 Anti-Union Cliches: A clearly written example of self-contradiction | Jan. 18th, 2008 @ 03:42 pm  |
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in his weblog entry, Why I Don’t Support the Writer’s Strike, states his position so clearly that it is easy to see through the usual cliches. There is the usual cliche that somehow joining a union is a way to get around "personal responsibility". There is the cliche that we live in a competitive market, on a level playing field and all you have to do is go out and create your own business to compete with the corporations.On the other hand there is the usual fatalistic notion that people shouldn't cooperate to change their situation. The corporations set the rules and all you can do is follow their rules or go out and create similar rules that others follow. The Word Wrangler
writes in his post , "For those that think they’re getting screwed by the corporations - which they probably are - go off on your own. Start your own company. Make your own future instead of crying about your present." Basically, this reduces to the following choice, "Screw or get screwed," either get exploited or do some exploiting yourself. There is no perspective that the basic situation might be changed, or at least made better for those who come after. ( Another possibility of course is that you will hope that your business will be somehow "different." Many have tried, through cooperatives, share-alike business organizations, etc. These forms are good, but unfortunately in our society very unstable.)There is also the usual silliness, and yes it is silliness, that people that are out on strike, fighting for themselves and others are somehow "cry babies." Having known people who have gotten beaten up by company goons while on picket-lines, I find it kind of childish that a person compares a picket line "to a child holding his breath until he gets what he wants." Union haters are mired in self-contradiction, in this respect. If the picket lines are old fashion sorts of affairs that people won't cross, they blame unions for being thugs. If picket lines largely act as a moral reminder that people should stick together for the good of all who work, then the picketers are called cry-babies or people who are not serious. The conglomerates have said this about the current WGA picketers over and over again. The anti-union types will often go back and forth between these two complaints depending on the strike and the type of picket line.
I use the above phrase "anti-union type" gingerly, but I don't want to be too mean to The Word Wrangler
because it seems to me that he doesn't see that his cliches are such and are in many ways self-contradictory. He writes clearly, and not like a hardened intellectual who can hide the contradictions in his thought. For this precise reason his expressions are useful.So after this post I reply at length: (Note: I left a shorter and non-proofread version of my reply at The Word Wrangler
. Word Wrangler replied very politely.Why I Don’t Support the Writer’s Strike
Posted in January 18th, 2008
by The Word Wrangler
I’ve been avoiding talking about the writer’s strike for a couple of reasons. The first one being that I don’t support strikes, nor do I support unions. The second one is that I believe that people should take responsibility for their own lives. If you think you’re getting a raw deal at your job, then change jobs. Change careers if you want. But don’t stand around with a sign on a picket line, which is the adult equivalent of a child holding his breath until he gets what he wants.
Anne Wayman from the Golden Pencil
So I’m giving my reasons why I don’t support the strike.
The rules are set by the corporations - If I went to work at Marvel Comics as a writer or artist, I know going in that the company is pretty much going to own whatever it is I create. If I create the next Superman - and Marvel makes millions of dollars in TV, toys, movies and comic books - chances are I’m still going to be compensated based on our original agreement with Marvel coming out on top. And Marvel certainly isn’t going to give me the rights to the character that’s earning them that much scratch. I know this going in. If I don’t want to play by those rules, I can choose not to.
It’s their game so don’t whine about it when you come out on the bottom of a deal.
Personal responsibility - I admit that I lean pretty far to the conservative side of the political spectrum. My father is a no-nonsense guy and an extremely hard worker. He always preached about controlling your own destiny instead of it controlling you. Make choices - both good and bad - and live with the consequences. And if you’re in a situation you don’t like, pull yourself up out of it and move on.
I realize we live in a society that doesn’t like to hear that. We don’t want to work hard for what we want. We think we’re entitled to everything and when we don’t get it, we whine. We think the companies we work for owe us all. Well, I got news for y’all, it ain’t like that.
For those that think they’re getting screwed by the corporations - which they probably are - go off on your own. Start your own company. Make your own future instead of crying about your present.
The marketplace has changed drastically over the past decade. There are more opportunities than ever for creative people to get noticed, make money AND keep the rights to their material than ever before.
Instead of trying to change someone else’s rules, why not just go and make up your own?
Word Wrangler,
We have so little common ground between us, that a discussion between us would probably be difficult. But because you state your view so clearly it is also easy to see the alternatives that you leave out.
You say that there are a couple of reasons you don't support the WGA strike: "The first one being that I don’t support strikes, nor do I support unions. The second one is that I believe that people should take responsibility for their own lives."
You state this right out without giving reasons. You also seem to connect "personal responsibility" and being anti-union. Later you say that corporations set the rules. So let me ask you the following questions.
1) What is a corporation but a state-sanctioned and legally protected union of investors and owners? Why do you support the kind of union of owners that is a corporation, but not a union of employees? The business institution we call a corporation was not created whole cloth and neither is it a "natural phenomena" that has always been with us. In your post you in effect assume that both of these situations are true, both that corporations suddenly appeared as arbitrary institutions and that they are natural phenomena that no one can change. The rules are the rules. But corporations were created through heavy state intervention and enabled by laws created by lawyers and judges. Why should you support laws and state-intervention to enable corporations but be opposed to people getting together in unions? My suspicion is that you believe in corporations and not unions because the business institutions are the dominant form in our country and as John Dewey said, business is simply the political air we breath.
So this is the first contradiction that I find in your post: You are in favor of unions of owners and investors, corporations that are the height of the lack of personal responsibility because this lack of personal responsibility is encoded in the law under the guise of "limited liability." But you are opposed to cooperation between employees in collective bargaining.
2) If people cooperate with each other to get things done, do you consider this something that is counter to "personal responsibility"? Why shouldn't employees cooperate to bargain with their employer? Why shouldn't employees try to improve the work situation that they are in? Why is cooperating with others to improve your situation, or the situation of your industry, somehow an abnegation of personal responsibility? I don't really understand how personal responsibility and cooperation with others contradict each other. In fact, I consider the idea that "personal responsibility" and self-help through cooperation with others are mutually exclusive another example of how you fall into self-contradiction.
3) You state "the rules are set by corporations", as if this is something we should just accept. (Are you always advocating the same kind of acceptance? A slave says: "The rules are set by slave owners. Accept it.") What rules are you talking about in this case?
Well, in the next breath you speak of copyright rules. You point out correctly that the people who created Superman for
Maybe in giving up on working with a corporation that can help to distribute your creations you will have other ideas, or maybe you will just put all ideas in a drawer. I have known many poets, some of the with money and jobs and some of them living catch as catch can. But I have rarely met a poet with business sense. The same is true of many artists. Why should we construct a scoiety where the only people who have decent lives ar those that run their own businesses? Are these the only choices you wish to offer? Why isn't participating in a union also a choice?
Why not expand your choices through trying to cooperate with others in changing the rules to a system that would be better for workers and creators? Corporations changed the rules because they cooperated with investors and hired lawyers and twisted the arms of judges and bought politicians to get the copyright laws that favor them and not the creators. One reason why writers need a union is so they can get together and higher people who are expert in bargaining and twisting arms of judges and lobbying to get copyright laws favorable to individuals. There was nothing inevitable about the copyright rules we have now. Why shouldn't they be changed by us all in favor of the creator. I look at this as a minimal reform.
Still, it is not quite true to say that these rules were set by corporations. The rules for copyright were set, not by corporations, but by Congress as enabled by the U.S. constitution. These rules of copyright are a state-granted monopoly for a limited amount of time (supposedly "limited", but not if Disney keeps getting its way) giving the creator use and disposal of the creative work. There is nothing natural or inevitable about these rules and what is certain is that the founders of our country only envisioned patents and copyrights being owned by individual people and not by corporations. The idea that fictional people (corporations) could own fictional property (copyright and patents) is a very recent phenomena in history. It is a recent phenomena that we allowed to happen because we have neglected the public domain and allowed corporations and states to run rough-shod over (in this case) individual rights. The reason this phenomena came about in the first place was through acts of judicial activism, i.e. supreme court decisions argued by corporate lawyers in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. The situation where most writers don't control their own copyrights was only codified in law by congress in the 1970s. And it was only through lobbying by corporations to pass new copyright laws that we are in the current mess we are in.
So once again back to unions. If creators of songs, stories, movies, and comic books had as much bargaining power as corporations in the early part of the 20th century the situation would have been different. In other words, back then the best way to protect individual rights would have been through forming a union or some sort of cooperative organization to save individual control of copyright. Later in the century if individuals had as much political influence over congress as rent-seeking businesses, "for hire" ownership of copyright would never have come about.
Personally, I think that it is the epitome of personal responsibility to risk some of one's own personal comfort to form collective organizations to cooperate to make better rules in this part of the world
Jerry Monaco
P.S. Word Wrangler's reply:
The Word Wrangler said,
in January 18th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Thanks for the comment Jerry. First, let me start out by stating that I don’t have the level of education regarding copyrights and their history that you do, so I really can’t address that issue.
One question you asked was: “Why is cooperating with others to improve your situation or the situation of your industry somehow an abnegation of personal responsibility?”
The answer is: It isn’t.
I’ll go back to my Marvel Comics example. Back in the 90s, when comics were hot, there were a few very talented creators who worked either for Marvel or DC. These creators became sick of the ‘work for hire’ business practices at the big corporations and - rather than forming a union, striking or picketing - they went off and formed their own company Image Comics.
Image’s business model was based on the notion that creators could publish under the Image umbrella, but still retain all rights to their characters and maintain independent studios.
That’s a good example of people cooperating to change the way business works. Image became so successful that Marvel and DC started treating their talent better because they didn’t want them going off on their own.
Instead of trying to hold a company hostage in order to get what they wanted, they went out and got what they wanted on their own. They changed the rules by making their own rules.
The world is changing in such a way that offers global opportunities for creators. I think we’re moving towards a time where creative types won’t need unions or corporations to find success. And I think that’s in everyone’s best interest.
My reply to this was to say was that a cooperative model for creative writers and a union of employees are not mutually exclusive. (You can read my full comment at The Word Wrangler's site.)
Postscript: Because of the WGA strike I have read comments by Brian K. Vaughan who believes that the comic book industry would be much better if the comic book creators had a decent union.
This brings up another subject -- the issue of industry customs and standards. The reason that companies that make movies and comic books in general control the copyrights of the creative workers is a matter of industry custom and standards.
Consider the following:
In the industries that were created before modern copyright existed the creators have substantial control of their copyrights. In many of the industries created in the 20th Century creators lost control of their copyrights. This was mainly because of economic "power", and the rise of vast networks of distribution. Historically, if a creator did not have access to the networks of distribution, which were usually held as oligopolies by three or four companies, then the creator lost control of the uses and reuses of his creation.
The division between creative workers and ownership was especially true in industries where several creators worked on one product. More often than not the company would try to maintain a high-level of competition between creators and category of creators. Thus in the movie business editors were set against directors, set designers against the wardrobe designer, wardrobe designers against make-up artists, writers against directors and unit producers, and directors were set against every one. It was precisely such situations that unions were meant to resolve. Unfortunately, because of manipulation by the bosses and defeats on the line the unions often exacerbated this situation. All of this is part of a longer story....
Jerry Monaco
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