Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 06:44:17 -0800 (PST)
From: ancommus ancommus <ancommus-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: AUT: Bihr on unions


Hi all, 

while I have been scanning autopsy archive I have
found interesting quotation from Alain Bihr about
unions, which was posted by Steve Wright sometimes in
2000.

I just wonder if is this text or some its parts
translated into English and available on internet...

Can anyone help?

Thanks a lot.

Cheers,

David
*****

(...
I'll sign off with a quote from one of the more
interesting things I've seen of late by a
revolutionary syndicalist, this being a book by Alain
Bihr (_Dall'"assalto al cielo" all'"alternativa"_,
1995, Pisa, p.195 - the French edition came out in
1991): 

"As we have already emphasised, if the union
organisations want to attract the growing number of
unemployed and casualised workers, those excluded
temporarily or definitively from production if not the
labour market, and contribute towards the unification
of the proletariat, it is fundamental that they
privilege cross-sectoral structures which operate both
within and outside firms. 

"In responding to the immediate needs of the class
struggle, as well as satisfying the demands imposed by
the objectives and strategy we have set out, the
workers' movement must reassess some of the
fundamental principles of revolutionary syndicalism.
Two cornerstone ideas in particular must either be
revamped or abandoned. 

"First of all, *the myth of the insurrectionary
general strike*, a particular form of that apocalyptic
conception of revolution criticised in the previous
chapter. If not taken up within a strategy of
counterpowers, the idea of the general strike remains
forever and always a "mobilising myth", the
realisation of which is continually put off to the
future. Only the slow construction of a proletarian
counterpower can prepare the objective and subjective
conditions for a successful insurrectionary general
strike. 

"Second, the conception of *the union as the only
revolutionary organisation possible for the
proletariat*, embyro of the organisation of
post-revolutionary society, destined to transform
itself into the organ of direction, administration and
control, must be set aside. Today, a union
organisation, however revolutionary, cannot posit
itself as the only structure concentrating and
stimulating the revolutionary activity of workers. The
experience of class struggle over recent decades has
taught us that such autonomous action also broadly
holds for more informal organisations: those that are
transitory because born in struggle, such as strike
committees and their coordinations; or those that are
more lasting, such as workplace or factory councils in
revolutionary periods. And alongside union
organisations, we find specific movements and
political vanguards." 

[translator's note: I know the term "political
vanguards" will further excite some list members. As
Bihr makes plain a few pages later (pp.199-202), his
views on political organisation are rather
Platformist. In the pages in between, he sets out what
he sees as the anti-capitalist potential of so-called
"new social movements" in a world where no single
organisation can pretend to have all the answers].)

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