Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 05:07:10 +0000 (GMT)
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Scott=20Hamilton?= <s_h_hamilton-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: US Labor against War, etc




I think this is an ultra-left approach Neil. It's
actually very close to the line of the Sparts you
condemn! In many places here is no mechanism for
anti-war strike action except the trade unions. You
cannot hope for spontaneous strike action outside the
unions.
There are good reasons why most unions in the
Anglophone countries are still bureaucratic and
reformist, and these conditions cannot simply be leapt
over. This is proved by the case of 'revolutionary'
unions like the IWW: they are consciously trying to
break with reformism, yet still succumb to the
backwardness and social imperialism of the Anglophone
countries. The task is to engage with the concrete
conditions without adapting to the backwardness of the
mainstream left, of most of the unions, and indeed of
many of the workers. In Western Australia 75,000
workers in nine different unions (some blue collar)
are pledged to take strike action if the war breaks
out. Should we condemn them for this because they are
not out and out revolutionaries and haven't broken
away from reformist unions? What we should be doing is
advancing tactics which would if implemented point
away from reformism and exacerbate the tension between
the rank and file and bureaucracy (or, to put it
another way, between the correct tactic and incorrect
(because reformist) strategy of the workers). An
obvious one is rank and file committees to run the
strikes and the generalisation of the struggle beyond
trade and employed-unemployed barriers. It seems to me
- and this speculative, since I'm not in the US - that
Workers Actions' demands will if taken up push the
anti-war union movement left. Does the very abstract
propaganda of left communists have a chance of being
taken up? 



 

===="Revolution is not like cricket, not even one day cricket"

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