The tech solidarity is at odds with the progressive causes. I would probably join a solidarity group, but I would not join one that pushed causes other than 'tech worker interests'
I'm not the biggest fan of Tech Solidarity, but they understand, at least, that we (folks who work, as opposed to folks who own) are more in it together than we're not. Labor history bears this out; they can read a map.
Like, I don't give a fuck if people understand broad overarching concepts of solidarity and togetherness. Maybe I'm just a huge sperg, but what I want is concrete work on making tech work better. Make a flyer explaining stock compensation and how shady employers will structure things to screw you over, and publicize the shit out of it so that employers can't claim ignorance. Name-and-shame employers for having equity compensation terms so bad that they grants are effectively worthless. Something.
That is a progressive cause, no?
What frustrates me personally is the inability of many progressives to rationalize anything other than Marxist/socialist means for those ends and then act as if everyone who doesn't believe in those means doesn't share those end goals.
What does this actually mean?
They tend to dismiss the more incentive-based approach of ending the abuse of the H1-B system, which is the key market driver for artificially low wages and poorer working conditions. This is because doing so is at odds with the post-modernist ideal of a borderless society.
nit: "a borderless society" is compatible with postmodernist framing, but it is not the necessary outcome of one. Postmodernism is a category of schools of though, not a single one, and so some schools of postmodernism advocate a borderless society, but others are opposed to it.
Two examples:
If you want to improve salaries, you can do that via unionization and lobbying for guaranteed raises. That's a popular leftist approach. You can also do that by advocating for bonuses based on personal achievement or corporate profit. The left has generally been disinterested in that, and has indirectly opposed it by advocating for higher taxes on bonuses.
If you want to expand worker influence on how companies are run, you can found co-ops, establish worker's councils, and so on; these are popular leftist programs. You can also give meaningfully-large stock grants to large numbers of employees - equity-granting startups are worker-owned every bit as much as co-ops. This isn't a leftist initiative at all, and has been indirectly opposed by calls to heavily tax options and capital gains even when they're being given in lieu of salary.
I don't especially want to debate any of those as policies; it's just a demonstration of what some leftist and non-leftist roads to labor power look like.
I'm not an extremest on the other end, but it is not disingenuous to state that much of the left's visions are directly "Marxist". What would you call the idea of a "base livable wage" or "equity over equality"?
The most historically important labor union of our time, Solidarność, was the largest player in driving the Communists out of Poland and bringing back capitalism. It doesn't seem to me that you're throwing around terms, it's more like you're just sort of wandering around accidentally dropping them on the floor.
Which is possibly rude to say, but the first person to use the word "postmodernism" in a conversation earns some demerits. (edit: that wasn't you. My bad!)
Another poster pointed out that a labor union is a bunch of laborers standing in solidarity for something they want. Acting as if that is always the same... well, have fun with that.
You're confusing a labor union in a communist country versus those in a capitalist country. There is a long history of American labor unions being the main infiltration point of communist movements. The AFL CIO had to specifically write a bylaw in the 1950s to expel them.
Here's a really interesting interview of Thaddeus Russel, someone who was raised by two communists in Berkeley, whose main goal was infiltrating labor movements: https://youtu.be/x4YxSGFqOH8?t=3m50s
It's not on me to intuit that your misuse of terms is limited to the United States. Your statement is funny, though, and would seem to imply that labor unions opposed to Marxism during Communist regimes would embrace Marxism once those governments adopted capitalism, for some reason. I wonder if there are any examples of that happening.
> someone who was raised by two communists in Berkeley, whose main goal was infiltrating labor movements
I think you've taken the notion that all Marxists like labor unions and taken it to imply that all labor unions like Marxism, which is obviously not true. You should be able to see the logical problem there, even if you're not interested in the historical specifics, which are interesting.
If you're limiting yourself to the American left-right political spectrum, which tends to lobotomize a political discussion, you can probably sort of justify calling unionization a "leftist" tactic. That's not about ideas at all, it is simply because what we call our "right" has defined itself as being opposed to unionization. Marxism has nothing to do with that, and calling unionization "Marxist/socialist" is really a bridge too far.
And in case it wasn't obvious: "progressives" often find being labelled Marxists irritating. It's one of the dumber things that happens in our political dialog, and if you do it in mixed company you'll sometimes be called out on it.
Says the person who took an article about American labor organization and tried to make it about Europe.
> And in case it wasn't obvious: "progressives" often find being labelled Marxists irritating.
Except the term "progressives" was coined by Marxists and socialists in the 1930s to separate themselves from liberals.
In the US, the term "progressive" is much older than that. The party you're referring to is the third "progressive" party, started by Wallace in 1948. The first was in 1912, and the usage of the term goes back to the 19th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Party_(United_Stat...
The three parties had distinct platforms and motivations, and each used the term in ways that would be inconsistent with contemporary usage of the word. OP is clearly referring to contemporary usage of the word, so there's no reason to bring up the mid-20th century version of the party in that context.
That is not what I did. What I did was find the most historically important counterexample to an unselfconsciously silly thing you said. If I had realized that we are pretending the rest of the world doesn't exist, I could have chosen the anti-Communist leadership of the Teamsters during the red scare or something.
Equating unionism with Marxism is goofy. I mean, honestly, go to the local pipefitter's union hall or something and poll a few people on their feelings regarding Karl Marx or worldwide worker's solidarity or control of the means of production. Please just be honest: do you really think you are going to find a lot of real Marxists?
> Except the term "progressives" was coined by Marxists and socialists in the 1930s to separate themselves from liberals.
Not to downplay the importance of etymology, which dang reminded me recently is quite important, but I think that if we project the values of today's "progressives" onto the depression era, it is obvious that they identify quite a bit more with the New Deal than with the progressive movement. Today, it is just a poorly thought out label. I think you can see why someone might view "Marxist" as a bit more than that.
It's a tangential point, but "progressivism" as a political term in the US dates back all the way to the 1890s. It meant something different in the 20s and 30s, which sort of illustrates the point I'm making.
Its a simple and easily verifiable historical fact that that's not when or by whom “progressive” as a political label (or even one used in the US) was coined. In 1912, former President Theodore Roosevelt—who was neither a Marxist nor any other variety of socialist—ran for President under the banner of the “Progressive Party”.
And what you suggest is also not the origin of the modern use, which was from early 1990s liberals in the Democratic Party adopting the term largely in response to decades of Republican media efforts to make “liberal” a toxic term, but also as a distinguishing marker against the rising center-right neoliberal faction of the party.
The reason they are disinterested in bonuses based upon personal achievement is because it is guaranteed to be used as a tool for favoritism and divide and rule, which ultimately just lowers worker compensation.
It will only work if the measure is objective, which is almost always impossible.
And this doesn't happen in unions? The only difference is in who's getting bribed, management or the union boss.
Just curious, do you consider progressives the identity politics fanatics and staunch neoliberals? I'd spend some time arguing they're not progressively oriented at all.
Differing opinions are welcome but the last time I felt worker welfare was truly a core cause of the progressive mainstream was around the 1970s. It certainly wasn't by the 1990s and doesn't even seem to even be on the radar today as far as I can tell.
> empathy gap
Maybe if you were more open to helping them with threats to their livelihood, dignity, and well-being, they’d be more open to helping you with yours?
I don’t know, just a thought.
Find the points where some dedicated work can help out tech workers as a class and push on them. Then once you have something worth trading for, sell it dearly and hold out for something worthwhile. IMO something like a volunteer writer to put out educational material relevant to working conditions in tech is probably the best bang-for-buck. Teach people how and why to job-hop and negotiate, make it concise, informative, and helpful, and put up a standard link to organization and request to sign up for the mailing list. Bog-standard growth-hacking, except peddling a professional organization rather than some startup's SaaS product.
All the important social changes of the past - workplace safety, worker benefits, weekends, overtime, maternity leave, etc. - were achieved not individually by specially focused groups of organised workers. They were done through the actions and demands of mass movements of workers across industry lines. When you say "such-and-such group should only focus on the specific issues that affect them" then you are playing into the divide-and-conquer strategy of the ruling class and ensuring that you will gain less overall in the struggle against them.
So were a lot of other not-so-great things, like per-country immigration quotas (which we still have to this day), Puerto Rican colonialism (vestiges exist to this day as well, though at least the genocide stopped in the 1970s), - heck, even internment camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II. Organized labor lobbied heavily for all of those, because they protected the interests of white workers.
The problem with talking broadly about "solidarity" is that it's all contextual - who are you standing in solidarity with, and who are you standing in solidarity against? For people in minority groups and historically marginalized and disenfranchised people, it's not always clear that "solidarity" means solidarity with their interests - historically, it often means the exact opposite.
I'll probably get downvoted for pointing this out in a thread that's literally a PR piece advocating unionization of the tech industry, but it needs to be said.
This is not necessarily an argument against unions though. It means we need to stand for unions that are engaged in real solidarity with the workers and other oppressed groups. And that we must put pressure on any that are engaged in bad practices to change.