From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: Re: SV: AUT: Cobas/SUD
Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2002 18:24:41 -0600


Hey all,

I am glad this is getting picked up.  Harald and I have gone over this a
little and I actually do not think that we disagree in substance.  Harald
differentiates between 'real unions' and 'unions' as they exist now.  In
essence, I think that we agree about the way that unions have developed, and
he rightly points out that the issue is the possibility of 'revolutionary
unionism', where I think that commie00 and I agree.

Even the council communists were not in agreement on this one, since people
like Otto Ruhle tended towards a revolutionary unionism in the AUT (I don't
remember if that is exactly right just now).  Ruhle focussed on the idea of
a 'union' that opposed 'craft' and 'trade' unionism, but which sought to
express the self-organization of the entire class at the level of the
workplace (IMO), and therefore at the main point of contact with capital.

I really enjoyed Steve's info and I hope this can progress, though I wonder
if we should start by working out the differences and similarities of our
notions of 'workplace organizing', for example 'real unions', Cobas/SUD-type
formations and ideas such as workplace 'centers' (such as what I perceive
Wildcat as doing) and struggle-based committees/forms of organization that
exist for and through but not beyond a strike.

One problem 'unionists' raise with me is the 'winning' of contracts and the
formalization of 'labor's rights' over that period, which I view as a
dubious, but which I am not totally convinced of either way.

Just some thoughts.

Cheers,
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Harald Beyer-Arnesen" <haraldba-AT-online.no>
To: <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2002 12:29 PM
Subject: Re: SV: AUT: Cobas/SUD


>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: pmargin-AT-froggy.com.au
> Date: Saturday, March 30, 2002 12:50 PM
> Subject: Re: SV: AUT: Cobas/SUD
>
>
> Steve wrote:
>
>         "What I took Harald to mean - and maybe I misunderstood him -
>         was the severe limits of an approach to workplace
>         organising  that confined itself to the inner city left ghetto's
>         alternative economy (whether self-managed in the form of
>         co-ops, or else as little businesses)."
>
>
> Well, I actually I was trying to say something like that that I am
> very much in favour of counter-culture unionism, I would even
> say the unions tend to become counter-cultural to degree they
> manage to maintain themselves as unions, but that such a
> thing is only possible through moving way beyond the sectarian
> confines of "counter-culturalism". I don't believe the later can ever
> really become a counter-culture, unlike a "sub-culture," or put otherwise,
> can only do so by becoming one contributing ingre-
> dient of a greater whole. There were (and partially remain)
> many counter-cultural elements in the old "macho" blue-collar
> don't talk bull shit attitude to life as well. And unlike what many
> seem to believe, it was never only a male thing.
>
> Whatever their other faults (some of which were to undermine
> their existence to a degree that at the end not much more than
> an empty shell remained, with a few local ) historical unions
> were often counter-cultural to a degree that todays "counter-
> culturalist" can only dream of.  Which is not to say that the later
> has not also produced much of value.
>
> At last, I would say, to the degree and as long as unions function
> as real unions, an environment emerges that cannot help but
> creating  a counter-culture. It is not unions that are the problem,
> it is their almost complete absence. So I claim. I will not here
> and now enter into the traditional counter-arguments, rooted
> in particularily in the council communist tradition -- or should
> I say the unionist tradition today better know under the name
> council communism -- that unions have only become what they
> had to become and what they always will become, unions as
> brokers of labour power, permanent organisations etc.
> For me the the class composition thing might be more interesting
> in this context, for while I generally find the council communist
> critique of unions the best among "anti-unionists," also because
> they tend to be far better informed on the topic than rest of the
> critiques, their critique none the less differ little from the critique
> underlying, and to a great extent incorporated into, anarcho-syndicalism.
>
>
>
> Harald
>
>
>
>
>
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