Epitaph for American Labor: How Union Leaders Lost Touch with America.

I have been waiting a long time to hear what the neo-conservative fraternity thinks about the American labor movement. In recent years their silence on this subject has, by and large, been deafening. But a relative newcomer to their ranks, Max Green, has broken that silence with the publication of Epitaph for American Labor. The book is published, appropriately enough, by the flagship think tank of the neoconservative movement, the American Enterprise Institute, and has been launched with predictably extravagant "blurbs" by four leading neoconservatives. (Curiously, although the book deals with American labor history, it carries no jacket endorsements by labor historians - more about that in a moment.)

Green argues that until the 1980s the American labor movement, faithful to the principles set forth by its founding father, Samuel Gompers, had renounced not only political radicalism but cultural radicalism as well, but that since then it has been advocating policies that are fundamentally inconsistent with competitive capitalism. Specifically, Green charges that, since the 1980s, American labor has mobilized the race- and gender-based policies of the civil rights, feminist, and gay rights movements; and is bent on challenging the pursuit of U.S. interests abroad. In particular it opposes strengthening free-market economies through free trade and other means.

In short, Green concludes that, as currently constituted and led, the movement no longer serves the public or the national interest. It has condemned itself, he says, to a life on the leftward fringe of American politics.

All of Green's charges can be subsumed under that basic complaint. American labor, along with many others, advocates policies that are fundamentally inconsistent with competitive capitalism.

Political analyst Michael Barone, in his laudatory foreword to Green's book, goes directly to the heart of the matter. He admits that Green really does not subscribe to the Gompers tradition after all, but, to the contrary, believes "the Gompers enterprise was fundamentally flawed, based on a misunderstanding of economics." Barone adds that, "over the past thirty years, market economics has seen a great resurgence in the academy and in the political arena. This has put at grave disadvantage the American labor movement, which since Gompers has never believed in market economics." What this mean's in practical terms is that, faithful to the Gompers tradition but to the dismay of both Green and Barone, American labor has consistently rejected the notion that labor is just another commodity in the market and has insisted that wages in some measure be taken out of the market matrix through collective bargaining and/or appropriate legislation. In registering this basic complaint about the movement, Green cites Michael Novak on the virtues of what he calls free labor in a free market. In Novak's words, as quoted by Green, "The precise quality which Marx sees as so inhuman - that labor is treated as a commodity - ...[isl the condition of its multiple possibilities of employment and reward, under conditions of mobility. Thus free men will necessarily trade their labor so as to obtain what they deserve."

Novak, according to Green, "considers himself a friend of the American labor movement, but the principle he upholds is inconsistent with labor's view since its beginning." It is indeed, and, as Barone points out, that's precisely why Green thinks that "the decline of organized labor is a good thing."

The word "epitaph" in Green's title is meant to be taken literally. The dictionary definition of the word is "a funeral oration" or "an inscription on a tomb in memory of the one buried there." In other words, Green has come not to reform the labor movement but to bury it once and for all. Moreover, he makes it perfectly clear that, in his view, the movement will not and should not be revived. Green's subtitle, "How Union Leaders Lost Touch with America," might suggest to some that in his view the movement could conceivably be revived or resuscitated under better leadership. But they would be misreading the basic thesis of his book. His purpose is to prove (if only to his own satisfaction) that unions are no longer needed, thanks to the beneficent workings of the free market, and that their demise is a blessing to the nation and to workers. In my fifty-odd years of reading voraciously in the field of labor economics and labor history, I have never seen this thesis stated as bluntly as Green frames it on the very last page of his book: "America today is more than ever an equal opportunity society, where individuals can rise on their merits, a condition that makes unions irrelevant."

In the light of Green's straightforward conclusion that unions under a system of democratic capitalism are irrelevant, I must admit to being somewhat confused by Michael Novak's carefully worded "blurb" for the book. Novak says that Green's "point is to launch a revivifying argument." Not so. To repeat, Green has come not to revivify the movement but to bury it. Moreover, he has come to bury it, not with what Novak describes as "at times a lover's sorrow," but rather with genuine satisfaction at labor's permanent demise.

Novak's AEI colleague, Irving Kristol, often called the godfather of the neo-conservative movement, has also endorsed Green's book. He calls it "the best history of American trade unionism yet written." That's a bit much, even for Kristol. I say this as one who, fifty years ago, wrote a doctoral dissertation in American labor history and can modestly claim to have read almost every significant book or monograph on this subject published during the intervening years.

"Blurbs," of course, are not meant to be taken too seriously. Blurb writers indulge in poetic license and exaggerate the merits of the book they are praising - especially one written by a friend or, in this case, by an ideological soulmate. But having mentioned labor history, Kristol might have added for the record that Green's is probably the only labor history ever published that congratulates Andrew Carnegie for having ruthlessly broken the bloody Homestead strike at the end of the last century.

Be that as it may, I find Kristol's grossly exaggerated praise more than a bit disturbing. It confirms my long-standing suspicion that all too many neoconservatives are anti-union - not merely critical of existing unions, but opposed to unions on principle. Like Green, they seem to believe that, given the success of democratic capitalism, unions have completely outlived their usefulness. In my opinion, that's a delusion - a form of dangerous wishful thinking which, by the way, contradicts the customary emphasis of neoconservatives on the indispensability of mediating structures or institutions in a democratic society. If neoconservatives truly believe that unions are not mediating institutions, it will not be too long before someone will write a book titled, Epitaph for the Neoconservative Movement: How the Neoconservatives Lost Touch with America. I would hate to see that happen, for the neoconservatives still have an important role to play in the intellectual dialogue in the United States. But they can't afford to squander their credibility by overpraising a book that seriously and systematically argues that unions are mere anachronisms.

I have no problem with Green writing a critical book about the American labor movement (like all organizations, it needs constructive criticism), but, pace Irving Kristol, this book is more ideology than history and will not, I predict, be taken very seriously by credentialed labor historians.

Monsignor George G. Higgins, a longtime Commonweal contributor, writes a column for the Catholic News Service.