a reminder of the importance of Labor

This was sent to me this Labor Day morning.  A great reminder of the importance of Labor. 

Abe Lincoln's quote should be posted on every Republican congressman's door...and most Democrat's, too. 

Carl Jarvis

E.J. Dionne / Syndicated columnist
Remembering those who go to work



Syndicated columnist
WASHINGTON - Let's get it over with and rename the holiday "Capital Day." We
may still celebrate Labor Day, but our culture has given up on honoring
workers as the real creators of wealth and their honest toil - the phrase
itself seems antique - as worthy of genuine respect.

Imagine a Republican saying this: "Labor is prior to and independent of
capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if
labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves
much the higher consideration."

These heretical thoughts would inspire horror among our friends at Fox News
or in the tea party. They'd likely label them as Marxist, socialist or Big
Labor propaganda. Too bad for Abraham Lincoln, our first Republican
president, who offered those words in his annual message to Congress in
1861. Will President Obama dare say anything like this in his jobs speech
this week?

As for the unions, they are often treated in the media as advocates of
arcane work rules, protectors of inefficient public employees and obstacles
to the economic growth our bold entrepreneurs would let loose if only they
were free from labor regulations.

So it would take a brave man to point out that unions "grew up from the
struggle of the workers - workers in general but especially the industrial
workers - to protect their just rights vis-a-vis the entrepreneurs and the
owners of the means of production," or to insist that "the experience of
history teaches that organizations of this type are an indispensable element
of social life."

That's what Pope John Paul II said (the italics are his) in the 1981
encyclical Laborem exercens. Like Lincoln, John Paul repeatedly asserted
"the priority of labor over capital."

That the language of Lincoln and John Paul is so distant from our experience
is a sign of an enormous cultural shift. In scores of different ways, we
paint investors as the heroes and workers as the sideshow. We tax the fruits
of labor more vigorously than we tax the gains from capital - resistance to
continuing the payroll tax cut is a case in point - and we hide workers away
while lavishing attention on those who make their livings by moving money
around.

Consider that what the media call economics reporting is largely finance
reporting. Once upon a time, a lively band of labor reporters covered the
world of work and the unions. If you stipulate that the decline of unions
makes the old labor beat a bit less compelling, there are still tens of
millions of workers who do their jobs every day. But when the labor beat
withered, it was rarely replaced by a work beat. Workers have vanished.

But we are now inundated with news (and "news") about the world of capital.
CNBC and the other financial media are for investors what ESPN is for sports
junkies. We cheer the markets, learn the obscure language of hedge-fund
managers, and get to know some of the big investors in off-field interviews.
Workers are regarded as factors of production. At best, they're consumers;
at worst, they're "labor costs" cutting into profits and the sacred stock
price.

They have faded away in both high and popular culture, too. Can you point to
someone "who makes art out of working-class lives by refusing to prettify
them"?

The phrase comes from a 2006 essay by the critic William Deresiewicz who
observed that we no longer have novelists such as John Steinbeck or John Dos
Passos who take the lives of working people seriously. Nor do we have
television shows along the lines of "The Honeymooners" or even "All in the
Family," which were parodies of an affectionate sort. "First we stopped
noticing members of the working class," Deresiewicz wrote, "and now we're
convinced they don't exist."

In his extraordinary book "Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the
Working Class," Jefferson Cowie spoke of how little we identify
working-class people with their labor. "Workers occasionally reappeared in
public discourse as 'Reagan Democrats' - later as 'NASCAR Dads,' " he wrote,
"or the victims of another plant shutdown or as irrational protectionist and
protesters of free trade, but rarely did they appear as workers."

With the worker disappearing from our media and our consciousness, isn't it
only a matter of time before Labor Day falls off the calendar? As long as
it's there, it should shame us about our cool indifference to the heroism of
those who go to work every day.

E.J. Dionne Jr.'s column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times.
His email address is ejdionne@washpost.com