Date: Sun, 31 May 1998 00:50:02 +1000 (EST)
From: billbartlett-AT-vision.net.au (Bill Bartlett)
Subject: Re: AUT: Re: WR on the Australian dockers


Antagonism wrote:

>I was trying to distance myself from what I see as an over conspiratorial
>element in the ICC's analysis.

I guessed as much. My point was you weren't putting quite enough distance
between them and you.

>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.

Aren't we all? I don't see how any person or organisation can escape some
sort of association with the presently operating economic system. The point
is we HAVE to work within it. The logical alternative is working outside of
it but there IS no outside of it, you can't survive outside the economy,
you can't live on air.

>Unions group
>workers according to trade or industry or enterprise, re-inforcing the
>fragmentation of capitalist society.

That is to say that they operate according to the logic of the
circumstances that prevail. I don't see that this NECESSARILY entails
re-inforcing the system. The way most unions operate does re-inforce the
system of course, but I see that as political, its where they're at. But it
hasn't always been that way with most unions and it isn't that way with all
unions now. I belong to the IWW, which can hardly be said to re-inforce the
fragmentation or anything else of capitalism. So it can be done, but
depends on political consiousness as well.

>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?

Union leaders are professional managers, or professional politicians. But
I'm not sure that is the basic problem - rather a symptom. Or perhaps not
even that? If the membership was class-conscious and purposeful, and the
unions democratic...

Once again, the problem is political.


>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.

Why are they against it though?  But of course since unions are bourgeosie,
such violence must be 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.)

How are they wrong?


>
>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.

A plot perhaps, but hardly surprising that the state should back the
employers. The implication in your words though is that these disputes
involved all of capital uniting behind these enterprises. They may not have
been disputes "between one group of workers and a single isolated
enterprise", but neither were they disputes where capital unanimously
backed the individual firms directly involved.

They unanimously agree on objectives of course, but as you point out - most
unions are largely bourgeoise anyhow so such attempts to crush unions
always give rise to disputes between different sections and interests
within the ruling class as to STRATEGY.

>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.

There are degrees between total failure and total victory, so I don't know
what you mean by "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.

Although an international energy blockade would have done the trick, the UK
needed energy from somewhere. But picketing and blockading only Coal from
the UK was not going to do the trick, I agree.
>
>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.

Well, the state is not backing down, the government is still as rebid as
ever, but they have been stymied somewhat. If you mean the role of the
courts, well aside from the fact that the employer IS actually flouting the
laws, the courts may have also been influenced by the fact that public
opinion is opposed to the sort of tricks used by the employer to deprive
their employees of their entitlements. This makes all wage-workers aware of
their common insecurity, in other words it promotes working class
solidarity, so you can see why other employers who don't stand to benefit
from such shady tricks do NOT support the Patricks employers.

My argument is that, because it is a popular cause, it is more difficult to
forcefully suppress pickets. The lesson I draw from this is that, whatever
else we do, we think about whether and how we can ensure the protection
that such popular support can provide for the tactics of direct action.

[...]


>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).

Fascinating! A state representing ALL classes? So obviously not a socialist
revolution of any kind. Basicly they want a single world-wide political
government then? I've never heard of them before, so up until you told me
that I had nothing whatsoever against them.

Bill Bartlett
Bracknell Tas.




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