From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: Re: AUT: Perplexed, all variations
Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2002 23:34:19 -0600


This is a multi-part message in MIME format.


Greg said:
No-one mistake the originality of your approach and I for one always find within anything original tremendous insights and this is also the case with your piece. But there are cavaets and important ones.

Chris:
Thank you.

Gregsaid:
I bleieve the analysis while revealing many things that are true disregards historical movement. You vision of unions seems to be based on soley what they have become, and in the main you have got that correct.

So I raise two features which should not be overlooked, of course unions are bound to capital and so are workers - this has to be taken for granted. And we need not go into the benefits of being organisied as opposed as confronting the bosses in isolation - they are obvious. But the lacklustre perfformance of unions today around the world (there are no doubt a great many exceptions) is real enough - something is out of kilter this is not a matter of having an absiolkute position oin unions and unionism which appears to be one of the conclusions you reach.

Chris:
Well, not exactly.  I think that unions started off as ways that the workers organized themselves to defend themselves within capitalist society.  What they have become does not simply follow from the logic of organizing to defend onesself within the capital-labor relation, which is what I think you and Scott take me as saying.  Certainly, the process of the degeneration of the unions has been historically conditioned, but the logic of 'unionism', of a perpetual organization which exists to defend labor's stake within the capital-labor relation, regardless of the consciousness, self-organization, militancy, etc of the class or even sections of the class, has taken over most of the so-called mass working class organizations.  At that point, the unions have developed into organizations which had to survive regardless of levels of workers' self-activity, regardless of very widely differentiated levels of consciousness, and generally in defense of sectional interests within the class.  I have not recapitulated the history here, but a more thorough treatment would have to attend to the historical development of the current situation. 

However, I also think that we are obliged to ask ourselves this: why has this seemingly been so uniformly the case across the international working class, for so many years now?  That is my first question.

Greg said:
Unions are contradictory, but to be effective they have to correspond to the labour market - in effect they organise sections of that market into combines and this is necessary. But what happens to such combinations when the markets change and the unions have not?

In other words what you are percieving is something that has happened many times in the history of unionism - at the moment it is particularily acute, the unions have grown due to past struggles to the point that some are not inconsequential bureacracies in their own rights. The unioin base meanwhile dwindles, the struggle itself subsisdes the bureacratic aspects of organisation come more and more to the fore.

Chris:
Yes and no.  This is part of the process, but in fact organizations like the CIO were never under the control of the workers.  The CIO was founded and run top-down by former AFL bureaucrats, starting with John L. Lewis, Hillman, & Co.  Few unions have actually come into being since the earliest days of unionism in the 19th century which have not been bureaucratic from the start.

This does not simply correspond to labor markets, but also to the transformation of class composition, to the lessons learned by capitalists and the state, etc.  So I wonder, though I have not stated it directly, if a different class composition might mean a new lease on life for revolutionary unionism (if it ever had one) or if the so-called loss of mediating institutions has to list unions as one casualty or what else?  That is my second question.

Certainly, in many places the old form of union is no longer possible.  On the other hand, I know of people who have turned towards social unionism, the resurgence of some IWW organizing, and the discussion of the return of the hiring-hall based union (but would that make them more or less than glorified temp agencies???)

Greg said:
Traditionally, amongst communists (often derided here as Leninists) the response has been to buidl militant workplace and grass-roots organisation which forms opposition to the bureacratic tendenices and the tendencies towards gross class colaboration. I in no-way disavow this approach and indeed other then the fact that it to has dwindled this tension wiuthin unions is to be expected and fostered where-ever possible (I spent many years in such capacities and feel priviledged for this experience).

Chris:
Leninists consider themselves communists.  IMO, they generally, though not always, do not so much build militant workplace organization, but try to engage in winning union positions and fighting from within the union apparatus, to lead the way for a 'revolutionary leadership' in the unions.  What you say seems to me to be the opposite of most (I say most because Lutte Ouvriere, for all their problems, took this approach in some ways) Leninists, but what a communist would want to do.

I support developing groups of revolutionaries in workplaces and grass roots organizations of workers in workplaces, independent of the union or regardless of whether a union exists or not.  The question is not to quit the union, call for its decertification, reform the unions, etc.  The problem is to organize independently and defend independent workers' action and organization, in spite of the union and against it where necessary. 

That does NOT mean not supporting workers' struggles, but to many people who have become unable to separate workplace struggle from unionism, that is what they see.  For me, I can support workers' struggle to organize themselves, regardless of whether or not they want a union, but I am obliged to say that they will control their struggle and their situation only as long as they control their organization and act independently.  Given capitalist society, given the limited nature of most struggles, a union will result, the inevitable outcome of both a limited struggle, the nature of every partial victory as a partial defeat, and the fact that the dominant layer of the workers in a workplace struggle do not want to overthrow capital and therefore WANT an orgaization to do the work.

I am pointing out that this will eventually mean an apparatus which will become the enemy of workers in struggles which threaten to break the boundaries that capital will except, and sometimes well before that.  The ossification of the struggle into an apparatus working within the confines of capital can only do one thing (and that goes for more than unions, btw.)

Greg said:
The real problem is one of disjuncture, not unions as such. The disjuncture is between the union as an organisation and the labour market as it has evolved. Notice I concentrate on the market aspects for it is this which sets workers collectively and individually against one another as competitors.

Nothing can thrive if workers see themselves and become competitors, in fact class political actions cannot happen unless this contradiction is addressed at its base (unionism - combination for economic reasons is inescapable).

Chris:
Well, we disagree.  The problem is the capital-labor relation, not the market.  The capital-labor relation creates the market and gives rise to competition between workers, a situation which can only be mollified slightly under capital's reign.  That unions can ossify certain victories and become an impediment to the free competition of all against all is certainly the reason that capital has attacked its servants so visciously over the last 30 years.

But this does not make unionism the same thing as combination for self-defense at the point of production.  And that's part of my point.

Greg said:
I will leave with this quote, and yes Harald will declare it as holy writ being displayed, but if he cares to read it carefully he will find that it actually speaks clearly on this very issue:

"The union [of workers] is helped on by the improved means of communications that are created by modern industry and that places the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, INTO ONE national STRUGGLE BETWEEN CLASSES. But every class struggle IS a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burgers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years."

"The organization of the proletarians into a class and consequentially into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. BUT IT EVER RISES UP AGAIN, STRONGER, FIRMER, MIGHTER..."

Communist Manifesto 1848

Chris:
Greg, I think you miss Marx's point, which is clearly about the political union of workers, not about trade unions.  Marx here seems to be speaking about the transformation of the self-organization of the class from disconnected local struggles into a coherent national struggle against capital.  Some have also read this as a party in the vanguard sense, but I think that Marx means the historical party of the class, not some single political organization.  But that is my take.

Cheers,
Chris

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