From: dr.bedggood-AT-auckland.ac.nz
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 22:24:14 +0000
Subject: M-G: Re: M-I: Marxists in unions


>Godena wrote: 
> I wrote in this forum last fall that unions,  *as such*,  were wholly
> incompatible with a Marxian revolutionary program,  but were, on the
> contrary,  indispensable to strengthening capitalism in its twilight era.
> It is not that workers are docile or counter-revolutionary -- though
> tempermentally,  urban dwellers seem the least suited for purposive and
> determined revolutionary action -- it is just that organizationally,
> American trade unionism is a natural agency for reform,  not revolution.
> This has always been so,  even during the heyday of Left agitation (authored
> and embodied largely by the Communist Party).    Demands for union
> recognition or an eight hour day could succeed (with largely defensive
> violence if necessary) where more fundamental demands could not.
> Principle always took a back seat to the humdrum world of higher wages and
> more time off.    The Left was cleaned out of the shops in the 40s/50s with
> hardly a whimper from the rank and file who had lately benefited from the
> sacrifices of these same stalwarts.
> 
> I am struck by how little,  fundamentally,  has changed.    The occasional
> "Leftist" or "Socialist" is tolerated,  even, good naturedly,  celebrated on
> the lower rungs of the trade union leadership ("Communists" are still
> outside the pale).    But the basic union program -- embraced by virtually
> all workers,  whether service or manufacturing -- is still,  and will remain
> so,  solidly right-wing social democratic.   Workers in Russia or China may
> have had nothing to lose but their chains.     Western workers -- whatever
> their exogenous situation -- have a good deal more than that to lose,  and
> they don't want to lose it.    It may be that the Western urban working
> class,  that species that is thoughtlessly celebrated on this list by a
> number of modern day Rip Van Winkles,  is congenitally incapable of becoming
> a ruling class (Lenin hinted at this in his last days).    In any event,  a
> few noisy but ineffectual "revolutionaries" have made no difference in
> American trade union life in many decades.    Those whose lives
> providentially supply the self-delusion necessary to go on living can
> content themselves with "revolutionary" action within the trade unions.
> Those who prefer a reality grounded in the here in now will demur to other
> types of activity.
>

Here we go again. What is a useful swapping of notes on actual 
struggles inside unions is turned into a `end of the working class' 
as revolutionary class. Lenin in his last years agrees with a third 
generation carpenter who sees trades unions as never more than 
social democratic organs  `incompatible with a marxian revolutionary 
programme"! 
Its no wonder that you have given up on the working class Godena if 
this is your solemn judgement.  I mean how can workers become 
revolutionary if they have so much to lose?  Speak for yourself and 
for the priviledged layer of US labor aristocrats. Do not speak for 
the workers of the world. It is that layer of aristocrats that has 
spawned the labor bureaucracy which has sat on the leadership of  
the unions and held back its struggles for decades all the while 
blaming workers for their backwardness.
But if there was no prospect for unions becoming schools of class struggle, 
in which revolutionaries can intervene, and which can be transformed 
into soviets, how do you explain the victorious struggles of unionists in 
your own country, let alone others,  to fight for and win those gains you so 
cynically claim fall short of revolution. The defence of those gains in the 
struggles to come will create the conditions for the renewal of the 
unions and in  them a revolutionary vanguard. I'm sorry to say 
that this will be in spite of you Godena, not because of you. 

Dave.



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