Solfed and the Anarchist Federation: Debating the role of the unions

Here are some reflections on my recent experience of working within a trade union and its relation with the rest of the workplace. I present these by way of stimulating discussion in the context of real, lived experience. I am interested in how or if there is a conflict between reader's (of this website) real lived experience and the theory that is articulated within the site. I look forward to responses.
Details of the workplace involved are left out and only the general events and possible lessons learned are included.
1. The union was the only focus for struggle within the work-place. Without an active branch organization workers would have remained isolated and cowed by the employers attack on them (redundancies).
2. Within a branch of 100 members, two thirds of those were either unsure or uncertain of their position, fearful of taking action etc.., or completely non-militant seeing a trade union as some kind of insurance policy and adopting a strategy of keeping their heads down and hoping that the axe falls elsewhere.
3. The remaining third were prepared to take action and at least, in public, were keen to talk in militant phrases.
4. There were a hard core of about 6 militants who were aggressive in their trade union activity.
5. At the branch level, there was active solidarity and organizing between two of the major unions within the workplace which cut across union boundaries but was nonetheless organized by the militants of those unions, thus still within the union context (again, however, nothing would have happened outside of that context).
6. Despite this, the full-time organizations of unions at a national level were partizan and in practice acted to disrupt grassroots solidarity by claiming victories for one union or another in a competitive way. Thus, in practice they were divisive.
7. However, full-time officials were thoroughly supportive and militant in regards to the interests of the branches and did not attempt to put a break on any militant activity developing in the branch: they were simply concerned in maximising the best result for their union and its members.
8. The national organization of shop-stewards that dictated union policy in its regional meetings was more militant than the individual branch members.
9. Negotiations over the redundancy issue between full-time union officials and a branch representative led to the calling off of strike action. Was this a case of the union selling out the workers? A complicated question but a deal was done that would financially benefit those at risk of redundancy if they acccepted voluntary redundancy (thus avoiding the rationale for strike). This seemed to be the only possible solution in an institution which, on analysis, didn't have the finances to continue to employ these people.

Overall conclusion: without the activity of the trade union there would have been no struggle within the workplace and no-one defending the interests of workers who would have remained isolated and acting as individuals alone.

General questions: how does this experience relate to the ICC's positions on unions? Is it unique and can therefore be ignored? Can it be explained away whilst maintaining the general position on unions held by the ICC - does it actually confirm their theses? Or could it be the case that an outright dismissal of the unions is too dogmatic? Unions exist historically as an expression of working class struggle - aren't they likely to play some part in any future revolutionary situation? Could unions play a revolutionary role reflecting a changing membership consciousness, or, by their very nature are they condemned to be servants of the bourgeoisie and counter-revolution?

I look forward to reading comments and criticisms.

I've never seen a union like that. The unions I've seen not only do not look into employee grievances, but they don't even have enough power to negotiate a new contract. The unions I've been in, all service industry, both state and "private" sector, not only aren't capable of waging a strike but act specifically as a management tool. That is to say your "representative" in the union will not only not bother to give you a union handbook so that you'll know about your own contract but that they wont even tell you where the union meeting is held. The only thing I've seen union reps ever do is witness people's firings, in order to make it official so that the company wont have to pay unemployment benefit and can just fire people. I've never once seen a union that wasn't yellow. Union "activists" are exclusively Democratic Party drones who would do say or believe anything in order to make their support for capitalists acceptable to other workers. I'm on my fourth union now and they've never once defended any job security for new hires that's for certain.

The unions I've been in can't do any of the following things:
-Wage a strike successfully
-Investigate a worker's grievance
-Tell members where the union meeting actually is
-Give members a copy of their contract and/or union handbook
-Wage a successful strike
-Do anything other than support the ruling parties on which they depend--worthless ruling party shills, the more left posturing they act, the more deceptive they are being.

Throughout the 70s I was a convenor of shop stewards. I was elected by the workers, along with other stewards, after taking part in non-union wildcat over wages during which the management called in the unions to "take the heat out of things".
During the last twenty years I have worked in one of the major industries where union membership was a prerequisite for getting a job. I left the union after a period when I thought it was safe. My personal experience of trade union activity was:
- complete complicity in disciplinary measures against workers;
- complete complicity in "flexibility", ie productivity increases, job cuts (over the twenty years), and the "negotiation" of ever-worsening conditions and pay;
- structuring divisions of the workers through types of job, geographical divisions within the industry, and divisions between the three different unions involved - all of them weakening and undermining any possible response to the attacks - indeed facilitating these attacks;
- organising meetings of just sections of the workforce based on divisions or organising meetings that were too late or difficult to get to;
- repression of any anti-union sentiments that went hand in hand with repression against any attempts by workers to organise outside of the unions. For attempting the latter, I was warned by a friendly manager that the unions were after me;
- the elimation, by "negotiation", of time and a half for Saturday's and double time for Sundays to be replaced by time and a sixth in the interests of "job security", ie, the management.

It should go without saying that many union members and some shop stewards were genuine working class militants, but when push came to shove they were bound hand and foot by the union structure.

I took a job in a grocery store when I was 15, almost 16. In the 8+ years I worked there (I left last year), there's not much I can say about the union (the UFCW). I suppose this is telling. We had virtually no contact with the union apart from a few isolated incidents in which desperate workers who had just been fired or forced to quit went to the union for help. In each case the union did nothing; sometimes they'd tell an employee that if they had quit, there's was nothing you would do for them. We knew almost nothing about the union hierarchy -- not who represented our store in the union, not who to talk to if we had a problem, and so on. With each new contract, the union gave away more and more of our benefits, agreed to lower or halt pay increases, and so on. Work conditions deteriorated in the last few years, with more work being expected from fewer workers and the hours of the of the more senior workers being slashed and replaced by hours from lower paid workers, but the union never did anything to defend us in this -- likely they didn't even know about it, since to a person we had no faith in the union and never really thought about asking them for anything. The most extensive contact we had with the union was through the union newsletter, which had news of bowling tournaments, reminders to follow the rules of the store you worked in, and congratulatory messages to the local capitalists who had opened new unionized stores. I suppose part of the hands-off attitude of the union was due to the fact that management didn't really need to use the unions to control and discipline the workforce, which was resigned to its lot for the most part, unlike in other industries with greater traditions of militancy.

Excellent discussion. To follow up on what I was saying in my first post, perhaps the key is that my union is quite small and locally organised. I'm based in Wales, and the union is a teaching union which is activist led, with the full-timers pretty good at supporting workers in struggle. During the latest dispute it was the full-time framework that pushed for militant activity in terms of strike and encouraged branch members to greater militancy. However, the framework does discourage solidarity actions and works within the existing anti-union laws within the UK. The union also caved in to some sickening attacks on education workers' conditions at the start of the 90s when Thatcherism was rife (before my time).

But if we're talking about facts on the ground, isn't it true that most workers will join a union if they can? Isn't it true that most struggles will occur within the union framework? Isn't it also true that some union struggles can be militant, aggressive and for the working class? The leftists in the UK that I know about, such as the Trotskyite Socialist Party talk about "going where the working class is" (the unions) and electing left leaderships to those unions to radicalize them. I don't know about this, but isn't it true that in any revolutionary situation the unions will have some involvement? Doesn't history demonstrate this? By dismissing unions as part of the bourgeois state, isn't there a danger of oversimplification? Won't revolutions always be messy affairs which constantly push at class boundaries occupied by organisations like the unions?

Some "facts on the ground".

DP's point above about the unions discouraging solidarity is a confirmation of their role against the workers, as is his observations of the unions complicity in the attacks raining down on the working class. By itself, these are enough to condemn the unions as anti-working class structures. But this is not enough.

One of the main reasons why workers join unions is for protection and insurance, eg, if something goes wrong, accidents at work say, they will be able to pursue claims, etc. But the unions don't even fulfill this basic function. The recent case of the Beresford firm of solicitors acting for miners with lung disease shows this; union lawyers, acting in concert with the profession (more representative of members of parliament than workers), struck deals where the miners got a pittance and they got the lion's share of the dough. This absolutely confirms my overall experience of over 40 years inside and outside the unions, that the union and company legal firms conclude "sweetheart" deals (where both make money and the workers in question get less) and the worker get well below the going rate.

Secondly, on the question of protection, at a time when all the major unions are concluding, implementing and policing wage cuts, job cuts and increased flexibility, "protection" is a bit of a silly argument. But unions are "militant" in certain circumstances, there's no doubt about that and they would be immediately seen through if they didn't play the part. For example, the recent RMT tube strike; it seems that most workers didn't want a strike but the unions staked out their ground in advance by calling the reluctant workers out. They appeared "militant". But calling workers out on strike doesn't make unions part of the working class. In this case, the unions treated workers like mindless zombies; why should they strike if they didn't want to?

And of course most strikes (that workers want) take place within a union framework. I'm not being flippant when I say you won't find many trade unions active in the penguin enclosure at Regents Park Zoo. Why? Because there are no workers there and unions are active where the workers are - that is precisely their role. And this role is reinforced by the likes of the SWP, who like sheep dogs (what a lot of animal related allegories) attempt to corral the workers back into the unions, often by means of "grassroots democracy" in order to reinforce illusions and their own particular role in this state apparatus. When workers begin to see the real function of unions, the leftists are there to further obscure the workers real interests, which are self-organisation and solidarity above all else. And the workers do not need the unions for these fundamental tasks.

DP's right. Things are not black and white and the road to revolution will be messy. But there will be no road to revolution if the unions have their way. These organisms, which were once part of the working class, are now firmly entrenched within the state apparatus and it's in the confrontation with and the overcoming of them by workers, not in an end to itself but as part of a successful struggle, which naturally goes alongside the revolutionary perspective of the working class. We don't call on workers to "leave the unions". Such a slogan would be facile. We call on the workers to spread their struggle as widely as possible, to organise themselves and express their solidarity. It's in this that the workers will confront the unions whether they initially want to or not.

August 23, 2009
Sunday

Dear Comrades:

My first firing came in 1965 when I tried to organize a caddies' strike on a golf course. I was turned into the boss by a cop employed days as a caddie, so it also gave me a lesson in the relation of the institution of agents of the capitalist state with capitalist bosses.

In 1967, I was employed as a bus boy busing tables at the student restaurant at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin. I was under the political influence at that time of the Independent Socialist Clubs of America, later named the International Socialists, and whose successor organization became today's International Socialist Organization. With an anarchist co-worker, I was instrumental in organizing on the job a union of part-time workers.

In 1969-1970, while living in Berkeley, California, and working in support of the International Socialists there, I helped the International Socialists campaign in support of the United Farm Workers boycott of the lettuce and grape fields in California. The UFW were seeking, under Cesar Chavez's leadership, to gain union recognition.

In 1972-1973, while employed as a cab driver in New York City, New York, I was a political activist in the Taxi Rank and File Coalition, a group of union dissidents associated with the union that existed at that time, Local 3036 of the Taxi Drivers Union. I disagreed with the Taxi Rank and File Coalition's proposal to sue the union in the capitalist courts, and resigned from the Taxi Rank and File Coalition. But it should here be mentioned that Local 3036 of the Taxi Drivers Union was so corrupt at the top reaches and so anti-democratic that eventually, due to the New York City fleet owners' offensive against the cab drivers, the union itself was virtually destroyed from within by its own rotten, pro-capitalist leadership's policies, and there is not, today, a union representing cab drivers in New York City; to the contrary, you can't even drive a cab unless you are simultaneously a small cab owner (which basically means, you're mortgaged up to the hilt to the supplier of the cabs with viciously exploitative fees -- and that is the situation in most both big and small cities in the U.S.A., including here in St. Pete, Florida, where I currently live) and working 7 days per week. The old notion of fleet bosses employing in a classic capitalist exploitative relationship cab drivers has been replaced by a new kind of capitalist exploitative relationship in which the cab drivers are supposedly "owners" of "their" cabs while, in reality, they've been essentially pushed backward into a kind of semi-feudalistic relationship to suppliers of cabs.

I was employed in white collar typing work in the years 1976-1989 in New York, and nowhere did I encounter unions in any of the typing jobs I had. The union movement had not even bothered to try to organize clerical workers in big law firms I worked at, as well as in big brokerage firms I worked at. I worked as a typist, a word processor, and as a typesetter, and in none of these areas did I encounter unions. The unions' misleaders had not even bothered to try.

I moved to Florida in October 1989, and have been, basically, on one long continuous job search here for 20 years, working one place 2 years, another place 3 years, another place 1 year, another place short bouts of a couple months here, a couple months there, and only survived because I had family living here till about 2001. I currently am 63, getting social security, and it's slated to not go up for the next 2 years because of the international capitalist economic and financial crisis. I was one of the fortunate few who had family to help me out after the death of another family member in 2001 left me potentially out of luck, but they will not be around forever.

Unions do not try to organize the workers in the Southern states of America, and the Southern states are historically the most socially and politically conservative and right-wing area of the country. Their being that way is the legacy of the 250 years of chattel slavery and the slaveowning bosses who exploited black slave laborers they owned in the Southern states. After the Second American Revolution of 1861-1865, which was the second of two American bourgeois-democratic revolutions, and the only real social revolution that happened in the history of the U.S., confiscating the plantations of the slaveowners and ending chattel slavery by an armed bourgeois revolution carried on by the U.S. federal government with Lincoln at its head, the old anti-black racist caste system was re-imposed on the Southern states with the direct collaboration and involvement of the murdered Lincoln's vice-president, Andrew Johnson, on the national level, and with the terroristic violence of the former slaveholders' Ku Klux Klan, formed in 1865 to re-impose slavery into the Southern states by violence and terror; the Klan is the oldest fascist organization in North America, and it probably is the oldest fascist organization in the world. By about 1900-1901, all the formal bourgeois democratic rights won by former black slaves turned "freedmen" in the Southern states had been in practical and de facto terms destroyed by a political counter-revolution in the Southern states, and this actual material destruction of their rights was, on the ground, legalized and codified from 1900-1906 throughout the Southern states, and from there throughout the U.S.

It should also be mentioned that the actual legal codification of the decision of the nationally militarily victorious U.S. bourgeoisie to abandon freed blacks to the right-wing terror of the Klan in the Southern states by withdrawing the federal occupying troops from the Southern states in 1877 coincided with the sending of those same federal troops to smash the first major modern big labor strike in modern U.S. history that same year, a big strike threatening to shut down all industry in most of the country. So the political counter-revolution -- the racist caste revolution -- against black and nonwhite workers' formal legal bourgeois democratic rights and the smashing of those rights in the period especially from 1877-1900 coincided as well with a massive bosses' offensive against all labor in the U.S.

The formation of unions in the U.S. in the period of the modern U.S. labor movement was characterized from the start by racial segregation and the color line imposed by the unions' mainly white leadership themselves in white labor organizations. This compelled black workers to form their own unions. It is a sad irony that the great revolutionary radical abolitionist militants of the anti-slavery revolutionary movement of the 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, especially two of the most radical and most militant, Frederick Douglass, who was black, and Wendell Phillips, who was white, both became friendly to socialist ideas later in their lives, but due to the unions' misleaderships forging unions that were segregated by the skin color line from the start, Douglass was compelled to speak before black labor congresses where there were no whites, and Phillips to white labor congresses where there were no blacks. Daniel Guerin, who was formerly a Trotskyist, then turned anarchist, addresses this situation of the formation of American labor unions in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s as segregated from the start in his book, 100 Years of Labor in the U.S.A., a hard book to get, but one worth trying to get, and read.

By the turn of the 19th into the 20th Century, the U.S. had joined Germany and Japan as the three "johnny-come-lately" global capitalist imperialist powers, and the world globally had, indeed, entered into the epoch globally of imperialism, or what the ICC terms, the epoch internationally of capitalist decadence.

In 1988-1989, I got a job working as a typist, office assistant and secretary to the vice-president of Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians in New York. At that time, I had not been in a political organization since I'd retired from the Spartacists in 1976 after 3 years in their organization, a Trotskyist organization. But I remained politically supportive of their views. Their Partisan Defense Committee mounted in 1988 an anti-Klan mobilization that was centered in black trade unionists. I helped them build it and passed out many leaflets; but one of my main tasks was, I secured a meeting between the then president of Local 802, and representatives of the Partisan Defense Committee, which succeeded in getting the formal written endorsement by the president of Local 802 for the upcoming anti-Klan mobilization, and the actual listing of the guy's name on the "call" leaflet of the Partisan Defense Committee to "Stop the KKK" in Philadelphia (which was where the fascists were planning on holding their provocation). We succeeded in getting enough workers out there that the KKK were stopped.

But after that, here is what happened to me.

In the spring of 1989, in the union hall itself, an old friend of the vice-president of the union, whose identity I only years later realized, and who was mentally impaired, came into the union hall, tried to start a fight with me, and when I would not fight, was taken aside by the v.p.'s wife. Then, a day or so later, the v.p. scapegoated me for what happened and basically said he would "deal with you [me]" after he got back from a vacation. I went to my shop steward of the union of staffers employed by Local 802, a union called Local 153 of the Office and Professional Employees International Union-AFL-CIO, and she said my only recourse was to bring it before arbitration -- which in effect meant to bring it before the capitalist government's arbitrators, something I in principle would not due, since it meant bringing the bosses' government's arbitrators into the internal dispute between workers employed by the Local 802 union (of whom I was one), and the union itself. I didn't believe in bringing the bosses' courts, cops, government, into the unions' internal affairs, and I'd held that position since I resigned in 1973 from the Taxi Rank and File Coalition over the issue of suing unions in the capitalist government's courts.

So I wrote up and signed a letter expressing my views, resigning my post, put it on the desks of Local 802 exec board members, and left.

Later on, I found out from a friend still employed by the union that a libel and slander was being spread about me that I'd come back to the union hall and vandalized the office of the v.p. for whom I'd previously been employed. I wrote to the union on several occasions stipulating their libel and slander of me behind my back was, indeed, a libel and a slander of me, but also stipulating my opposition in principle to bringing the union into the capitalist courts as my reason for not bringing the original issue to arbitration, and also not pursuing a law suit against the union's misleaders for slandering and libeling me behind my back.

Of course, they knew I was a professed communist after I secured the meeting of the president of the union with the Partisan Defense Committee reps and got his signature on the anti-KKK mobilization call, and I didn't hide my left radical views. So I'm sure that played a role in this whole rotten affair.

But it is quite clear that in my situation, the Local 802 bureaucrats played the role, objectively speaking, no different in essentials from capitalist bosses in smashing a worker they wanted to smash, and it's also quite clear to me that Local 153, by refusing to do anything but tell me to bring this to arbitration, kept intact the apparatus of government repression -- state repression -- of the capitalist state against the working class in that situation after I refused to bring this thing to arbitration.

I was compelled to move out of New York because mainly of this incident, because in 1989, my money was rapidly running out, and I ended up moving to Florida because of it.

And on several occasions, when I sought work at various nonprofit institutions who did not mind I'd worked previously for a union, I know the Local 802 slanderers and libelers of me retailed to bosses seeking a job reference on me the libel and slander of me that I'd vandalized the union office. (I later realized the person who probably vandalized the union office was the same mentally impaired friend of the v.p. of Local 802, who had originally come into the union hall and tried, unprovoked, to start a fight with me.)

In 1971, I was involved with the Service Employees International Union in trying to get a union into Brooklyn Hospital. At that time, I heard from female workers approached by union organizers on a basis of the attractiveness of the female workers, not on the basis of the issues about which the workers were concerned. I went to the union about this and complained, but the first effort to get the union there was defeated, and I cannot get over feeling it was defeated to a significant extent because of the actions of the bureaucracy themselves in subverting their own union organizing campaign from within with this sexist crap.

My overall feeling on the basis of witnessing years of defeats in which the unions' misleaderships were themselves directly involved is that Leon Trotsky's 1940 prediction that if the unions did not become revolutionary organs of class struggle, they would become effectively agents of the capitalist police -- the capitalist state -- has come true.

Furthermore, however, I have to state that I'm very impressed on this issue with the International Communist Current's position, which places the objective nature of the unions having become, in practical effect, agents of the capitalist bosses and capitalist state (capitalist cops), much earlier than Trotsky's 1940 prediction. That is, I'm impressed by the International Communist Current's view that the unions have in effect become agents of the capitalist bosses and ruling class and been that objectively throughout the past one hundred and ten years of the 20th Century and the ten years of the 21st Century.

I am impressed by the ICC's view on that issue because I've seen and observed it directly in many situations.

Comradely,
Allan Greene
Email: tompaine1917@yahoo.com

August 24, 2009
Monday

Dear Comrades:

I realize I am torn and conflicted between left communism and Trotskyism, and that includes on the question of unions. I do not pretend I am not conflicted and I do not pretend I am not torn. I am.

Part of my thinking is that, in purely objective terms, you're right, and that unions are part of capital's left apparatus for disciplining the working class.

But part of my thinking is that, at least on some level, they still embody an encroachment on the power of the capitalist bosses.

The many defeats I've observed in my life in which unions were either involved by commission, or omission, drive me closer to your position. But the fact the bosses in America, for instance, fight so hard against something as tepid, mild, and modest as the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for workers to organize and join unions, makes me think the bosses, at least, in their class consciousness as enemies of the working class, don't want unions, which is, after all, why a significant segment of the American bosses have been organizing so hard against the Employee Free Choice Act.

I can't keep this up right now. My health is not very good, and I have to stop right now.

But that is the nature of my conflict on this issue.

Comradely,
Allan Greene
Email: tompaine1917@yahoo.com

August 24, 2009
Monday

Dear Comrades:

In perusing the resolutions of the ICC's 18th conference, I noticed in one part of one of your resolutions, you indicated you did not think a third world war was necessarily probable or in the offing. Am I reading you correctly on that?

If that is your position, I would disagree.

I think, internationally, the general configuration of inter-imperialist rivalries among the major capitalist countries has been pretty much similar since the First Imperialist World War of 1914-1918. The three main "johnny-come-lately" capitalist imperialist countries of the past one hundred years have been, America, Germany, and Japan. Their respective imperialist capitalist bourgeoisies have always wished to redress what their respective individual imperialist capitalist bourgeoisies viewed as a "downside," namely: being johnny-come-latelies on the world scene. I don't think that imperialist appetite on the part of these three capitalist imperialist countries' bourgeoisies has ever let up. And I think it's fully capable of leading to a Third Inter-imperialist World War, this time a nuclear pushbutton world war, and not too long from now at that.

I think that's particularly probable given the current international capitalist economic and financial crisis.

I think you're probably quite right that the international bourgeoisies cannot "solve" the current economic and financial crisis, because it is a hardcore crisis of capitalist overproduction, and only more debt seems to be their way of "solving" it. But that is no "solution" at all, of course.

Ultimately, they're going to have to go to war to redivide up the world in the interests of their respective imperialist ruling classes' profits.

I don't see how they can avoid doing that.

Comradely,
Allan Greene
Email: tompaine1917@yahoo.com

In one sense, you're correct that a part of the bourgeoisie is following an objective "class instinct" in resisting union organization and measures that would make that easier. You're also correct that a union takes some power in the workplace away from the individual capitalist boss, and that it is the aforementioned class instinct that leads them to do so. However, the opposition to a part of the bourgeoisie to a certain measure is not enough reason for revolutionaries to support it. Revolutionaries must look at who is actually supporting the measure and who stands to benefit before taking a position. In addition, we must look at the realities of the present period, for a tactical position that may have been correct in the past may not necessarily be so now.

The first thing to consider is, if power is being taken from the individual capitalist boss, where exactly is it going? You mention you accept the premise that "unions are part of capital's left apparatus for disciplining the working class". If power is being diverted from the bosses to the unions, and the premise that unions are instruments of the bourgeoisie is correct, then all that has happened is that power has been delegated from a boss to an instrument of a part of the bourgeoisie. The situation is more complex than that, however, as power is not simply being transferred from boss to union. Power is also being diverted from the boss to the state, which oversees the creation of unions (at least in the United States), and would continue to do so under EFCA. In addition, there are myriad personal and institutional connections between the unions and the state, as well as with one of the major American capitalist parties. In this light, the transfer of power from the individual boss to the unions and the state represents nothing other than a facet of the universal tendency towards state capitalism under the period of decadence. The section of the bourgeoisie which is resisting this tendency is ultimately fighting a losing battle: even if EFCA specifically is defeated, the transfer of power away from individual bosses to the state has gotten well under way over the last century.

But might there be some benefit that workers could find in all this? In organizing against the reactionary section of the bourgeoisie that doesn't want unions (by participating in the creation of said unions), might the workers gain some experience and be able to use that experience against the rest of the bourgeoisie? There are several problems with this. The first is that collaboration with the section of the bourgeoisie that wants a stronger state capitalism forces the workers to fight on the bourgeoisie's class terrain. Doing so makes it much harder to resist ideological attacks by the section of the bourgeoisie with which the workers are cooperating, and makes it harder to return to the workers' class terrain. It also is very likely to involve participation in electoral politics, which holds no benefit for the working class and is especially dangerous for revolutionaries.

The position that revolutionaries must take will be entirely outside the bourgeoisie's terms of debate (freedom of the boss v. efficient state capitalism). The focus of our efforts must be to keep in the forefront the fact that the only way for workers to defend their living conditions is to struggle as indepenently and as widely as possible.

_____

As for the possibility of a world war, the ICC's analysis comes not only from its analaysis of the military, economic, and geopolitical situation, as does yours. Even the analysis you applied is, in a vacuum, unsound. One of the geopolitical hallmarks of an emerging world war is the creation of imperialist blocs. None of the three powers you mention (Germany, Japan, and the United States) currently commands a coalition that can be called an imperialist bloc; no group is cohesive enough. Furthermore, of the three, only the United States commands nuclear weapons, and indeed has such weapons stationed in Germany, unless I am remembering wrongly. These countries are certainly engaged in imperialist conflict, as are all, but the situation has not developed to such an extent that a third imperialist war is likely. It was actually much more likely during the Cold War, from a strictly geopolitical perspective.

However, the absense of imperialist blocs is only one facet of the problem, and a small one at that. There remains the problem of why they haven't emerged. After all, various collective security agreements exist all over the globe: why have they not become the foundations of cohesive imperialist blocs? The fact is that no army, as it currently exists, can conduct an imperialist war on the scale of WWII or even WWI. Both those imperialist wars involved massive mobilizations of entire populations, and thus the mobilization of the proletariat behind the war program of the bourgeoisie. The US Army, for example, is certainly not a mass army, is overdeployed as it is, and is in no position to fight a war on the scale of WWI, when it mobilized millions of men. To enact conscription would be to set the masses of people in the United States in direct conflict with the state, because the American proletariat simply does not support the bourgeoisie's war program to the extent that it is possible to create a mass army. In China, to take a different example, a mass army certainly exists. However, in that country there is widespread open class struggle taking place, limited though our information about it may be. Not only does this effect the PLA's base of recruitment; it effects its mobilization time, supply situation, and logistic capability, all of which are critical in any imperialist war. Simply put, the imperialist powers cannot conduct a full-scale imperialist war because the workers have not been dealt an international defeat on the scale of 1914 (betrayal of social democracy) or 1936 (anti-fascism in defense of "democracy"). Such a defeat must be ideological as well as material, but neither has currently happened. As long as it has not, there can be no full-scale imperialist war.

Ther can be smaller wars, drawn-out, low-intensity wars, guerrilla wars, proxy wars, and all manner of military conflicts. However, a full-on imperialist war is simply beyond the bourgeoisie's capacity at the present time.

Tuesday
August 25, 2009

Dear zimmerwald1915:

Thank you for your detailed response to my posts. Your responses were educational and informative.

1. On unions. You make in your post many significant points, and I do not automatically reject them. I must think about them, carefully. I am 63. Sometimes when one gets my age, and has had a long-time leftist type of perspective, as I have had, one finds that the older he gets, the more he realizes he does not know. So give me some time.

However, my point about unions is also connected with my point made below about the Stalinist bureaucracies in what the ICC calls, state capitalist countries.

I think by and large the unions have become what you called them, and what Trotsky in 1940 predicted they would become: agencies for policing the workers on behalf of the bourgeoisie, the ruling class.

But that is not the case in all instances.

And, furthermore, sometimes when significant working class battles break out, unions and their bureaucracies despite themselves shatter and go over to the side of the insurgent working class fighters. This happens with Social-democratic bureaucracies, Stalinist bureaucracies, various kinds of labor bureaucracies.

Not always, of course. In the 1920s, John L. Lewis actually worked hand in glove with the mine bosses to smash any insurgent mine workers who sought to mobilize in the coal fields militant labor insurgency and labor organization.

But to some degree, it's the class dynamics on the ground that are what decides these issues.

I suppose, however, you could just as well come back and make the argument to me, well, then, revolutionaries ought to orient ourselves to creating the class dynamics on the ground and not put ourselves in a position of acting, either tacitly or more overtly, as agents for unreliable bureaucracies. And that, I suppose, would be a perfectly good answer to my points here.

So again, I have to think over your points, because your points seem good ones to me.

2. On the prospect of a Third World War. Here, I think my basic view starts from the standpoint that the capitalistic bourgeoisie are not a collectivist class in their thinking. They may possess a class-versus-class standpoint when confronted with an immediate threat to their class rule by the working class, but beyond that, it's every man for himself -- in their class consciousness.

This means I do not think the bourgeoisie as a class are as entirely "collectively rational" as you seem to think they are. There are factions of the ruling class. It is not a homogeneous class.

On this issue of state capitalism. I think to a significant extent, your analysis makes sense (that is, the ICC's analysis that state capitalism is a big part of the trend in how capitalism started developing in the early part of the 20th century, and has been developing since then).

But on issues like China or the former Soviet Union, there is one issue that I don't think the ICC has addressed.

In 1956, the Hungarian workers rose up in a working class political revolution against Hungarian Stalinism. What happened at that time is not what happens when a ruling class is confronted with a threat to its class rule. When a ruling class is confronted with a threat to its class rule, the ruling class unites as one. But in 1956, the entire Stalinist bureaucracy of Hungary shattered, and most of the Communist Party workers and also functionaries went over to the side of the Hungarian working class revolution, to the side of the workers' councils. Ruling classes don't behave like that. That's why I have some problems with characterizing the Stalinist bureaucracies of the former Eastern European part of the old Soviet bloc, the leadership of the old Soviet Union, the leadership of the current-day Stalinist China, as "ruling classes" of a "state capitalist kind."

I'll give you another example.

In 1989, there was a situation on the ground in China of an incipient -- embryonic -- proletarian political revolution. For a brief historical moment, the PLA -- Peoples' Liberation Army -- armed forces, or some sections of them sent into Beijing to crush the insurgents, shattered, and some significant sections of the PLA went over to the sides of the insurgents or refused to fire on them. I should here say that in the 1956 Hungarian situation, that also started happening with some of the earliest Soviet troops sent into Budapest. That is, some of these troops, finding they had been sent to crush insurgent workers' councils, simply became disgusted and refused, particularly after Hungarian workers approached them and talked with them, to fire on the insurgents.

This, again, makes me think that the characterization of the Stalinist bureaucracies as "state capitalist ruling classes" doesn't make sense from a classical Marxist analytical standpoint. Ruling classes tend to unite when a direct class threat to their power from insurgent proletarians happens. They don't tend to shatter and go over to the side of the insurgent proletarians. But in Hungary in 1956, they did. And while that did not happen in 1989 in China, there were significant embryonic pressures toward its happening, as in, for instance, my mentioned point about sections of the PLA ranks not firing on the insurgents.

Again, you could simply come back and say, but revolutionaries gear themselves to the proletarian class on the ground and to creating the class dynamics moving forward to a proletarian seizure of power, not on this or that unreliable bureaucrat, and I would have to agree with you if you were to say that to me.

But in the purely Marxist analytical sphere, again, it does not appear to me that ruling classes behave like the Stalininst bureaucracies of Hungary in 1956 or China in 1989 behaved, or at least how the Hungarian bureaucracy did in 1956, when the Hungarian Communist Party went over to the side of the insurgent workers. When ruling classes are confronted with direct threats to their class rule, they tend to unite.

But going back to the issue of a Third World War's probability, again, other than when ruling classes are, indeed, confronted with a direct threat to their class rule by insurgent proletarians, they do not tend to so "rationally" unite. That is what I meant when I said you may be imputing or ascribing to the international bourgeoisie more "rationality" and more of a "collectivist" kind of class consciousness than it really has.

There may, indeed, be the sorts of pressures on the international bourgeoisies today militating against their forming trade blocs that will eventually become imperialist military alliances.

But I think today the bourgeoisies are even less capable of resisting ending up in inter-imperialist world wars than they were able to resist that in 1914 or in 1939. I think the American ruling class, first of all, is much weaker today than it was in 1914 or in 1939. That is because the U.S. has itself been weakened from within by the financialization of U.S. capitalism -- the replacement or displacement, if you will, of productive capital by speculative capital as the primary element in the U.S. capitalist structure. This is also expressed in the fact that more countries' ruling classes are no longer willing to internationally play second-fiddle to the U.S. ruling class's traditional role as boss of the world or top cop of the world. When the French imperialist ruling class say this is a "multi-polar world," that is sort of what has happened. And that is not liked by the American ruling class. But the American ruling class can't do a thing about it, and, in fact, is itself primarily responsible for having created that situation internationally. It took about 40 or 50 years for the American ruling class to create that situation, but it is, just for that reason, all the more fundamental in the world material and economic situation now, and cannot be reversed in a capitalist framework.

This also implies, in my view, that the American capitalist ruling class cannot re-industrialize or re-modernize the country in a capitalist framework. It will take a socialist revolution in the U.S. and a proletarian government, a dictatorship of the proletariat, a government of elected workers' councils, and a series of socialist 5-year plans administered by an American proletarian soviet type of government, to even begin to re-modernize and re-industrialize and re-build the country's infrastructure internally. Capitalism can't do it.

I think that an increasingly weakened American imperialist capitalism, however, is the surest symptom of the coming of a new Third World inter-imperialist world war.

As I said, the American bourgeoisie is far less capable of resisting the pressure for moving toward inter-imperialist world war today than they were in 1914 and 1939.

Comradely,
Allan Greene
Email: tompaine1917@yahoo.com

Readers of the foregoing comments by Allan Greene and Zimmerwald might have seen what J.Posadas (founder of the Posadiste version of the Trotskyist international) wrote as on 6th April 1978 in his article entitled 'On the inevitability of the war', which can be seen on the website quatrieme-internationale-posadiste.org under its 'Other texts'. From it the following brief quote seems notable:
'What we have said is that the war (he refers to an atomic war-DKT) is inevitable; and that capitalism is going to launch it. We have also said that socialism will be built, in spite of the capitalist war. This is so, because socialism is a necessity of the develpment of human history, of science and of the economy; and above all, it is a necessity of human intelligence at the centre of which there is the function of the working class.' (end of quote, but do see the whole article).
Please note that I am not trying to make a case for Posadist Trotskyism and do not belong to it, but take an interest in all shades of allegedly Marxist views.
As for the communist left's views on 'revolutionary defeatism', it seems to me necessary to ask what seems to be a key question: In the event of workers, for any combination of reasons, being under military attack, could, should and would they/we fight back in a military manner ?
The CL and others remind us that fraternisation across barbed wire occurred in WW1, but that was when the firing stopped temporarily. Regardless of the class nature and views of the bomb-aimers overhead, fraternisation from air-raid shelters is unlikely ! I will leave the argument here, though am tempted to extend it.
Regards, DKT-25-8-2009-4.20PM.

EFCA is stone cold dead, deader than Lenin. The main provision for union card check certification. That is union certification via a union card count as opposed to a company sponsored "vote", has been ripped out of the DPs EFCA bill and will never be seen again. EFCA was the silver bullet that union reps where I work, thought would save the unions, or help save them.

August 29, 2009
Saturday

Dear Anonymous:

I'm inclined to agree with you.

Additionally, that in some sense confirms for me the side of the issue on unions which the ICC defends.

I just got through reading a Trotskyist book published by the Spartacists, entitled, James P. Cannon and the Early Years of American Communism: Writings and Speeches, 1920-1928.

John L. Lewis acted overtly as a cop for the bosses against insurgent miners in the 1920s. What's interesting to me, however, is that in the 1930s, he seems to have been compelled to split with the AFL and help forge the CIO, Committee on Industrial Organization, which became the nucleus of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and in the 1940s, he seems to have been compelled to actually call the miners out on strike in the middle of the Second Imperialist World War.

So that side of the issue seems to me to confirm the Trotskyist analysis of labor bureaucracies that they are not fixed and finished quantities.

Trotsky in 1940 wrote in Trade Unions in the Imperialist Epoch that if the unions didn't become revolutionary class struggle organizations, they'd end up cops for the bosses, and I think in many cases in the U.S., that's effectively become true by today.

In the 1920s, in the early American Communist Party, then called the Workers Party, there was a split between those who wanted to "bore from within" the AFL to the exclusion of doing anything else, and others with a more flexible policy of, if necessary (i.e., if circumstances necessitated it), going independent and organizing independent of the AFL. The impression I got from reading that book was, Foster was more a pure "bore-from-within" type, and at the start, Cannon was, too, but Cannon later got more flexible as the bureaucratic rot in the AFL showed how clearly the bureaucracy was destroying or aiding the bosses in destroying the unions from within.

I think the issue of unions is a tactical issue. I think revolutionaries favor workers' councils, and ought to put forward the formation of strike committees elected by the ranks to take labor strikes out of the hands of union bureaucracies in strike situations. I think additionally the formation of daily labor strike newspapers becomes a tactical necessity for keeping the ranks informed. Additionally, elected strike committees must be of people from the ranks and subject to immediate recall by the ranks at any time in the course of the strike. The formation of workers' defense guards to defend labor picket lines is a key issue as well. And additionally, the issue of formation of mass labor picket lines outside of struck plants surrounding the plants to keep all scabs and strikebreakers out is a key issue, as is the issue of in-plant occupations of plants by the workers.

In the 1930s, there were not only in-plant occupations of the auto plants in Flint, Michigan, in 1937, but there were in-store occupations of department stores by the workers employed by the stores, including waiters and waitresses at the store lunch counters. In 1934, there were 3 big strikes, one in Minneapolis in which Trotskyists played a prominent role which led to a labor general strike that shut down the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul, one in Toledo, Ohio, of the Auto-Lite workers in which then A. J. Muste's American Workers' Party played a prominent role, and one in San Francisco in which the Communist Party played a prominent role; in the last case, this was in the transitional period between the Stalinist "Third Period" line, and their later "popular frontist" line.

In all three cases, there were mass strikes that shut down whole towns.

The people leading the 1937 Flint sit-down strike were left-wing members of the Socialist Party who later became core supporters of the Trotskyist party, the SWP in the U.S. Additionally, the people who led the women's emergency brigade that aided the workers sitting in in the Flint plant were also left-wing Socialist Party supporters, Trotskyists inside the Socialist Party, who later became, again, part of the American Trotskyist party, the SWP in the U.S.

If you go on line and Google the name, Genora Dollinger, she was one of the militants who was a leader of the women's emergency brigade in Flint, and her then-husband, a guy named Kermit Johnson, was one of the leaders of the sit-in in the Flint plant. If you Google her name, she gave an interesting long interview in 1995 shortly before she died to an interviewer about the experience.

The formation of mass picket lines, workers' defense guards, daily labor strike newspapers, elected strike committees of rank-and-file militants, were crucial winning tactics in the 1934 strikes, and apparently in the 1937 strike as well.

I think Anonymous was right -- that the bureaucrats thought the EFCA would save their butts. Obviously, it didn't. The options of the bureaucracies are running out. They've endlessly relied on losing no-win tactics and strategies based on their kissing up to the Democratic and Republican Parties, endlessly pressuring legislatures and courts to do their bidding, endlessly lobbying. It's all fallen apart.

They're really left with no way out anymore, and none of them know how to win labor strikes anymore.

It's going to be entirely left up to the masses of rank-and-file workers, awakening workers open to class war approaches, to start winning labor strikes again and smashing the bosses' offensive throughout the U.S.

I am increasingly of the inclination, however, this will entirely bypass the old union structures, or may, and may end up telescoping itself more or less directly toward the formation of revolutionary class struggle councils of the workers on the ground and the formation of a revolutionary class struggle communist party on the ground. There's really no other way the masses can possibly win squat.

The masses seem in polls to favor their right to form unions, but the bosses won't allow it, and the government sides with the bosses. So it's going to be a situation in which the masses will be compelled to bypass the bosses, union bureaucracies, unions themselves, government, cops, state, the whole enchilada, and go for broke.

That implies the objective necessity of regroupment of revolutionaries into the nucleus of a communist party and the doing of that right away or as soon as is humanly possible.

That's kind of how I see it.

--Allan Greene
Email: tompaine1917@yahoo.com

unions are "economic" organizations of the class to wrest beneficial reforms from capitalism. i think this is the main characteristic of unions.
in capitalist ascendancy (19th century), unions were truly class organs for reforms since capitalism can still give "true" reforms for the benefit of the proletariat.
but in the imperialist epoch, the epoch of decaying (death agony) capitalism, unions changed its nature in order to survive under a system that cannot give anymore beneficial reforms to the class.
in western europe, the "model" for union rights and where the longest experience of unionism resides, workers there are rapidly seeing the anti-worker nature of unions.
but in under-developed countries where bourgeois democracy is weak, as well as the proletarian combat in general, unions still manage to coopt a large numbers of proletarians. yet, unions there cannot hide its reactionary character.
take for example the philippines, an under-develop country and a colony of america since 1900s. unions were used by the nationalist national bourgeoisie against "american imperialism" under the banner of nationalism, but not against capitalism (ie national). in the 30s onwards, its been used for or against the two imperialist blocs (US and USSR). in the 60s, being used by pro-Mao, pro-USSR and pro-US. today, unions are being used to support a bourgeois faction -- administration and opposition.
the result: grave fragmentation of the workers, grave divisions and demoralization.
thanks for unionism, the workers struggles in the philippines were being sabotaged and derailed. worst, it was disconnected to their brothers around the world as one class. unions nailed the class struggle to national framework, patriotism and nationalism. workers are being posion that the anti-american imperialist faction of the bourgeois class is ally, and the only enemy is the pro-US imperialist faction.

Anyone, notice the pattern where state governors threaten massive layoffs, and the unions turn around to grant concessions in the form of less massive layoffs, furloughs, casualization of state labor. What have unions gotten out of all this, namely a seat on the NY Fed, seats on GMs corporate board...you get the idea.

As a capitalist class institution the union views itself as integral to management needs. The memberships get crushed but this isn't seen as a failure to the union apparatus itself. Remember the "great victory" of the Teamsters UPS strike in the 1990s. That was considered a victory. Twenty years prior to that strike such a bad contract would've been considered a defeat.

For the American Federation of Labor, it could even be argued that it had clearly become a management tool of class collaborationism, a bourgeois control mechanism long before WWI. The late nineteeth century socialists basically stepped aside so as not to disturb the union movement or challenge its bourgeoise leaderships. By the time the CPofA/Workers Party was debating boring from within, it was too late to do anything but be a radical organizing fringe. The union bosses made excellent use of union leftists.

Consider the experience of the Communist League of America during the Minneapolis Teamsters strike. They managed to bypass union officialdom, lead a workers strike that extended beyond the boundaries of the union, but at the same time their objective was not a workers revolution or insurrection of any kind but a bigger union with more "recognition" from the employers and the state. So while workers waged a battle in the streets even the leadership of the CLA had to back down to avoid a situation of martial law because their goal was to build a union not foment a revolution. The union logic trumped the struggle.

Ironically the nationalist logic of the unions blames workers in places like the Philippines for "stealing American jobs". At May Day and Labor Day rallies unions trot out the old rhetoric of saving "American" jobs.

Unions in the US for most of the last eighty years or so, since the collapse of the IWW under the jackboot of state-vigilante repression, have consisted of the AFL-CIO backing the DP, and a handful of "independent" unions like United Electrical Workers.

On a note unrelated to the article above; I noticed Anonymous above refers to the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the strike and to pay homage to the struggle, all the various Trotskyists groups are running series of articles and talks on the value of socialist work in the unions, the lessons of workers' struggles during the depression, etc.

I think it would be interesting if in response to this we could see from the ICC's American comrades, a lengthy article in Internationalism (much like those on the 1919 Seattle and Winnipeg general strikes), looking at the struggle itself, the myths surrounding it and most importantly, the lessons to be drawn from it.

Nic.

09-10-2009

Dear Cde. Internationalysta:

When I read Rosa Luxemburg's Crisis of German Social Democracy ("Junius Pamphlet"), nowhere in there did I see a suggestion by her that she would have rejected workers' efforts to try to get unions into their workplace.

Additionally, what bothers me is, the mass of bosses here in the States mobilized their class against the EFCA, Employee Free Choice Act. Why would they have done that if their class wanted unions in shops and plants?

The problem I see is, unions in the epoch of imperialism, or what comrades of the communist left call, the epoch of decadence (which to me means the same thing), can, as Trotsky put it, either become agents of the imperialist bosses or revolutionary class struggle organizations for smashing capitalism. He wrote that in, as I recall, 1940, in his essay, Trade Unions in the Imperialist Epoch. What is wrong with that perspective? In fact, it appears to me to be similar to your own.

The IWW was a kind of bastardized type of organization part-way Bolshevik Party and part-way militant union. I confess that view of the IWW comes straight from the American Trotskyist, James Cannon, in his essay, "The IWW: The Great Anticipation." But it seemed to me Cannon wrote a decent essay giving a mainly correct analysis of what the IWW was.

The IWW couldn't continue like that. It had to go one way or the other. It ended up going the pure union-syndicalist route. But that meant it also rejected adherence to the Third International in the early period of the Third International.

I think by and large most unions in the States have pretty much completely become agents for disciplining the working class in the interests of the bosses. And internally, I think most of them destroy their own members or destroy those who work most loyally for what those who sincerely believe in union militancy think unions are supposed to represent. I know when I worked for Local 802, their bureaucrats set out to destroy me, because they saw me as a red. They set me up and drove me out of my post. And they were social-democrats in their positions -- Democratic Socialists of America social-democrats, the worst kind of labor-betraying scum, the sorts who murdered Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Leo Jogiches, and other communist militants in 1919 in the German Revolution.

But they sure as hell didn't like the fact I was at that time (in the fall of 1988 and the spring of 1989) a supporter of the Trotskyists, the Spartacists and Partisan Defense Committee. I'm sure that's why they set me up to drive me out of my post in the spring of 1989, and I'm sure that's why they libeled and slandered me behind my back, lying about me that I had returned to the union to vandalize their office, which I did not (I'm now quite sure the bureaucrat for whom I worked as an office assistant there in 1988-1989 whose mentally deranged buddy came into the union hall to start a fight with me was probably the same guy who must have vandalized their union office, a crime they tried to libel and slander me behind my back as having done; I found that out from a friend still employed at that time for the union who told me of the libel and slander they spread about me). The only reason I didn't take them to the bourgeois courts is, I didn't believe in suing unions. I hadn't believed in suing unions from the time in 1972-1973 I was a member of Taxi Drivers Local 3036 in New York City, was part of the Taxi Rank and File Coalition dissident caucus in the union, but quit that caucus in 1973 precisely over the issue that they decided to sue the union in the court. I tried to get the shop steward of Local 153 of the Office and Professional Employees International Union-AFL-CIO, of which I was in the spring of 1989 a member to fight for me against the bureaucrat trying to set me up in the spring of 1989, but all she said was, I had to bring it to arbitration. I didn't believe in bringing the bosses' government's arbitrators into the internal affairs of unions and disputes among unions, so I quit my job and left angry letters on the desks of Local 802's exec board members saying, no cops in the unions, and calling for an independent workers' commission to assess my work and performance working for the union.

That experience certainly made me think seriously about the view you comrades have that unions are essentially and organically organizations for disciplining the workers and organizations that are effectively cops for the capitalist bosses, capitalist employers, against the working classes. I was left high and dry -- to twist in the wind -- in that situation. I got no help -- none, zero, zilch, nada, zip -- even though I behaved in an entirely principled way, at least according to my own lights as I saw them.

But when I see the whole gang of the capitalist boss employing class ganging up against the EFCA, the Employee Free Choice Act, I cannot get over thinking, if the capitalist ruling class are so hot to have unions, then why do they fight so hard against the EFCA, which makes it a little bit easier to organize them?

I think there are efforts to get unions that do on some level represent the class interests of workers. I don't think if workers try to organize unions that revolutionaries should stand aside from their efforts. I would think revolutionaries would participate in their efforts. I have done that in the past. I got fired for trying to organize a caddies strike in 1965 at a golf course, and I worked with an anarchist colleague in 1967 and 1968 where we were employed at the University of Wisconsin to get a union in where we worked, and I tried in the first effort of the Service Employees International Union to help them get a union at Brooklyn Hospital in 1971, although they screwed it up, because they sent in male macho chauvinist creeps to approach female workers at the hospital on how pretty they were, rather than on the issues of concern to the workers, and in their first effort to get a union in there, they failed. I got pretty disheartened after that and left the employment of the hospital. In Florida in 1993 and 1994, I tried to get a union into a plant in Clearwater where I worked, but the union, Local 79 of the Teamsters, wouldn't lift a finger to pass out leaflets from the outside of the plant, and there were only a couple of us on the inside, and it seemed to me the union ought to make a more serious effort.

I think that you are right if you claim that the problem with unions is, they don't fight because they are tied hand in glove to class collaborationist politics -- to electoralist bourgeois politics, to getting bourgeois capitalist politicians, Democrats and sometimes Republicans, elected to office. I think that's the basic problem with them today. I think that's probably why Local 79 of the Teamsters left us high and dry in 1993-1994 when I tried to get a union in a plant here in Florida. I think it's probably why in the first effort of the Service Employees International Union in 1971 at Brooklyn Hospital, they failed -- their macho stupid male chauvinism was part and parcel of their bourgeois and pro-capitalist politics of their leadership.

But I think what happens in the broader society is decisive for whether unions remain class collaborationist or become oriented toward class struggle. They may end up as auxiliaries to broader mass class struggle developments in society moving in a more struggle-oriented direction, or they may act as obstacles. But as I see it, I am inclined to think the position of revolutionaries is to always advocate workers' councils, workers' defense guards, elected strike committees to take strikes out of the hands of bureaucrats and put them in the hands of rank-and-filers, mass labor picket lines which no scab and no strikebreaker dares cross, generalizing labor strikes from one locality to other localities -- the entire panoply of militant class struggle tactics. Part of that is also advocating workers form a class struggle-based workers' party, a revoluionary workers party fighting for state power.

I think you tend to avoid the question of communist leadership and to think communist leadership is not a real question. That bothers me. What is the reason for being of being a communist? It seems to me it is to try to provide leadership, if possible. But that also means one picks and chooses situations where a fight is possible or not possible. One's got to have some sense of that. That's part of communist leadership, I would think.

I don't think the issue of unions is either-or. I think the issue of unions partly depends on the objective material situation. Situations differ. The key thing is, what advances or retards the class war and the movement of the workers toward power for the workers. That, it seems to me, is the decisive question in all issues.

Comradely,
Al Greene
Email: tompaine1917@yahoo.com

I wrote that the bureaucrat of Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians in 1989 probably vandalized the union office and blamed me on it. I meant to write that his mentally deranged buddy, the guy who had tried to start a fight with me originally, and whom the bureaucrat for whom I worked at Local 802 (then the v.p. of Local 802, named John Palanchian) who covered his butt by scapegoating me, was the one who probably vandalized Local 802's office, after which their bureaucracy libeled and slandered me behind my back lying that I did it. I didn't even at the time know who this mentally deranged whackjob coming into the union trying to start a fight with me was or what was making him go loco, but he went loco, and next thing I knew, Palanchian scapegoated me, and I was forced out of my job as an office assistant and secretary at the union. And Local 153 of the Office and Professional Employees Union-AFL-CIO, of which I was a member, wouldn't fight for me, and said I had to bring this to arbitration, which meant bringing a dispute among union people into the capitalist government. I didn't believe in that, and so, left my post, but leaving protest letters on desks of Local 802 bureaucrats. They then resorted to slandering and libeling me behind my back, I later found out from someone at that time still employed by the union whom I knew. They even slandered me to prospective employers when I later tried to get jobs and put them down as somewhere I'd previously worked.

I think they did that because I got the meeting in 1988 of the then-president of Local 802, John Glasel, with supporters of the Spartacist-supported Partisan Defense Committee that resulted in Glasel putting his written endorsement on the Partisan Defense Committee "call" to "Stop the Ku Klux Klan" in Philadelphia on November 5, 1988. After that, I was an "outted" red, in their DSA (Democratic Socialists of America social-democratic) eyes, and so, they had it in for me, I'm now persuaded.

--Al Greene
Email: tompaine1917@yahoo.com

September 10, 2009

Dear ICC Comrades:

Despite my arguments with you and my defense of positions you no doubt view as not communist, I found your 18th International Conference postings -- both your main Resolution, and your analytical posting -- very informative, enlightening, educational, helpful, and, in general, very much in the spirit of Marxism.

You make it hard for someone like me, who comes out of a long history of defending what are Trotskyist positions, to see you as anything other than serious, programmatically and theoretically principled revolutionary communists.

I commend you, and salute you, whatever our differences are, comrades.

Comradely,
Al Greene
Email: tompaine1917@yahoo.com

cmde allan,

i dont know where you get the idea that my stand is "similar" to trotsky in which you said that in imperialist epeoch "Trotsky put it, either become agents of the imperialist bosses or revolutionary class struggle organizations for smashing capitalism." For trotsky it depends upon the "situation" but on the other hand, trotskyist seems not seeing that the situation change from ascendat capitalism (19th century) to decadent capitalism (since 20th century).
it seems that you have similar ideas with trotsky as far as unionism is concern, not mine.
the nature of unions change when capitalism change from progressive to completely reactionary. and here in the philippines it becomes more obvious as in the advance countries.
its not a matter of "leadership" that unions can be transform into a revolutionary one or an "ally" of the working class.
many posters here, elaborate the left-communist position on unions more sharply than mine...

09-11-2009

Dear Cde. Internationalysta:

If you read "The First Five Years of the Communist International," which a collection of the writings and speeches of Trotsky when he was on the Executive Committee of the Communist International in 1919-1922, it's clear he holds to the basic precept of the International Communist Current that the epoch in which we live is the epoch of what he, Lenin, Luxemburg, and all the Third Internationalists of the period of 1919-1922 called, "the imperialist epoch." That epoch was seen by all these communist internationalists as the epoch of international capitalist decline.

My view is simply that the International Communist Current's notion of decadence is basically the same as the viewpoint held by the early Third Internationalists.

Years ago -- actually a couple decades ago, when I was much politically closer to Trotskyism than I am now, when I resided in New York City, and when I used to occasionally attend public ICC meetings there and polemicize with comrades of the ICC from my much more Trotskyist standpoint than the standpoint I have now, I remember purchasing sometime in the 1970s or, possibly, in the 1980s, a couple of the ICC's fairly thick bulletins comprising the documents of international conferences of the Communist Left. I read over those quite carefully.

Additionally, I used to purchase ICC magazines and read them carefully.

It was always my impression that the ICC were very similar in many ways to the views Leon Trotsky, when he headed up the Executive Committee of the Communist International, held in the period of 1919-1922.

I gradually got to realize that the ICC tended to date its heritage not from the first four congresses of the Third International, but roughly from the first and portions of the second congress, or, that is my impression now. The Trotskyists tended to date their heritage from the first four congresses of the Third International.

When I was much closer to Trotskyism -- even though in 1976 I had resigned from the Spartacists, I continued being a public supporter of theirs for many years and defended their line for many years both at their public forums, and often, as best I could, when I found myself arguing with comrades from the ICC at public forums of the ICC, or even when I just found myself discussing politics with other people -- I had a quite good conception that the early Third Internationalists did, indeed, hold that the epoch in which we live since the early portion of the 20th Century was the epoch of what the early Third Internationalists called, imperialism, and which you comrades of the ICC call, decadence.

And to me, that means, roughly, the same thing. Leastwise, I don't see the difference.

When I just last night or yesterday read over your 18th Conference main resolution which you published here on line, and also your main analytical statement (or it was my impression that that was your main analytical statement) from your 18th international conference, I was very impressed with both and said that.

I said that even though I realized I had substantial numbers of differences with you.

But I don't think one of my differences with you is the nature of the epoch.

I do think that a key difference I have is, what that means in terms of every specific situation which arises.

That is, I do think in the epoch in which the proletariat lives internationally, situations continually arise with which revolutionaries must deal. I don't think it's sufficient to passively sit back and wait simply for objective conditions to mature in one part of the planet or another part of the planet. I think the proletariat is a heterogeneous class, and I think different conditions prevail in different parts of the planet, and different localities of each country and in different workplaces of every country. I think individual situations that arise may or may not present to revolutionaries the opportunity to help a forward movement of the proletarian class. I think part of the task of being a revolutionary is to properly assess when such situations do, indeed, arise. I do not think that forward movements of the proletarian class will always or necessarily simply arise en bloc -- that is, as one totality or one total movement forward. It is my impression the comrades of the ICC seem to have that view -- that the class will, at some point in the future, simply move forward in one great forward movement internationally and simultaneously. I think that probably is not how the objective reality of the coming proletarian class struggles will necessarily arise. And I think revolutionaries have to be open and sensitive to any and all possible individual situations which might present us with some way of forwarding the movement of our class, the proletariat.

I also don't think there are any truly "impossible" situations for the bourgeoisie in that I don't think the bourgeoisie will simply collapse of its own accord. I think that is a kind of automatism which is alien to Marxism.

I do give to Lenin and Trotsky enormous credit for showing the centrality of revolutionary leadership and the centrality of a revolutionary vanguard party. I do believe strongly in the centrality of a revolutionary vanguard party and I also do not think a proletarian socialist revolution can occur without one. In that, I'm a hard Leninist-Trotskyist. But by the same token, I could just as well be adjudged a hard Bordigist, because comrade Bordiga held the same hard "centralist" view on the party question. I've read a number of his writings, and found he was just as thoroughly "centralist" on the party question as was comrade Lenin and as was comrade Trotsky.

I think there's some ignorance among at least some of the ICC comrades about the role of comrade Trotsky. Comrade Trotsky was a proletarian revolutionary in his blood and in his bones. The notion that he ever betrayed the proletariat is, to me, nonsensical stupidity.

Furthermore, he derived his entire conception of the nature of the epoch from the era of World War One, the era of the formation of the nucleus of the Third International, the era of Lenin and the Comintern of Lenin's time.

I have the impression that the ICC holds that the perspective of the Third International after the first and, possibly (and here I'm inferring and may be incorrect in my inference) the second of the first four congresses of the Third International (1919, 1920) reverted backwards to a kind of Social-Democratic two-stagist conception. I think if you want to correctly and accurately date where your heritage departs from the heritage of what you call, Trotskyism, it appears to me you ought to date it from at least some parts of the second of the first four congresses of the Third International, and probably more from the third and fourth congresses of the Third International, which, pretty much, organized Trotskyists tend to view as part of their heritage. I've read a lot about this, so I'm not talking through my hat on it.

I do know that the Spartacists, for instance, are pretty severely critical of some aspects -- now, that is -- of some of the first four congresses' decisions in some areas, and some of these criticisms of the Spartacists are formally "left" criticisms. I know, because I used to read a lot of their (the Spartacists') literature, including their main theoretical journal, Spartacist.

I do think much more highly, however, than I used to think of the view of the ICC that you comrades date your heritage from the communists who detached themselves from the Third International in, if my recollection is right, the period of at least the third and fourth congresses and maybe even around the time of the second congress. I find that position of yours more meaningful in light of my having read more of comrade Bordiga's writings. However, comrade Bordiga did remain in the Third International longer than, say, comrades Pannekoek and Gorter, and, additionally, I think more highly of comrade Bordiga's centralism than I do of what at least on the surface appears to me to be comrades Gorter and Pannekoek's decentralism and spontaneism and "crypto-anarchism," if you will.

The problem I have with Trotskyism is, I do really think of the Spartacists as Trotskyists. But I also think that if they were able, as they were, in their relation to me to defer to the leadership principle to such an inordinate degree in the fusion of the tendency with which I joined their party in 1973 so that, for instance, my vote in that fusion against putting on their own CC someone heading up my own tendency made me "suspect" in their minds (which is what, I'm now persuaded, was the case for the 3 years I was in their party) -- that leads me logically to infer that there is something pretty fundamentally wrong with Trotskyism. I don't think what's wrong is the principle of the vanguard party, or the principle of centralism. But there's something wrong with Trotskyism. And when I read over some of your criticisms of, for instance, the united front, I think to myself, perhaps there is in that criticism some element of a basic comprehension of why deferring in the way deferring was done in my case could have been done. The person against whom I voted putting on the Spartacist CC in 1973 at the moment of the fusion of the IS dissident tendency with the Spartacists in 1973 ended up turning out to be a real piece of work, in the wrong sense of a piece of work. So my vote was shown right. But that didn't matter. What mattered was, the original idiotic, to me, deference to the notion of what the Spartacists would have, I now believe idiotically, called, "Leninist organizational protocol," in suggesting the person who headed up the tendency with whom I joined their party in 1973 should have been the person elected to their CC. But that kind of stupidity and idiocy contains the embryo of something more fundamentally programmatically rotten. That's my point.

I think it's right to say the organizational question is a programmatic question. But if it is a programmatic question, which I think it is, then idiotic mindless whoring for a perspective of what amounts to deference is not communist. It's simply mindless stupidity and programmatically counter-revolutionary anti-communism.

In my view, however, whether it's correct to say, that's because of Trotskyism, or, rather, that's because the Spartacists are not authentically Trotskyist, is the issue with which I'm grappling.

I don't think it's right to say, however, that the Trotskyists do not view the epoch in which, internationally, humankind lives as the epoch of the decline of capitalism internationally. At least theoretically, the Trotskyists have historically dated their heritage back to the same roots as the ICC dates its heritage.

I think the issue of stuff like unions is, to me, more of a tactical issue than it used to be. I used to hold to a hard and fast notion which, organizationally, I would call, union fetishism. I no longer do. I think it is quite possible for objective material conditions to transcend or surpass every and any kind of organizational vehicle or instrument, be it a party, a union, a workers council, a strike committee, or whatever it might be. No organizational vehicle is immune to degeneration or deformation or corruption from within or because of the pressures of surrounding bourgeois society. But that is precisely why it's necessary for revolutionaries to constantly fight the pressures of bourgeois society and even, if necessary, fight entirely alone, totally in isolation, as Lenin did for many years. One has to be programmatically pure, theoretically pure, and constantly aware of the pressures of bourgeois society.

I also think there is value in polemic, including tough, hard polemic, in clarifying and making clearer issues. Polemics are basically ultimately reflections of the class war refracted through into ideas, and the struggles over ideas are ultimately reflections of the struggle of classes. So sometimes hard polemics may seem "uncomradely," but that's material life. Lenin's polemics were not gentlemanly. But he was building a party, and he had to engage in them. Once, however, he'd persuaded former adversaries and they came over to his position, the old "ungentlemanly" polemical methods were forgotten.

I think the issue of individual situations has to do with the issue of tactics of revolutionaries in said situations. I think there are issues of overriding strategy for the imperialist epoch, as well as issues of the fundamental program for the epoch, which is, the program for the socialist revolution, and there are issues of a subordinate sort, which are tactical issues. But this perspective of mine is firmly in the tradition of at least the first four congresses of the Communist International.

Or so, that is how I see it.

I am inclined to be openminded more on issues like the united front than I used to be, and I am inclined to be more openminded on the issue the ICC raises that any deformation of ostensible workers' organizations (what Trotskyists call workers' states, what Trotskyists call workers' unions) really is not a deformation of a real workers' organization, but is really nothing but an extension, more or less, of bourgeoisification into what might once have been workers' organizations so that in the epoch of what the ICC comrades call, decadence, calling something like the Soviet Union after the rise of Stalinism or something like a union any kind of workers' organization makes no sense. I'm more openminded on that than I used to be, and some of my openmindedness stems from my own experiences. But experience is sometimes an impressionistic taskmaster, and being a Marxist, I realize the problems with impressionism and empiricism. That's why I tend also to sometimes revert in a kind of knee-jerk fashion back to my older Trotskyist positions. But as I said, I'm not at all closeminded to the ICC's perspectives. I just continue reading and listening and arguing, and take things as I go.

I do, indeed, think the situation in the 20th Century changed fundamentally from the 19th Century. But that was also the view of Trotsky and the view of the early Third Internationalists. I am of the impression that the ICC more or less sees that after the first congress of the Third International, the Third International started reverting backwards to a kind of Social-Democratic perspective on that issue. I do think you could make that argument about Stalinism and the sort of "perspective" it particularly imposed on the Third International especially after the rise of Hitler in Germany, from about 1935 on, in the period of the popular front. But the ICC does not, so far as I'm aware, make any fundamental distinctions between what was called the popular front in the 1930s, and the united front in the period of, say, the third and fourth congresses of the Third International. It is my impression from my experience in or supporting Trotskyist movements in the past that Trotskyist movements, or at least Trotsky, held that a united front was not the same as a popular front, and that the purpose of a united front for a communist was to use the united front partly as a weapon in winning some sections of labor to the cause of communism. The slogan, "March separately, strike together," was originally intended, as far as I can gather, to "set the base against the top" of workers' organizations. That in some sense was why, for instance, Social-Democratic Parties were so hostile to allowing any kind of Communist Parties to try to make united fronts with Social-Democratic Parties in the early 1920s. But the Communist Parties in the early 1920s certainly sometimes impermissibly and in a programmatically degenerated and deformed fashion did begin in some parts of the world to mush over or obscure programmatic differences and turn the sharp programmatic differences between communists and reformists into oatmeal mush when what was called for was the expression of differences within the fronts in order to win the ranks of the workers to communism.

I think your position -- that of the ICC -- that that was an expression or embodiment of a reversion backward to a kind of crypto-Social-Democratic or Social-Democratic sort of perspective makes more sense to me now than it once did. But when I explain basic Marxist positions to people on such things as, for instance, value theory, surplus value, the labor theory of value, commodities, how society operates, the crises of overproduction, etc., like it or not, there are some reasonably good books and pamphlets written by Trotskyists that explain those things pretty well, and I do refer people to those kinds of books and pamphlets.

However, I liked your 18th congress resolution and 18th congress analytical statement, and will probably be using that as a reference and source for people as well. I also sometimes refer people to your "Who We Are" statement as a pretty good statement of left communist views, and I try to explain to people the differences in the heritage to which I think you comrades trace yourselves and where that differs from where Trotskyists trace their heritage.

But there are similarities, and I think it's important to show where there are similarities as it's important to show the differences.

Anyway, I must for the moment stop.

Comradely,
Al (Allan) Greene
Email: tompaine1917@yahoo.com

In your comment to the excellent Brighton Solidarity Federation (british section of International Workers Association) you say :

> the discussion document from Brighton Solidarity Federation marks something of a break from traditional anarcho-syndicalism,

Well, in fact not so much.

"Anarchosyndicalism" - or at leat the workers anarchism - is not only a european experience. It is also rooted into mass workers movements that developped into South America in the late XIX - early XX. I especially think about the FORA (Workers Federation of the Argentinian Region), founded in 1905, that was a workers movement of more than 200 000 members - at his highest point - capable of avoiding Argentina to enter into WWI by general strike for instance. This is a very rich story. But as this is a story from the "south" (and not from North/western country), and also as the brightests pages have been written before the spanish 36 revolution, it is widely forgotten. (and not to talk about the FORA political exemple that was disturbing for many ... not only in the marxist spectrum ...)

So the Brighton pamphlet is not a break from "traditionnal anarchosyndicalism" but much more a "renewal of the workers anarchism". But for sure it is a break from "european revolutionnary unionism", which is a good news indeed. (The european revolutionnary unionism died in 1906, with the CGT Amiens's Charter ... just one year after FORA was created. FORA were pretty much more advanced politically that all europeans revolutionnary 9including marxists) of that time !)

I invite all ICC members to take a look at FORA history and experiences (and more openly not only to limit their study of the revolutionnary movements history to the european zone, which is too limited when you claim to be internationalist ...) they should be interested to see that Pannekoek and Mattick had have kind of precursors, and with mass movement ... (for the french readers for instance :

LA FORA : ORGANISATION OUVRIERE ANARCHISTE
FORA : A WORKERS AANRCHIST ORGANIZATION

http://cnt-ait.info/article.php3?id_article=127