A Labor Movement

A great piece in n + 1 about the heretofore awkward relationship between Big Labor and Occupy Wall Street. Occupy has been thus far loathe to associate itself with labor unions, for some of the traditional reasons that people on the Left often find themselves skeptical of unions: because they're corrupt, or bureaucratic, or socially conservative, or simply too big. But labor is universal, writes Saval, binding us together; it's the stuff solidarity, that heady concept, is made of. "Labor is the thing one does to sustain life, and the thing one hates for that very reason; it creates wealth, and takes wealth away from the wealthiest. Everything we make for our wants and want to make is labor." 

"The 'Occupy Movement, which, when it lets its guard down, admits that it wants equality, might do worse than submitting to a name that represents the struggle for it in the past, and call itself 'a labor movement.'"