“It is one of the maxims in life that the larger the
institution the greater the distance between the head and the body.” ---From
The Quotations of Chairman Joe
It has become commonplace on the political wrong to
criticize labor unions as being wholly out of touch with their membership. And, on balance this criticism is valid. For any organization worth its salt has to be
large and the leadership that emerges becomes, by degrees and by definition, an
elite. The same can also be said of the
United States Chamber of Commerce.
The Chamber, in the American Romantic version, is seen
a group of civic-minded leaders who regularly gather to address the needs and
aspirations of the local community. In days of yore this would typically
involve the coming together of the leadership on Main Street what, referring to
such gatherings in Grand Haven Michigan, I would in my youth refer to as the
“Washington Street Aristocracy”.
Washington Street, being of course, the name of the City’s Main
Street. In attendance one would
encounter the Presidents of the local banks, the downtown pharmacists, the
owners of the downtown furniture, hardware, and appliance stores, the owners
the local restaurants and hotels, the owners of local media, and
representatives of the then emerging chain operations like McClellan’s
downtown. These people would join forces
to further the interests of the business district then the heart of commerce,
seen as pumping life into community. It was, in my youth, the group that built
what was then billed as the “world’s largest musical fountain” at the foot of
Main Street, serving as an attraction to combat the emerging strip malls then
beginning to make their appearance on the outlying Beacon Boulevard.
Today,
the local chamber is as hollowed-out as is the rest of the economy. Gone are the owners of the hardware stores,
the pharmacist and the hotel. In their place have emerged craft and novelty
shops, small mom and pop operations. The
real retail operations have been taken over by the regional and national
chains. The old neighborhood grocery has
given way to Meijer and Plumbs, the old hardware stores have been gobbled up
first by the old W.T. Grant corporation to be superseded Meijer, and the old hotel
has given way to Best Western and other Giants. The local pharmacist is now a
mere employee of the regional ‘big box’ operations. The result is that the local Chamber of
Commerce no longer represents the true moneyed interests of the community. Today at any Chamber meeting in rural or
semi-rural America you will encounter more often than not a gathering of small
merchants and corporate underlings, none of whom are empowered to put the
weight of their corporate paymasters behind any decision under discussion. Where once stood the captains of commerce now
sit the ensigns of activity. The result
is that the collective production has diminished with their community
standing. Where once the Chamber could produce
a monument on Main Street, today their mighty labors call forth only the
occasional sidewalk sale.
Nevertheless,
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce continues to nurture the image of its local
chapters being the ground upon which the movers and shakers meet to shape the
future of the community. Likewise, the
local chapter nurtures the myth that the national chamber is nothing more than
the collection of the local body, with the interests of Main Street writ large
on a national scale.
Nothing
could be further from the truth. While
the local chamber has been hollowed out to the point of near irrelevance, the
national Chamber of Commerce has gone whoring after the Koch Brothers and
foreign interests, financing a self-serving wrong-wing agenda that serves the
interests of a relative handful of international financiers, foreign suppliers,
and the Rescumlican partisan political agenda.
The
difference is that as Labor has its own elites, these groups have historically
supported and continue to support a wide range of issues from immigration
reform, education, working conditions, minimum wage, health care, the
environment and regulation to name a few, the Chamber has become a spokesman
for international greed and the lackeys who support it. While one supports the middle class, the
other has declared war upon it. This too is the face of modern Conservatism.
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