UNLOCKED: History is a Weapon 15: On the Labor Question w/ Matt Christman

Enjoy this blast from the distant pass: January 2023!

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In light of the depressing denouement of 2022's railroad conflict, Sean and Matt sit down, in person at last, to discuss the deep history behind how American organized labor got so disorganized and why the labor movement hasn't moved in decades.

Why was it that, in the United States, workers institutions had trouble evolving past the infancy of narrow, sectoral, decentralized craft unionism towards broad-based, nationally-coordinated industrial unionism? How did capital, in the face of militant organizing, help choose the weaker of the two as their partner to bargain with? In what ways is worker self-organization in this country truly, as our enemies always say, anti-American? And importantly what is to be done now that private sector union density is so low, workers institutions so captured and the national labor relations regime has fallen apart?

STAY TUNED AFTER THE OUTRO MUSIC FOR A SPECIAL LAST MINUTE ADDENDUM