The few advocates of state intervention in the market who post on this blog i would hazard to say do not advocate it for the purpose of repressing labour on behalf of unethical businesses. The rest of us don’t advocate any state intervention at all, but instead advocate completely free markets. In the free market that i envision all laborers would be free to seek work wherever they wished based purely on their skills and the demand for them.

My first opinion is that yes, unionized labor has been the cause of many an economic ill. A glance at the railroad system history can easily verify same. To this day, so called “feather bedding” [sp?] substantially limits the profit viability of any railroad within the 48.

My second opinion lies within my family history. Within this web-site, much verification of corruption between monopolies and government officials or just with the State per se has been presented.

My family has roots in deep shaft anthracite coal mining, steel milling , and of the like. as a child, when I wasn’t hearing and listening to the family/clan ‘s oral history concerning the Great War, the Great Depression, or War II, I heard about my mother’s cousin for example. The one who died in a mine shaft collapse. Or the one who died from Black Lung at age 20.

Yes, scholars who derive their income by their wits and deep thoughts, would and do say, “well, men have freedom to move on to another job”. Right.

Time and again, I hear how hard some “genius scholar” had it. So hard that………”.

The unionization of the mining industry was brutal. Many times I have heard about the murders of management by the future members of the United Mine Workers for an example. But….

What does Mises have to say towards the massacre of the “Molly MacGuires”? Not the television show, folks, but the Irish rail workers killed by the “Pinks”. The Pinkertons. Supported by your local sheriff of course. And plenty of deputies.

Or the mass murder of the oil field workers by machine gun toting Pinks, in the Standard Oil Fields?

And if not Mises, then how about Rothbard? One or another was alive during these events.

Yes. Of course. Just go find another job, the Austrians say you can, so one can, yes?

Let’s see. From the early ninieteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, one , of the “working class” , just traipsed around the landscape , with complete freedom to pick and choose where to supply their “voluntary labor”. No policemen harrassed them. Strictly enforced “no loitering” laws didn’t exist. The States were just one big Utopia, with everyone to pick and choose as they willed. Sure.

I studied “Political Economy” in High School. I think an additional course should have been put together. One in “Historical Economy”.

Wherein, the students would be required to research old micro-films of the times of labour unrest in America. They would be “encouraged” to study one city, for one decade, [?], better make that one year. They would perforce read ALL articles in all newspapers. To get a taste of the times, as it were. Records of births and deaths. Articles of the nobility of the times , to be found within the Society pages. They could read the various accounts of policemen on horseback, dispersing rioting good for nothings.

News flash folks, more “union organizers” and “strikers” were killed, than ever a capitalist and/or his family. But the Austrians say that the monopolists were evil and if they hadn’t existed , then workers COULD have chosen their employment without coercion. Uh-huh.
The monopolista did exist. They did own politicians. They owned the police forces as well. As for the judges, I’ll let others instruct me concerning that item…..

So in resolution, what can be my final determination? Yes, the unions did wreck upon the utopian world of Austrian economic theory. And yes, the progression in a very real sense, of “progressive labor” hampered real time/place economic growth, particularly in modern times.

But when one has just arrived from Germany, or Russia, or Austria, or Hungary; And one has been loaded into a cattle car of a railroad train and taken to a coal town in Pa., an oil field in Pa. , …..

And how about those one hundred or so thousand Chinese “imported ” to America to be working on the railroad. All the live long day? Those folks, so say the theologically pure Austrians, were to just “up and leave” , their employment and go finc another job with better wages. Hmmmm.. Yeah. Okay.

well…………you folks figure out the rest

But do these prior brutal times excuse least explain the corruption of the Teamsters under Jimmy Hoffa? Or the Polish fella who colluded with Joe Kennedy to give West Virgina in the 1960 election? No. Modern day union criminality, as well as abuse directed towards a worker disagreeing with the leadership [many times resulting in a pair of concrete overshoes] can not be explained as legitamat. Legitimate in as the ends justifying the means.

I humbly submit, that for every economic evil on one side of a labor vs. capitalist equation, there exists its counterpoint on the other side.

submitted with respect

Z.

GREAT ARTICLE!

Further, he recognizes the relatively benign nature that free-market, voluntarily-collusive, unions would have.

Just as capital pools form, invest, and dissolve, so would labor pools. Freeing laborers from both state protection and conspiracy regulations would give them the opportunity to *peacefully* organize to take advantage of any imbalances of labor supply and demand in the marketplace.

And just as the market eventually works to resolve these imbalances for capital pools (e.g., cartels), such will be the case for labor pools. Just as do cartels, unions would form to take advantage of these imbalances until the market eventually works to eliminate them. Then, just as do cartels, unions would dissolve — unable to restrain ‘cheating’ by members — only to pop up again when opportunity arises.

It’s refreshing to read an Austrian Economist who accurately attacks the state for the extant destructive nature of unionism — while explicitly welcoming unprotected, voluntary unions to the “big tent” of free markets.

Thank you Professor Westley.

V Harris

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