Word: levison
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...LEVISON PROVIDES an education for middle-class radicals and liberals: he simply describes the working day of an industrial or blue-collar worker. A worker is forced to submit to military authoritarianism while on the job: he or she must do what the foreman demands. Most factories have rules--despite "job enrichment" programs--which prohibit "cat calls, horseplay, making preparation to leave before the whistle sounds, littering, wasting time, and loitering in the toilets." In addition, some companies have the right to discipline workers for "using abusive language" and 'distracting the attention of other employees." Levison sums up the much...
...Levison sees revolutionary possibilities in American workers--he does not fall into a moronic "classless society" argument. For Levison, workers are a progressive force in the present, capable of fighting for redistributive taxation, a full employment economy, national health reform, representation in the workplace and workers' control. All of these issues are part of working-class self-interest, and Levison sees the potential to go beyond this advanced welfare-state liberalism...
...Levison strikes down many of the misconceptions taken so seriously by a lot of radicals: that the American labor movement is a totally integrated, quiescent partner of the ruling class (it isn't: except for the Vietnam War, labor has consistently pushed for socially liberal legislation, and only two types of unions--the leadership of the Teamsters and the building trades--have really taken the side of capitalism): that workers are more militarist and racist than other Americans (they aren't, but they are angry when upper class students support a foreign army that is attempting to kill their...
...Levison also creditably debunks the recent nonsense we have been hearing, from both "Left" and "Right," about the post-industrial character of the modern work force: of how blue-collar work is declining in magnitude and importance, and service and technical-professional work is replacing it. Levison shows how shoe-shine workers, street sweepers, janitors, mailmen, milkmen, cleaning women, typists, and department store clerks are all placed in the "clerical and sales" or "service" categories of the census, and when both occupational and standard of living factors are taken into account, "working class people" across for all least...
...Levison further discredits the "affluent worker" thesis--the idea of the working class having been bought off of radicalism by wage rises--by a simple glance at statistics...