Paul Mishler-Indiana University at South Bend
Talk delivered at the University of Notre Dame, September 13, 2005

This week marks the anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. I was living and working in New York that day, and shared the fear and anger felt by all New Yorkers when our city was attacked. Yet for me, and for many others outside of our country there is another significant September 11, what Pilar Aguilera and Ricardo Fredes call in their book, “the other September 11th”. On that Tuesday in 1973, the Chilean military, with the aid, support, and perhaps direction of the United States government overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, killing him, and thousands more over the next few weeks. The new military dictatorship approached torture and repression with a passion and efficiency, unrivalled even in similar dictatorships in Latin America. Unlike in the U.S. after our September 11th, nothing would ever be the same in Chile.

I mention Chile today since both anniversaries speak to the relationship between the United States and the rest of the world. And both speak to the necessity of recognizing the international context in which labor and poverty, human rights and workers rights exist.

To begin, we need to enlarge the question raised in the title of today’s discussion- “Do We Need the United Nations?” asking how a particular process or event impacts on those of living in the United States- while seemingly a good place to start- is actually part of the problem. We in the United States live in a military empire, and as inhabitants of an empire, the impact of what we do may only show up years after we have devastated other peoples and places. For example, the destruction of New Orleans has come after years of ignoring climate change, and cutting funding from public projects, which have already been impacting other communities, and other countries.

I would like to address a number of points regarding the relationship between the United States and the rest of the world. These points are directed towards shifting our framework from one in which we are at the center, believing that what our government believes benefits us is good for everyone. The UN is often treated derisively in the United States. This often expressed in a colonial, or even racist way, with contempt for all the small nations who are members, many of which have governments with serious limitations in terms of social and human rights. Yet this contempt masks two aspects of the world that we in the United States often ignore. First, the countries with the worst human rights policies are often our closest allies, and have governments put in place by the United States, such as Saudi Arabia or El Salvador. And secondly, there are numerous countries whose human and social rights records are, in fact, far better than ours. For example, the European Union will not extradite people to the United States because of our death penalty policies. The most important aspect of the UN is that it is the only international body which represents all countries, and the only one not under the sway of the United States.

This hostility towards the UN may seem recent as expressed in the first the choice of anti-UN figure John Bolton as U.S. ambassador, whose first activity as U.S. representative was to try to derail the UN’s anti-poverty goals. However, its roots in the American far right are very deep. The John Birch Society agitated against the UN during the 1950s and 1960s, but at that time, even Republicans thought they were kooks.

For most people in the world, the United States is the problem, not the solution. Our military adventures and covert activities from the Mid-East to Latin America from the end of the 2nd World War through the present have not only been responsible for derailing democracy, but have led to the current military and political crises the world faces. Indeed these have been a constant feature of U.S. policy throughout the 20th century. I will quote here from Marine Major General Smedley Butler, the man responsible for modernizing the Marines, and one of the few soldiers to win the Congressional Medal of Honor twice. Upon his retirement form active duty he re-evaluated his military service:

I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

Secondly, the issues of poverty addressed in the United Nations Millenium goals are primarily issues of decent work and decent wages, as has been spelled out in the positions of the UN-based International Labor Organization. That is, while issues of famine and other “natural” causes do impact on certain areas of the world, most poor people are suffering from poverty-creating social and political policies. I worry sometimes that when issues of poverty and development are discussed in this country we are shown pictures of starving babies in Africa. These images have been part of the way Americans have seen Africa for a long time. Even, one hundred years ago these problems were caused by the impact of colonialism, but today our emotional response to this suffering is a way of avoiding the social causes of poverty, hunger and disease.

So, it is in this context that we should consider the relationships between labor issues and the goal of ending world poverty. Simply expanding economic development cannot end poverty. Indeed, the expansion of industrial work has never ended poverty, by itself. The expansion of industrial work in most of developing world has not led to a reduction of poverty but its transformation. Poverty based in landlordism and rural inequality now is based in the expansion of low wage manufacturing. Industries formerly based in the United States now conduct most of their production in Asia and Latin America. In Malaysia, thirteen-year-old girls produce parts for computers, while in Central America children and young women work in garment production. This expansion of child labor exists for the same reason it used to exist here-children are cheap workers. When children are working their parents are usually unemployed. This does not help end poverty, it increases it.

The labor approach to ending poverty is to recognize that the right to a decent job, at decent wages is basic human right. Yet this will not come on its own. It has to be accompanied by the recognition that workers’ right to organize unions and bargain collectively is the only way to guarantee that jobs will provide a living wage and dignity for workers.

All too often we think of the problem of ending poverty as concerning those who are facing the worst crises. And indeed those facing starvation do need our aid immediately. But in the long run focusing on the worst of the crises may lead us to feel that the problems are too daunting to solve, or can only be solved by charity. If we were to support the working population of the developing world in their efforts to transform their conditions, they will be, in turn, a catalyst for others in their own countries and regions. Here too we find the United States on the wrong side. The most significant example of this is that the single law retained from the era of Saddam Hussein by the U.S. occupation authority in Iraq is that banning trade unions in the public sector. We have further passed regulations banning strikes throughout the economy-at the same time as we are handing over millions of dollars in reconstruction work to multi-national corporations linked to the Bush regime.

To conclude, the United States-especially its working people-need the United Nations. We need it as a counter-weight to the power of U.S.-based multi-national corporations who care as little for workers here as in other countries. We need the UN to stand up for values and policies that benefit working people. But if we restrict ourselves to being concerned with only what benefits us here in the United States, and do not pay attention to what is happening to workers elsewhere, we will end up supporting policies that encourage anti-union activities and maintain low wages around the world. This, as we have seen, will come back to haunt us as corporations become used to the profits to be gained through extreme exploitation abroad and will demand that we work in their version of the world economy. We, through the United Nations, and other international forums need to support a single standard of labor rights that applies to us as well as to workers employed by corporations based here.

1Pilar Aguilar and Ricardo Fredes. Chile: The Other September 11. Melbourne: Ocean Press 2003
2http://www.fas.org/man/smedley.shtml
3“ Most disturbing, the Saddam-era laws which prohibited unions and bargaining for workers in government-owned enterprises are still in effect. In addition, the occupation authority on June 16 issued an order prohibiting strikes” http://www.pnvrc.net/Events/Dec16.shtml

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