Comment by Frank Girard to letter from Jon Bekken

COMMENT:

First of all, my apologies to Jon Bekken (Editor of the IWW's Industrial Worker) and to DB readers for any confusion I created by adding a separate article to the tail end of Alexis Buss's "Teamsters and Turtles," taken from the September '01 Industrial Worker. as well as a similar mistake in an article from the Anarcho-Syndicalist Review. In all fairness, though, my scanner found them there in the originals.

As to my brief review in DB108 of Jon's pamphlet "Arguments for the Four-Hour Day," nowhere does it claim that Jon advocates legislative action for a four-hour day, although on rereading it I can see that he might think I am suggesting that. My point, though, was that when workers reach a level of militancy such that they can force capital to grant a four-hour day throughout U.S. industry, they are unlikely to stop short of taking over the industries and abolishing capitalism entirely. Certainly he is right about gains in wages and hours of labor being the result of the class struggle - gains that which were granted by capitalists and negotiated by their labor lieutenants to defuse militancy. Such gains are welcome though temporary, a fact recognized by both the IWW and De Leon. If Jon has any doubts, he should check to see how many GM workers in Flint, Michigan are enjoying their gain of a few years ago: the ban on mandatory overtime. Also, for at least the last thirty years losses have outnumbered gains both here and worldwide.

-Frank Girard