Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 09:58:57 +0100
From: Antagonism <mrnobody-AT-geocities.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: Re: WR on the Australian dockers


Bill,    Hope this addresses most of your points

> [...] Therefore, because the ICC recognise that the unions are part of capital,
> >and do useful work for the bourgeoisie, they take it for granted that
> >Patricks recognise the MUA as their ally against the workers.
> [...]
> >We could nonetheless regard conflicts
> >between enterprises and the state on the one hand, and union structures on
> >the other, as being faction fights within capital.
> This still seems an unwarranted generalisation. Sometimes they are and
> sometimes they are not. This view seems to assume that because many union
> structures are not class-conscious, they are part of a conspiracy against
> the working class. But it is as well to remember that the working class not
> not overly class-conscious either, so although there are lots of
> conspiracies against the working class, not everyone is party to that
> conspiracy.

I was trying to distance myself from what I see as an over conspiratorial element
in the ICC's analysis. Whether the unions are part of a conspiracy or not, they
still are structures integrated into this society, and more often than not they are
integrated into the state in various ways. Unions group workers according to trade
or industry or enterprise, re-inforcing the fragmentation of capitalist society.The
are business organizations, often with many millions of investments in business, or
owning their own insurance companies etc. The union leaders and higher officials
are increasingly drawn from outside of the union membership, and are professional
businessmen. Under these circumstances, it makes little sense to talk about unions
being class-conscious or not. Which class are we talking about, when the unions are
multi-million enterprises run by businessmen?

> >3) The article states that "at Wapping back in 1985-86 (...) twice a week for
> >months the unions staged pitched battles with the police." This is not
> >true. >Most of those fighting the police weren't even printers, but were
> >teenagers >from the local tower blocks, or were 'activists'. The unions
> >tried to >organise peaceful pickets. They informed the police on
> >proletarians who >used violence against scabs and cops The unions also
> >used violence directly >against those who fought the cops.
> >The dispute was called off after a year by the union (SOGAT) after
> >violence >reached such a level that significant numbers of police were
> >getting >hospitalised weekly.
>
> So what is the point of all this? What is the article getting at?

Well the ICC tend to be against a lot of the violence that workers carry out,
implying it is really carried out by fractions of the bourgeosie. I think they are
often wrong. The News International dispute at Wapping was one I was involved in,
so I know from personal experience that they are wrong on this point. I think the
ICC have taken their critique of unions one step too far here, in trying to
discredit all pickets (but I may be wrong in my interpretation.)

> Pickets are more than that, they constitute direct economic action against
> an employer and are one of the few actions that workers who are locked out
> can take. If locked out workers cannot get solidarity from other workers
> they are lost, but it is often unrealistic to expect a general strike every
> time there is the slightest injury to any group of workers. Of course when
> the picket line is honoured by other workers then that is, effectively, a
> widening of the dispute. If other workers refuse to cross a picket line
> then they are taking industrial action, the law recognises (and usually
> proscribes) this reality.

I think this is at best an out-dated view. The 1984-85 miners strike, the 1985-86
printers strike, the Liverpool dockers dispute and the Australian dockers strike
were in no way a battle between one group of workers and a single isolated
enterprise. In each case the dispute was prepared for beforehand by the enterprise
in question, together with the state and other backers within the ruling class.
Surely this doesn't have to be argued, we all saw the reports about mercenries
being trained in Dubai months before the Australian dispute started. What this
means is that trying simply to win through picketing a single enterprise is bound
to fail. In the case of the miners strike, the long term plan of the state was to
shut down virtually the whole industry, so trying to win through economic attacks
on that industry was fatal.

A clarification, here, and this is relevent to the earlier discussion with IWW
Chris. Calling for struggle across union divisions is not the same as calling a
general strike. As I've said several times, in Australia workers from different
industries, unions, enterprises have struck in the this dispute, and that I think
is why the state has backed down a bit. Similarly there have been various incidents
in Brittain, such as Ford workers going out in support of nurses, and more recently
textile workers in London sending flying pickets to enterprises not involved in
their dispute, resulting in victory. Neither I nor the ICC are making unrealistic
calls for a general strike. On the contrary we are both pointing to the incidents
in real class struggle where workers have been most successful.

> Yes, but neither you nor the article address the crucial issue of HOW to
> cut across those artificial lines. A picket is one obvious way. What other
> strategies or factors must be in place to facillitate effective solidarity
> actions. It is all very well to demand that solidarity be present, but
> surely there is more to it than that?

Well, this is certainly the hardest part. I don't think its really in my power to
lay down the exact tactics or whatever that workers & other proletarians must
follow in the future. What I've said in the past in various leaflets is that
workers from different sectors could put forward common demands. That is, instead
of each sector putting forward complex demands relevent only to some workers, it is
possible to put accross demands such as "10% and no strings, no redundancies" or
whatever, which are relevent to all workers (I'm not saying this is a revolutionary
demand, but one that could possibly help unify workers' struggles). Also, its
neccessary to keep things practical. So rather than just say, picking groups of
workers at random and asking them to go on strike, its far more realistic to ask
seperate groups of workers already in dispute to struggle collectively.

I've repeated a lot of arguments here that are commonplace amongst left-communists,
situationists, councilists and anarchist-communists. For more background, have a
look at my web page and also the fairly comprehesive set of links at the John Gray
website at
 http://www.geocities.com/~johngray/

I feel I should point out that while I am broadly in agreement with the ICC on the
question of unions and nationalism, I quite disagree with their line on party &
transition. (They want to set up a world party, and a post-revolutinary state
representing all classes).
--

web:  http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill//Lobby/3909/
email:  mrnobody-AT-geocities.com
post:  BM Makhno, London WC1N 3XX, UK




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