File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-03-14.105, message 47


Date: Thu, 13 Mar 1997 16:58:39 -0500 (EST)
From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
Subject: Re: M-I: An American Experience in Socialism?


 
Noor writes:
        
>..[T]he AFL-CIO.. did get rid of Lane
>Kirkland, and have promised to do more grass roots organizing,so why not give
>them a chance.   What I think you were getting at was -union leadership imposed
>from above.    Where the rank and file have no say or input in the unions
policy.
> Does Louis G. feel that he has influence in the direction  his union
>moves or in its overall policies?

The American trade union movement is composed of -- and developed through --
a number of competing (and often contradictory) traditions.   The Protestant
noncomformist background embedded in its history gave it at times a
missionary zeal and fervor in the cause of the oppressed.    But the same
tradition also accomodated a respect for a liberal society and the rule of
law;  the prospect of winning concessions for the workers within that
society,  and through its procedures (at least until recently) still seemed
real.    In the large urban centers,  too,  there exists the traditions of
bossism,  extortion,  and cliqueishness which is a reminder of the not
inconsiderable role played by organized crime in the development of American
trade unionism.   And there has always been relatively little here of the
anarchist strain which is a common ingredient of the revolutionary spirit. 

The American labor movement has always leaned more toward syndicalism than
revolutionary Marxism.    Many of its earliest and best leaders (like
William Z Foster,  later head of the Communist Party) were first of all
syndicalists,  and rarely able to break completely free of that ambiguous
tradition.    The IWW may be a partial exception but in any case is today
more of a nostalgic historical relic than a bona fide trade labor union.    

The trade unions in virtually every country,  east and west,  were more or
less part of the government,  that is to say,  they stayed in close touch
with "official opinion" and rarely strayed from it.    General strikes were
unheard of in the socialist countries (for reasons I enumerated in my
earlier post) and in the West were more or less just old-fashioned quarrels
-- though on a mammoth scale -- about wages.    In some countries today (one
thinks of revolutionary Lima and the Partido Comunista del Peru)  the
concept of the General Strike,  or rather its armed component,  is a
departure from this modern trade union tradition and, in some respects, is
actually much closer to that envisioned by Lenin and to some extent Marx.     

I have argued in this forum of the limited efficacy of the modern Western
trade union tradition in effecting profound and fundamental change within
the working class in Western society.    A revolutionary break from the
hidebound tradtions of our society would be a first pre-requisite to
facilitating a successful struggle for a socialist society.

Louis Godena



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