Yes, I Really Do Mean It The Salvation Army As More Radical Than The Wobblies

One of the more productive insights I've had into the serial failures of the left is in noticing that a secular left doesn't seem to be able to attract support sufficient to either gain or maintain political office.   Well, secular folk on the left can, actually win and hold an office, given the right congressional districting, such as the generally admirable Barney Frank and they can have some influence but he is the exception as proved by his failure to be part of a movement which actually holds power.  And, as the putrid "cromnibus" that just got voted on and signed into law proves, their achievements being maintained depends on holding power.
 
I have been conducting a few thought experiments recently, comparing different aspects of the self-identified secular "left" and various religious groups which have stated similar goals, certainly not all of them self-identified as even moderately leftish.   The greatest challenge is to look at the actual achievement of something towards those goals as opposed to the public relations lines put out. Something that, if it's legitimate to do with religion, it's legitimate to do with the "secular" and, especially the anti-religious.  Here's one I'm engaged in right now, comparing an object of mandatory leftish reverence with one of the targets of its derisive invective.

In a turnaround from that old song, The Preacher and the Slave, by Joe Hill, it is the secular left that has been promising pie in the sky, or at least in some future that never seems to get here.  And then doing everything in their power to screw up delivering on that promise.  The Salvation Army, which he satirized in the song certainly fed more people than the Wobblies ever did, they clothed more, they housed more and I dare say they contributed more to the actual welfare of the destitute and the poor than the IWW ever has in the past or present or will in the future.  I suspect that the Salvation Army have, actually, been the vehicle for improvement of lives, including working lives, more so than the Wobblies ever were or ever could have been.   I certainly don't agree with the Salvation Army's theology in places and I don't approve of the quasi-military structure of it and am aware of notable lapses between its aspired ideals and beliefs and its actual achievement of those, but I'm not going to lie about it, what it does when it follows its stated intentions.   No matter how much I dislike the quasi-military garb and ranking or some aspects of it, in every practical way they have contributed more to the actual achievement of the goals of the left in real life than the sacred Wobblies and their like.

The IWW's role in the creation and maintenance of unions which achieved those goals is marginal, at most and most of that is probably the product of self-interested public relations and not rigorous honesty.

That a group which may have included such figures as Eugene Debs and Mother Jones was so notably impractical and such a disaster that even its membership was more notable for defections than recruitment (I recall reading its loss of membership, somehow, managed to reach over 100% per decade) and it generated more opposition than support, makes its veneration today bizarre in the extreme.

If you want to put it in one of those laws that are so fashionable these days,
NO "LEFTIST" EFFORT THAT IS `MORE NOTABLE FOR THE OPPRESSION IT GENERATED THAN ACHIEVEMENT WILL EVER SUCCEED IN IMPLEMENTING THE PROGRAM OF THE LEFT. Only a left which is not really that into achieving the goals of economic justice, equality and a decent life would revere the disaster that the IWW has been from just about the beginning.  

And that is a history that is repeated, over and over again with the secular left.  I live in reputedly secular New England and, believe me, when someone is down and out and in need of services that are not provided by the government, it's a religious organization they will turn to because those are the only ones that are there in almost every case.  AND WHENEVER A LEGISLATIVE HEARING IS HELD ON INCREASING THE AID WHICH THE GOVERNMENT PROVIDES RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS WILL BE THERE TESTIFYING IN FAVOR OF THAT*.   Even as I was frequently enraged with the former archbishops in Portland, Maine, over such issues as marriage equality, contraception and the rights of women to control their bodies, they were the ones testifying in favor of increasing aid to the destitute, the sick, the homeless.  I have said before that if you read the economic justice statements of even the past two popes who I disliked and held were horrible in so many ways, they are radical as compared to even some entirely secular politicians held to be of the left in the United States and even Europe.

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Most of the members of my family are members of unions, most of those in either teachers unions (some in the NEA, some in the AFT) or the United Brotherhood of Carpenters.   I come from a very strong, pro-union family which has been and is considerably left of center.  I'm considered one of the most radical of the bunch, just the kind of person who used to buy the romantic unreality of the heroic Wobblies.   Once my blinders were removed and I looked around at the real history of that instead of the romance,  it was clear it's a dead end.  As I noted earlier this year, that kind of secular left always ends up being Harry Hope's bar in The Iceman Cometh.  I think that was one of the most brilliant and enduring insights that Eugene O'Neill ever had, though he doesn't seem to have gotten to the other side of that, noticing that while atheism produces that static place with No Exit, there is an alternative which has done things.   That O'Neill was part of the same scene as many of the early supporters of the left I've been talking about and where he ended up can be instructive.

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Two (actually, just recalled, it's more than two) members of my family have held positions as member representatives and organizers with their unions, in all cases they have major problems with the present leadership and directions of those unions as the leadership has become more professional and managerial, a direct result of the deterioration of the ideals of what unions are supposed to do and be for and the participation of membership in the unions.   In the case of the Carpenters, it is a direct result of heavy handed, top leadership of the union that clearly couldn't care less about the welfare of workers than it does its own salaries, associated benefits and maintaining their positions.   If that deterioration is related to the increase in materialism in American society, I can't say but I suspect it is all related to the general decrease in belief in religious ideals for mindless consumerism under the regime of TV based reality.   That's something I expect to be going more into in the coming years.  If I'm given the time.  This is an interim report on where I've gone and the direction I'm going in.    One of the other things I am looking into is the extent to which neo-fascism, on the rise in the allegedly secularized Europe seems to be related to the abandonment of religious ideals such as I've also concentrated on.

*  I will be interested to see if, as he seems to be doing, Pope Francis replacing bishops whose tacit political endorsements of Republicans was at odds with their economic and social justice statements will really turn around the direction of the American bishops.   His recent actions are certainly not making the Catholic right happy.  I hope and pray that Pope Francis has the chance to undo the damage that has been done to the credibility of the Catholic church under the former leadership and that there are results in elections, here and elsewhere.

Update:  I still hold with what I said last June:

The entire faith of liberal politics is the faith, beyond any wisdom or council to despair or cynically give up, that society can be redeemed and a better life is possible.  Not only possible but the only really good reason for politics to exist, the highest reason for governments to exist, their only legitimate motive for their actions, the only legitimate goal that should be allowed.  I have asked, over and over again, in different forms for some other basis of liberalism and no one has yet provided me with one.