by
Alice Munro
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I had known this man before I left my marriage and he was the immediate reason I had left it, though I pretended to him—and to everyone else—that this was not so. When I met him I tried to be carefree and to show an independent spirit. We exchanged news—I made sure I had news—and we laughed, and went for walks in the ravine, but all I really wanted was to entice him to have sex with me, because I thought the high enthusiasm of sex fused people’s best selves. I was stupid about these matters, in a way that was very risky, particularly for a woman of my age. There were times when I would be so happy, after our encounters—dazzled and secure—and there were other times when I would lie stone-heavy with misgiving. After he had taken himself off, I would feel tears running out of my eyes before I knew that I was weeping. And this was because of some shadow I had glimpsed in him or some offhandedness, or an oblique warning he’d given me. Outside the windows, as it got dark, the backyard parties would begin, with music and shouting and provocations that later might develop into fights, and I would be frightened, not of any hostility but of a kind of nonexistence.
Young husbands were stern, in those days. Just a short time before, they had been suitors, almost figures of fun, knock-kneed and desperate in their sexual agonies. Now, bedded down, they turned resolute and disapproving. Off to work every morning, clean-shaven, youthful necks in knotted ties, days spent in unknown labors, home again at suppertime to take a critical glance at the evening meal and to shake out the newspaper, hold it up between themselves and the muddle of the kitchen, the ailments and emotions, the babies. What a lot they had to learn, so quickly. How to kowtow to bosses and how to manage wives. How to be authoritative about mortgages, retaining walls, lawn grass, drains, politics, as well as about the jobs that had to maintain their families for the next quarter of a century. It was the women, then, who could slip back—during the daytime hours, and always allowing for the stunning responsibility that had been landed on them, in the matter of the children—into a kind of second adolescence. A lightening of spirits when the husbands departed. Dreamy rebellion, subversive get-togethers, laughing fits that were a throwback to high school, mushrooming between the walls that the husband was paying for, in the hours when he wasn’t there.
She was about to say that nursing homes can be dreary and unnerving. Then she remembered that he was a doctor and would see nothing here that he had not seen before. And something in the way he said “if you wouldn’t mind that”—some formality, but also an uncertainty in his voice—surprised her. It seemed that he was making an offering of his time and his presence that had little to do with courtesy, but rather something to do with herself. It was an offer made with a touch of frank humility, but it was not a plea. If she had said that she would really rather not take up any more of his time, he would not have tried any further persuasion, he would have said goodbye with an even courtesy and driven away.
“He’s a doctor,” said Meriel. She was about to start explaining about the funeral, the accident, the flight down from Smithers, but the conversation was taken away from her.
“But I’m not here officially, don’t worry,” the doctor said.
“Oh, no,” said Aunt Muriel. “You’re here with her.”
“Yes,” he said.
At this moment he reached across the space between their two chairs and picked up Meriel’s hand, holding it for a moment in a hard grip, then letting it go. And he said to Aunt Muriel, “How could you tell that? By my breathing?”
“I could tell,” she said with some impatience. “I used to be a devil myself.”
The job she had to do, as she saw it, was to remember everything—and by “remember” she meant experience it in her mind, one more time—then store it away forever. This day’s experience set in order, none of it left ragged or lying about, all of it gathered in like treasure and finished with, set aside.
In Part 3, we argue for three principles to guide our organizing. First, we need action. In taking action we change the world, but this struggle also changes us. Action should furthermore be a core part of what we do rather than a last resort. Second, we need to find ways to build a rank and file that keeps union bureaucracy in check, developing methods and skills to apply pressure inside unions as well as the confidence to act for ourselves. Third, enacting democracy means understanding organizing as a process. We want to win, and this necessitates having as many co-workers involved in our struggle as possible. This might mean decisions not going our way or having to learn hard lessons. Struggle is not only about winning, it is also a process that builds new leaders and a confident rank and file. It is through struggle that we become a force capable of changing the world. We also introduce the idea of workers’ inquiry. This builds upon the idea that we, as workers, are best placed to both understand and change our own work.
At the heart of it, organizing and winning is a simple game of maths. Can you apply enough pressure that maintaining the current arrangement is more costly to the employer (whether in finances, disruption or reputation) than making the change that you want? [...]
In the early 2000s in Cochabamba, Bolivia, the community struggled over their access to water. Privatization had been creeping further into public services from the 1980s, but what took place in Cochabamba was much more forceful. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were forcing changes – so-called ‘structural adjustment’ – on many countries in the Global South. Much of this was about pushing the claim that privatization is more efficient, introducing economic incentives. Despite widespread evidence that privatization has not delivered this – you only need to look at transport or healthcare in the UK, US and elsewhere – water provision was privatised in Bolivia. It is an example of ‘accumulation by dispossession’, which David Harvey identifies as a key part of neoliberalism. This is a process that involves taking wealth from the many (whether held in public institutions or public goods) and centralizing it in the hands of private interests. Put simply: it is a process of theft.
Cochabamba had been suffering from a chronic water shortage. Many people did not have access to the water network and there were many state subsidies. The Bolivian government auctioned the Cochabamba water system, with only one bidder responding – the Aguas del Tunari consortium of private and foreign interests, including the American Bechtel Corporation, won the forty-year deal for $2.5 billion. However, ‘won’ may be too strong a word, as they were not competing against anyone else. The contract gave them rights to meter the entire water network, including all water in the districts and aquifers. The deal also guaranteed the consortium a 15 per cent annual return on investment. They had been given this legal right to expropriate water after the Bolivian parliament rushed through new legislation.8
While unions come in all shapes and sizes, there are distinctions that are useful to make. There are, broadly speaking, four kinds of unions. First, craft unions. These organize with workers based on the skill involved or the kind of work they do – for example, carpenters being part of a woodworkers’ union. Craft unions may organize workers across different industries but tend to be smaller and concerned with setting boundaries around who can do their kind of work. Controlling this can be part of developing bargaining power. It also means they might work alongside workers who are not eligible to join the same union. Second, industrial unions organize with workers across one industry, regardless of the level or job of the worker. The strength of this model comes from the ability to strike to shut down the whole supply chain. The IWW is one example of radical industrial unionism. While they accept all members, they focus on organizing whole industries, like factories, mining, utilities and transportation. Third, professional unions are like craft unions, but they have grown in so-called white-collar professions. For example, academic workers in the UCU (University and College Union) in the UK is only open to academic or academic-related workers in universities and colleges, not to the wider workforce. Fourth are the general unions that recruit workers from any industry or sector. Most unions today are closer to this kind of model, and many of them are the result of mergers. For example, the SEIU (Service Employees International Union) in the US or Unite in the UK. These unions can grow to be very large, with many having membership in the millions. They may have a blend of craft, professional and industrial unionism within them, depending on their history.
The Enquête represents a significant expansion on the questions previously posed in the IWMA efforts. Indeed, it entails a fundamentally qualitative shift: rather than pursuing a broad knowledge of workers’ situations, the questionnaire rigorously scrutinises the immediate dynamics of the capitalist labour-process. Its political character is obvious: through pursuing the questions, the respondent is led to consider the disjuncture between workers and capitalists, and is faced with an empirical demonstration of opposing interests in the capitalist organisation of work. [...]