Friday, September 25, 2009

Michael Moore is the best development for the American Left in decades

"But one of the biggest barriers I've found in my research around worker cooperatives is not just government and companies being resistant to it but actually unions as well. Obviously there are exceptions, like the union in your film, United Electrical Workers, which was really open to the idea of the Republic Windows & Doors factory being turned into a cooperative, if that's what the workers wanted. But in most cases, particularly with larger unions, they have their script, and when a factory is being closed down their job is to get a big payout--as big a payout as they can, as big a severance package as they can for the workers. And they have a dynamic that is in place, which is that the powerful ones, the decision-makers, are the owners."
The left in the US is really bad in terms of delivery and form: they come across as spineless, humorless, and tedious. Michael Moore (and Noami Klein) know how to deliver an uncompromising Leftist message to a mainstream audience.