There is some irony there. After all, he was the great union leader for baseball players that ended the Reserve Clause and got them free agency and a slew of other rights and benefits. Yet he didn't believe he was a socialist-and I can see he's right. Asked if he would call himself a socialist he said:
"I would not. Industry does many things the government won’t and shouldn't."
http://fortune.com/2012/11/27/lion-of-american-labor-a-final-conversation-with-marvin-miller/
Many great union leaders historically considered themselves socialists-though I don't think there is any inherent reason why you would have to be a socialist to be a union leader. In truth a union only exists in a capitalist setting-history shows that socialists governments don't tolerate the existence of an independent union.
When reading Miller it's clear that he really was always much more consistently pro-capitalist than the owners he fought against-and achieved those victories over. We can argue about Marxism and the idea of 'surplus value' but what I find interesting as a sports fan is that it's in pro sports that we see the clearest evocation of labor strife-of a battle between capital and labor; ie, the owners and the players.
Yet, the consistently capitalist position is clearly for the unionists like Miller. In sport after sport, the owners consistently prefer a quasi socialist system. The biggest socialist around was always Bud Selig. He wanted the 'big market teams' to finance the 'small market teans'-and it's just a big unimportant coincidink that he was also the owner of an alleged small market team-the Milwaukee Brewers-as he was demanding revenue sharing and a luxury tax. Meanwhile after the deal for more revenue sharing in 2002 the Brewers halved their payroll in the next 3 years while averaging 64 wins and 98 losses per year.
The model for MLB no doubt is the salary cap NFL which has lots of 'competitive balance' though you can argue that MLB is more 'competitvely balanced' than football.
http://espn.go.com/blog/jayson-stark/post/_/id/1075/think-nfl-has-greater-parity-than-mlb-well-think-again
In any case, I think the whole idea of competitive balance is problematic. No one who talks about it ever makes any effort to define it in any way approaching rigorously. Selig had said that the goal was a league where every team's fans can believe they have a shot at winning it all every year. Such a vision is just absurd. How can it ever really be the case that all 32 teams could have a realistic chance of winning the WS every year? I argue that it's impossible but that if it were possible it would be totally unpleasant for fans. Who would want a situation where their team would win roughly once every 32 years? Even as a vision this is flawed.
What Selig seems not to understand is the word 'competitive'-he's just focused on the 'balance.' Competition is the drive to be the best, to dominate the competition not achieve parity with it. Everyone hates my Yankees because they wish their team was the Yankees. That should be the goal of a sports team-sustained dominance. I guess Selig would prefer what the Florida Marlins did in 1998 after winning the World Series: they dismantled the entire team and went 54-108 in their defense of the title. I guess that's what any team should do as the goal is not victory but parity and everyone getting their turn to win one.
I mean in the 1990s it was supposedly a travesty that the Yankees won 3 straight World Series and 4 of 5 but it was also an era of record attendance. Yet we here that if we don't have a situation where each team wins once every 32 years, the fans will stay at home. Meanwhile. the Yankees have always dominated baseball. They did in the Ruth era, the DiMaggio era, in the late 70s, again in the late 90s-and basically were a very dominant team for 20 years running starting in the early 90s-and yet attendance does nothing but rise.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-yankee-dynasty-and-george.html
When is a sportswriter going to have the guts to tell the truth: it''s all a ruse? The whole thing is nothing to do with competitive balance-which, again, doesn't matter to the fans anyway-but keeping down players' salaries. Full stop.
I guess I can understand the reluctance-not to say cowardice-on the part of the sports media. After all, if we're to believe Bill Madden, the great baseball union leader Marvin Miller has been held back from being voted into the Hall of Fame because he criticized the witch hunt against steroids. He has been held back for Orwell's ThoughtCrime. To simply disagree with Bud Selig and his small market buddies is enough to get you blacklisted. So while cowardice is cowardice, it is a prudent cowardice.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/04/bill-madden-shows-everything-thats.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DiaryOfARepublicanHater+%28Diary+of+a+Republican+Hater%29
The more I read and learn about Marvin Miller the more impressed I am. I admire the way he always stuck to his guns and took unpopular stands if that's where the facts took him. On the other hand the more I learn about Bud Selig the less I like him.
Anyway, that's the funny thing about baseball: as baseball's greatest union leader, Miller was also the most consistent capitalist. It's for this reason that he actually has nicer things to say about George Steinbrenner than most of the other owners-as George was actually much less anti union than most other owners-as he was always willing to open his checkbook.
Here is an interview with Steinbrenner's son, Hank Steinbrenner on Mike Francesa.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2015/03/26/hal-steinbrenner-on-wfan-im-a-very-different-man-than-my-father-was/
"I would not. Industry does many things the government won’t and shouldn't."
http://fortune.com/2012/11/27/lion-of-american-labor-a-final-conversation-with-marvin-miller/
Many great union leaders historically considered themselves socialists-though I don't think there is any inherent reason why you would have to be a socialist to be a union leader. In truth a union only exists in a capitalist setting-history shows that socialists governments don't tolerate the existence of an independent union.
When reading Miller it's clear that he really was always much more consistently pro-capitalist than the owners he fought against-and achieved those victories over. We can argue about Marxism and the idea of 'surplus value' but what I find interesting as a sports fan is that it's in pro sports that we see the clearest evocation of labor strife-of a battle between capital and labor; ie, the owners and the players.
Yet, the consistently capitalist position is clearly for the unionists like Miller. In sport after sport, the owners consistently prefer a quasi socialist system. The biggest socialist around was always Bud Selig. He wanted the 'big market teams' to finance the 'small market teans'-and it's just a big unimportant coincidink that he was also the owner of an alleged small market team-the Milwaukee Brewers-as he was demanding revenue sharing and a luxury tax. Meanwhile after the deal for more revenue sharing in 2002 the Brewers halved their payroll in the next 3 years while averaging 64 wins and 98 losses per year.
The model for MLB no doubt is the salary cap NFL which has lots of 'competitive balance' though you can argue that MLB is more 'competitvely balanced' than football.
http://espn.go.com/blog/jayson-stark/post/_/id/1075/think-nfl-has-greater-parity-than-mlb-well-think-again
In any case, I think the whole idea of competitive balance is problematic. No one who talks about it ever makes any effort to define it in any way approaching rigorously. Selig had said that the goal was a league where every team's fans can believe they have a shot at winning it all every year. Such a vision is just absurd. How can it ever really be the case that all 32 teams could have a realistic chance of winning the WS every year? I argue that it's impossible but that if it were possible it would be totally unpleasant for fans. Who would want a situation where their team would win roughly once every 32 years? Even as a vision this is flawed.
What Selig seems not to understand is the word 'competitive'-he's just focused on the 'balance.' Competition is the drive to be the best, to dominate the competition not achieve parity with it. Everyone hates my Yankees because they wish their team was the Yankees. That should be the goal of a sports team-sustained dominance. I guess Selig would prefer what the Florida Marlins did in 1998 after winning the World Series: they dismantled the entire team and went 54-108 in their defense of the title. I guess that's what any team should do as the goal is not victory but parity and everyone getting their turn to win one.
I mean in the 1990s it was supposedly a travesty that the Yankees won 3 straight World Series and 4 of 5 but it was also an era of record attendance. Yet we here that if we don't have a situation where each team wins once every 32 years, the fans will stay at home. Meanwhile. the Yankees have always dominated baseball. They did in the Ruth era, the DiMaggio era, in the late 70s, again in the late 90s-and basically were a very dominant team for 20 years running starting in the early 90s-and yet attendance does nothing but rise.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-yankee-dynasty-and-george.html
When is a sportswriter going to have the guts to tell the truth: it''s all a ruse? The whole thing is nothing to do with competitive balance-which, again, doesn't matter to the fans anyway-but keeping down players' salaries. Full stop.
I guess I can understand the reluctance-not to say cowardice-on the part of the sports media. After all, if we're to believe Bill Madden, the great baseball union leader Marvin Miller has been held back from being voted into the Hall of Fame because he criticized the witch hunt against steroids. He has been held back for Orwell's ThoughtCrime. To simply disagree with Bud Selig and his small market buddies is enough to get you blacklisted. So while cowardice is cowardice, it is a prudent cowardice.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/04/bill-madden-shows-everything-thats.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DiaryOfARepublicanHater+%28Diary+of+a+Republican+Hater%29
The more I read and learn about Marvin Miller the more impressed I am. I admire the way he always stuck to his guns and took unpopular stands if that's where the facts took him. On the other hand the more I learn about Bud Selig the less I like him.
Anyway, that's the funny thing about baseball: as baseball's greatest union leader, Miller was also the most consistent capitalist. It's for this reason that he actually has nicer things to say about George Steinbrenner than most of the other owners-as George was actually much less anti union than most other owners-as he was always willing to open his checkbook.
Here is an interview with Steinbrenner's son, Hank Steinbrenner on Mike Francesa.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2015/03/26/hal-steinbrenner-on-wfan-im-a-very-different-man-than-my-father-was/
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