banning paid organizers

Nate, i couldn't find where my last comment on the WSM on syndicalism is posted on the site. So here it is: (Admins could replace this with a URL if you know where this is.)

4. WSM on Syndicalism

The fact is, there are quite a few different ways that anarcho-syndicalism can be interpreted. The fundamental failing of the WSM's discussion is that it doesn't acknowledge or deal with the fact that they are arguing only against particular interpretations of syndicalism. Their polemic therefore has the character of a strawman fallacy, because they are fighting a mere caricature.

I debated some of these issues with Alan MacSimoin of the WSM almost three years ago. That debate is here:

http://www.workersolidarity.org/debates.html

WSM says at the end of their critique of syndicalism that they favor the same sort of union structures as do syndicalists, but they don't really tell us what that might be.

"[Syndicalists] hold that most workers are not revolutionaries because the structure of their unions is such that it takes the initiative away from the rank and file." They infer that syndicalists therefore deduce that the strategy is organize all workers into "one big union in preparation for the revolutionary general strike."

There may be some syndicalists who think this way, but they are saying this is a defining feature of what the syndicalist view is, and as such this is a caricature, a strawman.

As I said earlier, there are a variety of things that affect the level of class consciousness. Partly it is the sort of culture that we live in, which the WSM highlights. But it is also a question of activity. Again, people tend to become what they do, consciousness is shaped by practice. What's required is for the working class to change, through the development of self-confidence, skills, habits of solidarity, active involvement, and understanding of the society, of the enemy they face. There are a variety of things that can affect this, such as publishing and training and alternative school efforts within the working class, the experience of greater solidarity around them, the experience of collective power through
actually being drawn into struggles with others, the development of habits and understanding of how to organize in a self-managing, directly democratic way, and so on.

Developing mass organizations that are self-managed, and facilitate collective struggle, are certainly important and necessary, but there are a variety of ways that the way the working class organizes itself can change over time.

Given the current level of consciousness in the USA, it is reasonable to view it as a
step forward if a sizeable group of workers form a new union organization that is more militant, more open about recognizing the inevitable conflict of interests with the
employers, and self-managing in its form of organization. This would be a step forward even if, in keeping with the current level of class consciousness, it did not formally adopt a commitment to some revolutionary verbiage.

Thus the development of new selfmanaged union organization does not have to take the form of an explicitly revolutionary union in an ideological sense.

I've expressed here how the WSA views this. We support initiatives to form grassroots
forms of worker mass organization, independent of the AFL-CIO or CTW hierarchies,
even if these organizations are not explicitly revolutionary, and even if, from our
point of view, they still have organizational defects, such as dependency on foundation grant financing, which is a weakness of the workers centers movement. But we still support the workers centers as a step forward, given the work they are doing, even tho some are structured with executive directors like an NGO.

We recognize that it is often unavoidable at present that struggles will be conducted
through imperfect organizations, and we support the actual struggles, but that is
consistent with saying that, as left-libertarians, we should always be looking for
ways to push the envelope, in terms of a higher level of democracy, towards genuine
self-management of struggles.

Now this is in fact one particular interpretation of anarcho-syndicalism. It's a different
interpretation than, say, AnarchoSyndicalist Review. But each is still legitimately a
form of libertarian syndicalism, and if WSM is to have an honest discussion of syndicalism, it needs to acknowledge that there are different interpretations of anarcho-syndicalism.

In addition to the fallacy of saying that syndicalism must inherently say that it only
the union structure that is the cause of a non-revolutionary working class, I would
point out that the WSM is equally mistaken in its overemphasis on the role of "ideas"
as the counter factor. This overlooks the crucial importance of practice, that practice
shapes consciousness, since humans are, as Marx said, "beings of practice."

WSM: "Syndicalism in itself does not create a revolutionary political organization. It
creates industrial unions. It is apolitical, arguing that all that is necessary to make
the revolution is for the workers to take the factories and the land. After that it believes
that all the other institutions of the ruling class will come toppling down. They do
not accept that the working class must take political power."

Again, this is a strawman fallacy. There are three separate mistakes:

(A) The assumption that syndicalism is static, an eternal definition unchanging for all time.

This is false because in fact syndicalism has undergone political development over time. WSA's extension of syndicalism acknowledges that class struggle spreads throughout the society, and that there are class struggles in the community, over things like housing or public transit fares. Thus we advocate the development of self-managed mass organizations in the community, such as a transit riders union, a tenant union, and other possible community organizations. In the 1920s there was a debate with the CNT in Spain where activists worried about the potential for CNT union struggles to be boxed into just the issues that arise in a workplace struggle. And a number of syndicalists such as Joan Peiro, advocated the development of neighborhood based organization to discuss and struggle and mobilize around broad issues of concern to the working class. This led directly to the mass rent strike in Barcelona in 1931.

(B) Political Organization

The fact is there have been numerous revolutionary left-libertarian political
organizations whose main strategy was syndicalist. When WSA was founded, we
defined ourselves as an "anarcho-syndicalist" organization. But we are a political
organization, not a union or proto-union. We've always acknowledged in practice
(if not always very clearly in our political statements) the distinction between
political organization and mass workplace organization.

In the 1980s an historical example that I pointed to as a precedent of the WSA
was the role of the Turin Libertarian Group -- an anarchosyndicalist political
group -- in the Turin factory council movement (modeled on the British shop
stewards' movement).

And of course the FAI was a political organization formed precisely to have an impact
within the mass unions of the CNT.

There is nothing in the nature of anarchosyndicalism to not have a revolutionary
political group. Moreover, if you acknowledge that the change in working class
consciousness is likely to be protracted, it is almost inevitable. There are three
other reasons. First, there is a great variety of mass organizations thru which
worker struggle takes place. You need to be able to have an organization that
activists in these struggles can belong to and which can have a strategy for. Second,
there are also struggles against oppression not directly on class lines, such as
against racism or gender inequality. These are also part of the struggle for
liberation, which cannot therefore be reduced to the union organization. Third, as
noted above there are class struggles outside the workplace, and community organization
may arise in this connection, apart from union organization.

Finally, it is necessary to have a means to bring together and retain and educate
the revolutionary libertarian syndicalist activists. Unions are likely to be
heterogeneous in their consciousness, and therefore are not adequate to this function.

(C) Political Power

In regard to the issue of political power, political functions are obviously going
to have to continue to be performed in any feasible society we might create --
basic rules must be decided, there must be a way for the society to make these
decisions and make them stick, there must be a way to defend the social order
and enforce the basic rules and depend against anti-social forms of behavior
such as murder, rape or theft of personal possessions. There must be a way to
adjudicate accusations of these transgressions that are made against people.

I believe that the working class must take political power to free itself, and I believe
this is the position of the WSA, as expressed in its "Where We Stand" statement. It's
just that it doesn't happen by taking over and running a state, but by replacing
the state with a different type of governance structure, rooted in the participatory
democracy of the assemblies, and extended via delegates to grassroots congresses.

Moreover, the Zaragoza program of the CNT, decided in May 1936, obviously provided
for a polity, a structure of governance. They advocated regional and national
people's congresses to make the basic rules, although controversies or important
questions were to be referred back to the base assemblies. They provided for the
raising of an army, a People's Militia, to defend the revolutionary society.

The WSM document supports what the Friends of Durruti advocated in 1937. What the WSM is apparently unaware of is that what they advocate was the OFFICIAL PROGRAM OF THE CNT prior to its joining the Popular Front government in Nov. 1936. The Friends of Durruti WERE anarchosyndicalists.

In July of 1936 in Barcelona there was a heated debate on what the CNT should do, a
debate at a regional plenary, of over 500 CNT delegates. The local union federation
of Bajo Llobregat advocated overthrowing the Generalitat and the unions taking power. This was defended in the debate by Joan Garcia Oliver. He was opposed by Federica Montseny and Abad Diego de Santillan, representing the Peninsular Committee of the FAI. They advocated a "temporary" collaboration with the political parties on the Anti-fascist Militia Committee, which had been proposed by Lluis Companys. This commmittee idea was a clever ploy of Companys because he knew the anarchists could rationalize this by the fact it was nominally independent of the state.

But the debate continued in the union and six weeks later, at a national plenary
in Sept. 3, the CNT proposed the overthrow of the national Popular Front government,
jointly with the UGT, and its replacement by a proletarian government of sorts,
a National Defense Council. Under the CNT's Zaragoza program, this council would
be an administrative committee that would have to be accountable to the base assemblies by means of a national workers congress, which would replace the parliament (Cortes).

Perhaps the most critical part of the CNT proposal was for a unified People's Militia
as the official armed force in Spain, run by "joint CNT-UGT commissions". In other words, the unions would have a monopoly of armed power.

Now if this proposal isn't proposing "working class political power" what is?

I think the CNT came to the idea of national and regional defense councils, to control
the social self-defense function, by an analogy with the national and regional
economics councils, which were part of the Zaragoza program. But because the defense councils weren't in the Zaragoza program, this is why the Friends of Durruti refer to it as an "innovation".

Throughout Sept. and Oct. 1936 Solidaridad Obrera, the CNT paper in Barcelona, mounted a big campaign for the national and regional defense councils. During that time Liberto Callejas was the managing editor of that paper and one of the main editorial writers and journalists was Jaime Balius. Both Balius and Callejas were initiators of the Friends of Durruti in March 1937. They had been fired by the CNT regional committee from the paper in Nov. 1936 because they refused to accept the turn towards Popular Front collaboration.

I tell this whole story in my essay on the Spanish revolution:

http://www.workersolidarity.org/spain.pdf

Certainly it is true that there did exist "anti-power" anarchists in the CNT. Jose
Peirats is an example. He was opposed to both the National Defense Council proposal as well as Popular Front collaboration. He had some unrealistic notion of society as a dispersed set of local committees and collectives. And there were also people in the CNT who advocated Popular Front collaboration from the beginning, like the Treintista leader Horacio Prieto. But there were also anarchosyndicalists who clearly advocated for the working class taking political power. As I said earlier, anarcho-syndicalism has multiple interpretations.

That's just it they should fuck off, their idea of keeping on track is to pimp their bullshit unionism, we shouldn't have paid parasites like you 'leading' the leaders of the working class. It's a very basic principle.

And because there isn't much self organising obvious at the moment is an argument for why anarchists should be even more resistant to becoming professional organisers.

Also whether or not something happens now all the time does not mean it's not an issue? If anarchists are serious about their politics they should have the confidence to stand by their principles and not fall into oppurtunism. If various social democrats want to pimp the business unions let them, anarchists should stick to their principled opposition and argue against the unions. Afterall every 'anarchist' working for the T&G is one less anarchist in a real workplace and if we keep capitulating then it becomes self fufilling ie there is no self organisation because those who could be doing it are recuperated into business unions. Your argument seems to be 'they are the only show in town', which is nothing more than oppurtunist shite.

rervol:

well, we didn't join a recognized union, so we satisfied your definition of "informal." the point is not having a formal organization, with membership, elected committee, written materials like leaflets or newsletter, some sort of program, etc. but even if there is a formal organization in this sense, there are still informal characteristics of the situation that are very important -- how active people are, the level of resistance to the employers, the personal links between people, the political consciousness within the workforce, people having skills useful for organizing & running an organization, etc.

in regard to full-time organizers, mitch (syndicalist) used to be a staff organizer, so obviously WSA doesn't ban full-time organizers. we usually make a distinction between the full-time officials and the staff. on the other hand, we also criticize "staff-driven" unions. it's a question of the relationship between the whole structure of the union and the members, not the mere fact that some people are hired to do organizing.

rank and file opposition movements in the USA usually involve criticisms of the full-time officers, or even unpaid elected officers, not so much the staff.

I was at a talk hosted by the IWW recently in D.C. with one of their organizer-members (a non-paid position). He'd been involved with organizing couriers in Chicago. The Chicago IWW set out to organize couriers before any of it's members were couriers (though one of the organizers eventually did get a job as a courier). One thing they did to help was get an IWW member from another courier organizing effort to move to Chicago and help try and getting things going there. If I recall, there was some sort of monetary stipend involved. The IWW has paid organizers in the past, as well as paid office staff and the General-Secretary Treasurer. The turnout for IWW election of union-wide officers (GST, General Executive Board) was nothing particularly extraordinary.

You know the question that goes, "Would you have sex with me for a million dollars?" If the answer is yes, see if they'll do it for $25. If they are insulted, point out that they are already a whore and now it's just a question of haggling.

That's sort of how I feel about the IWW compared to other unions.

The IWW does everything other unions in the U.S. do functionally. It'll hire staff, file for NLRB elections, file unfair labor practices, negotiate contracts, have conflicts between the local and the international, miss manage money, have strikes, raise funds, distribute funds, etc... what it doesn't do is what... no portable benefits (insurance) and doesn't put money into electoral campaigns. The IWW is just strapped for resources, has no industrial strategy, and no industrial density. Unsurprisingly, this makes their efforts fail a lot.

The IWW aspires to be a union, and so NEFAC largely tries to treat it as one; one that NEFACers are very sympathetic to, sometimes members of, etc... but it's still a union and all the problems with unions would be problems for the IWW if only they were more successful in organizing.

Did I mention that at the IWW talk in question, there was no talk of abolishing the wage system? I've seen a lot of other union organizers and representatives give much more radical speeches.

me:

staff can sometimes be a problem, tho. at the time of the last election in the national writers' union, there was a national union conference and a lawyer was there representing the UAW, which NWU is affiliated to. he was basically threatening and bullying the union, threatening them with trusteeship if they didn't do what he demanded. he was staff. the NWU's difficult relationship to the UAW was one of the issues in the election. i'm not sure to what degree Tasini's uncritical relationship to the UAW was a factor in his defeat. but this lawyer was basically an enforcer for the UAW international administration. this is rather different than a staff oganizer who is organizing workers into unions.

this is not to say i have no criticisms of staff organizers. i'll give an example, again from the UAW. i had a conversation with a UAW staff organizer organizing teaching assistants at University of California. her approach was a total contrast to the way we built the TAs union i was a part of in the early '70s. her method was not to have meetings -- it wasn't a question of getting them together, but to talk to them one on one, to convince them of the value of the union. i can see how this would be useful if your aim is simply to get someone to sign a dues checkoff form, so that the union gets money. not sure how this builds the power and confidence and self-organization of the employees. i mean, i could see talking to people one-on-one if this was a prelude to them moving to a higher level of participation, getting them to actually do something. but she didn't mention that.

but this is a criticism of her particular approach, that is, the UAW's approach.

Nate, i've told you why i think full time organisers are bad for the class, I assume you agree because you are opposed to them in the IWW, your argument seems to revolve around me whether this or that individual organiser deters working class struggle, my argument is that the practice itself is anti working class and that anarchists shouldn't be involved in it.

Your argument that if the workers say they don't want 'a union' they don't get one is pure shit. If workers self organisation developed, if the IWW was extending into important sectors, then you can bet that there would be a huge push from the business unions to recruit in those sectors and it certainly wouldn;'t be the simplistic scenario you suggest, there would be a vicious fight. Afterall it's never a simple matter of the workers wanting or not wanting this, rather there's going to be division over it, some workers will support the business unions and some won't. Those organisers will be at the forefront of winning people to the business unions and they will certainly be in conflict with the IWW or whatever base union or workers organisation is making gains, what are those 'anarchist; full time organisers going to do then?

that's why we are on principle opposed to anarchists taking full time organiser jobs.

If paid union organizers were proletarians, then necessarily their interest would be opposed to that of their employer - the union.

Good analysis. It almost fits on a bumpersticker.

and yes there is that.

OK. So in practice, how often does this go beyond getting people to sign up/pay dues? i.e. how often have you experienced (either directly or anecdotally) significant organisation which went along with the formal process of unionisation? And how often have you seen industrial action following unionisation (i.e. not dead-ends like pr campaigns?).Not an attack, I'm genuinely interested in your experiences of this, but you seemed pretty pessimistic about how effective it was (hard to find workers who are clued up/motivated etc.).

I spent a while looking for this, but couldn't find. Either way, one poster was an organiser for the SuperSizeMyPay campaign, and tried hard to push the boundaries of his job role - he caught a massive amount of flack from a lot of other people for doing so, and was put in exactly the position that revol's outlined (the union or the workers). I will try to find it again a bit later.

I can think of several stories in libcom news in the past few months where non-unionised workers have elected spokespople from wthin their own ranks.

ack. more later.

Do paid organizers assert their interests as proletarians against their employer, the union?

...

Some do. Some even form staff unions. Actually, come to think of it, didn't the IWW organize a staff union awhile back?

I actually met a paid organizer of a union staff union once...

Staff unions have paid organizers? Do those people have unions?

One day the IWW will have organized all staff of business unions and do-gooder NGOs (like ACORN, Green Peace, AFSC), workers cooperatives, and even the staff of lefty political parties. Once they are all in One Big Union, there will be a general strike among left staffers. This is in fitting with the ultra-left program, you see the IWW realizes that these NGOs and unions are the left-wing of capital; if all those do-gooders go on strike then there will no longer be any mass or activist leftist organizations holding back the proletariat from communism!

Admin - off-topic comments deleted

I'm not sure that's a complete understanding of the interests of proletarians. The antagonism is a class antagonism, usually but not always an individual one. Here's how you can tell:

If I lose my job tomorrow, and am unemployed, am I no longer a proletarian?

If I decide to quit my job for a year to take care of a baby, and live off my wife or girlfriend's income, am I not a proletarian for a year?

If I want to go to nursing school, and decide to get it done with as quickly as possible, quit my job, take out some loans, and pile on my courseload, am I a non-proletarian until I graduate and start paying the loans off?

If my prole status in these cases holds up -- who is the "employer" whose interests I oppose? In the first, the state maybe? When my unemployment runs out are they still my "employer"? In the second, is my partner my "employer"? I would be kept alive out of her paycheck, essentially in "exchange" for the housework and childcare I'm performing. Would she be a "capitalist"? And in the third -- who is my "employer"? The banks that are underwriting my tuition, in exchange for my future partial indentured servitude? The nursing school? The faculty and management of the nursing school? Hospitals, collectively?

MJ, I never said one must be employed to be proletarian. However, when one is employed and proletarian, one's interest is opposed to that of one's employer. Right?

A paid union organizer's employer is obviously the union. The example of being a stay-at-home dad is not related.

the opposition stems from our opposition to paid and/or unelected union positions which are involved in working with workers in struggle, hence it doesn't apply to secretaries but it does to organisers, or that's how i'd interpret it, maybe someone in Organise! might disagree with that interpretation but I doubt it.

I have told you why they are bad for the class, because they represent a profesionalisation of workers struggle, they are tied vis a vis their employment to business unions who anarcho syndicalist oppose, their role contains the distinct possibility of coming into conflict with workers self organisation ie say being parachuted in somewhere to organise the union in an industry in which workers are organising outside the business model.

Afterall we ban all cops, regardless if they've never had to baton a striking worker or not, regardless if they only ever investigate serious sexual assaults, so it is for union organisers regardless of whether they individually have only worked in sectors were there has been no self organised alternative.

Abstract idealism. You "represent" a pantomime of workers struggle, but that's not grounds for banning you in and of itself.

Not that I'm all that fascinated by this discussion, but let me make a couple of points anyway just to hopefully piss off Revol...

1. I see no distinction between internal and external organizers. Both are either about upping the skill levels of workers in their fight against bosses. So I think I disagree with Nate and MJ's distinctions there.
2. Its important to concieve of staff roles in ways that understand that they vary greatly between unions and even locals within unions.
3. I am no longer working clearly as an organizer in either an internal or external capacity. I now run a large local unions team devoted to contract enforcement, lmc models and contract negotiations. Still an organizing model position in my union but thats anomolous to most US unions.
4. If people consider union staff to be workers, which we clearly are not, then I would be considered a boss. Union staff are not exploited by capital, they're movement positions and are liberated from exploitation by the rank and file. So it depends on your orientation towards staff as to how you would concieve of my role speciffically.
5. I've never met an organizer or other staff in one of the few US organizing unions whose role was to suppress workers self-activity. Mostly we try to agitate them into setting their boss on fire.
6. Technically, my new position is both an unelected full time paid staffer and oddly enough I'm a member of my union for the first time as well. Go figure that one out Revol.

I'd think that any succesful workers movement independent of the business unions in sectors they deemed important would be met with a flood of 'paid organisers', if the IWW got anywhere with the Starbucks stuff, you can beat your arse that the unions will come sniffing around, presenting youse as amateurs, troublemakers and anything else, they will more than likely collaborate with business owners to keep the dangerous 'radicals' out.

If you don't think this will happen I think you are painfully niave.

Snore. If some union wanted to raid the wobs they wouldn't need to cut a deal with the employer to do it. In fact thats the opposite strategy for successful raid.

Did I say they would always do that, I'm sure your aware as a savvy strategist that there is more than one way to skin a cat and it's hardly an unknown event in US labour history now is it.

I note you don't deny that if the Wobs made significant headway in a sector the Unions saw as important they'd raid the shit out of them.

Yeah, but now that your a NEFAC supporter we can let you in on Duke's weaknesses (note: I'd sell Duke out for a beer). Your campaign should be safe.