File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9801, message 355


From: LeoCasey <LeoCasey-AT-aol.com>
Date: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 14:22:03 EST
Subject: M-TH: RE: Why the American working class is not radical.


Justin:
<< Leo says that my claim that the adherence to the Democratic Party by the
 union leadership has undermined the radicalization of the working class is 
 a vapid generalization. I don't know on what basis he claims this. Surely  it
is true
 that if the unions, the main self-organized force of the
 working class, throw in their hand with a political party lead by
 capitalists and committed to the maintenance of the capitalist system, it
 will not promote radicalization of the working class or anticapitalist
 attitudes.>>

Leo:
What I object to is the implied casuality in this formula, that somehow the
American working class was straining at the leash, just waiting to be
radicalized, and along comes the labour bureaucrats misleaders to deliver them
into the hands of the Democrat Party and capitalist class. To which I say,
nonsense. The decisions by the Gompers and Strassers, the A. Phillip
Randolphs, Hillmans and Reuthers, to move away from a quest for the golden
grail of a class-based labor or socialist party to seek a broadly social-
democratic agenda within the Democratic Party was based on a political
calculation, made again and again by left American trade union leaders in
significant leadership positions, about what was possible given the American
political system and the specific balance of class forces at the given
historical conjunctures. The constant repeating pattern should give a little
pause that there is something more significant here than personal 'betrayal'
of the faith. Might it just be that their choices reflected the 'de-
radicalization' of the American working class more than caused it, especially
given their origins in the radical/socialist movement?   

Justin:
 <<Maybe Leo believes that the DP is sufficiently open-textured
 and loose taht it can be captured or split. I don't think so, but even if
 this were true, which side of the split do you think the union leadership
 would be on?>>
 
The Democratic Party is no longer a political party in any classic sense of
the word; following the general decline in political parties, it is more of a
quasi-state apparatus, a line on the ballot, to be won by those with the
political organization and will to succeed. Like it or not, it is the forum in
which all significant mass movements of the left are involved, from trade
unions to civil rights organizations, from feminists and gays/lesbians to
environmentalists. They recognize a political reality that Justin seems to
want to avoid.
   
Justin:
 <<Leo runs together my claim about the unions and the DP and
 decradicalization with some sort of generic denunciation of labor
 bureaucrats, which he attributes to me. Well, I am in a sort of
 conflicted position. As a law clerk at the UAW I work, of course, for
 these self-same labor bureaucrats. I hope to find a career in unionside
 labor law, which means working for them for a living. At the same I I
 basically share Solidarity's militant rank-and-file labor perspective. I
 think that the interests of the labor bureaucracy diverge from those of
 its members. This often leads to blatantly counterproductive strategy,
 such as reflextive support for the Democrats, who reciprocate by taking
 the labor vote and money for garnted and screwing labor sideways: GATT,
 NAFTA, etc.>> 
 
The militant rank-and-filism of groups like Solidarity and other incarnations
of International Socialist Schachtmanism are really nothing more than latter-
day syndicalists, the Wobblies of our day. At their best, they provide skilled
cadre for important fights against corrupt and dictatorial union leadership
such as that waged by TDU against the Mafia crew in the IBT. But their
horizons are so limited by their anti-political worldview, so clearly manifest
in this purist vision of trade union  leadership as bureaucratic sell-outs
that any practical intervention in the shape and form of trade union and
working class politics is impossible. This 'principle' against involvement in
the only significant arena of working class electoral politics that currently
exists is just one symptom of this purist syndicalism. I suspect that the
longer Justin works in this context, and the more he attempts to figure out
what a meaningful political intervention from the left might be, the more he
will become dissatisfied with this syndicalism.

Justin:
 <<Leo suggests that if I knew more labor history I would understand that the
 Gompers, Reuthers, Meanys, and Kirklands did what they did because they
 thought it would help the working class for the unions to be narrowly
 economistic and supportive of the capitalist state. Well, we can all stand
 to know more labor history, but I am not completely ignorant of it either.
 Nor do I think that the leader bureaucrats act agaisnt their own
 conception of what's good for workers. It's just that as usual, its easy
 to identify what's good for one' own institutional interests with what's
 good for the working class.>> 
 
 <<When Walter Reuther took over the UAW, he fired Maurice Sugar from the
 post of General Counsel because Sugar was a red (though not a CPer), and
 then he hired someone, whose name I forget, who helped him implement the
 Taft-Hartly-mandated purge of reds (commies and Trots) from union office.
 Sure, he thought he was doing good. But look at the fruits of this policy>>.
 
Leo:
Reuther is an excellent example to consider, especially since the recent book
by Nelson Lichtenstein (_The Most Dangerous Man In Detroit: Walter Reuther and
the Fate of American Labor_) provides a very full and nuanced account of his
life and political efforts. Justin's point above is emblematic of a very
shallow reading of Reuther which simply pre-dates or ignores the complexity of
Lichtenstein's account. The factional history within the UAW long pre-dates
Taft-Hartley, and can not be reduced to simple capitualtion to Taft-Hartley.
To no small extent, the CP made its own demise in the UAW. Moreover, I don't
know who these Trots were who were purged; certainly the Schachtmanites, who
were the most significant Trot grouping within the UAW, were thorough-going
Reutherites. Nor could Reuther's politics after the Taft-Hartley period be
correctly characterized as a capitulation to simple economism, unless one
wants to reduce a social-democratic agenda to economism  -- a manifestly silly
proposition.   

Justin:
 <<I find it hard to believe that in this era of Clinton a supposed
 progressive would defend the labor-DP alliance. Look at what happened to
 Ron Carey and reflect. Mene mene tarkel uparshin!>>
 
Leo:
Well this 'supposed progressive' sees the experience of Ron Carey as a lesson
on how easily some reformers forget basic ideas of trade union democracy once
they are in power and in a little bit of a tight space. I suppose some great
leap in logic will attribute this lapse to the nefarious influence of Clinton
and the Democratic Party, but I would think that a hard-headed empiricist who
insists upon logical argumentation would not fall for such a fallacious
exercise.


     --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005