May Day! May Day! Arise, ye prisoners of starvation...

"Ultimately, the trend toward widening inequality in America, as elsewhere, can be reversed only if the vast majority, whose incomes have stagnated and whose wealth has failed to increase, join together to demand fundamental change."  -- Bob Reich

Workers of the world, unite. What kind of fundamental change does Bob Reich have in mind? Giving workers "the bargaining leverage they need to get a larger share of the gains from growth."

Full employment was a substitute for collective action. Growth was a substitute for full employment. "We're all in this together" sacrifice (austerity) was a substitute for growth. Collective action to get a larger share of the gains from growth begins to sound like the conservative motto, "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work."

“Workers ought not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!’ they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wages system!’”