Dionne: Why the Left is losing the debate on workers’ rights

In a great Washington Post editorial, the great E.J. Dionne explains how the right does a better job framing the debate on labor rights and the limits of capitalism than the left. He notes:

The conservatives have a single, coherent story and stick to it: Economic change is good for everyone, especially for consumers, who get better stuff at lower prices. The fact that “producer groups” (such as those unions) are losing their “monopolies” and their capacity for “rent seeking” is cheered as progress.

The left’s narrative is less compelling not only because there is no single story but also because few on the left attack the current system with the same gusto the right brings to defending it. Gone, for good reason, is the time when significant parts of the left called for “government ownership of the means of production.” Much of the left accepts a certain amount of creative destruction because, in Margaret Thatcher’s famous phrase, there is no alternative.

But this muddle reflects a default on parts of the left and, especially, within the Democratic Party. Because so many Democrats fear that they might sound like — God forbid! — socialists, they are unwilling to challenge the right’s core story. Capitalism, all by itself, would never have achieved the rising living standards that were the pride of the United States in O’Neill’s 1950s and still are today. The rules enforced by the National Labor Relations Board made it possible for Reuther’s union to organize by protecting workers’ rights. Cheap 30-year mortgages, which became the norm because of Federal Housing Administration guarantees, created a nation of homeowners.