Customer Reviews

Audacious Democracy: Labor, Intellectuals, and the Social Reconstruction of America

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an absolutely Fantastic Review of the Columbia labor teach-in. This volume brings together some of America's top labor-left leaders and intellectuals.... a definite must.

The sub-title of this collection of articles is somewhat misleading. Not only does the book contain more than a hand full of bias-laden pieces but many of the same are written by people who fall well outside the parameters of "intellectuals" and maintain thier living from the labor movement. But my main disapointment with this book is that it is weighted down with the same tired polemics and solutions for accomplishing "social justice" (whatever that might be as the year 2000 approaches) as we have seen over and over for the past several decades. Also readers should note that this volume appeared before the recent troubles the AFL-CIO encountered with the Democratic fundraising scandals. Those troubles have done much to reveal AFL chief John Sweeney and Take-the-Fifth Trumpka and their "shining promise" for change as little more than a slick public relations coup. If organized labor had a real program for change and economic democracy then it would not be necessary for it to attempt to buy its way into the mainstream of a corrupt process that could care less about the American working person. Lane Kirkland might have been preoccupied with having dinners in Europe but Sweeney needs to understand that dinners on Capitol Hill are no less useless. What is needed is an objective book that poses and addresses the crucial question of whether or not unions in their current incarnation have not outlived their usefulness. Reading this book and comparing its contents to the present turmoil within the labor movement only underscores the fact that what labor lacks is a serious intellectual base, the mystique and vehicle for moving any kind of social change agenda in America, and most of all, the will to move forward.