wisconsin, the class struggle in the US blah blah blah

Isn't there an ICT comrade there?  I suppose one of us could/should contact the ICT to confirm this.  Also, Will Barnes, who debates with Internationalist Perspective, Goldner, and Hieronymous from libcom went down there earlier and wrote this piece about the movement there.  And yes, the libcom thread about the events has some people mentioning they headed up there, although I think many are centering their activity around the IWW, who in my opinion, don't have a solid position against  the 'business unions' and what to do about them the way the ICC/ICT and some other anarchists do.  The Madison IWW are focused on a statewide (might be wrong about that, could be regional, or maybe they want to it be bigger than that?) general strike.  An IWW UK cde has written: "As I'm sure most people have heard, in the American state of Wisconsin the government has introduced a bill to strip public sector workers of their rights to collective bargaining. Of course, us in the IWW have no love for the trade unions, but this represents a vicious and coordinated attack on the working conditions and living standards of public sector workers that will ripple through the private sector as well. Plus, Wisconsin has historically been a bastion of organized labor. If the bosses can do this there, similar measures are sure to follow elsewhere.  The Madison, Wisconsin IWW along with local labor councils has begun calling for a one-day general strike in the state to oppose this. Public sectors workers, who've been without the right to strike for the past 40 years, have already begun taking action. Teachers have staged sick-ins and students have walked out in support. There's been occupations of the capitol building with tens of thousands of protestors supporting them from the outside. It is time to build on this momentum!"

To my mind, we've seen how effective the one-day general strike is in Europe (i.e., not effective at all), and thinking that the low level of class struggle in the US justifies trying something that never works in Europe as an 'intermediary' or however it is justified is wrong.  Overall the unions in WI may be shifting toward taking 'radical' postures to allow their members to blow off steam and then be weakened to the point of accepting that 'there is no alternative' to cuts to save the state's bond ratings.  The unions have switched from agreeing to every concession but one (their extinction and the end of their dues revenue streams) to refusing all concessions but workers should be under no illusions about this.

Still, this is one of the biggest movements involving the working class that we've seen in the US in recent years, and it's definitely worth intervening in.  The best thing I think communists can do though is try to provoke some discussion and reflection about what it would really take to defeat a national initiative to make public sector workers pay for  the insolvent states and why the public sector has gotten so separate from the private in terms of being viewed as privileged, etc. (why did we allow the private sector to get so screwed?  how can we re-unite with them in this struggle?), and to try to combat the unions' liturgical repetition of the same unthinking slogans and provoke some real discussion and reflection.

According to WSWS there were some teachers defying back-to-work orders from their union a few days ago too.  So there may be growing attempts to go beyond the unions that could use some encouragement.  Good luck, Rolento!

-soyons tout

There was a legitimate worker's uprising, outside the control of the trade unions, in Wisconsin in 2011. Worker's who belonged to a union showed they would disobey them, baby steps toward acting as a class. It's true that the weight of trade unionism and left-liberal ideology via the AFL-CIO and Democratic Party recuperated their struggles and channeled them down bourgeous-legimitizing paths, there was something there. The debates between IP and Will Barnes (posted on the IP website) are  very good on this.

The story goes that the General Strike discussion (which was covered in the national media during the events) was initiated by a lone IWW member calling on the central labor council (SCFL), in a CLC meeting during the uprising, to promote a general strike in Wisconsin, 2 motions to that effect passed the SCFL- the trade unions immediately came out against it and fought any strike talk. Unlike Europe and elsewhere where 24 or 48 hour general strikes are routine, called and run by the trade unions, etc. general strikes in US history have been thoroughly proletarian in content, our violent class war history in the US contributes to this environment. It was the result of a pro-revolutionary worker engaging in the class struggle and bringing the history and weapons of the working-class into the dialogue of the struggle. I don't think this is a bad thing, or symptomatic of a trade union guiding the class down mediated and legal paths.

This is excellent news mhou and jk, perhaps more should have been made of it. That something recognizable as close to "autonomous class struggle" didn't grab the left communist headlines in quite the way the Occupiers did, is a pity. (but maybe it did and I missed it.)

How can I find out more about "our violent class war history in the US" which I've never heard of before? And how does the second sentence in the quote above beginning "It was the result of..." relate to 'our violent class war history', or maybe it doesn't? I am not being deliberately pernickety here, but would really like to hear more! Maybe the US is going to be ahead in the race for revolution after all, leaving Europe behind. But it's strange that articles by Internationalism comrades don't seem to take this line, or maybe it's all implicit? Please elaborate.

The IWW's bookstore has several books about the Western mine wars around the turn of the century; I'd highly recommend Stalinist-Titoite Louis Adamic's book, "Dynamite: The Story of Class Violence in America,"- it goes back to the founding days of the US and the rudimentary trade unions to the gangsterism of the early American Federation of Labor, violent anarchist groups (around Johann Most, the propaganda of the deed proponent who was influential on the 'Haymarket Synthesis'), etc. Unlike Western Europe, the class struggle in the US has, up until the 1950's, been racked with extreme violence and a reluctance on the part of employers and the state to willingly engage in the direct mediation of class struggle into legally defined and acceptable routes: although this is eventually what happened, there has always been a greater reluctance to combat trade unionism in the US than in Europe, which manifests itself in the example of the general strike: while in Europe it may be lefty sloganeering to call for general strikes (like the Trots do, asking the trade union leaders to do it over every thing imaginable), whereas in the US, where there has always been such reluctance to accept corporatism and a history of violent repression up to the 1940's, no such thing as a union called and run general strike for 24 or 48 hours; in my mind a general strike, in the US, only means direct class struggle outside the control of the unions- because it is not accepted practice here.

The history of IWW members and CIO organizers being literally tarred and feathered, lynchings up to the 1930's and 1940's of trade unionists in the South, the states of Colorado, Nevada, Montana, etc. were the site of pitched battles between armed workers (who often dynamited intransigent mine owners' operations) and vigilante groups and private armies, the phenomenon of the Black Legion in Detroit/industrial Midwest. Labor's Untold Story, a history of American unionism and class struggle written by the Communist Party USA dominated United Electrical Worker's in 1955, has many individual instances of open class warfare in the US- particularly in the era of the Pinkertons. In one anecdote, a salesman for innovative crowd control weapons (in this case gas grenades and gas grenade launchers to use on crowds- like the ones in use today and so familiar at the G8 summit protests and Occupy Oakland's forcible evacuation) would go around to factory owners and if a strike was underway, would use it as an opportunity to demonstrate the capabilities of the weapon to the owner. The private business of strikebreakers, vigilante's, private security forces, labor spies, labor snitches, crowd control policing techniques and technology, etc. is rooted in the war like atmosphere of American class struggle.

Hello. And Bye.