From: wdrb-AT-siva.bris.ac.uk Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 17:45:12 GMT Subject: RE: M-I: Marxists in unions While I think it is right to question the potentially revolutionary role of trade unions, there have been at least two disputs in the UK in the last 15 years which had roots in trade unionism but transcended and narrow catrgory of reformism... one was the miners strike of 1984/5...the other the present Liverpool docks dispute. Will Brown Louis 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.>> --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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