The Rest of the Story

Pluralist democracy

In my previous post, I noted that the pluralist theory of American democracy appears to best describe American government.  Organized groups lobby for their interests, and the policies that government adopts tend to be compromises.  Nobody gets everything; everybody gets something.

At the national level groups learned to live in an uneasy balance with their opponents.   In political science terminology, we had “countervailing power.”

Pluralism does have its downsides.  First of all, not everyone joins in.  The Sierra Club, a comparatively large environmental group, has 1.3 million members.  For every 240 Americans, only one is a Sierra Club member.

A second problem is the lack of participation by the people who are in groups.  Many members have a “checkbook affiliation.”  They mail in their dues and receive a newsletter.  That’s not very participatory.

Finally, in the words of interest group scholar E. E. Schattschneider (love that name), “...the flaw in the pluralist heaven is that the heavenly chorus sings with an upper-class accent.”  Very few poor people join groups, give campaign donations, or support lobbyists.  Those few groups that do represent the poor are marginalized or attacked.  (Remember Acorn.)

The labor movement

The one place where the average blue or pink collar worker had some clout was in the labor movement.  Retail clerks, teachers, laborers, farm workers, miners, steel workers, auto workers--all had their unions.  While never as powerful as corporate interests, these unions did act as countervailing power, and they were effective.

An occupational therapist from Wisconsin was quoted as saying workers no longer needed unions, because we had laws to protect workers.  We do have minimum wage and maximum hours and workers’ comp, but that is because of unions.  If unions disappear, those laws will be repealed or not enforced, nor will non-union employers feel any pressure to match union wages or benefits.

Not all unions were progressive, of course.  Some of the old AFL unions resisted integration, and you may remember the “hardhats” supporting Nixon.  Nevertheless, when you look at the history of reform legislation, unions have been the good guys.  They are also one of the mainstays of the Democratic Party, and an important source of both campaign contributions and volunteers.  Of the ten top donor groups in 2008, only three supported Democrats, and they were unions.

Unfortunately, organized labor is on the ropes.  Fewer than one in ten private workers is in a union.  The reasons for that are too many and too complicated to cover here.  The one bright spot in the labor movement has been unionized government workers.  

Republicans know that.  Corporate interests know that.  By eliminating unions we will see government reflecting the interests of those at the top even more than it already does.  The U.S. currently has one of the largest gaps between rich and poor of all the industrialized countries, and that gap is growing each year.  We are becoming an oligarchy where the wealthy few enjoy their money and power and the rest of us can’t do a damn thing about it.  That is why Wisconsin is so important.