File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9705, message 22


Date: 20 May 97 09:48:13 EDT
From: jonathan flanders <72763.2240-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: M-I: Labour Government and the Unions


Lou G returns to a theme we have discussed in the past.

 >>  Jon, I don't think Clinton or anyone else (save for a few Right-wing 
Rip van Winkles in the *Wall Street Journal* or *National Review*) 
worries about "labor in the streets" in America.<<

If this is true, why the unseemly rush to declare an unconditional return
to work in the Detroit newspaper strike just as a movement to call a mass
solidarity rally was picking up steam, aimed directly at the AFL-CIO's EC
meeting? Why the conscious effort of the UAW to isolate the Catapillar 
strike when the membership in the CAT plants was plainly ready to go on 
the warpath? With a minimal national effort, 30,000 just turned in April 
out for the strawberry farm workers in California.

 >> The big attraction for a practically bankrupt Democrat Party in 1996
was labor *money*, together with the connections certain craft and
transportation unions had with organized crime and urban political
machines that were needed to get out the votes for Clinton and
congressional Democrats.  The whole "union summer" demagogy of 1996 was
simply a cynical ploy on the part of Sweeney, Trumka, et al to try
 to regain influence within the Democrat party.<<

True. Nothing new in this however.  

>>It didn't work.  The workers themselves stayed away from the polls in
 droves. There was never any prospect of "labor in the streets", nor will
there be, unless it is part of a much, much larger incident of social
 upheaval in America, such as one springing from a natural calamity, and 
then only as a tail to more dynamic forces facilitating fundamental and 
far-reaching changes.  The culture of western workers simply forbids them
playing a leading role in effecting revolutionary change.<<

  Natural calamities and third world upheaval are permanently on the 
agenda. Is there an example in history of a revolution that didn't start 
with such a calamity, whether a world war, invasion, economic collapse or
dictatorship? The fact that the workers stay away from the polls is a 
positive sign, albeit a passive one, in my book. Alienation from 
capitalist politics is the beginning of wisdom for the working class.

>>Both Jon and Rob Lyon in their own way unconsciously chart labor's 
degeneration in the modern era.  The hapless NDP in Canada could only 
keep itself solvent by moving sharply to the Right; despite rumors of 
worker discontent, no left-wing movement of any import proposes to 
replace it.  In the US, two decades of worker retrenchment and give-backs
has only thrown up the most pathetic resistance, like the so-called Labor
Party Advocates, itself a still-born movement in many ways more
right-wing and less respectful of "democracy" than the Democrat Party
itself.  At its inaugaral convention, the Number One Enemy was not the
Democrats or the capitalist system, but a noisy (and ultimately
ineffectual) Left wing among its own members.<<

  The significance of a labor party lies not in its program, but in the 
emergence of a mass consciousness in the working class that it needs its 
own party. Once that consciousness exists, we can start arguing within 
the class about the program, ie socialism or reforming capitalism. As far
as I am concerned the jury is still out on the current LPA effort.

  <<If Jon and Rob are to be believed, and workers themselves are
anticipating a party or movement that will fight vigorously for their
rights, where is the evidence of this?<<

  The huge attraction to Perot in 1992 is the biggest piece of evidence. 
If he had not deliberately stumbled, as did the PAN candidate in Mexico, 
by the way, in their last election, the momentum was there to either take
the election or come in second. I watched Perot mania sweep through my 
shop and drew the conclusion that workers were ready for a break with the
Democrats. It will take an upheaval to do that, of course, and the trade 
union officialdom still clings to the rails of the sinking ship.

>>I must say no such evidence exists, and for good reason.  Workers in 
the West are an irretrievably counter-revolutionary force. If their
leaders are drawn to various social democratic reform schemes, the rank
and file themselves are pulled inexorably in the opposite direction.<<

  The essence of your position. Hence your attraction to the peasantry as
an alternative. We've argued this before. My point is that the rising
force in the Third world is the working class,not the peasantry, and
inevitably, workers in the advanced countries will see the need to link
up with their brothers and sisters around the world. I have already 
experienced a small taste of this myself.

>> That is why union leaders, almost without exception, oppose things 
like voter initiative, one-man-one-vote in formulating national labor 
policy, and the like.  They hate and fear their own members and, lacking 
any modicum of popular support, they are wholly dependent upon the 
leaders of the organized political parties for their very survival.<<

  True. This is why they will always be to the right of their members 
when a massive upsurge "threatens" a sweeping victory. A secure living 
for the bureaucrat lies in the gray fog of labor peace, with an alienated 
but not completely defeated membership. Decertified unions don't collect 
union dues. 

  >>The labor movement in Canada and the US is in an inexorable process 
of decline and outright degeneration.  It can neither be recussitated or 
destroyed by any political party; it must be refunctioned from within.<<

  True.

>>So, may I humbly suggest that it is not the Democrats who most fear 
"labor in the streets"?  It is, sadly, the institution of labor itself.<<

  They are completely interlinked. But the Democrats will go first. The 
more astute labor officials will run ahead of a mobilized working class, 
just as Lewis and the CIO did in the thirties.

Jon FlandersJon Flanders, using OzWin 2.12.1



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