Here is my take on the recent events in Wisconsin, in the form of a short talk and roundtable discussion at Santa Clara’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, where I am an Ethics Fellow.

Here is a recap:

Governor Walker’s attack on unions is part of a longstanding animus from employers in this country to unions, what some call American exceptionalism because this kind of hostility to trade unions is rare in the rest of the world, outside of countries like China.

Walker’s approach is also dysfunctional because it is an attack on labor policy but it does nothing to address deep concerns we should have about fiscal policy and social policy, which are the other two key pieces of the debate.

Our fiscal policy is out of whack because pension funds are now used by Wall Street for financial engineering at great expense to those funds not for investment in long term economic development.

[Left out as there was a time constraint]: We need to shift our approach to social policy away from the volatile and chaotic capital markets to investment in infrastructure and other methods of revitalizing the economy, a process in which state and local public employees can play a vital role.

Santa Clara University – Podcasts from Ethics Center Events.

This essay in the Guardian makes the key point about Wisconsin and also shows why a narrow trade union approach to the issue will fail. Walker is implementing the Greek solution – the looting of public goods to fend off the bond markets.

Greece tried it and it failed and it nearly brought down the EU. If the Republicans want to go down this road they better be ready for the consequences.

But the left must broaden their response – it is about trade union rights but only because the trade union acts a check on the abuse of power that would return to the state sector if these reforms go through.

Scott Walker’s real agenda in Wisconsin | Michael Hudson and Jeffrey Sommers

Anderson Cooper has moved on to Libya but the social conflict in Egypt continues.

Egypt workers continue to strike amid fears of revolution backlash – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

The only comment I would add to this otherwise excellent analysis of the current revolutionary wave washing over the middle east and north Africa by Michigan historian Juan Cole is that the combination of authoritarian rule and neo-liberal reform is not peculiar to the region.

There is no alternative, as Thatcher would say, to authoritarian rule in order to implement neo-liberal reform – from Poland to China to Egypt it has always and everywhere been accompanied by repression, forced restructuring and unemployment and political corruption leading to inequality and the harshening of class conflict.

The myth of the two decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall that globalization would lead to a stable rule of law and democracy has now been exposed for what it is. The events of the last few weeks, only the most visible of a long wave of resistance to restructuring in places like Egypt, only highlight this reality.

Cole says there are now renewed hopes for liberalization, which he suggests indirectly are naive. That is to be determined. The question is the content of “liberalization” – the aspirations of a Wael Ghonim, the Google entrepreneur in Egypt, are likely to be satisfied with a far different approach to reform than the textile workers at Ghazl Shebeen el-Koum.

The Great Arab Revolt | The Nation.

The Times finally wakes up and notices the Egyptian labor movement. Of course, more than 2 million workers have gone on strike in Egypt in the last few years. The 3 week effort to push Mubarak out of power was the cherry on the sundae of a very deep and long effort.

But big questions remain: how will labor organize itself? will it push beyond demands for union recognition and confront basic questions of economic and political organization?

In Germany in 1919 a revived labor movement at the heart of the German Revolution of 1981-19  led to the fall of the monarchy and then the creation of the Weimar Republic. While many on the left viewed it as a new form of progressive government it was hobbled by all sorts of political compromises that in fact left a door open for the restoration of authoritarian rule – in the form of the new Nazi party.

Egypt must avoid that outcome. It is not clear that there is an “Egyptian solution,” however, without a regional solution that encompasses the rest of the Arab world and Israel as well. None of the countries in the region can stand on their own. to be independent of big power influence they need to organize together, democratically.

Workers Press Demands After Aiding Egypt’s Revolt – NYTimes.com.

The British Guardian ran my letter responding to the contention that Egyptian events can be analogized to the Polish Solidarity movement.

After the fall of Mubarak, what next for Egypt?  The Guardian.

Here is some critical background information on key role of workers in recent Egyptian events. Stanford historian Joel Beinin confirms my view that the uprising has been in part a response to neo-liberalism and the authoritarian nature of politics that is associated with globalization. For more on labor and authoritarianism in the global economy see my book, From Che to China.

This makes the current international movement very different than what happened in Poland in 1980-81 or in eastern Europe more generally after 1989. In fact, Polish Solidarity was defeated by martial law and neo-liberalism unleashed in the 1980s and 90s.

But the Egyptian events come in response to two decades of neo-liberalism as Mubarak oversaw the dismantling of the state socialism of the Nasser era. As Beinin says about a minimum wage campaign by Egyptian textile workers:

“Raising the minimum wage is not simply an economic demand, it’s a political demand, because it is in opposition to the whole neoliberal economic restructuring project that has been proceeding very rapidly in Egypt, especially since the government that was recently deposed was installed in July 2004.”

A similar kind of neo-liberal reform process is underway in China as the authoritarian regime transitions from Maoist state socialism to property rights based capitalism. And workers there are also engaged in widespread job actions, so it is possible the events of Cairo could be echoed in Beijing and Shanghai. Indeed, there are reports the Chinese censored media and internet coverage of the Egyptian and Tunisian events.

Striking Egyptian Workers Fuel the Uprising After 10 Years of Labor Organizing.

This commentary in the UK Guardian tells an important aspect of the recent events in Tunisia and Egypt that is not getting near enough attention in the US, namely that the 18 day movement that ousted Mubarak came after years of struggle and conflict with workers organizing a key factor.

But the article comes up short in its analogy with Poland.

As is now well known, the Polish Solidarity movement that emerged in 1980-81 was killed off by the imposition of martial law. (I was there in Poland in the 80s meeting with underground activists and saw the impact). What re-emerged in 1989-1991 as Stalinism collapsed was a far weaker organization unable to withstand the neo-liberal regime being imposed on a global scale.

In other words, the Polish working class was defeated not victorious over a twenty year period and thus it is not really an “appealing model” as the authors suggest despite the undeniable heroism and inspiration that the 1980-81 period provided the entire eastern European democracy movement.

In Egypt and Tunisia, on the other hand, the strike wave has emerged in the wake of the attempt to impose neo-liberal reforms. Thus, these new unions face directly not just questions of union freedom but of economic and political structure in their society.

And certainly if they do not move beyond what might be called “ordinary bread and butter trade unionism” they will once again find themselves under the yoke of global economic forces, but with new bosses who happen to use Facebook and Google.

But if the Egyptians and Tunisian workers can find a new voice, they may in fact provide an inspiration to Polish workers and workers around the world that resistance to the neo-liberal model of globalization can succeed.

It may be that the reason the authors do not reach this fairly straightforward conclusion and try to steer the Guardian’s labor audience back in time is that there is a conservative edge to their thinking – Lee, although a web designer for trade unions and editor of a website on union events, is a strong defender of some of the worst of Israel’s politics and was a supporter of the US invasions of Yugoslavia and Iraq, while Weinthal is a fellow at a neo-con think tank and writes for National Review Online.

Trade unions: the revolutionary social network at play in Egypt and Tunisia | Eric Lee and Benjamin Weinthal