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Don't Write Labor's Epitaph Yet
By Msgr. George Higgins
June 29, 1998
This column concludes a series I've written about the neo-conservative movement in the United States. The first column said that, by and large, neo-conservative silence on labor issues has been deafening -- a silence broken only by an aggressively anti-union book published by the American Enterprise Institute, the flagship neo-conservative think tank.The book's title is ``Epitaph for American Labor: How Union Leaders Lost Touch With America.'' The author, Max Green, began adult life as a democratic socialist and a firm AFL-CIO supporter. He spent 10 years working for the teachers' union in New York. Later, like many of his neo-conservative elders, he found himself moving to the right, and the rest, as they say, is history.
A recent profile in the New Yorker of three prominent neo-conservatives says neo-conservatism is ``perhaps the only political movement in which you qualify for membership by declaring yourself to have been totally wrong.''
There's nothing wrong, of course, about changing one's mind or political philosophy. But Green in my view goes overboard. His book argues that the American labor movement as currently constituted no longer serves the public or national interest. The word ``epitaph'' in his book's title is meant literally. The dictionary defines ``epitaph'' as ``a funeral oration'' or ``inscription on a tomb in memory of the one buried there.''
Green has come not to reform the labor movement but to bury it. He makes clear his view that the movement will not and should not be revived.
Green's purpose is to prove, if only to his satisfaction, that unions no longer are needed, thanks to the free market's beneficent workings, and that the unions' demise is a blessing to the nation and its workers.
In my 50-odd years of reading voraciously in the field of labor, I never have seen this thesis stated as bluntly as Green frames it on his book's last page:
``America today is more than ever an equal opportunity society where individuals can rise on their merits, a condition that makes unions irrelevant.''
In light of that statement, I admit to being somewhat confused by Michael Novak's carefully worded blurb for the book. He says Green's ``point is to launch a revivifying argument.'' Not so. Green has come not to revivify the movement but to bury it.
Novak's AEI colleague, Irving Kristol, often called the neo-conservative movement's godfather, has written a blurb extravagantly praising Green's book. Kristol says the book is ``the best history of American trade unionism yet written.''
Now, book blurbs tend to exaggerate the merits of the book -- especially one written by a friend, or, in this case, an ideological soul mate.
Be that as it may, I find Kristol's exaggerated praise of the book disturbing. It serves to confirm my long-standing suspicion that too many neo-conservatives are anti-union -- not critical of existing unions (nothing wrong with that), but opposed to unions on principle, asGreen is on grounds that, given democratic capitalism's success, unions have outlived their usefulness.
In my opinion that's dangerous wishful thinking and flatly contradicts their customary emphasis on the crucial importance of mediating structures or institutions in a democratic society.
If they truly believe that unions are not among these mediating structures or institutions, it may not be too long before someone writes a book titled ``Epitaph for the Neo-Conservative Movement: How the Neo-Conservatives Lost Touch With America.''
Neo-conservatives have an important role to play in the intellectual dialogue in the United States. But they cannot afford to squander credibility by overpraising a book that systematically argues that unions have no role in American society.