Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 23:17:16 -0400
From: Joseph Green <comvoice-AT-flash.net>
Subject: M-G: Detroit demo on Saturday
--SUPPORT THE DETROIT NEWSPAPER WORKERS!--
A demonstration is being held this Saturday, June 21, in Detroit
in support of the newspaper workers. It is being organized by "Action!
Motown '97" and by AFL-CIO unions, but the AFL-CIO leaders will not
tell the workers the real story of this struggle. Detroit Workers'
Voice #14 (June 1, 1997) calls for participation in this demonstration
but also tells how this important strike was betrayed. It contains two
articles, one on the newspaper workers' struggle and one on the crisis
of left-wing thought. Both follow below:
--RANK-AND-FILE ACTION OR UNION LEADER SELLOUTS?--
Detroit newspaper workers and many others in solidarity with them
have fought hard for nearly two years. Untold sacrifices have been
made in the fight against the corporate media giants, Gannett and
Knight-Ridder. But despite the efforts of the rank and file and their
supporters, the truth is that the struggle has been derailed. The
efforts to shut down scab production have ended. The mass plant
rallies were dismantled. The strike itself has been called off. The
handful of workers that have returned to work face worse conditions
then when the strike began. Meanwhile the union leaderships are
promising the newspaper bosses more concessions if only they hire back
the former strikers. The goals of the struggle have been reduced to
hoping that some year the National Labor Relations Board will order
the newspapers to take back some more workers, with all the issues
that led to the strike still unresolved, and with hundreds of workers
never called back.
The leaders of the AFL-CIO are pretending that the struggle is
stronger than ever, but in fact it has suffered severe defeats. They
present this rosy picture to cover their responsibility for the
dilemma the workers now face. The reasons for these severe defeats
were not just because of the financial power of the companies. Nor
was it merely that the capitalist bosses, as usual, have had their
facilities protected by court orders and the Detroit and suburban
police, in addition to their own private goon squads. The truth is
that the struggle has been subverted by the national and local leaders
of the AFL-CIO unions. In the face of powerful enemies, these alleged
champions of labor have gone all out to prevent the type of struggle
that could have kept the company reeling. Right from the beginning
they have worked to contain the militant strivings among the workers
and solidarity activists. They undermined the most effective mass
actions that proved it was possible to shut down scab production. If
the police wanted to escort scabs through plant picket lines, the
union bureaucrats were there to help the cops. If the courts banned
plant actions, the union misleaders would counsel the workers to
comply. While the NLRB banned effective forms of worker protests, the
AFL-CIO leadership assured the workers that if only they obeyed these
restrictions, this same NLRB would allegedly save the workers from
being devastated. While cowering before the cops and courts, the
union leaderships only got tough when it came to putting down rank-
and-file militants and activists who wanted to go beyond their timid
tactics.
Of course, the AFL-CIO bureaucrats promise they will never betray
the workers. Indeed, each time they have toned down the struggle,
they bragged about how the strike would now be more powerful than
ever. Now, they are patting themselves on the back for having
organized the thousands-strong June 21 march. But the bureaucrats are
not suddenly reversing their opposition to militant mass action after
two years. Even with thousands of workers gathered for June 21, they
are not calling for plant blockades. Indeed, it's notable that the
national AFL-CIO leaders refused to agree to the march until after
instructing their underlings at the local level to call off the strike
and make an unconditional offer to return to work.
Using corporate boycotts to subvert militant action
The failure of the union leaders to put up a serious fight is a
national disease rendering the workers weak in the face of the
corporate offensive. Time and again the workers have been channeled
away from powerful actions that could really shut down scab
production, such as the mighty plant blockades at the Detroit
newspaper plant in Sterling Heights in September 1995. Instead the
union officials tell the workers that all they need do is have a
boycott campaign against the scab product. Boycotts have their place.
But as a substitute for militant mass action, they are a recipe for
failure. Look at the evidence. The AFL-CIO heads touted the
corporate boycott as the answer for the major strikes of recent years.
The results? The bureaucrats wound up swallowing rotten settlements
leaving many strikers jobless and working conditions gutted. The
workers at Staley, Caterpillar, and Bridgestone/Firestone are among
those who have suffered this sad fate thanks to the bankrupt ideas of
the so-called "corporate campaign."
Aren't the Detroit newspaper workers being led to the same
slaughter? The union leaders can dress up their meek tactics with
fiery slogans like "shut down Motown", but they are not even willing
to shut down one single newspaper production plant! They can
proclaim offering to return to work under slave conditions (already
some returned workers have been fired!) as an escalation of the
battle. But the fact remains that the lame AFL-CIO tactics have led
to the strike being abandoned.
Build rank-and-file initiative
If workers are not to suffer more bitter setbacks, the rank and
file must take the initiative. The potential power of our class is
enormous. Just look at how the plant blockades of September 1995 shut
down the Sterling Heights plant. These actions became quite powerful
not because the union bureaucrats were more militant then. The
bureaucrats had organized for a pacifist action where workers would be
peacefully carted away by the cops. Instead the workers fought back
and defeated the police efforts to break the picket lines. But for
the workers to carry out a consistent policy of militant action, the
rank and file must develop its own organizations of struggle. Such
organizations must not only develop mass militant tactics, but
encourage a struggle against the union bureaucracy.
Working class politics vs. Labor Party politics
For the working class to become a real force, it must have its
own class politics. The trade union bureaucrats tell us that
political activity means voting for the Democrats as the alternative
to the Republicans. But in fact, both of these parties are in the
pockets of the wealthy. Others claim the recently founded Labor Party
represents the workers' political trend. After all, the Labor Party
has said that both the Republicans and Democrats are representing the
rich. But the Labor Party does not stand for developing independent
working class organization, but relies on the very same AFL-CIO
hierarchy that is betraying the workers. In fact the main leaders of
this party are case-hardened union bureaucrats. They point out how
the Democratic Party politicians have failed to deliver on their
promises to the workers, but then promote such two-faced liberal
politicians as former Democratic California Governor Jerry Brown.
Their failure to really stand for building an independent class
movement means undermining the fight for any useful reforms they might
support. In this way, they mimic the traditional stand of the left-
wing of the Democratic Party. Workers must oppose such politics if
they are to begin to establish their own independent trend.
For the workers to make a clean break with bourgeois politics
requires more, however. The current corporate onslaught not only
requires strong resistance, but raises the question of the root cause
of the problems facing the workers and poor today. The capitalist
system is behind the current attacks on the workers' livelihood. As
long as a handful of corporate bloodsuckers rule, the workers will
always be subjugated. As long as the profit system exists, even when
workers win a bit of relief, the next day they will be under renewed
attacks. Nor can we expect that as long as the wealthy corporations
remain, the political system will be freed from their grip and
converted into the protector of the exploited.
Revolutionary class politics points to the need for a political
party opposed to the capitalist system itself. As an opponent of the
capitalist system, it fights for the most resolute struggle for the
workers' immediate interests. Part of this involves winning workers
away from the influence of the AFL-CIO leadership and exposing the two
capitalist parties and the reformist "third parties" that trail in the
Democrats' wake. As well, in the struggles of today, it works to
demonstrate that the liberation of our class requires the overthrow of
capitalism. It puts forward the perspective of a revolutionary
workers' rule which eliminates class oppression and exposes the fake
"communist" regimes that have existed in the Soviet Union, China and
Cuba. <>
--MARXISM IN AN ERA OF FREE-MARKET CAPITALISM--
Today the bourgeoisie is crowing that the free market has won the
world contest. Its politicians and economists are shouting that
Marxism is dead and and the revolutionary working class movement is
dead and capitalism will last forever. According to them, there is
nothing for the workers to do but pull in their belts further and
further so that the CEOs and yuppies can get richer and richer.
Perhaps a few crumbs will trickle down to the workers of the country
that is farthest ahead in the competitive race.
But what has died was not socialism but more-or-less authoritarian
regimes with extensive state ownership. The attempts at socialism in
the 20th century didn't succeed, but were replaced by state-capitalist
regimes. It is this that has died. And there must be no tears for such
regimes if a truly militant working class movement is to rise again.
And rise again it must. Free-market capitalism is triumphant, and
so poverty is growing throughout the world. The more the world economy
grows, the more "safety nets" are removed and the poorer are millions
of people. Asia is one of the boom areas of capitalism, yet it has
unprecedented numbers of child laborers and child prostitutes. The
U.S. boasts of producing more jobs than any other Western industrial
economy, and each year wages drop and more people are on the street.
Meanwhile, despite pious declarations from Clinton and UN conferences,
the world environmental crisis gets worse and worse. If this is
capitalism at its height, then capitalism is bankrupt.
The crisis of revolutionary theory
The class struggle will come back. But it will not come back on
the old basis. All around the world, left-wing movements and workers'
organizations are in crisis. The collapse of the fake "socialist"
regimes abroad and the shrinking size of the reformist trade unions in
the U.S. are not an accident. The only way the working class anywhere
in the world can defend itself is to put the class struggle on a new
basis.
The Communist Voice Organization (CVO) is dedicated to paving the
way for this proletarian reorganization. We don't hide the crisis of
left-wing thought, but put overcoming this crisis at the center of our
activity. We hold that Marxism shows the way to reorganize the left,
but not just any kind of Marxism. The "Marxism" that is proclaimed in
the regimes in Cuba and China today, and that was proclaimed by the
fallen regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe yesterday, was not really
Marxism. It was just a set of apologies for a different kind of
capitalist oppression, state-capitalism rather than free- market
capitalism. To use Marxism in this manner, it had to be "revised", and
all the revolutionary principles of Marx and Lenin had to be
falsified. This type of "Marxism" is what we call "revisionism". It
has made millions of toilers around the world puke.
No tears for the fake socialist regimes
This is why the Communist Voice Organization, unlike most
Trotskyists and reformists, has no tears about the collapse of the
fake "communist" regimes in the Russia and Eastern Europe. And this is
why we denounce the remaining revisionist or state-capitalist regimes
in Cuba, China, etc. But most left-wing organizations find one reason
or other to apologize for these regimes. For example, they say they
have disagreements with various Cuban policies, but that nevertheless
supporting Castro is necessary to oppose U.S. imperialism. We say
that, on the contrary, it is not Castro but the Cuban workers whom we
should support. We must oppose U.S. imperialist bullying of Cuba, such
as the Helms-Burton bill, but we must also oppose the Castroist regime
which prevents the political activity of the working class. We must
look not to the bureaucrats and armed forces of Cuba and the remaining
revisionist regimes, but to developing the class-consciousness of
workers in Cuba as well as here.
Trotskyism = revisionist twin
Today, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the old pro-Soviet
parties around the world have mostly renounced their past, and the
Trotskyists organizations appear as among the largest forces still
claiming to be Leninist. However, on the main issues, the Trotskyists
are just a revisionist clone. They are not Leninists, but
revisionists.
For example, most Trotskyists still cry over the collapse of the
revisionist regimes, and claim that these regimes, such as the
Stalinist regime in Russia, weren't capitalist. They may defend
today's China, or in some cases even Yeltsins Russia, as not yet
capitalist because there still is a large state sector in the economy,
and most all of them defend Castro's Cuba. They have their
"criticisms" of these regimes, sometimes harsh ones, but nevertheless
hold that these regimes are some sort of defense against world
capitalism. Some of the largest Trotskyist organizations, like the
SWP, don't just defend fake "Marxist" regimes, but other backward
regimes as well. They go so far as to find pretexts to defend the
theocratic regime in Iran or the murderous regime in Iraq. This shows
that Trotskyism is totally useless for the rebuilding of a militant
working class movement. The Trotskyists are more interested in finding
some excuse to ally with a big force, however corrupt, then in helping
build an independent revolutionary movement.
Anarchism
Many young activists, thinking the collapse of the revisionist
regimes is the collapse of Marxism, have turned to anarchism.
Anarchism claims to be above politics and political organization, and
it thinks it overcomes the state and politics by basing itself mainly
on loose networks of autonomous groups. They are skeptical of the
Marxist idea of the working class as a whole running the economy,
believing that large-scale organization must inevitably be oppressive.
In the Spanish Civil War of the mid-1930's, one of the few cases in
this century when anyone tried to implement anarchist economic ideas
on a mass scale, they ended up stymied. Individual villages abolished
the hated national currency and established local currencies,
believing that local currencies weren't money. Individual workplaces
were run on a separate basis, believing that this overcame capitalism.
The result was a fiasco.
Anarchists believe that government is the root of all evil, and
don't understand that government is simply a symptom of the existence
of conflicting classes. That gives them something in common with the
free-market fanatics of the Libertarian Party. It is why, although
most anarchists are left-wing, the pro-capitalist Libertarians can
flirt with anarchist phrases.
The Communist Voice Organization
We hold that a serious look at the history of the 20th century
verifies Marxism. We seek to pave the way for the future development
of a mass Marxist- Leninist movement by:
a) theoretical work analyzing the current mass struggles and the new
features of world capitalism on the eve of the 21st century;
b) showing what anti-revisionist Marxism really is, and opposing all
apologies for state-capitalist regimes; and
c) taking part in the present-day working class struggle, even when it
is at a low level.
This is long-term work. We hold that real revolutionary work
doesn't mean sugarcoating the problems of the present and predicting
socialist revolution around the corner. It means knowing how to help
overcome the crisis of the left and build an truly independent working
class movement today. Every step towards clarifying the disaster that
has befallen the left, and every step towards organizing independently
of the reformists, the trade union bureaucrats, and the apologists of
the state-capitalist regimes, is work that will bear abundant fruit
in the future.
Let all those who wish to see an end to this capitalist hell, and
who see the need for a thorough criticism of the travesties that have
passed as "Marxism", join with us. Let those who are dissatisfied with
lying bourgeois politicians in the West and lying revisionist
politicians in the state-capitalist regimes, unite. Let those who are
sick of Trotskyism, trade union bureaucrats, reformism and anarchism
join with us. We say: no compromise with the fanatics of the
marketplace or of bureaucratic state-capitalism! It is only the
independent action of the working class that can provide a way out. It
is only Marxist communism that can provide a theory to guide this
class struggle. It is time to lay the basis for the rebirth of
communism by revitalizing revolutionary theory and practice. <>
For more on the Detroiô newspaper strike
or the Communist Voice Organization,
see the Communist Voice web site:
http://www.flash.net/~comvoice
e-mail: comvoice-AT-flash.net <>
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