From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: Re: AUT: Perplexed, all variations
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 00:08:01 -0600


Scott said:
> What I mean is that there will be a contradiction
> between the leadership and the base of unions,
> reflecting itself in bureuacracy and anti-democratic
> methodology, until you have a  revolution. Argentina
> seems to me to show this - over there, there are still
> bureaucrats hanging on for dear life as unions of even
> white collar workers (teachers, for instance) embrace
> a revolutionary programme.
> Opting out of trade unions and starting your own new
> models wont get rid of the problem, as the problems
> of the anarcho-syndicalists during the
> (uncompleted)Spanish revolution (cf Seidmans' book)
> and today in the IWA show.

Chris:
There will indeed be a contradiction, at times of struggle mostly, between
the apparatus and the workers, but the bureaucracy does not come from this,
but from the relationship of the union to capital, the role of the union as
negotiator of the rate of exploitation.  Unions need capital and have no
reason to exist without the capital-labor relation.  While the working class
can welcome its own non-existence with the end of the capital-labor
relation, the union apparatus' will most vcertainly not.

I am also not asking anyone to quit their union.  I wish people would stop
putting that silliness in my mouth.  Union or not, our task is to organize
independently.  I am asking what the role of communist revolutionaries is in
the workplace and in relation to unions.  Our task is to fight for the
autonomous, independent self-organization of the workers, regardless of the
medium they choose, but with awareness of what different choices involve.

Scott:
> Well, yes and no (sigh). The early syndicalist union
> movement in NZ was quite racist at times toward
> Chinese, whereas some of the trade union movement that
> developed later  the wharfies before they were
> smashed in 1951, for instance - pioneered anti-fascism
> and anti-racism. To say that trade unions are doomed
> to be racist is a bit silly, and would also be
> offensive to trade union militants  for instance my
> Maori trade union activist friends in the AIC  if
> there were any of them on this list.

Chris:
Well, no (sigh).  The CP in this country 'pioneered' anti-fascism and
anti-racism (if one only looks at it from a white perspective, since Black
workers 'pioneered' the struggle against racism in bloody 1640), in the form
of the Popular Fronts and cooperation with 'democratic' capitalists.

And in so far as capital is doomed to be racist, so are institutions in this
society, including trade unions, which represent even the most racist
jackass in a workplace or industry.  That means that unions tend to be a bit
worse in some ways.  If that offends your friends, that's too bad, they
should stop treating unions in a utopian fashion.  I know lots of people who
get offended if you tell them that unions are racist, or sexist or
anti-immigrant.  Then again, I know people who get offended if you argue
that "Black Hawk Down" is racist (communists and trade unionists mostly in a
recent discussion on another list).  Being from an oppressed group is no
guarantee of communist politics.  Wileding association with Maori trade
union activists does not convince me that trade unions are not racist.  I
have the same argument with Black and Chicano trade unionists, who face
'rank and file' Black and Chicano workers who do think the union is racist.

Its amazing how much the politics condition the critique and obscure the
problems.

Scott:
> Once again, you cant wish away the contradiction
> which found negative expression in these events. The
> Trotskyists were killed, after all, because they were
> inspiring  inside the national liberation movement
> insurrections that flew in the face of the Stalinist
> stagist approach. They failed to turn national
> liberation into permanent revolution, but they werent
> *doomed* to fail (many would argue, in fact, that they
> were sold out by the 4th Intl). In a place like
> Vietnam in the 40s, commitment to national liberation
> was a prerequsitie to any serious activity on the
> left. The Third World doesnt breed many
> ultra-leftists.

Chris:
Commitment to national liberation in the sense of the end of colonial and
imperial power does not, IMO, involve subordination to nationalist politics,
unlike the activity of most Trotskyists.

Secondly, no party can turn 'national liberation into permanent revolution'
since the revolution is not a party affair.

Thirdly, Trotskyism had no greater existence in the so-called Third World
than anarchism or other libertarian communist politics, with the exception
of Vietnam (where they tail-ended nationalism) and Sri Lanka, which I know
little about.  Stalinism and nationalism dominated the scene almost entirely
in many cases.  Of course, Ilan and I have discussed Matzpen in occupied
Palestine and much has been written about anarchism in Latin America and
Africa, if one wants to go beyond the self-serving histories of Leninism.

Scott said:
> > On this idea of 'exploiting the base-leadership
> > contradiction', that sounds like entryism.  Why not
> join the Labour Party then?
>
> I would join the NZ Labour Party in 1919, when it used
> revolutionary rhetoric and had organic links to mass
> organisations of workers who wanted socialism. I would
> enter it in an organised way, with the intention of
> pushing it to its limits and exposing it. Labour today
> is a very different beast.

Chris:
It was exactly around this kind of attitude that Marx said he was no
Marxist.  Marx took the French Socialist Party program seriously, Jaures
thought it was a way to 'expose' the limits of bourgeois society in France.
Please do us the favor of not joining anything with the intention of showing
us that we were too stupid to realize it was reactionary without you.

Scott said:
> All I mean is that you have to be with the people you
> want to win over to revolutionary politics.

Chris:
(Sigh.)  'With the people'??  Are you serious?  'Win over to revolutionary
politics'??  Maybe our fellow workers will win you over to revolutionary
politics someday, instead of this 'I am the teacher of the poor, stupid
proletariat which is limited to trade union consciousness' nonsense.

If theyre
> not in a union and doing stuff, fine. If theyre on a
> union picket line, you have to be there. I dont see
> anything mutually exclusive about the situation. In NZ
> at the moment there is an ongoing crisis over funding
> in the public sector and a series of strikes by
> members of heavily bureaucratised unions have broken
> out. Recently the teachers went on strike after voting
> to reject the deal their leadership hammered out with
> the government. The AIC was at their rally in Auckland
> trying to link their struggle with the war on terror
> and with events in Argentina. I dont see how we were
> selling out ununionised workers by doing this

Chris:
What are you talking about?  Where do you come up with this stuff?  Did I
say 'don't talk to unionized workers'?  I said 'don't let the union stand in
the way of any struggle'.  That means we should go and talk to whomever we
can and encourage, where we are not dropping in like Martians from outer
space feeding our 'line' to people, autonomous self-organization and
independence from the apparatuses of the 'labor movement'.

I said:
> But anti-imperialism is a political position
> > which of necessity places te struggle against
> > imperialism ahead of the struggle against
> capitalism.

Scott said:
> There is no single anti-imperialist position.

Chris:
Well, the primacy of imperialism was your phrase, which I simply found in
convergence with almost the entirety of Trotskyism, Stalinism
and Maoism, despite topical variations and greater or lesser degrees of
cupidity.

Anyway, the rest is old hat.  I preferred my discussions with Harald, et al.

Cheers,
Chris



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