Why do we lose with the unions?

Devoration, factual point - for better or for worse (or both), the IWW doesn't have direct democracy enshrined at every level, that's just inaccurate. I say this as someone intimately familiar with the workings of the organization across its many levels.

Exactly. As I understood it, things are organised by representation rather than recallable delegates for the GEB but, perhaps, for regional officers too?

Anti-electoralism has certainly been present among a large number of wobblies themselves (I woudn't suggest otherwise) but in terms of the union itself it's more nuanced. The IWW was never officially anti-electoral but neutral. At times, it's had a close relationship with certain socialist parties and, of course, folk like the DeLeonists advocated that it take on political functions. It's never been a condition of membership to be against parliamentary representation, and many members have combined a pro-electoral position with their involvement in the union. This has continued to the present day.

I agree with this to a certain extent, but then despite its revolutionary preamble it's always tried to be a radical union not a (pro-)revolutionary group as such. I think it's important not to exaggerate its radical heritage with its actual function and aims. To what extent is an economic, non-political organisation revolutionary? In any case, today you might miss its more radical heritage in a good deal of its literature (this isn't to say it's ditched the latter).

Mostly. There is possibility of recall but they're not delegates. (That's a strength in my opinion.) The highest decision making structures are the referendum of the membership followed by a convention of mandated delegates. Beyond that, the administrative infrastructure is not made up of delegates.

I think it's hard to get a sense of the IWW from what's in print. We're not primarily a writing organization by any means. This is an area where we need tons of improvement. The 'patchwork' metaphor isn't a totally bad one, because of the many differences. About to what extent the IWW is revolutionary, that's a fair question. Like I tried to say, I think this has to be addressed by thinking dynamically about processes and tendencies over time, not by thinking about snapshots and instances.

In my opinion, from looking at my crystal ball and tarot cards, the IWW will not grow to massive size and provoke a revolutionary crisis or something. (So, among other things, I do not believe that all or most of the working class will join the IWW forming a literal "One Big Union.") What I think is more plausible is that we will play an important role in the recomposition of some class fractions as subjects and in tying those fractions into the rest of the class (as opposed to just pursuing their own interests). There will be huge chunks of the class that we play basically no role in and have no effect on, certainly no direct effect on. I also think along the way that can play an important role in building up the revolutionary left in the US, tied to the recomposition of the class.

I tried to say above that in my experience when people from political organizations join the IWW I think that improves their political organization because of things they learn in the IWW, I've not seen it really improve the IWW. So I doubt very much that much, if any, of the existing revolutionary political organizations in the US will make much of a contribution to the IWW let alone to the recomposition of the class, at least at first. As the class really starts to move, that will reshape the revolutionary left and then perhaps the reshaped left will then begin to be useful to the class.

Thirteen months of "negotiations" by the GMB airport division has resulted in over 90% of GMB union members accepting the deal a "ringing endorsement" says the union. The "negotiated settlement" (GMB) entails a one-year pay freeze and 500 job losses. The latter are not "compulsory" says the union. What a victory!

A bit more on the above:
Yesterday, boss of British Airways, Willie Walsh, said of the latest deals with the unions: "This is another important step towards securing permanen structural change and the long-term future of the company. It also underlines our committment to working with all of our trade unions, including Unite".

My opinion is that this shows that Willie Walsh is just as much a "negotiator" for the working class as are the GMB, Unite and Balpa trade unions.

I posted this yesterday on another thread about the BA strikes:

http://libcom.org/news/uk-workplace-news-roundup-august-2010-29082010

baboon, I'm not sure if you've missed the point of this thread, but the premise is that we do lose with the unions, the question is why. miscellaneous examples of the premise therefore seem a bit redundant and don't shed any light on the question at hand.

I think that examples of reality does shed light on why we lose with the unions. BA shows the unions as capitalist structures that are active in organising and implementing attacks on the working class.

right, but this still isn't an argument, since single cases don't prove generalities. for instance less than a year ago Brighton bin workers all-but completely stopped massive pay cuts on day 2 of a week-long official strike. by your 'reasoning', this in fact proves the unions are pro-worker structures for beating the bosses. now neither position is correct, but you're not offering any exlpanation, just restating again and again that unions are capitalist.

'why do objects fall?'
'i saw some objects falling in the news yesterday'
'yes, but the question is why they fall'
'they fall because they have a downward trajectory'
'but some objects have an upward trajectory, then fall, so you haven't explained anything'
'i've explained that the falling objects i listed have a downward trajectory'.

Why do we lose with the unions?
baboon is responding by referrering to a theory that is based not just on immediate empirical evidence but a theory derived from a historical accumulation of evidence; a theory which argues that we lose repeatedly with the unions because their function is to protect the capitalist order from the class struggle. The tendency to 'lose' is a general one and does not mean that there cannot be cases where official strikes bring gains, but even there it is necessary to examine the real dynamic between the workers and the union structures. So I don't see why arguing that unions can only be properly understood as state organs within the working class misses the point of this thread.

listing examples of unions doing bad things is not a 'theory'.

this still isn't an explanation of anything, or rather it's like saying WW1 was caused by military clashes between states. A statement of affairs, regardless of its accuracy, is not an explanation. why do objects fall? 'because that is their function'.

(a) baboon wasn't doing this, he was listing bad things unions have done that he read in the Guardian

(b) as has already been argued, just defining the unions as part of the state doesn't really explain anything (it just says we lose therefore the unions are on the side of the baddies), nor does it explain illegal unions, or unions that are clearly antagonistic to the state and act independently of it (e.g. CNT), or how those unions sometimes 'swap sides' (which requires an analysis of the actual role actual organisations play in the actual world, not the inversion of abstractions and general tendencies into causes.

The unions in the UK, in all the major industries of the UK, have now expressed themselves on their attitude to the coming struggles of the class. One can probably dismiss the ideas of "militant" Bob Crow of RMT - dress up in a silly costume and climb up Buckingham palace, but one can't dismiss the statements of intent in general. The Trades Union Congress has made it clear: we will work with elements in the Labour Party in order to show that the coming (attacks) cuts in the public sector are not in the national interest. The defence of the national interest as seen by this apparatus of the left wing of capital is entirely consistent with the unions as part of the state. The unions that spoke at the TUC Congress said that they would be organising "coordinated action". What this means is that they will not be organising any coordinated action but will continue their work of division at a higher level.

I apologise if some of my posts above have been bitty - that's certainly the case. But the assault of three of the UK's main trade unions against hundreds of thousands of heavily unionised members in the vitally important airport industry over the last 5 years has been something to behold. Workers have been divided between and within the unions, wage and condition cuts have followed one after the other and many workers, in echoes of the miners' strike have lost their jobs with union complicity, gone sick, given up and had seven colours of shit kicked out them not just by Willie Walsh (pantomime baddy), but by his trade union cohorts. It is testimony to the combativity of the working class that, after all this, they are still combative and up for a fight. It is not a coincidence that this 5 year old company/union assault on the workers began just after one the most significant examples of proletarian solidarity seen in the UK for years - the Gate Gourmet fight. What's gone on in the airport industry over the last five years is indicative of the role of the unions and should not be ignored.

The overwhelming role of the trade unions in Britain over the past decades has been to divide the working class, organise the attacks on it with the cooperation of management, implement and police those attacks. That is the overwhelming reality based on a theoretical conclusion going back to the communist left - particularly the German Left on the role of the unions. The premise is why do we lose with the union? According to JK, the answer is we win some, we lose some. Where does that take us for the struggles to come?

The unions in the UK, like everywhere else in the world, are, in their great majority, dividing the working class and lining up to stake their claim as good nationalists. They are not "negotiators" - as if they stand outside the classes, but defenders of the capitalist state.

Just a note on what I read in The Guardian today: in Wisconsin, the union at Harley-Davidson have delivered a vote agreeing to a seven year pay freeze, the replacement of hundreds of permanent jobs with temporary ones and a deterioration in conditions that can only get worse.

I don't understand your method JK. You are perfectly aware that baboon was basing his view on a theoretical postulate derived from the communist left, as he confirms in his last post; in turn this postulate is based on another theoretical notion, ie that organisations which play a fundamental role in bourgeois society have a class nature which determines their behaviour and activities, and thus the attitude that revolutionaries need to adopt toward them. Marx saw the unions as proletarian organisations, albeit with certain limitations; later on, the marxist movement was split between seeing them as still basically proletarian and seeing them as bourgeois, as state organs.

I don't see why these positions are not theories, leaving out which theories correspond most closely to the historical evidence. By contrast JK's view (and perhaps the view that is predominant on libcom) seems to be predicated on a rejection of any general theory about the class nature and function of the trade unions.

"Why do unions do bad things?"

"Because they're part of the state. Duh."

I mean, this seems so clear to me, what don't the rest of you understand?

Yes. It would be nice if someone did this. Because examinations of instances, especially those which are counter-tendency, can illuminate tendencies.

For example:

So... what happened in that case, Alf, Baboon? Presumably the union in that case was also part of the state, does this mean that sometimes being part of the state offers workers a chance at victory....?

Over all, "why do we lose with the unions" is a more fruitful discussion if enriched by "when do we lose with the unions, and how" -- especially if the aim is to talk to anyone who is not already convinced by the a priori postulate "We lose with the unions."

Oh, well when you put it that way... I believe that this is what they call A Theory.

I intend to deal with all this in my forthcoming pamphlet, "A Communist Theoretically Confirms For Other Communists Those Things Which Communists Agree Are Communist Components Of Communist Theory."

This reminds me, I heard about one time this one union killed this one guy. It's because all unions by their nature are part of the state.

Or:

"The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes".

Communist Manifesto

A position can be based on theory, and theory can be based on historical trends, but a position is not a theory.

Along with Alf and Baboon I do not understand what comrades are wanting from us. We have explained numerous times why the unions are part of the state and are an integral part of the ruling class's repressive appartus. We found this on our theory of decadence. Form this theoretical basis Baboon has shown how the unions actions are concrete confirmation of that role. It could well be we are not understanding what comrades want from us, so please explain to us what you want.
On the Bin mens victory, yes it could be seen as proving the unions can defend us. On the other hand, it could also show that it was the determination of the bin-men to defend themselves that pushed back the attack. The fact his took place within a union framework does not prove the unions are not part of the state, just that in this case it was flexible enough to contain the workers. If we think that the power of the unions is simply its structures we are disarming ourselves. The ideology of the unions as being part of the class and the only way to struggle despite the actions of the leaders, is its most powerful tool/. You do not even have to be in a union to be imprisoned in this conception. And the unions when the struggles begin to push beyond them will certainly be willing to appear to go with the workers by agreeing to set up strike committes, mass assemblies etc as long as they and their ideology hold sway. We saw this in the 1980's with the Cobas in Italy and the coordinations in France.
We have always said the power of the unions is to absorb some of the most militant workers and at times the unions and the bosses will back down faced with workers militancy rather than see the hold of the unions broken. But examples like the bin men are an exception which the unions are more than happy to use in order to show that they really can be radical if only the workers push them hard enough

Do keep up. Baboon wasn't offering a "view", he was quoting bad stuff wot unions have done, hence I said:

I can't put it any more succintly than that. If this were a science forum and somebody asked for an explanation of gravity, listing examples of things falling down that you read in the paper would be similarly irrelevant.

get over yourself, nobody's demanding anything from you (plural), i simply pointed out that simply listing examples of unions doing bad things adds nothing to the thread. this really is elementary stuff. believe it or not, restating THE LINE over and over again doesn't constitute an argument either, regardless of the truth-value of the line in question. and personally i find it tiresome that as a libcom thread grows longer, the probability of it being sidetracked into a discussion of THE ICC's LINE approaches 1, probably itself a symptom of seeing libcom as a site to make unidirectional "interventions" rather than engage in discussion.

Frankly Alf, i don't doubt your sincerity but this line of argument is dire. I don't accept your generalisations, so i must be against general theories as such. A simple reading of my posts on this thread would disprove this, since i've sketched a theory rooted in analysis of the role played by organisations, arguing that a representative function tends to lead to a mediating role which tends to see unions more and more not only cease to defend workers but actively side with capital.

Now that theory may be right or wrong, but it has the virtue of not immediately falling down in the face of numerous counter-examples, such as the Brighton bin-men, the Starbucks Workers Union, the CNT etc, where workers have won with unions. In the Brighton bin men's case, their propensity for unnofficial action made effective official action a necessity for the union to maintain its representative role, else it would have been bypassed by its rank and file. In the other two cases, the unions in question consciously and deliberately avoid playing a representative or mediating role, trying to rely on unmediated direct action (well, the CNT does take legal action too, although it's seen as problematic).

By not being immediately contradicted by concrete counter-examples, i think such a theory helps explain why we lose with the unions, which is the question at hand. I think it's much more productive than the kind of left-communist metaphysics again on show here, where abstractions from concrete reality (general tendencies: losing with the unions, decadent capitalism) are held to be determinant of concrete reality. For the hard of thinking, I am not opposing making generalisations, I am stating that such abstractions of thought do not determine concrete reality, and thus cannot explain why organisations behave in a certain way.

There's a fundamental ontological inversion going on there that calls to mind Marx's critique of Hegel's mysticism, which i suspect is also why arguing with the ICC feels like arguing with christians. I don't doubt your sincerity. You may even have arrived at some of the right ideas. But the thought process stands reality on its head.

I can't believe I missed this, but this is a spectacular misrepresentation, and I don't know whether it's more generous to attribute it to slander or stupidity. Seriously, try reading the words in my posts. Strung together with correct syntax, these form sentences which convey meaning. If you do this, you'll no longer have to invent bizarre positions to attribute to me. Still I guess a straw man argument is an argument of sorts, so maybe this constitutes progress.

Apologies to everyone else for the hostile tone, but frankly such a crude straw man deserves derision.

I don't think winning temporary reforms or victories through a union changes the dynamic they play- in which in the overall picture of class struggle, we do lose with the unions because they are unable, in themselves, to advance the class struggle past a certain point.

Bread and butter victories are temporary- there is no such thing as a permanent reform through capitalism. Whether the Starbucks workers in NYC were able to get city wide wage increases, doesn't mean those increases are permanent- in most cases they last for a relatively short time before coming under attack again.

Workers engaging in struggle outside of the unions are also able to gain temporary bread and butter victories (wildcat strikes, ad hoc committee's and demands, etc)- so I don't see it as a game changer that some of the time, groups of workers in a union will win temporary reforms.

We lose with the unions because they are unable to become vehicles to advance the class struggle beyond their inherent limitations as being a mediator in some form (sometimes though not always through collective bargaining, negotiations and direct brokering of labor power).

The UE Republic Doors & Windows occupation is a good example. The workers undertook a strategy that hadn't been utilized by American workers in generations- and then it was during a very active period of industrial strife- however if they had made attempts to spread that struggle to other workers to strike and occupy, UE would not become a vehicle for revolutionary change. An organization thats purpose under capitalism is to act as a middle man in some form between labor and capital will always act conservatively. The CGT in France '68, the GSEE in Greece 2010, all of the unions involved in the TEKEL strikes in Turkey 2009, etc.

A much better discussion would be the role of anarcho-syndicalist unions, how they see themselves and what they do today. Outside of a mediator role, I don't think it's appropriate to call such an organization a union. But thats just me.

Dev, although I could have an honest debate with your last sentence, that response has way too much depth and analysis for you to join the ICC

i just want to draw attention to this too, because it exemplifies two problems in this discussion (and the 'intervention' approach of the ICC to libcom in general):

Firstly, it subtly shifts the discussion from the topic of the thread to a discussion of the validity of THE ICC's LINE, in this case that unions are a part of the state. Hey everybody, forget the topic, here's a template argument in defence of the ICC position!

Secondly, it completely undermines the argument that was made only a few posts earlier; namely if the unions are part of the state, and we sometimes win and sometimes lose, then their being part of the state is not an explanatory factor, merely a constant. Thus the introduction of the 'unions are part of the state' bears no logical relation to the discussion even on ernie's own terms, and only serves the first point, namely to shift the discussion to everybody debating the ICC's positions, which as ever are unfalsified, and indeed proved all the more true with each counter-example.

Devoration, I think that that's a good suggestion at the end of your post. I think what you underestimate in the above is the active role that the unions play in the organising, implementation and policing of capitalism's attacks on the working class.

I hesitate to come back on this; Joseph. I find your approach to this debate somewhat repressive, since it seems to imply that any attempt on our part to argue our positions can be dismissed as a kind of autistic repetition of a holy truth. We are convinced of a number of things and we think it is worth trying to convince others. Are you really doing anything different, either on these boards or when you are taking part in a discussion with workers in a strike (say)?

On your theory:

"A simple reading of my posts on this thread would disprove this, since i've sketched a theory rooted in analysis of the role played by organisations, arguing that a representative function tends to lead to a mediating role which tends to see unions more and more not only cease to defend workers but actively side with capital. Now that theory may be right or wrong, but it has the virtue of not immediately falling down in the face of numerous counter-examples, such as the Brighton bin-men, the Starbucks Workers Union, the CNT etc, where workers have won with unions. In the Brighton bin men's case, their propensity for unnofficial action made effective official action a necessity for the union to maintain its representative role, else it would have been bypassed by its rank and file. In the other two cases, the unions in question consciously and deliberately avoid playing a representative or mediating role, trying to rely on unmediated direct action (well, the CNT does take legal action too, although it's seen as problematic).By not being immediately contradicted by concrete counter-examples, i think such a theory helps explain why we lose with the unions, which is the question at hand. I think it's much more productive than the kind of left-communist metaphysics again on show here, where abstractions from concrete reality (general tendencies: losing with the unions, decadent capitalism) are held to be determinant of concrete reality. For the hard of thinking, I am not opposing making generalisations, I am stating that such abstractions of thought do not determine concrete reality, and thus cannot explain why organisations behave in a certain way"

OK: I accept this is a theory, and explained in this way, I understand it better. But I want to take issue with some key points.

First, as Devoration also argues, some of us are not convinced that the CNT is still a trade union in any real sense (we would say the same about the IWW). We could equally argue that when the CNT did reach the stage of being a mass organisation, really able to 'represent' workers, as in the events of the 1930s, it also more and more acted against the interests of the workers.

Secondly, not just the Brighton bin men, but innumerable 'official' strikes have won some concrete gains for the workers. But as Ernie pointed out, what is key here is the impetus coming from the workers, above all the danger of the movement going beyond its initial limitations, the threat of extension; it is this which generally compels the ruling class to make concessions. In every official strike there is still a tendency for workers to come up against the union structure, the union rule book, the union way of doing things, and yes, we need a general theory to explain why this is the case. Furthermore it is the role of revolutionary organisations or radical workers' groups to push this often implicit conflict forward.

Third: when you say that 'unions tend to actively side with capital', or that the problem stems from their trying to 'represent' the workers, what does that tell us about the class nature of the unions, a question you again don't take up? Can an organisation which has sided with capital in a major class conflict then go back to siding with the workers in another situation? And will the state just watch from the sidelines, not doing everything it can to enmesh such an organisation in its own machinery?

Regarding 'abstractions of thought determining concrete reality', again we have to return to some very basic marxist postulates. We are not talking about 'abstractions of thought'. According to marxist theory, the class position and function of the capitalist 'determines' (although not in an absolute manner, since we are dealing with human beings) his behaviour towards the working class. He is compelled by this position, regardless of whether he is 'sincere' or humanitarian, to increase the exploitation of his workforce, above all in times of crisis. Of course there are exceptions - capitalists who give up their wealth, or even become revolutionaries. And how often do empiricist bourgeois historians argue against the alleged abstractions of marxism by pointing to this or that individual case, for example, of bourgeois who didn't support the bourgeois revolution, but fought on the side of the aristocracy. Does this mean that in a general sense the bourgeoisie does not act in its overall class interests?

This is why the question of the unions class nature is so important for us. If, as the German left argued a long time ago, they have become structurally integrated into capital, then their behaviour towards the working class will obey the same basic 'determinates' as the ones which compel capitalists to extort more surplus value.

You won't agree. But I don't see why you have such a problem engaging in a real confrontation with what is, after all, a long-established position within the workers' movement, without constantly hurling anathemas like 'metaphysics' and 'mysticism' and basically arguing that this whole discussion is a waste of time.

Alf, don't forget what started this: one of your members listing a host of individual examples without explanation. And like Joseph pointed out, "The unions are part of the state", if true, is true both of the cases when workers have "won" and when they have "lost." Thus "the unions are part of the state" is not a good explanation for why workers "lose" with the unions. It's rather like "why do bombs kill people?" "because they are dropped from planes." A claim which is true in general but doesn't actually answer the question in a real way. So, who do you think this stuff was convincing?

Now we're starting to get somewhere. Your implicit answer to "why do we lose with the unions" here seems to be two-fold. One, an answer to "when do we lose", which for you seems to be "we/workers lose with unions when the workers do not threaten to go beyond the initial limitations of their struggle and do not threaten to extend the struggle." Two, in sum, "the unions don't want to win, they don't exist to win, and are structurally incapable of being made into organizations built to win." (You put this in fancier terms, but it boils down to this. This leads to your corollary, " In every official strike there is still a tendency for workers to come up against the union structure, the union rule book, the union way of doing things." Especially if the workers are going to do things that make "winning" really possible.

I mostly agree with the first point and with the corollary. I'm not sure the second really makes sense. The reason the state licenses/recognizes unions is so that those unions can act as guarantors of social peace/labor peace. This often comes in the form of concessions in exchange for folk agreeing to work/going back to work. Here too it seems to me that the issue returns to what we mean by "winning," since pacifying concessions are possible not just in response to unions and a non-union formation that merely wanted to "win" according to the logic of the class in itself (ie, according a logic which continues to presume the commodification of labor power, which is to say, the subjection of labor to capital) would likely achieve only better terms for the sale of labor power. That's nice, people should have better lives, but it's a different sort of "win" than a communist one. Anyway.

Getting back to the first point - we lose because the workers don't push beyond the union form, I'm sympathetic like I said but I want to quibble on two points. One, I think you rather mechanically place the union and the workers as external to each other, with the workers always being an engine for pushing forward, even if an engine without enough fuel and power sometimes, and with the union always being a structure of containment which limits the engine's power and tries to keep it from starting. I think the reality is more complicated than that.

Two, I'm having a hard time telling the difference between your view here and the view that Ernie criticizes here:

Actually, I'm not sure I can tell the difference between Ernie's view and the view he criticizes...

The last bit, the bosses being afraid to see unions' power broken, that's a bit hard for me to get. I know there are some cases of this. In general in the United States, though, there aren't unions with any hold. Private sector unionization here is about 8%, over all unionization is about 12%, and bosses fight like hell to prevent to reverse unionization. Are the bosses working against their own interests, then?

I do think Ernie has one good point, here:

That's true, and important. You don't have to believe the rest of what Ernie says to agree with this, though.

Why not? Surely this is logically possible. Particularly if "siding with the workers" is about achieving concessions - since concessions can be an important part of pacification. After all, as you right, behaviors are not determined "in an absolute manner, since we are dealing with human beings." As I tried to say, to my mind the interesting questions here are historical ones about what the conditions are for when and where people lose, as well as the occasional counter-tendential win.

the point is this: the generalisation with regard to the unions or the decadence of capital is an epistemological manouvre [jargon = to do with our knowledge of reality]. For example, periodisation, for a historian, is a means to break up the complex, messy events of history into intelligible chunks, by abstracting from what seem to be the essential characteristics or tendencies. This is perfectly legitimate, although the specific periodisations are largely arbitrary, they may be more or less helpful. So decadence is one way to characterise the present period.

The problem comes by switching from an epistemologial manouvre to an ontological one [jargon = to do with reality itself], that is to say attributing causation to the abstraction. So for example, and i'll quote your positions since you've been alluding to them:

These two sentences include a causal claim (in italics), that decadence is implicated in this "transformation", and two categorical statements (in bold). The causal claim is the epistemology/ontology fallacy above, the two categorical statements are pretty alien to the "basic Marxist postulates" you claim to hold dear, since you'll note Marx talks overwhelmingly of tendencies rather than making categorical statements. Now categorical statements are vulnerable to falsification by, strictly speaking, a single counter-example, or more generously to a small group of well-marshelled ones.

So when faced with unions that do not conform to your essential idea of a union, you're forced to either (a) modify or abandon your theory, (b) claim that they are not really unions (as devoration1 does above, and you entertain), or (c) claim that eventually they will conform to your theory (as you're trying to do with the CNT, ignoring the fact they learned from the problem of representation, leading them to consciously reject it in the post-war period).

(a) is untenable, since you're 'correct'. (b) is a common strategy, as is (c), which however concedes the point by ceding categorical statements to tendencies. Now whatever the problems with the CNT (and there are plenty), it is absolutely untenable to claim that they "only serve to discipline the working class and sabotage its struggles". Likewise, whatever the problems with the Starbucks Workers Union, it's untenable to claim it's an "organ of capitalist order within the proletariat", since it's main activity thus far has been to organise disorder to the detriment of capital. To claim that neither are unions (option (b)) is to play humpty dumpty with words in order to fit reality to the theory; unions not being defined by their concrete reality as groups of workers organising workplace struggle, but in comparison to the abstract idea of 'the union' erected in theory.

Maybe you say they'll end up there (i.e. option c). Fine, but that's a retreat from categorical statements (unions everywhere, only...) and back to tendencies. It's a stopped clock theory - it may not describe reality today, but it will sometimes. In any case the tendency is the observation from the analysis not the cause of the phenomenon analysed. This runs contrary to your line of argument - the tendency is not the cause, it does not speak to the 'why?' which is the question in this thread. I mean even in the physical sciences, the most eloquent and accurate description of say, Newton's inverse-square law of gravitation does not explain why gravity happens (which is to do with fundamental particle interactions). So there's the fundamental epistemology/ontology fallacy, that you're not speaking to the why, to causes, but describing things as they appear (baboon literally listing them).

Then there's the issue that once you say we can win and lose with the unions, their integration (or otherwise) into the state is irrelevent. It doesn't explain why we lose, and why we win, because it's constant in all cases. So to explain that you have to have recourse to other explanations. You say "what is key here is the impetus coming from the workers"; this is precisely the argument i've been making throughout. But that would mean a cause of losing with the unions is a lack of impetus coming from the workers; presumably if more workers had more impetus, more victories would be achieved with the unions. Which is why i argued this is a weak critique back on page 2. Now while militancy or lack thereof is clearly a factor, if the critique is to apply to militant rank-and-file trade unionism too, it needs to be a structural critique of the kind i've outlined.

You're aware that the occupation was largely the result of actions by UE officers and staff, right?

Edit:

I just read JK's last post, I think we were writing at the same time. I agree with him across the board. But, let's say for the sake of argument that the ICC maneuver he describes is correct -- "This formation has ceased to be a union." In that case, it seems to me that we could translate "why do we lose with the unions" into something like "Why do some struggles begun in relation to unions manage to go beyond the union form while others fail?" That too would be more interesting than this business about all unions being part of the state etc.

Agree.