With the announcement that Steve Rattner is stepping down from his spot as "car czar," President Obama is promoting Ron Bloom, a "Harvard Business-trained banker turned United Steelworkers official", the auto industry is put further under union control. First, the unions, with their massive pension and health plans, along with uncompetitive wages, held massive leverage over the car manufacturers, as they refused to make concessions until the last few years, when it was too late. Then the Obama adinistration-negotiated bailout of Chrysler gave the UAW a majority share of the company (not to mention the minority they got of GM.) Now, this.
I personally believe that cries of Communism are self-defeating, because it helps maintain the lack of legitimacy the Republican Party has in some circles. This is almost certainly a case of Obama aiding a very important constituency of his party. However, the central event that Marx thought would lead to the final stage in the dialectic was labor taking over industry through democratic means. The auto industry may be turning into an unintentional test of that thesis.
Relevant Link: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/24876.html#ixzz0LFCx9Ykq&C
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