File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_1997/aut-op-sy.9711, message 17


From: obu-AT-teleport.com
Date: Sun, 9 Nov 1997 04:01:52 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: AUT: unions and revolution



I think the discussion of unions and revolution has started to focus more
on "dis" than discussion.

I think Neil's left-communist schema must be honestly appraised, a
difficult process because we are jumping into a river with counter
currents.

The Left-Communist schematics of groups such as the PCInt, CWO and the ICC
are very inviting for they give a concrete base for activity. I know, I was
involved with the ICC in the early 80s. But they have really no basis in
real life existance of the class, at least how I, my friends, and community
have lived it.

Neil Says:
>You just don't show you have the slightest idea why these
>and other rev. struggles/movements had to face
>down the unions as well as  open bourgeois -state
>reaction as open enemeies who wanted to drown
>the rev. workers organization in blood --and certainly
>they succeeded, unfortunately for workers of the world.

But Neil ignores the same arguement could be made about Political
groupings. The only logical outcome is what the renegade Bordigist Camatte
came up with; that all organizations are rackets and we should avoid them.
The question needs to be one of workers organizing on a certain "terrain"
not what a movemnet or current should call itself. The Left-Communists of
the Internationalist Communist Group have realized this, that it doesn't
matter what flag the group waves, what matters is what the content of the
actions are.

>Just deal honestly  with my examples of the  mass
>movements, economic/political , leading to the Russian soviets-
> councils of 1905 & 1917.

I think it is widely recognized that the Bolshevik Party disengaged the
actions of the Soviets. All Neil can offer is that HIS party won't do the
same thing. All Bill can say is the IWW isn't the same as trade unionism.
Tit for tat. Let's get beyond that and see what really moves the working
class and what makes it articulate its own activity, in keeping with
Autonomia Operaria and their work. We should be working for revolution not
just political theories.

>How about the western soviets/councils  in
>Germany and Austria post WW1 ? The red Turin workers
>movements in Italy in 1919-20?

What about Hungary, where a happless leftist CP was thrust into power to
discredit it? There is a lesson where political organization leads you
to...

>Did  not these and other movements not show how unionist
> structure/business is reactionary in this epoch?

Again, no more than the model you subscribe to.


>Don't confuse your own  apparent shallow understanding
>of workers rev. history with the concrete historical
>examples i presented to try to show how the developemnt
>of the capitalist exploiter  system from ascendency to outright
>barbarism  helped change the nature of the EPOCH
>and the UNIONS!.

The central thesis of Neil's arguements lies in the concept of Capitalist
Decadence. Before WW1 capitalism was progressive, therefore Unions could be
revolutionary. After WW1, capitalism became decadent, and now there can be
no permant organs of stuggle for the working class.

So let's see then, a consistant Left-Communist would say:

* Slavery was progressive.

* The Genocide of Aboriginal Peoples was necessary and objectively a "good"
thing.

* That Aboriginal peoples are backwards and need "progress".

* That Workers are victims of capitalism are not active particpants in the
social process.

* That reformist unionism of the 1800s, such as the Chartists in the UK,
the AFL in the US, etc, should be supported. But when the IWW today leads a
wildcat sympathy strike in Butte, MT of 300 construction workers in favour
of UPS strikers (true story), that is bourgeois.


But I digress... I guess what I am trying to show is that we shouldn't be
snots about what our respective tendancies argue, but strip away the
ideology and find the communality between us and basis for common activity.
Shake your sectarian thang...

for the one big union (which the IWW always meant the SOLIDARITY/UNITY of
all workers, not some Trade union confederation),

CACanny
Portland IWW




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