Date: 	Wed, 8 Jan 1997 22:23:22 -1000
From: Stephen E Philion <philion-AT-hawaii.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: AFL-CIO crushing Latin Americans 


Neil,

I didn't get the impression that English was saying that all is now hunky
dory with the AFL-CIO in terms of foreign policy..His point is that while
remaining critical, it's also important to be factual about what changes
*have* occurred in the labor movement (and which have not occurred, and
why or why not..).  Here is what Hal Draper wrote on what Marx and Engels
thought of  "revolutionary sects"
all out dismissal of the labor movement and its leadership, in Hal Draper,
*Karl Marx's Theory of Revolutin Vol 2: The Politics of Social
Classes*:(pp. 120-121)

He (Engels) raged at the bad attitude of,
:the Socialist League, which looks down on everything that is not directly
revolutionary (which means here in England as in your country: all who do
not limit themselves to making phrases ad otherwise doing nothing) and the
[Social Demcocratic] Federation, which still behaves as if all except
themselves were asses and bunglers, although it is precisely owing to the
new impetus lent to the movement that *they* have succeeded in getting
some following again."

(Draper) Indeed, some of the best organizers of the new unions began as
S.D.F. members but had to break with the sect in order to do effective
work as trade union militants.  Engels generally supported such organizers
against the sect.  In a published interview he repudiated the S.D. F. on
the ground of its sectism, and gave an example:

(Engels) It is an exclusive body.  It has not understood how to take the
lead of the working class movement generally, and to direct it towards
socialism.  It ahs turned Marxism into an orthodoxy.  Thus it insisted
upon [dockers' leader] John Burns unfurling the red flag at the dock
strike, where such an act would have ruined the whole movement, and,
instead of gaining over the dockers, would have driven them back into the
arms of the capitalists....


(Draper).The sectism of the Hyndman group, like its similars,
suggested a fossilized sort of ultimatism, as if it were saying to
the class it purported to represent: Either you obey my
certified-correct Revolutionary Program, or else I will punish you by 
withdrawing my benediction on your existence and will refuse to be
contaminated by further association with your unsanctified
activities. .Marx implemented
a basically different conception of
the relation to trade unions (from the sects).  Socialists should act as a
loyal left wing of the class movement, not an alternative counterposed to
it; they should start with the working class as it is and where it is in
order to change it; they should become the best militants for the limited
aims of the movement-as-is...at the same time, through this association,
they seek to push the whole movement upward to higher levels of class
struggle commitment and consciousness by means of the lessons of
experience, all without giving up or hushing their own full views or
ceasing to criticise mistaken or ineffective polices.

Steve

On Wed, 8 Jan 1997, neil wrote:

> dear friends,
> 
> Lets see. Rich Alcorn exposes a key part of  the real track
> record of AFL-CIO work with the US  capitalists state machine
>  and  its CIA to sabotoge and wreck workers movements 
> and struggles in Latin America for decades.
> Quite a bit of hard evidence indeed concerning the loyalty
> of the AFL/CIO apparatus to  US capital!
> 
> Andy English then assures us that all this is ancient history 
> because the AIFLD front  will be changing its NAME soon! WOW!
> That will really change things!
> What about the money/business trail between the bi-partisan
>  state department and the AFL/CIO? Maybe with all the
> cutbacks , even the AFL/CIA might take a 10%er for show?
> Andy should ask himself  another basic question , which is 
> primary, spirit or matter?
> 
> Neil
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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