Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 02:03:07 -0500
From: neil <74742.1651-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: AUT: unions & revolution


Reply to CACanny of IWW/Wash.

The Ascendence- decadence positions of the 
communist-left groupings  is distorted by your 
reply to mine.

I was merely  pointing out (helter-skelter) the aspect of capitalism's 
being able to develop the productive forces 
in the period before the 20th century without 
its periodic  crises and rebounds then  leading to 
massive WORLD WIDE slaughters as has 
come to pass in the 20th cent. I.E. that is this
century that the decadence ahs led to the 
scenarios of capitals world wide Crisis--war-reconstruction
folowed by Crisis-war--etc cycles. Of course capitalism
"came into this world dripping with blood" (Marx)
(and now the drippings have become oceans!)

It is absurd to think that communists 
would think that the actions of capital 
in its historcial  accumulation cycles /plunder based on 
chattel slavery,  massacres/invasions 
of native peoples ,  or a passive working
class accepting this should be considered  'progressive",
 even in having taken place in the "ascendent' phase.
At that time (18- 19th cent) of course real  communists still 
advocated buliding up the workers forces for revolution 
against capital and in this period that even  some 
National struggles could still be defended 
and supportable (as did Marx-Engels on Ireland,
Poland etc.) ,  also 1st international , etc   worked actively 
 to  oppose US  Confederacy in US civil war, backed 
up Paris Commune , etc  even though  sucessful 
workers revolutions could not be victorious then 
owing to the numerical and organizational -political/economic
weakness in the workers movements then. But the
mass struggles were also part of  workers maturation at 
this period.

Your IWW unionism  of the syndicalist variety 
had its heyday in the late 19th , early 20th cent.
in between the 2 phases. 
Of course vicious repression by the US "democratic' bourgeois 
state and para-militaries hastened the demise of the 
fighting US  IWW then. But you need to look at the other 
apsect of the IWWs own outmoded syndicalism,
which in light of the successes of  early bolshevism,
which actually won the MAJORITY of the  Russian soviets/councils
to accept its programme (however somewhat flawed) 
and led  the sucessful  but all to brief rule of workers
in Russia , 1917-20, and this growing world movement 
 caused the best IWW fighters to join the bolshevik trends
en-masse  sprouting up in the USA in these years. 

(The commusist-left points out too , that the bolsheviks 
stripping power from Soviets of workers Deputies and
replacing them with its elitist "peoples comissars' and going 
over to semi- bourgeois style administration  in 1918 was 
a key turning point  eventually leading to the gutting 
of soviet power by early 1921 -and that Party hegemony  helped
to eventual  building of state cap system.) 

But he IWW has since the 20s, though it still had honest worker 
fighters in it, been passed over by its own economism,
its local-yokelism, and  hostility to workers fighting with two
 hands --political and economic, instead supports the  one hand fighting
method
 (economic) of the IWW, etc. going up  against a ruling class that punches
workers lights out with any blow it can mount , above or below the
belt.

Lately however, The IWW press (Industrial Worker-IW) has
 awkwardly tried to correct  its absurd rejection of political struggle--
but since it has no political/ecomonic analysis of the 
the present epoch to aid workers -it itself has floundered around  today
recently debasing itself by  printing recent articles sowing 
the worst illusions in the AFL/CIO controlled, and left-swamp
state capper promoted US Labor Party!.
I' know you will say that this recent  IWW article was the work of
a Labor Party supporter . I would say to you then you 
should have polemicized honestly and frankly with the
author ! But that would have meant getting ones hands 
dirty with politics-even dare I say  ( un-developed IWW)
pro-worker politics! 

But your own experience here shows your method/programme
of syndicalism  cannot handle the problem of dealing with
the filthy capitalist lib-lab politics that hamstrings workers-
and even leads to real  IWW capitulation to them..
And that is a  fatal contradiction  that  has helped lead your trend 
in its awful quandry for the last 75+ years.

Neil 




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