| Having
organized many workers and studied labor history,
I have seen that Eli Siegel understood what
other economists and historians have not. He explained that the central
matter in economics is ETHICAL: the fight throughout history is not the
class struggle; it’s the fight between respect for people and contempt
for people.
Mr. Siegel showed that the desire for contempt — to make oneself more by
lessening someone else — is the only reason why there is poverty in this
world. Contempt is what has a person see another in terms of money for
oneself — not in terms of who that other person is and what he or she deserves.
I’ve seen many people who were maimed or diseased because of the contempt
which Mr. Siegel showed is at the basis of profit economics. I know men
whose fingers were severed on table saws because the boss didn’t want the
flow of profit slowed down by safety mechanisms. I know workers whose lungs
are damaged from years of inhaling dust because employers didn’t want to
lose profit by remedying the hazardous conditions. Mr. Siegel was clear
early, here in Baltimore, and all his life: jobs should be for usefulness,
not for profit.
In many lectures he gave, he showed that unions have been one of the biggest
opponents to contempt and forces for respect in world history, because
unions have insisted, with power and often beautiful rudeness: These are
people, not mechanisms for someone’s profit! A statement I love
and believe needs to be known by everyone is this, from a 1970 lecture
by Mr. Siegel:
The
most important thing in industry is the person who does the industry, which
is the worker. That ... can never change. Labor is the only source of wealth.
There is no other source, except land, the raw material .... Every bit
of capital that exists was made by labor, just as everything that is consumed
is.
In that year, 1970, Mr. Siegel explained that we have reached a point in
history at which economics based on using people contemptuously, for profit,
no longer works. Good will has to be the basis of production and distribution
for our economy to be efficient and kind. A poem he wrote here in Baltimore
when he was 20 years old has in it his tremendous feeling for people, and
his hatred for a way of economics that has crippled their lives. He uses
the phrase "stupid masses" ironically. Maybe he saw a little girl like
the one he tells about, in this park:
|
Present Sight
A little
child of seven years,
Innocent
as little children are,
Though
very poor, she has no fears
Now
that she may not go
Just
as far
As
any other child.
She’s
very mild
About
her woe,
Though
later
She’ll
be
Among
the "stupid masses,"
This
one of millions,
Poor
dirty lasses;
May
strike as a showily attired
Shop
girl
Working
where cigars are made,
May
lose in the strike and be fired,
May
of hard work be very tired,
May
even for her body be desired,
May
live unhappily
And
not so very humanly. |
Because of Mr. Siegel’s conviction and clarity about justice, people come
to feel that being just to others is the same thing as having a great time
and taking care of yourself! I’ve seen this—and it’s the most hopeful news
in the world.
|