Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 07:49:16 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: M-G: The organized proletariat exists, what it needs is leadership



I'm quite sure I don't approve of this cross-posting, but people might be
interested in this discussion about the American working class.

I said that the US working class is a class objectively, as defined by its
relation to the means of production, but not subjectively, because it does
not conceive of itself as such.

On Sun, 2 Feb 1997, Hugh Rodwell wrote:

> The proletariat in the US has a long history of self-organization,
> including not just local and craft organizations but also national and
> international organizations of the class in general. Not every worker at
> the same time, of course, but that's not the point. It is incredible that
> Justin can make this claim at present when the new Labor Party has made its
> appearance. Inadequate as it is, it still represents the working class as a
> collective identity with a sense of political organization and capacity.

Hugh, you will forgive my saying this, but you do not know what uou are
talking about. I am a member--a charter member--of the new Labor Party, a
tiny splinter which represents the extreme left wing off the official
trade union movement. It might have a lot more support among workers if
the labor movement would push it, but at present the main unions won't.

Whatever the checkered history of American class organization, the fact is
that there is virtually no organized class conscious proletarian movement
in America. Union density has dropped from its height of about 33% in 1954
to about 15% today; in the private sector it's around 11%. (Doug, what are
the right figures? Those are recollections on my part.) The union
"movement" is bureaucratic, sclerotic, and ossified. I say this as someone
who plans to be a unionside labor lawyer. It's just the reality of the
situation here. 

As to political organizing, the organized labor movement is hopelessly
captive to the Democratic Party. The AFL-CIO endorsed--spent a lot of
money for--Clinton, who frustrated the labor agenda at every crucial point
except for raising the minimum wage. This is not new. The unions decided
to throw their lot in with the Dems back in '36, when the CIO, which might
have been a locus for a labor party, decided to support Roosevelt.

A good place to start on this is Kim Moody's book, the title of which now
escapes me (Doug?). 

I do not deny, indeed I rather quixitically assert, that the AMerican
working class has a potential to become a self-conscious organized class
force. But it's uninformed and wrong to say that this potential has any
actuality today.

Hugh disputes the applicability of my quotation from Marx to the effect
that the proletariat at a certain stage of strugle becomes organized as a
class and therfore as a political party. Hugh quotes Marx:


>         At this stage [early manufacturing industry, say late 18th >
century] the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered > over the
whole country, and broken up by their mutual > competition. > > [Three
paragraphs before Justin's quote] > > 

This is what Justin implies is the
situation today in the world's most > capitalistically developed country,
a completely unhistorical assumption. 

Well, in the first place, since the passage you quote does define what M
thought was an earlier phase of the struggle I am not sure why it can be
adduced against me. But in the second place it is a pretty good
description of the reality of the American working class, 85% of whom are
not even organized in unions, much less theor own political party.

(Quote omitte.)> 
> 
> So the character of collisions between classes actually precedes even the
> formation of trade unions! And the proletariat starts *feeling its
> strength* -- and all this is before 1848, almost exactly 150 years ago.
> 
Yes, and so? Textual argument is very nice, but we have to address
political reality.

>         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 burghers of the
>         Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries,
>         the modern proletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few
>         years.
> 
> Then follows Justin's quote -- and what a difference in the original
> context! No pessimism about unorganized, unaware classes or individual
> workers just jumbled together like potatoes in a sack, but a build-up to
> political victories for the class both in itself, objectively, and for
> itself, subjectively:

A pretty picture. Too bad it hasn't come to pass in America. 150+ years
later the workers are mainly not even organized in trade unions here.

Then the quote I discussed:

> 
>         This organization of the proletarians into a class, and
>         consequently into a political party, is continually being upset
>         again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it
>         ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels
>         legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers,
>         by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie
>         itself. Thus the ten-hours' bill in England was passed.
> 
> As for subsequent history, there have been four great workers'
> internationals with their roots in Marxism

Right, but in America, this plant has not taken root. Oh, and I would say
that the Fourth International is a joke compared with the first three.

> I would say, and this is the orthodox Trotskyist (that is Marxist and
> Leninist) position, that the problem is not so much one of organizing the
> class as such, but more one of the kind of leadership being provided for
> organizations of the class that actually exist.
> 
This is the orthodox Trotskyist position, but the futility of the 4I shows
its inadequacy. The American unions are misled. no doubt. But the first
thing is to get more of them, since they are in desperate decline. 

You _cannot_ translate the situation in Europe into an American context. I
have lived in England and know from that and my own studies how different
things are there. Some pessimism if the intellect is required to leaven
our optimism of the will.

--Justin




     --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---