The document compares the perspectives of Adolph Reed and Bob Master on the relationship between labor and the Democratic Party. Reed argues for an independent third party for labor while Master believes labor should continue engaging with Democrats. The document also discusses alternatives to cooperating with Democrats, such as community unionism and worker-run enterprises. It concludes by noting these approaches all aim to empower workers and potentially change the current system.

1. Prof. Stephanie Luce Stephen Cheng
Labor 605: Third paper Dec. 12, 2011
Topic two: Compare and contrast two authors (or schools of thought) that we have
covered in the semester, in relation to their theory of the labor movement. Write
about the vision the theorists have for unions, and the broader labor movement, in
relation to the economic and political system. Some variables you may choose to
discuss include: the role of the rank-and-file worker versus staff and union leaders,
the role of unions in relation to political parties and electoral politics, the end goal of
labor organizing, the justification for labor organizing.
Introduction
The effort to make unions and the broader labor movement relevant and powerful
in the contemporary politics of the United States entails a discussion, a debate, and a
decision as to whether there ought to be an ongoing cooperative relationship with the
Democratic Party. In this essay, I argue the case for ending cooperation with the
Democrats and establishing an independent third party that is devoted to the cause of
labor. I also argue for other concurrent approaches such as organizing based on the idea
of community unionism and the possibility of establishing worker-run enterprises. In
doing so, I have the opportunity discuss related issues such as the role of unions in
relation to political parties and electoral politics, the end goal of labor organizing, and the
justification for labor organizing.
Adolph Reed versus Bob Master: Labor, Political Parties, and Electoral Politics
In terms of the readings for the last few weeks of the semester, there is a
fundamental difference between the perspectives of Adolph Reed and Bob Master in
terms of the relationship between labor and electoral politics. The point at which they
differ relates to the question of whether organized labor in the United States should
remain allied with the Democrats. Reed considers President of the United States Barack
Obama to be a part of the status quo, in line with the New Democrat politics of Bill
1

2. Clinton’s presidency during the 1990s. Master, while acknowledging the disappointments
of Obama and the Democrats in relation to the labor movement and other progressive
political and social movements, continues to see hope in maintaining ties. In terms of
whether the labor movement should keep such ties, Reed makes the opposing case by
comparing Obama’s politics to the politics of Clinton.
Concerning Obama’s political similarities with Clinton, Reed writes, “[…]
Obama’s political style presumes and consolidates Clintonism’s ideological and
programmatic victory. […] Clinton’s presidency articulated a Democratic version of
neoliberalism that abjures commitment to the public sector’s role in mitigating
inequalities produced through market processes. This is the substantive foundation of
Obama’s political vision.”1
Since the Clinton administration committed itself to
maintaining the neoliberal status quo, the Obama presidency, by following in the
footsteps of its predecessor, also made the same commitment. The one-word slogan of
Obama’s 2008 presidential candidacy campaign, “Change,” amounted to mere rhetoric.
The notion of Obama as president actually presiding over substantial political, economic
and social change was an illusion that deluded many people in the labor movement and
the political left in the US.
Master, who is hardly deluded by the grim political realities of the Obama
administration, maintains a clear-eyed perspective on the continuing refusal of the
Democrats to break with the neoliberal consensus yet still argues that the labor movement
must continue engaging with Democrats.2
No other option seems realistic and Democrats
do in fact differ from Republicans. He makes this argument based on his political
1
Adolph Reed, “Why Labor’s Soldiering For The Democrats Is A Losing Battle,” New Labor Forum 19(3)
(Fall 2010): 9.
2
Bob Master, “Engaging with Democrats,” New Labor Forum 19(3) (Fall 2010): 16-18.
2

3. experiences and recollections in the 1970s and 1980s. Citing bitter experience in
attempting to organize an independent third party during the late 1970s, he writes off the
idea of building and organizing an independent third party as a “hopeless fantasy” and
adds, “History is littered with the wreckage of these fantasies, which have been more or
less energetic, depending on the state of mass movements at the time they arose.”3
Since
the rationale for launching a third party rests on frustrated progressive notions such as
fundamental similarities between the Republican and Democratic Parties, Master also
cites his memories of then-President Ronald Reagan’s ruthless repression of the air traffic
controllers’ strike during the early 1980s and writes that he was “permanently disabused
of the notion that there are no significant differences between Republicans and
Democrats.”4
To Master, continued engagement with the Democratic Party is the
obvious, if not the best, political approach for organized labor. Backing up his case for
such an approach, he mentions the history of the Democratic Party with then-Presidents
Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson as a progressive party that represented and aided
the US working class and the progressive achievements of the Obama presidency such as
reinforcing the right of airline workers to organize.5
Reed also acknowledges progress
made under the Obama administration.6
However, there are problems in Master’s case
which ultimately tip the debate in Reed’s favor.
There are two problems with Master’s argument. The first problem is that
although the Democrats are slightly better than the Republicans, the former remains just
as committed as the latter to the neoliberal agenda and therefore the labor movement, by
backing the Democrats, can only hope for gains that are at best minimal and easily lost.
3
Master, 18-19.
4
Master, 19.
5
Master, 18-19.
6
Reed, 11.
3

4. Master and Reed hardly disagree over the bipartisan commitment to neoliberalism; the
one important difference is that Master still thinks that the labor movement should still
bother engaging with Democrats.
The second problem is that although Master is correct to note that the Democratic
Party established the New Deal under Roosevelt and attempted to realize the Great
Society under Johnson, he does not take into account that those political and economic
projects were possible through the existence of a mixed economy in which Keynesian
concepts and policies held sway. With the neoliberal turn, the Democrats have not
pursued any similarly ambitious social democratic projects. They are not likely to do so
now either. Instead, Reed’s conclusion about the current Democratic president appears to
be the most appropriate, “[R]ather than providing new opportunities for the Left and
labor, the Obama presidency is more likely to complete the Clintonist consolidation of
the Democratic Party as the identitarian left-wing of neoliberalism.”7
Although Master
thinks that a progressive third party amounts to “hopeless fantasy,” ongoing cooperation
with the Democrats for the purpose of achieving the labor movement’s goals is, at least
on Master’s terms, also a hopeless fantasy. Yet if one must choose, perhaps a third party
will have more potential. Michael D. Yates, who most likely sides with Reed on how the
labor movement should regard Obama and the Democrats, is sympathetic to such a
choice.
Alternatives to cooperation with the Democratic Party
Yates makes the case for establishment of an independent labor party and argues
against continued support from organized labor for Democrats by providing examples
7
Reed, 12.
4

5. dating back to the mid-to-late 1970s as to how elected and soon-to-be-elected Democrats
have fallen short of helping the labor movement in turn and noting that both major US
political parties are “obviously allied with and subservient to the most powerful
employers in the nation” and therefore cannot possibly enact and enforce policies that
help workers.8
The organization of this party is a challenge to the two-party system of
electoral politics that has long existed and currently exists in the country. Although the
main goals for this new and independent labor party include getting seats in the US
legislature and running presidential candidates, a third party that is able to influence the
two major parties and the general public while remaining marginal is nonetheless
somewhat successful. Furthermore, although the labor movement will not be working
closely with Democrats or Republicans but instead working independently with its own
party, it will still be engaged in the legislative process. Master considers continued
engagement in the legislative process to be important, and rightly so. Yet while charting a
new course in electoral politics via an independent third party, there are other approaches
that organized labor can simultaneously consider and try.
Other approaches include community unionism and worker-run enterprises.
Writers such as Simon J. Black, Stephen Lerner, and Rick Wolff write about these
alternatives, none of which are mutually exclusive vis-à-vis the establishment of an
independent third party that represents working people. The common ground that these
approaches and an independent third party share is the challenge that they pose to the
status quo that the two-party system represents and perpetuates. In terms of community
unionism, Black takes as his key historical reference point the “neoliberal turn of the
8
Michael D. Yates, Why Unions Matter (2nd
ed.) (New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 2009) 120-125,
133.
5

6. 1970s” in order to make his case for the contemporary relevance and importance of
community-based labor organizing since the rise of a contingent labor force is very much
an effect of neoliberalism in practice.9
Likewise the fact that the two-party system helped
enable the neoliberal turn in the US provides reasons as to why both independent third
parties and community unions are important alternatives to consider. While independent
third parties provide political representation to working people of all backgrounds,
community unions support working people of all backgrounds through the handling of
community-based matters as if they are workplace issues.
One concrete example of the above is the extension of the collective bargaining in
an effort to economically represent and support more marginal members of the workforce
who may not be union members. Stephen Lerner forcefully writes, “Collective bargaining
can’t only be about improving wages and grievance procedures for union members – it
must also be a tool for fixing broken industries, creating economic opportunity, and
altering the business practices that exploit communities and pollute the environment.”10
At the same time, workplace organizing can evolve in novel ways such as the practice of
direct control of workers. On this matter, Rick Wolff argues that workers’ takeover of
workplaces are a new strategy that the labor movement must consider as a way to
develop workers’ power at the grassroots, “bottom up” level or, to use his words, the
“micro level.”11
While an independent labor party advocates for the interests of working
people at the macro level (i.e. the government, the “commanding heights” of the
economy), the labor movement can organize at the “micro level,” or the workplace
9
Simon J. Black, “Community Unionism: A Strategy for Organizing in the New Economy,” New Labor
Forum 14(3) (Fall 2005): 24-25, 27-27.
10
Stephen Lerner, “An Injury to All: Going Beyond Collective Bargaining as We Have Known It,” New
Labor Forum 19(2) (Spring 2010): 46.
11
Rick Wolff, “Taking Over the Enterprise: A New Strategy for Labor and the Left,” New Labor Forum
19(1) (Winter 2010): 8.
6

7. through traditional trade union methods and through workers’ cooperatives.
Conclusions
All of the above approaches touch on key issues such as the role of unions in
relation to political parties and electoral politics, the end goal of labor organizing, and the
justification for labor organizing. The role of unions and other forms of organized labor
in relation to political parties and electoral politics is an aforementioned topic in this
essay. For example, if unions decide to establish and support an independent third party
that represents the interests of labor, they are changing their relationship to political
parties and electoral politics by acting on their own within the existing political
framework and system. Likewise, by attempting to pursue social change outside of
political parties and electoral politics through community unionism and workers’
councils, the labor movement is developing interdependent power among workers .12
In
turn, these developments concern the end goal and justification for labor organizing. The
end goal is to empower workers within the system and, hopefully, to overturn that s
system. As for the justification, it is that working people, and people in general, should be
able to live better lives and therefore they should be able to organize among themselves
through political parties, unions, and/or other means in order to do so.
Of course, there should be no illusions either. Any independent third party that is
oriented towards the labor movement and/or leftist politics will necessarily be, in effect if
not in intention, a social democratic party since it is working within a system of political
institutions that exist alongside and for economic institutions that enable and oversee
capitalist accumulation. Likewise, community unionism and worker-run enterprises may
12
Frances Fox Piven, “Can Power from Below Change the World?” American Sociological Review Volume
73, Number 1 (February 2008): 5.
7

8. only allow for a more equitable and equal redistribution of monetary wealth on society.
Nonetheless these are all approaches worth trying. Given the times, they are not only
worth trying; they are essential.
References
8

9. Black, Simon J. “Community Unionism: A Strategy for Organizing in the New
Economy.” New Labor Forum 14(3) (Fall 2005): 24-32.
Lerner, Stephen. “An Injury to All: Going Beyond Collective Bargaining as We Have
Known It.” New Labor Forum 19(2) (Spring 2010): 45-52.
Master, Bob. “Engaging with Democrats.” New Labor Forum 19(3) (Fall 2010): 16-21.
Piven, Frances Fox. “Can Power from Below Change the World?” American
Sociological Review Volume 73, Number 1 (February 2008): 1-14.
Reed, Adolph. “Why Labor’s Soldiering For The Democrats Is A Losing Battle.” New
Labor Forum 19(3) (Fall 2010): 9-15.
Wolff, Rick. “Taking Over the Enterprise: A New Strategy for Labor and the Left.”
New Labor Forum 19(1) (Winter 2010): 8-12.
Yates, Michael D. Why Unions Matter (2nd
ed.) New York, NY: Monthly Review Press,
2009.
All citations are in Modern Language Association format.
9

10. Black, Simon J. “Community Unionism: A Strategy for Organizing in the New
Economy.” New Labor Forum 14(3) (Fall 2005): 24-32.
Lerner, Stephen. “An Injury to All: Going Beyond Collective Bargaining as We Have
Known It.” New Labor Forum 19(2) (Spring 2010): 45-52.
Master, Bob. “Engaging with Democrats.” New Labor Forum 19(3) (Fall 2010): 16-21.
Piven, Frances Fox. “Can Power from Below Change the World?” American
Sociological Review Volume 73, Number 1 (February 2008): 1-14.
Reed, Adolph. “Why Labor’s Soldiering For The Democrats Is A Losing Battle.” New
Labor Forum 19(3) (Fall 2010): 9-15.
Wolff, Rick. “Taking Over the Enterprise: A New Strategy for Labor and the Left.”
New Labor Forum 19(1) (Winter 2010): 8-12.
Yates, Michael D. Why Unions Matter (2nd
ed.) New York, NY: Monthly Review Press,
2009.
All citations are in Modern Language Association format.
9