The Legacy of Cesar Chavez

[Draggingtree]

Ludwig von Mises Institute:

 

 

The Legacy of Cesar Chavez

 

Mises Daily:Thursday, October 11, 2012 by Murray N. Rothbard

 

"Obama announced the creation of a national monument in honor of labor organizer Cesar Chavez.… Here's Murray Rothbard, who has a somewhat different take on Cesar Chavez. The word 'floperoo' is used." – Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

 

We live, increasingly, in a Jacobin Age. Memory, embodied in birthdays, anniversaries, and other commemorations, is vitally important to an individual, a family, or a nation. These ceremonies are critical for the self-identity and the renewed dedication to that identity, of a person or of a people. It was insight into this truth that led the Jacobins, during the French Revolution, to sweep away all the old religious festivals, birthdays, and even calendar of the French people, and to substitute new and artificial names, days, and months for commemoration.

 

In 1970, the boycott finally forced the grape growers to sign with UFW: five years later, Chavez reached his peak of seeming success when his newly elected ally, Governor Jerry Brown, pushed through the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, for the first time compelling collective bargaining in agriculture.

 

Indeed, the new California act came perilously close to imposing a closed shop: its "good standing clause" permitted union leaders to deny work to any worker who challenged decisions of union leaders.

 

Yet, despite the hosannahs of the nation's liberals, and the coercion supplied by the state of California, Cesar Chavez's entire life turned out to be a floperoo. Whereas he dreamed of his UFW organizing all of the nation's migrant farm workers, his union fell like a stone from a membership of 70,000 in the mid-1970s to only 5,000 today. In the UFW heartland, the Salinas Valley of California, the number of union contracts among vegetable growers has plummeted from 35 to only 1 at the present time. Only half of the meager union revenues now come from dues, the other half being supplied by nostalgic liberals. The UFW has had it.

 

What went wrong? Some of Chavez's critics point to his love of personal power, which led to his purging a succession of organizers, and to kicking all savvy non-Hispanic officials out of his union.

 

But the real problem is "the economy, stupid."