Economic struggle and the community
Jun 24 2007 18:39
I'm curious what people think about this article, specifically in how it relates to para-workplace organizing. This is something people have spoken about in portland, but without any real proposals or clarity about it. Having a framework for uniting libertarian prefigurative struggles within a mass organization has a lot of appeal for me, and i'm curious what other wobs think given that our written word seems so economistic even when the practice of the union has diverged from it.
http://www.solfed.org.uk/anarcho-syndicalism-in-puerto-real.htm#06
Jun 25 2007 04:11
#2
Dundee_United wrote:
because we are not a residents association, or a political group.
we are not a political group but we are a union with broad and vague politics.
Jun 25 2007 08:46
#3
Dundee_United wrote:
Of course when the IWW starts to have power and we control trades councils
I might be wrong on this, but aren't Trades Councils exclusively for TUC unions http://www.tuc.org.uk/the_tuc/about_councils.cfm - in which case how do you see this happening. And also, they seem entirely useless in their present state so why would you want to control them?
Jun 25 2007 08:54
#4
Quote:
aren't Trades Councils exclusively for TUC unions?
This is true.
I'd urge anyone interested in linking up unions with community struggles to watch this:-
Jun 25 2007 09:43
#5
Quote:
I might be wrong on this, but aren't Trades Councils exclusively for TUC unions
Yeah but I think IWW should be in the unions as a rank and file group and should get as many of its people to be shop stewards and get on trades councils. I see no reason they can't be taken over as part of an organised strategy, particularly as most of them have difficulty just getting enough people to sustain them.
Jun 25 2007 09:58
#6
Quote:
we are not a political group but we are a union with broad and vague politics.
It's not the role of the iWW. It's the role of political organisations like the WSA, or community tendencies like London's HSG to encourage the foundation of residents organisations, mass organisations whose purpose is to act in such things. The IWW is not a political organisation. Part of the problem for why it's so shit at the moment is that people within it treat it like a political organisation. It is the failure of unitary syndicalism that it sees the mass organisation as synonymous with the political organisation or tendency.
Let's be clear we need community organisations - indeed that's where I spend most of my organising/campaigning time - but because we need them we must actually treat organisation in our communities and neighbourhoods as a serious strategically goal, not a half assed thing 'the wobblies' also do (which incidentally will prevent the IWW developing as a union, and prevent more powerful community organisation from getting going on the ground). I think we need a lot more tactical flexibility than having one organisation which behaves like a party, union and residents association, because that just come across as the libcom version of tankie substitutionism.
The IWW has one task - build density in industry, by any means at its disposal. It's not the role of the IWW to act as a co-ordinating body for the class struggle as a whole, and with such incredibly vague politics it'd be shite at it anyway
Jun 25 2007 10:18
#7
Dundee_United wrote:
Quote:
we are not a political group but we are a union with broad and vague politics.It's not the role of the iWW. It's the role of political organisations like the WSA, or community tendencies like London's HSG to encourage the foundation of residents organisations, mass organisations whose purpose is to act in such things. The IWW is not a political organisation. Part of the problem for why it's so shit at the moment is that people within it treat it like a political organisation. It is the failure of unitary syndicalism that it sees the mass organisation as synonymous with the political organisation or tendency.
Let's be clear we need community organisations - indeed that's where I spend most of my organising/campaigning time - but because we need them we must actually treat organisation in our communities and neighbourhoods as a serious strategically goal, not a half assed thing 'the wobblies' also do (which incidentally will prevent the IWW developing as a union, and prevent more powerful community organisation from getting going on the ground). I think we need a lot more tactical flexibility than having one organisation which behaves like a party, union and residents association, because that just come across as the libcom version of tankie substitutionism.
The IWW has one task - build density in industry, by any means at its disposal. It's not the role of the IWW to act as a co-ordinating body for the class struggle as a whole, and with such incredibly vague politics it'd be shite at it anyway
er, thats what i said... 
Jun 25 2007 10:21
#8
well, more or less. The IWW is a union and a union first but it is a union with politicics. not a political group with interest in labour organizing.
Jun 25 2007 10:29
#9
x357997 wrote:
Dundee_United wrote:
because we are not a residents association, or a political group.we are not a political group but we are a union with broad and vague politics.
I think that actually you are a political group. You can call yourselves a union all you like, but it doesn't change the fact that you aren't a union, but a political group. Indeed as x357997 says, one with very broad politics.
Devrim
Jun 25 2007 10:32
#10
Dundee_United wrote:
Quote:
I might be wrong on this, but aren't Trades Councils exclusively for TUC unionsYeah but I think IWW should be in the unions as a rank and file group and should get as many of its people to be shop stewards and get on trades councils. I see no reason they can't be taken over as part of an organised strategy, particularly as most of them have difficulty just getting enough people to sustain them.
I don't know if you have ever been to a trade council meeting, but the line 'most of them have difficulty just getting enough people to sustain them' makes me think that you have.
You know that these are virtually dead organs, but you still want to take them over, and... well, I was going to say reinvigorate them, but I have no idea what you plan to do.
Devrim
Jun 25 2007 11:27
#11
Devrim wrote:
Dundee_United wrote:
Quote:
I might be wrong on this, but aren't Trades Councils exclusively for TUC unionsYeah but I think IWW should be in the unions as a rank and file group and should get as many of its people to be shop stewards and get on trades councils. I see no reason they can't be taken over as part of an organised strategy, particularly as most of them have difficulty just getting enough people to sustain them.
I don't know if you have ever been to a trade council meeting, but the line 'most of them have difficulty just getting enough people to sustain them' makes me think that you have.
You know that these are virtually dead organs, but you still want to take them over, and... well, I was going to say reinvigorate them, but I have no idea what you plan to do.
Devrim
quite simply you just socially insert yourself into anything and hope you can use it's husks to further struggles, trades councils, national liberation movements, union positions, basically anything and of course we all know that you don't get fleas from lying with dogs.
Jun 25 2007 11:34
#12
Quote:
You can call yourselves a union all you like, but it doesn't change the fact that you aren't a union, but a political group. Indeed as x357997 says, one with very broad politics.
There is a definite tendency to behave like one for sure, and yes, we are not a real union at the moment, as defined as a mass organisation of workers which fights to win job control and a greater proportion of our surplus labour. Let's leave it at that. As far as political organisations with vague politics go though, they are worthless and beneath contempt. I'm in the IWW purely on the basis that it can become a small fighting union. I have a political organisation already. I have no need for a surrogate political organisation that thinks it's a union.
Jun 25 2007 11:38
#13
the button wrote:
I'd urge anyone interested in linking up unions with community struggles to watch this:-
Beat me to it!
Jun 25 2007 11:45
#14
Quote:
I don't know if you have ever been to a trade council meeting, but the line 'most of them have difficulty just getting enough people to sustain them' makes me think that you have.
Only meetings organised by trades councils. Dumfries Trades Council for example is more active and has more members (about a dozen) than Glasgow Trades Council.
Quote:
You know that these are virtually dead organs, but you still want to take them over, and... well, I was going to say reinvigorate them, but I have no idea what you plan to do.
Reinvigorate I suppose. It's just a little bit of reverse leverage which could become useful and a chance to cause problems. Trade union collapse in Britain has bottomed out and the trade unions are growing again. We have also seen a modest upturn in industrial action. This has been coupled to some pretty big changes in the labour movement which may have implications for rank and file activity. If that rank and file activity takes off trades councils will become more important. It's just a point of tactical flexibility that along with DICs they could be used for co-ordination between labour organisations and community struggles. At the moment though, they are mostly something of a fringe phenomenon.
Quote:
quite simply you just socially insert yourself into anything and hope you can use it's husks to further struggles, trades councils, national liberation movements, union positions, basically anything and of course we all know that you don't get fleas from lying with dogs.
I love you too Revol.
Jun 25 2007 11:51
#15
Dundee_United wrote:
I have a political organisation already.
Which one, out of interest?
Devrim
Jun 25 2007 11:58
#16
Dundee_United wrote:
Reinvigorate I suppose. It's just a little bit of reverse leverage which could become useful and a chance to cause problems. Trade union collapse in Britain has bottomed out and the trade unions are growing again.
As far as i know this was a blip a year or two ago, now over, and they are still shrinking.
Quote:
We have also seen a modest upturn in industrial action.
Again, I don't think you can get a trend on this, just because IIRC 2005 had by far the lowest number of strike days ever
Oh, I just looked this up, and it does look like there may be a slight upturn from the 90s, when the average number of working days lost per year was 660,000. (1980s were 7.2 million and the 1970s were 12.9 million).
Jun 25 2007 12:00
#17
Quote:
Which one, out of interest?
Praxis. We're having our national (Scotland-wide) launch conference in September, so it's very early days, but if it gets off to a strong footing it should mark a point of departure from the other libertarian socialist organisations in the UK.
Jun 25 2007 12:06
#18
Quote:
Again, I don't think you can get a trend on this, just because IIRC 2005 had by far the lowest number of strike days everOh, I just looked this up, and it does look like there may be a slight upturn from the 90s, when the average number of working days lost per year was 660,000. (1980s were 7.2 million and the 1970s were 12.9 million).
No, you're right, but the trend towards absolute collapse if you like has halted or declined. If Unite gets off the ground though in the way in which it is intended there will be a number of structural changes which might open things up a bit and encourage more rank and file co-ordination. There is also the Shop Stewards Committee which could go someplace, and it looks like the RMT could get flung out of the TUC with the OILC merger. That will lead to a new, if not perhaps very deep, radicalism which would be likely to cause more industrial struggles on the whole, particularly with the injection of a load of OILC members in the RMT.
Jun 25 2007 12:10
#19
Quote:
As far as i know this was a blip a year or two ago, now over, and they are still shrinking.
6.9 million is the figure for 2006. 6.72 million is the figure for 2005. During the same period the number of unionised workers in the private sector fell from 17 odd % to 15 odd %. I'd imagine the growth on the whole is something to do with pensions stuff and the T&G organising drive.
Jun 25 2007 12:41
#20
Quote:
I'd imagine the growth on the whole is something to do with pensions stuff and the T&G organising drive.
More like the public sector expanding to take up workers that are surplus to private enterprise's requirements.
Jun 25 2007 13:02
#21
Yeah that too, but it doesn't necessarily explain the growth in trade union membership per se, unless the public sector unions have been good at recruiting new members. I think it's more likely to be a number of factors at play.
Jun 25 2007 13:09
#22
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unless the public sector unions have been good at recruiting new members.
They hand out application forms and do a presentation on company time as part your employee induction to explain how your wages will be higher and job more secure if you join. We even operate a sort of closed shop here, and we're not even remotely "militant". I understand there are an extra 860,000 public sector jobs since 1997. In that time for every civil service job cut, 9 new public sector jobs have been created.
Jun 25 2007 13:53
#23
I'm a member of a trades council in Canada Dundee, by the sounds of things they are even more comatose over there than they are here, the EDLC pulls about thirty grey haired men in suits once a month. In Vancouver there are two wobs on the VDLC and the only good it seems to do them is sets them up for slander by right wing forces looking to target radicals in the wake of the failed general strike. I'm curious how you see these things are worth reviving, to be honest they have as about as much relevance to the local rank and file as the local Elk's lodge, mostly they are a breeding ground for third rate municipal politicians (ie. trades workers tired of getting their hands dirty).
The really dangerous thing about labour centrals is they work like a one way valve because militants time and energy can go in to them, but there is no transfer back to the rank and file. Also how would the IWW operate in such a group? Would we form a voting block on certain issues, and run our members as candidates as in the elections of the affiliates (providing the affiliates are running elections for these positions). If that's the case how would we enforce group discipline on each other in the labour central? Our voting block would be pretty useless if we didn't go in there with a shared agenda and that does have us operating as a political group, and practicing entryism on another group no less.
Now I'm not opposed to dual carding, or even fosterim, if the situation warrants it, but at least in Canada I'm sure if this is a strategy I would make a priority right now.
Jun 25 2007 15:26
#24
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Would we form a voting block on certain issues, and run our members as candidates as in the elections of the affiliates (providing the affiliates are running elections for these positions).
To be honest it's not something that IWW could do as a whole. It'd be a job for the hacks. In your given situation you'd need to swamp them or be very fucking clever if you wanted to get anything done. Remembers as I said I think they are on the whole a fringe phenomena which _MAY_ prove to be useful.
Quote:
Now I'm not opposed to dual carding, or even fosterim, if the situation warrants it, but at least in Canada I'm sure if this is a strategy I would make a priority right now.
We take a very different view then. I'm unsure if there is a role for the IWW as it is at the moment (mostly young inexperienced, and often impressionable, activists and some backseat old guys, with occasional pockets of cadre syndicalists) outside the trade unions. I don't feel we have enough resources to do greenfield organising, and I think we could really fuck ourselves doing that sort of thing unless we can either get all our people trained up or we can recruit experienced trade unionists. Once we have density in a few industries where the going is easier and we've picked up more 'cadre' type people then we can throw our energies into expanding our base, but even then that should be on an industrial basis with a heavy volume of research and a thorough strategy. In the UK I can't see any role for us outside education and healthcare for a while.
Jun 25 2007 16:21
#25
Dundee I can't disagree with you more about the role you see for the IWW. I see our fundamental task not to just in the trade unions in two industries without independent organizing. Since we started greenfield organizing and abandoned the strategy you speak of (which was the main one for decades), the organization has expanded by 4 times in less than a decade. It has washed away its former activist/history club base and gained people interested in organizing their workplace. Going back would be a politically motivated castration I think.
On the issue of community organizing, the question isn't should we do this other stuff too, but rather do we need to do other stuff in order to organize the workplace. In my branch I've witnessed burn out due to people not being thoroughly engaged outside of workplace organizing, and people seeking out outside political groups in response to the void in many areas of their lives. Likewise when we see the experiences of other unions, such as the CNT pamphlet above, we can see the way in which the foundational social relationships that community action sews in building workplace resistance. It needs to be said that while capital is as strong and diffuse as it is, the only way for workplace resistance to succeed is broader supporter than merely the workers in the workplace. Maybe the workplace is necessary but not sufficient to winning in many cases.
The model of organizing that many if not most wobblies use seems to depart from your conception a bit, and is worth noting. Solidarity unionism is the idea that we organize collectively in order to win gains directly without outside intermediary bodies. This organizing model has build the organization and won gains in many industries (construction, health care, restaurants, transportation, etc), already and is more in line with our long term goals than the less successful model of being wobbly cheerleaders for a cleaner version of the trade unions.
Jun 25 2007 17:30
#26
You are confusing my position with a lot of issues here.
One: I am not advocating quietude, or saying that we should not do greenfield organising.
Two: I am not saying we should concentrate on building "a cleaner version of the trade unions", altho I don't think unions are revolutionary - in and of themselves - and I include the IWW in that.
Three: Solidarity unionism or social movement unionism is nothing new - revolutionary have advocated tactics of solidarity since before the days of Pouget and Pataud - and I certainly have no problem with that. What I do have a problem with is in the way the IWW operates in a patchy, substitutionist way, sometimes trying to do hotshopping, sometimes trying to be a community tendency/political organisation, which I feel detracts from the battle for workers to build job control in industry.
As for the membership of the IWW growing, well the IWU in Ireland has not been on the go for even half a decade and already has more members than we do. Whether it has more activists is another matter, but the IWW has not been the subject of miracle growth by any means, and currently has no serious density in any industry. Note I'm not saying it can't build density in industry, I'm not saying it can't do greenfield organising, I'm not saying I'm against solidarity unionism etc. I just feel that given in the UK we have members in health and education, and given that the trade unions keep workers in those industries apart, there is a role for an industrial organising strategy, and the militants are already in place in their respective trade unions. I think in all these accusations of quietism and so on flying around here, it's being lost that just randomly organising workers is the strategy of a (crap) trade union, not an industrial union. There is also the fact that our country's are not directly analogous. In the USA you've got 12% union membership or something like that - we have a quarter of the workforce in trade unions here.
Jun 25 2007 18:21
#27
Whilst I’d take on board Dundee’s views on this from someone who’s been involved in community organising for a while, I can’t myself go along with it.
You can’t deny that the organisation is political – but in a practical sense, non-specific and working outside parties and government for the building of working-class control from below. It’s a political group actively trying to become a small radical union by gaining industrial networks. To suggest that it’s anything more or that or isn’t based in radical politics is putting wishes before reality.
The – sure, still hazy, theoretical grounding of it all; from wage strikes to the General Strike is by itself political whether you choose to deny it or not. The strategy impacts upon communities and workers lives as whole as much as anywhere else – and where activity is needed just as much.
The greatest criticism of the IWW in the early days IMO, was its failure to make or act upon political stances (primarily during the World Wars) and it’s reluctance to see beyond anything other than basic organising in industries as the cure-all of workers woes. Or at least that’s the old industrial unionist line which was so attacked by anarchist communists, who then tended to equate syndicalism as being purely limited to the workplace, separating and prioritising it above all other struggle.
So, I think both the solely “economic” approach, which in other threads has been shown to be flawed for a variety of reasons, as well the devaluing or avoidance of any political debate in and around it (indeed, even the basic revolutionary stance which shapes everything) is to restrict its capacity to live up to its original role.
Of course we don’t need to have one organisation to involve ourselves in communities, but there’s many arguments for it. Communist organising needs to be encouraged and supported just like workplaces in terms of co-ordination, linking them together etc. As the cliché goes, we don’t need to re-invent the wheel every time as far as these struggles go, and be it in tenant’s organising or particular local issues sharing experience and resources could the difference between success and failure. Solidarity means more than most people give it credit.
I also think the IWW’s politics are remarkably useful in this regard – not vague and pointless but inclusive and stressing the basics of workers’ self-organisation. If you can pull struggles together wherever they are along these lines you’ve got an explosive combination. The basic principle of unifying rather than dividing extends here – blurring the lines of workplaces and communities, where they both strengthen each other. To take part in this is not necessarily to limit ourselves to being another propaganda group but to do what a great number of other syndicalist unions are trying to do (and for good reasons that have been arrived at through historical experience).
-
As Dundee says, many of us are already involved in this sort of thing – do we therefore not have time to do more ordinary union stuff as it is? Would it undermine our present campaigns or in fact, through proper separate meetings and networks bring a whole new crowd into the IWW?
On this aren’t we a union of people that includes hypothetically also the unemployed, ‘housewives/husbands’, even the self-employed?
Do we turn them away because they can’t actively become shop stewards* of whatever? Community issues are as much a part of it and greatly suited to them.
Personally, I’ve talked to quite a few people who would be amazing members – they’ve agreed with the basis for it, the political outlook etc. but felt they had no part to play without stable employment. I don’t think that’s right, do you? In dissuading them you’d have to have a quite different view of the union from that of Dundee et al. who’d frankly only put them off.
I wouldn’t want to see the activities we’re doing now undermined, and therefore comrades may find they want to focus on them at first – but we don’t know that. This leads on the last point concerning union autonomy.
I heard from the last conference that there were views concerning ‘forcing’ groups and GMBs to adhere to do a particular with defined targets with the threat of expulsion. That’s machiavellian balls and destined to lose support, not gain it.
Now if, say, one group wanted to include tenants organising, community campaigns etc. within their activities and within an IWW framework (so this might mean encouraging them rather than being the basis for them) and they felt that it suited them and their industrial activities then that’s they’re choice and one I’d definitely support.
If not BIROC as a whole, individual GMBs should take it upon themselves (not be forced) to create or contribute as a group to community campaigns, where the issues arise, where it crosses over with our own strategies and doesn’t undermine our main focus of forming industrial unions.
I’d like to see a group like the IWW involved in countless innovative areas of struggle that increase the capacity for working class solidarity in a real sense.
Jun 25 2007 20:59
#28
Dundee_United wrote:
Quote:
I might be wrong on this, but aren't Trades Councils exclusively for TUC unionsYeah but I think IWW should be in the unions as a rank and file group and should get as many of its people to be shop stewards and get on trades councils. I see no reason they can't be taken over as part of an organised strategy, particularly as most of them have difficulty just getting enough people to sustain them.
So why attempt to breath life into their dying husk?
Jun 25 2007 21:03
#29
John. wrote:
Dundee_United wrote:
Reinvigorate I suppose. It's just a little bit of reverse leverage which could become useful and a chance to cause problems. Trade union collapse in Britain has bottomed out and the trade unions are growing again.As far as i know this was a blip a year or two ago, now over, and they are still shrinking.
Quote:
We have also seen a modest upturn in industrial action.Again, I don't think you can get a trend on this, just because IIRC 2005 had by far the lowest number of strike days ever
Oh, I just looked this up, and it does look like there may be a slight upturn from the 90s, when the average number of working days lost per year was 660,000. (1980s were 7.2 million and the 1970s were 12.9 million).
Jun 25 2007 22:13
#30
I agree with Dundee completely about focusing on the workplace. I can't speak to the TUC stuff. If the IWW was ten or 100 times its size and racked up win after win after win against bosses I'd be more open to stuff outside the workplace. Right now, I think stuff outside the workplace is an organizational distraction. We need to do workplace organizing more and better. If members want to do other things too (like Dundee does) then great. But that's not what the IWW as an organization should focus on. I also have a hard time believing that members are burning out because they can't organize as wobblies outside the workplace. Burnout comes from too much organizing work. If the fact that the IWW members who want to do other organizing than workplace organizing are burning out then it's either because they're doing too much or because of some dynamic in your branch where people are being driven out due to disagreements (like maybe people being jerks about stuff etc). But I don't believe any burns out simply because they can't organize as wobs outside the workplace - no more than I believe people burn out in tenant groups because those tenant groups don't organize at work.
All that said, the IWW should do whatever its members need so if someone's getting evicted or deported or whatever then the union should support them as much as they need. But that's a tactic, not a strategy. Strategically it's workplace and nothing else in my opinion. I also want to say that the radicalism of the CNT and the radicalism of the tactic of organizing outside the workplace are not the same. Jobs With Justice in the US exists precisely to build those links, and unions that support JWJ have done that kind of organizing. I'm for that kind of activity when a campaign needs it, but it's a tactical matter not something which is more or less radical.
I'm involved in community organising. I don't think the IWW has any role to play in it. The IWW is not about to be taken seriously as a union if it behaves like a residents association, and those who use the IWW to act in that way I think are mistaking the IWW for a political organisation. I don't really get that. It seems really confused and probably results from the IWW being "all anarchists" in that area so it 'feels like' a political organisation which can act as a co-ordinating body. It's not and it's damaging for the IWW as a union to be involved in that way. Of course when the IWW starts to have power and we control trades councils or form DICs, then we can start to build those links on a formal basis between residents associations and community campaigns and federations of residents groups, until then it's a bit misplaced to think we have anything to gain from organising in the community, because we are not a residents association, or a political group.