate concentration of power these entities have.

Well, I generally agree with you about that. (Particularly in the case of the State Department, which I would argue is simply a criminal organization, which has no property rights and no legitimate expectation of privacy that anyone is bound to respect.) I would feel differently, in the case of BP, if we were talking about, say, breaking into their computers so as to permanently disable their equipment or prevent them from publishing a public statement. (To be clear, I also think BP is very close to simply being an arm of the State — especially as of late — and so its property rights are dubious at best, but I prefer to err on the side of not breaking other people’s shit where possible. In any case, there are differences among being let in by a leaker, on the one hand, and sneaking in to get information, on the other, and sneaking in to trash the place, on the, um, third.)

In any case, I think what’s wrong with posting a bunch of embarrassing private information online, in the case of an ordinary individual person, is not that it’s a violation of their rights (I don’t believe in intellectual property and so don’t think people have a right to control information in that way), but rather that it is a mean thing to do – - a real dick move, and one that most people don’t deserve. But a corporation has no feelings to be hurt and is not due the same sort of consideration for its secrets. The people in the corporation do, and are, but the purpose of revealing these kind of corporate secrets is hardly ever to inflict that kind of personal damage on people, or to invade the sphere of their private lives, but rather to scrutinize their dealings, and the way that those affect the rest of us. And while a person’s private life may not really be the business of random strangers, the kind of things that people are generally trying to hide within a big business like BP very often are.

I am not under any obligation to condemn every immoral action, especially when I view those actions to ahve positive consequences.

Well, I don’t think that doing what you described would necessarily be unethical. But I also agree that you’re not under any obligation to go out of your way to condemn every action you consider to be unethical. But I do believe in being honest, so if somebody specifically asked, you should probably tell them.

Anyway, I think that the virtue of being considerate and decent to others is an important one, but a distinct question from the question of respecting their basic human rights. I would have no problem with someone being rude or heckling or downright nasty to, say, a uniformed Klansman giving a speech on the street. But I do think that everyone has a right to express their ideas without being threatened or attacked for it; so I don’t think that said Klansman should be given a beat-down. Let alone arrested and prosecuted by the government (which is far bigger and more dangerous than even the most thuggish Klansman). Same goes for corporate sleazebags, raving warhawks, various political flunkies, etc. etc. etc.

... Marja, Right; I agree with you. But the origin of the discussion was around Szasz and his specific claims, so that's why I've mostly been sticking to

... I don't think it is. I think "schizophrenia" in this sense is a grab-bag of genuine symptoms and bogus attempts to write off deviation as "disease." As I

... Joshua, I don't think that the problems with psychiatry have to do with the fact that they make value judgments about brain states. If there are such a

... I don't think anyone here is unaware of that, Mike. Some of us question what the certification is worth. The fact that many psychiatrists all agree in