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Mar 21 2008 19:50
#61
Alf
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it is precisley because they are not 'outside' our class, but 'inside' both organisationally and psychologically...

I don't disagree with this, but as Demogorgon says, it doesn't alter the fundamental nature of the unions

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Mar 21 2008 21:16
#62
Ret Marut
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Demagor wrote:
Spikymike

Surely the point is that if the unions act in the interests of the bourgeoisie they are therefore bourgeois organisations. The fact that workers are in the unions and generally submit to union ideology, doesn't change this fundamental fact. Workers can set up and/or participate in all sorts of organisations ranging from unions to neighbourhood watch schemes. This in itself doesn't change the class nature (i.e. the class interests they serve) of those organs.

I don't see the harm in saying this clearly and directly to the working class.

None of this disputes anything I've said and no one has said there's any "harm in saying" the unions are "bourgeois organisations" - another strawman. I'm not going to repeat myself yet again, but I already dealt with why it's totally insufficient to merely say the "unions are bourgeois" if one really wants to understand their function and long-lasting influence, yet here you are trotting out the original simplistic line again as a supposed conclusion; to reassure yourselves, as if the whole discussion never happened or challenged your eternal assumptions. Yet you claim to want serious debate. I don't see how the above quote is a reply to what spikeymike is saying, since you're not disputing anything he or I said - though you talk as if you are.

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Mar 22 2008 09:40
#63
Demogorgon303
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Hi Ret

I was replying to Spikymike's suggestion that it's incorrect to present the unions as a force external to the working class. He talks about them being "inside" the class. I think the actual disagreements here are actually quite minimal, it's rather the manner we pose the question.

The problem for me is that without a clear point of departure i.e. the unions serve the interests of the bourgeoisie, the concept of them being "inside" the class seems insufficient because it leaves room for the conception that there is still something to be defended in the unions, despite their failings. (Please understand I don't think either you or he have actually said this, I'm just saying it can follow on from what you have or rather haven't said). If they are "inside" the class it is much in the same way as a parasitic organism lives inside its host. Again, this is implicit in Spiky's (and your) analysis but it would be much better if this was made explicit.

So it's not a question of peddling simplistic lines saying "the unions are bourgeois". This is just the first premise, a place to begin a serious analysis of the unions role today, before we can answer the questions of how and why they operate against the proletariat. After all, if we don't accept this premise then the idea of them operating against the working class seems to become meaningless or, at best, diluted.

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