Author Attacks Capitalism

“I feel very confirmed in my assertion that most people in this country know something is out of whack,” said William Greider.

Corporate America has beaten down the ordinary American worker for too long, and Greider believes that these victimized workers are fed up and ready to assert their power. In his new book The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy, Greider insists that there is no question of the widespread discontent among American employees; instead, as Grieder explained in an interview while in Cambridge promoting his book, “the question is whether people today have the sort of core courage and dedication to take on the big boys and stay with it as long as it takes; I think they do.”

Is the solution to all of American workers’ ills simply a matter of forging a united front from millions of American workers and making sure they don’t mind “beating their head against the wall…for two or three generations”? It sounds like a tall order, but Greider made no apologies for his optimism. “Maybe I’m delusional. But I really think we’re on the edge of something.”

A national affairs correspondent for The Nation and a reporter for over 40 years, Greider should have every right to be disillusioned by now. But, he said, his years on the road did not dishearten him; on the contrary, he was inspired by the Americans’ genuine striving “to do the best they can in their circumstances.” Because Americans workers are fundamentally good, Greider has reasoned, they deserve to be able to play a bigger role in their lives.

And, as Greider tells it, there is lot of room for improvement. Worker-boss relationships in industrial America currently suffer from “Assembly Line Syndrome.” The current employment philosophy, as a boss tells employees, is simple: do your job the way I tell you, and I will pay you. And the worker’s connection to the company ends there. This lack of personal investment in their work, said Greider, has led to severe discontent in the industry.

According to Greider, individual companies can cure the syndrome only by “recognizing the value of having workers involved intimately in the decision-making process…[making them] feel like they are participants with voice and with the ability to go up to people above them on the ladder and tell them, ‘You’ve got this wrong. What you’re doing is going to hurt, not help, the country.’”

Just how does one convince profit-hungry corporations to reorganize their infrastructure all for the good of workers? Greider suggested that the burden to convince companies to change is shared in the community. That is, the corporation’s investors and the members of the community at large have a social responsibility to use their own stake and influence in the corporation to force change.

By exploiting the democratic and capitalistic system already in place in America, said Greider, community members and investors can force the corporations to answer to them. He suggested that investors could intimidate corporations into self-reform by telling them, “We can give this money to all kinds of people. Why should we be giving it to you while you’re abusing your workers?” A corporation, said Greider, will be quick to change itself when faced with the threat of fiscal failure.

Greider believes that community members can similarly ensure that certain levers, such as tax breaks, are given only to corporations that do work to create better worker-manager relationships. It is all possible, he assured: “I’m talking about ways to get leverage and convince [corporations] either gently or harshly that they need to change. That’s how capitalism works. They play hardball every day.”