"SHOULD LABOR AND THE DEMOCRATS REVIVE THE MUSCULAR LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM OF ALBERT SHANKER?"

February 20, 2008

Remarks by Herb Magidson

Most of the speakers on the various panels that have discussed Rick’s bio of Al have started by thanking him for writing his book. I want to go a step further and thank him for writing his book WHEN he did. I want to thank him for NOT writing it immediately after Al’s death but, rather, a decade later.

And I say this because Al’s vision that an international movement for democracy and freedom is indispensable to the health and vitality of America and the free world is currently being challenged as never before.

There was a time when dictators were reluctant to condemn democratic thought. They felt compelled to use the words freedom and democracy as their very own. After all, we still have the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of North Korea. Even they felt compelled to use the word ‘democratic’.

But now, with the development of vigorous economic engines expanding incredibly in non-democratic countries and countries we might label partially free, there’s a very troubling idea growing on the world stage. There are those who believe the great world struggle is no longer between dictatorships and democracies, but between the efficiency of competing economic models. Freedom may very well become an afterthought - at best an adjunct to economic efficiency.

When Al died in 1997, we were still bathed in the glow of the overthrow of the Soviet Union. Freedom was on the march, the so-called end of history had arrived and a bio on Al Shanker may have only engendered a nostalgic look back at freedom’s battles won - in Poland, in South Africa, in Chile and so many other parts of the world.

But this book comes out when the vision of an inexorable march toward freedom and democracy is being challenged by what may be a fundamental change in the way people perceive the relationships between political freedom, economic growth and social justice.

Dictators around the world - as well as business entrepreneurs and social philosophers - are watching very closely the newly emerging economic engines - particularly those in China. If the Chinese are able to suppress worker rights and, as a result, successfully compete economically, then many other countries will feel the Chinese model is the correct model -that economic success based on the subjugation of worker rights is the only way to compete. Dictators will be able to hide their disdain for freedom by cloaking it in the mantra of economic competition and necessity.

So this discussion is not only timely, it is essential if the march to freedom and democracy is to continue and thrive.

To answer the question before us today, we need to recognize the unique role that organized labor in general and Al Shanker, in particular, have played in developing what we are calling “Liberal Internationalism”. Al Shanker envisioned democracy as the linch-pin for human happiness and fulfillment. For him, it was the life-blood of a universal yearning for freedom - not a Western phenomena.

This view, that the great struggle in the world is between dictatorship and democracy, led the U.S. labor movement to a unique position in the great foreign policy debates in the U.S. For so many other groups, battles over foreign policy seemed to be ideological - between those on the political right and those on the political left. Consequently, right-wing ideologues happily and exclusively condemned dictatorships on the left: such as those in the Soviet Union and the countries in Eastern Europe in the post WWII era; in China after the takeover by the Maoists; in Latin America when Castro took control of Cuba; in Nicaragua when the Sandinistas took over. Their consistency was to be against all left-wing dictatorships. Similarly, left-wing ideologues condemned right-wing dictatorships such as those in Chile, under Pinochet, during the apartheid government’s rule in South Africa, and Somoza’s right-wing dictatorship in Nicaragua. But they, too, found it very difficult to condemn left-wing dictatorships.

They did not divide the world between dictatorships and democracies. Some divided the world between capitalism and socialism; some between North and South; and others between the developed world and the under-developed world.

But these positions by right and left wing ideologues were not so much in opposition to dictatorships per se, as they were part of an ideological struggle for their views on economic theory and social policy. It was a means to promote a system of government, on the one hand, and condemn another system of government. So it was acceptable to some that right-wing dictators were in power because they espoused economic market concepts that some thought were the most important aspects of society. Extreme left-wing ideologues, on the other hand, accepted non-democratic forms of government if they met certain tests – that they were generally anti-capitalist.

I submit to you that over the last century the ONLY non-governmental organization in the U.S. that condemned and actively worked against both right-wing and left-wing dictatorships was the American labor movement and they were able to do it precisely because they saw the great world struggle as one between democratic and dictatorial regimes – no matter their political bent.

Consequently, it was the American labor movement alone that condemned both the Russian Czars when they were in power, and then the Soviets when they came to power in 1917. And it was the labor movement alone that condemned both Chiang-Kai-shek for preventing trade unions and the Chinese communists under Mao when they came to power in 1948. It was the American labor movement alone in the U.S. that condemned General Pinochet’s dictatorial regime in Chile at the same time that it condemned General Jaruzelski’s left-wing regime in Poland in the 1980s. And this is the unique and, to my mind, the indispensable quality that the American labor movement brings to the table. And this is the precise model that Al Shanker expanded when he became chair of the AFL-CIO’s International Affairs Committee.

What is ironic, is that Al Shanker’s view of the world made him very controversial. He was attacked by those on the left who thought him too conservative and those on the right who thought him too liberal. They were both wrong. Al really wasn’t an ideologue in the regular sense of the word. He was a democrat. He was a humanitarian. And that, I believe, is the ‘tough liberalism’ for which we long.

Whereas some determined which dictatorships they abhorred based on their political philosophy, Al was an equal-opportunity opponent of dictatorships of both the left and the right. He railed against both Fidel Castro and Batista. He was an opponent of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas and also an outspoken opponent of Somoza. He spoke out against the communist insurgency in the Philippines and also was an opponent of Marcos. There were those on the right who never could understand why Al criticized right-wing dictatorships who they believed we could live with because they represented stability and weren’t a direct threat to the U.S. There were those who hated Al for taking on the communists throughout the world because they thought the greatest menace to the world was capitalism.

But the essential value of the positions that Al and the labor movement espoused provided something that is sorely missing today - CREDIBILITY.

Al Shanker’s ‘tough liberalism’ is more necessary today than ever, precisely because the United States has lost a great deal of credibility when it talks of the importance of freedom and democracy in the world while it turns a blind eye to certain dictatorial governments based on whether they are perceived to be “with us or against us” on the world’s stage.

One of the reasons some have become disenchanted with the democratic imperative is that they were so disappointed when the Soviet Union fell and the end of a dictatorship did not immediately give rise to the birth of freedom and democracy.

Al knew differently. With the fall of the USSR, Al was one of the few voices that cautioned that democracy will not necessarily flourish at the demise of a dictatorship. He recognized the need for NGOs, independent political parties, the development of churches, unions, newspapers, business groups and universities for the long and hard conversion to a free, democratic society. Al would not have declared the “end of history’. He said, (p.263) “…free enterprise alone will not lead to a free society…we’ve seen the overthrow of a dictatorship…but not yet the development of democracy.”

So what do we mean by ‘Tough Liberalism’? If Al were alive today, I believe he would not be meeting with representatives of the ACFTU - a wing of the Chinese government that is used to suppress worker rights, not enhance them. Some U.S. unions are doing that. Rather, Al would be speaking out and supporting the NGOs in Hong Kong and the fledgling worker movements on mainland China just as he did with Solidarity in Poland and the freedom movement in South Africa. It was not by happenstance that on their first trips to the U.S. both Nelson Mandela and Lech Walesa visited the AFL-CIO and its International Affairs chair, Al Shanker. Were he alive today, I believe Al would be at the Embassies of the Sudan and Burma. He would be fighting the dictator in Zimbabwe as well as the terrorist movements of Hamas, Hezbollah. He would be fighting for fledgling worker movements that are forming in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s how he would build credibility as an advocate for freedom and democracy.

The question before us is not really, “Should Labor and the Democrats Revive the Muscular Liberal Internationalism of Albert Shanker?” The question is, rather, “ In a world where people are questioning the very legitimacy of the democratic imperative, who will champion the notion that there are certain universal values that transcend ethnicity, race, tribe and culture? Humankind strives to be free - to think what they wish, to associate freely with others, to speak their minds and challenge orthodoxy. Who will pick up the banner of ‘tough liberalism’ if not democrats, civil and human rights advocates and, most of all, the free labor movement?

Thank you.