Strikes...

[Kimmler]

...are immoral, or so I've learnt here as they are the initiation of force.

So, have any of you ever gone down to a picket line and told the men and women there this and that they should go back to work?

If so, how did they respond?

[Mike11]

People on here believe strikes are immoral? All of them? Really?

I can see some Objectivists saying that but I think there is room in Objectivism for organized labor.

But then again, Rand is not someone I trace my roots to.

[Jonathan David Leavitt]

...are immoral, or so I've learnt here as they are the initiation of force.

So, have any of you ever gone down to a picket line and told the men and women there this and that they should go back to work?

If so, how did they respond?

Ayn Rand wrote:

Organized labor has been much more sensitive to the danger of government power and much more aware of ideological issues. Its spokesmen have fought the government in proper, morally confident terms whenever they saw a threat to their rights. (To name a few examples of such occasions: the attempt at labor conscription in World War II, the issue of U.S. contributions to the Soviet-dominated International Labor Organization, President Kennedy’s attempt to impose guidelines in the steel crisis of 1962.) Labor’s concern was aroused only in defense of its rights; still, whoever defends his own rights defends the rights of all. But labor was pursuing a contradictory policy, which could not be maintained for long. In many issues—notably in its support of welfare-state legislation—labor violated the rights of others and fertilized the growth of the government’s power. And, today, labor is in line to become the next major victim of advancing statism.

It was business, not labor, that initiated the policy of government intervention in the economy (as long ago as the nineteenth century)—and business was the first victim. Labor adopted the same policy and will meet the same fate. He who lives by a legalized sword, will perish by a legalized sword.

“The Moratorium on Brains,” The Ayn Rand Letter, I, 3, 2.

.

Refusal to work is initiation of force?

Of course, SEIU thugs beating up those who disagree with them certainly is initiation of force.

Edited November 17, 2010 by Jonathan David Leavitt

[Selene]

...are immoral, or so I've learnt[sic. learned] here as they are the initiation of force.

So, have any of you ever gone down to a picket line and told the men and women there this and that they should go back to work?

If so, how did they respond?

Steven:

1) your time and your work are yours to either trade, donate or hold back;

2) striking is not an initiation of force because there is no force employed by not working. As someone who claims to have read Atlas Shrugged, you seem to have missed the part about the men of the mind going on strike...;

3) you appear to elect to consistently and consciously choose to confuse people who have been influenced by Ayn's ideas, the philosophy of Objectivism and subsequent enhancements of open objectivist thought and the closed system, true believer Objectivists of the Lord of Nimrodery, Leonard "I will tell you what to believe" Peikoff;

That is not what this forum is about. This is the only place that I have ever posted because of its intellectual openness. It would be interesting to see if you have the courage to understand that and to, as a consequence of understanding, respect it.

In answer to your other picket line nonsense, my father was an original organizer of the NY Fire Department union in the 1930's when you were followed home from meetings and sometimes run off the road or worse. I have been in politics since I was about ten years old in the 1950's. I have stood shoulder to shoulder on picket lines when the cause was just.

I have also fought against picket lines when the Communists were using the unions to bring down the US. You know the old communist union slogan, "If you can't open their minds, open their heads."

So do not make the mistake that you seem to make that being a follower of Ayn's ideas makes a person naive as to the realities of the union movement and the obscenity it has become in America. Similar to the obscenity capitalism has become by getting in bed with the centralized government...there is your socialism of the right and the left.

As I said in another post, your socialism has ALWAYS ended in the gas chamber, the gulag or the bloody rice paddy. Refute that if you would like to try.

Adam

[Jonathan David Leavitt]

...are immoral, or so I've learnt[sic. learned] here as they are the initiation of force.

So, have any of you ever gone down to a picket line and told the men and women there this and that they should go back to work?

If so, how did they respond?

Steven:

1) your time and your work are yours to either trade, donate or hold back;

2) striking is not an initiation of force because there is no force employed by not working. As someone who claims to have read Atlas Shrugged, you seem to have missed the part about the men of the mind going on strike...;

3) you appear to elect to consistently and consciously choose to confuse people who have been influenced by Ayn's ideas, the philosophy of Objectivism and subsequent enhancements of open objectivist thought and the closed system, true believer Objectivists of the Lord of Nimrodery, Leonard "I will tell you what to believe" Peikoff;

That is not what this forum is about. This is the only place that I have ever posted because of its intellectual openness. It would be interesting to see if you have the courage to understand that and to, as a consequence of understanding, respect it.

In answer to your other picket line nonsense, my father was an original organizer of the NY Fire Department union in the 1930's when you were followed home from meetings and sometimes run off the road or worse. I have been in politics since I was about ten years old in the 1950's. I have stood shoulder to shoulder on picket lines when the cause was just.

I have also fought against picket lines when the Communists were using the unions to bring down the US. You know the old communist union slogan, "If you can't open their minds, open their heads."

So do not make the mistake that you seem to make that being a follower of Ayn's ideas makes a person naive as to the realities of the union movement and the obscenity it has become in America. Similar to the obscenity capitalism has become by getting in bed with the centralized government...there is your socialism of the right and the left.

As I said in another post, your socialism has ALWAYS ended in the gas chamber, the gulag or the bloody rice paddy. Refute that if you would like to try.

Adam

Bravo!

[BaalChatzaf]

Refusal to work is initiation of force?

It is a form of fraud if the labor is owed under some contract.

It become force when the strikers block the path of those who are unwilling to participate in the strike.

The American labor movement is rife with acts of thuggery, assault and threat of bodily harm.

Ba'al Chatzaf