Sunday, June 24, 2018
Goebbels or Gompers Addendum
In my original post, I didn't say much about the overt racist expression in Gomper and the A. F. of L.'s advocacy for Chinese exclusion. I guess that is because I read the stuff voluminously a couple of decades ago and it by now it just seemed to me it was common knowledge. Of course it isn't. I was astonished and appalled when I first read it. Not so much at the vileness as at the obsessive repetition of that vileness. The pamphlet, Some Reasons for Chinese Exclusion gives a representative sampling. In the introduction, the authors assure the reader that they "are not inspired by a scintilla of prejudice of any kind..."
Not a scintilla.
Again, I had no idea but needed to know.
ReplyDeleteThank you.
I should add that I am very concerned about current widespread vilifying of China among American opinion makers both conservative and supposedly liberal.
ReplyDeleteEgmont,
ReplyDeleteIf you just post your comment without the superfluous diatribe, invective and self-aggrandizing spam, I wouldn't delete it. But if you insist on cluttering the comments with your repetitive drivel, it will be deleted. The following is an example of what would be acceptable comment:
You say: “I should add that I am very concerned about current widespread vilifying of China among American opinion makers both conservative and supposedly liberal.”
I should add that I am also concerned about vilifying China but even more about climate change, growing populism, foreign and domestic hackers, Middle Eastern rogue states, the caged children in the detention camps, the plastic apocalypse in the Pacific, the mass extinction of bees, the new Space Force, the swamp in Washington, Mr. Trump’s tax returns, fake news but most of all about the utter ignorance of economists.
How does it come that economists are not concerned about the state of their discipline?
• Employment theory has not risen since the founding fathers above the level of Lump-of-Labor polemics.
I am so sorry, I do not know how to post properly here since I prefer not using my name.
ReplyDeleteI am not a person called Egmont, I was not in any way rude or self-aggrandizing and only mentioned China because the last posts dealt with an American historical vilifying of the Chinese. A vilifying by the labor leader Samuel Gompers, which was a surprise to me. I know however there are other problems and am sorry to have somehow written a sentence I should not have.
I was not trying to be a nuisance, but obviously was.
I appreciate your writing.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteDon't worry, it wasn't you. Egmont quoted you in his post. I deleted Egmont's post.
I again read the posts and am completely impressed, though of course still surprised and dismayed at the racial attacks by Gompers. I do not excuse Gompers, no matter that the publishing of the pamphlet was in 1902, however I understand the non-racial thinking now.
ReplyDeleteThe posts are important.
Thank you.
I understand your argument:
ReplyDeletehttp://cepr.net/publications/briefings/testimony/can-work-sharing-bring-the-us-workplace-into-the-20th-century
June 21, 2018
Can Work Sharing Bring the US Workplace into the 20th Century?
By Dean Baker
Thanks, anon., for the link to the Dean Baker commentary.
ReplyDeleteYes, Gompers's racism is inexcusable and unconscionable. It is important to not whitewash such things because otherwise we may tend to romanticize "the labor movement" and view depredations like Trump as aberrations. "This is not who we are as Americans," is not a good slogan for finding a way to STOP being like that.
Abusers always excuse themselves with the plea that what they did is not really who they are. There is a deep strain of American exceptionalism and "manifest destiny" that all too easily again and again transforms into master race ideology, as we are currently witnessing.
Sandwichman
ReplyDeleteLike Anonymous, we all are “completely impressed, though of course still surprised and dismayed at the racial attacks by Gompers.”
Being on a blog called EconoSpeak, though, we all should now turn to contemporary economics and be “completely impressed, though of course still surprised and dismayed” at the utter idiocy and corruption of economists and the most embarrassing failure in the history of modern science.
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke