unions: councilist reading list?

Unions against Revolution by Munis, if you can find he original with comments by the pre-ICC Internationalism is best, better than the Red And Black version. But Munis isn't strictly a councilist but a post-Trot.

I can't think of a particular councilist critique of unions.

There is actually not all that much on the topic, at least in English. But Pannekoek is a good place to start:
http://libcom.org/library/trade-unionism-pannekoek

For some of the historical context of the emergence of these positions in the German left, the motivated should check out Dauve's book The German Communist Left, now available in English:
http://us.share.geocities.com/collectiveact/dauve11.htm
Also, parts of the book and a KAPD text reprinted at the end shed light on the relation between the positions of the German left and syndicalist currents.

"the american labor movement: towards a new beginning", by Dolgoff.

Yes, I need to update the Reading Guide to include the Unions as a specific section. It is a list that has gone through many evolutions since I first wrote it in 1994, I believe. I started it in WordPerfect 5.1, for those who realize what that means.

There are a number of references to the unions in the 1917-24 writings of Pannekoek, Gorter, and Otto Ruhle, most of which I believe are in the Library here. The KAPD program and the AAUD Program are also excellent sources.

The position of the German communist left in this period was not that unions were reactionary under all circumstances, but that their fundamentally bourgeois nature was fully and very dangerously realized in world war and revolution, and that while working within the unions was not a problem in "normal times" and was in fact mandatory, in a revolutionary period, the unions could only act as a brake on the revolution.

I seem to remember Gorter having a piece in particular that addressed this, though I can't remember which one. I know it comes up in his reply to Lenin's Left-wing Communism.

FTIW, Bordiga and the Italian communist left in the same period had a very different view of the unions, which only later would become consistently/dogmatically (depending on your point of view) anti-union.

Post-1930, from the GIK forward, more or less when councilism distinguished itself from left communism, Pannekoek's piece Trade Unions is clear enough, but there is also Henk Canne-Meijer's The Rise of a New Labour Movement, and Paul Mattick's Spontaneity and Organisation, and then some later things from Solidarity UK, Echanges et Mouvement, Cajo Brendel, and I would also put Martin Glaberman's The Left-wing Committeeman, Unions and Workers, and his many concrete discussions of the role of unions in post-WWII workers' struggles, which are invaluable for their rich concreteness, in this category. Glaberman was not strictly speaking a councilist by lineage and he never really went beyond CLR James' limitations, but his writing on this dovetails with European councilism and later left communism.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Chris

I always thought Bugs was making a joke around mispronouncing "Moron". *mortified*

Well at least he never joined the World Socialist Party.

There's a number of things I disagree with him on, but I think his ideas for the IWW were probably the most coherent and (dare I say it?) realistic that have been proposed in the last 30 years. Of course the US working class has changed a lot in those 30 years but I still think it's a better starting point than blind devotion to the slogans of the past combined with acting like a wanna-be petite UE.

It certainly wasn't councilist in the specific sense, but pretty close to Glaberman's ideas, applied to the IWW; basically that the unions were too far gone for us to worry about 'rehabilitating' them, or even replacing them, but that we should try to be a workers' organization of a new sort. The spirit of which I think is still valid today.

I think I've covered this before and should be more dilligent in explaining my snarks. Sam stayed at my house back in 1980, and all the old timers (generation 1919) thought he was a crank. Quite lovable and charismatic, but a terrible sectarian spouting drivel that was quite plainly incorrect. Watching that go down made me question all his works because I simply could not trust his use of "facts".

You're right Oliver - our members were unlike Dolgoff. They had helped in starting the Winnipeg General Strike and the formation of the OBU (Bill Pritchard and others), JA McDonald was the editor of the Industrial Worker and wrote the IWW pamphlet "Unemployment and the Machine", also did time in Levenworth as a Chicago defendant. Fred Thompson had been a member of our Canadian sister party. Sam Orner in NYC led the famous 1933 Taxi Cab strike and was immortalized as "Lefty" in "Waiting For Lefty". Our members formed the backbone of the UAW's education dept. before the Reuthers took over. And until a personal falling out, Paul Mattick was a close sympethizer. there's a couple of others - I forget. But they actually did labor stuff with lots of people involved...

I think the problem with is that it's schematic. I agree there needs to be more local autonomy in unions - the right to withdraw from federations, etc. But it isn't going to happen for a very long time if at all. But what can happen - and I had some success building such networks around the IWW - is not focusing on an abstract principle of local autonomy but networking from the ground up over distances.

I agree wholeheartedly about the mini-UE.

I agree with being an organization of a new sort.

I would agree that the SPGB/WSP went through some pretty moronic times - highly sectarian when I first came across them in the 1970s. And we're rediscovering our pre-cold war activities which in North America, were quite interesting. I'm working on a book on the "One Big Union" which came out of our sister party in Canada, the SPC.

Agreed, but that's why I'm always hammering on process, following the constitution, etc. because you can't have a democratic organization if you are fudging on the common agreements. When you don't follow the process - even with the best intentions or no concern with immediate reprocussions - it always comes back to bite you.

BTW Thompson ran Ralph Chaplin out of the IWW when Thompson was GST. Thompson decided he also wanted to edit the IW (extra $) and forced Chaplin out. That's when RC quit the union because he was fucked over.

All the libertarian socialist currents had to go through an extremely isolated and sectarian period during the cold war period. That's what happened to the WSP as well. As any of us - Syndicalist, SyndicalistCat, David in Atlanta, myself can tell you how advocating politics like found on Libcom, you might as well be talking some very strange language.

I can see how a younger reader would gfind that interesting (not meant being pejoritive, just a fact) but at the time that analysis was very thin compared to the Maoists and Trots (and glaberman/CLR James, N&L, etc). I remember reading lots on the subject - and it was widely discussed in the 1970s very widely during the wildcats movement, etc - and while i wanted to agree with it, it was just rather lame, based on ideas rather than events, quotes from workers, etc. It came across as a set of assertions instead of an articulation of what was being developed in the workplaces, where the anarchist movement was incredibly weak. If you don't read it in context of all the other pamphlets and periodicals, it comes off as profound. at the time it was pretty embarrassing.

I was there first.

I used to read the French publication in the 1980s. Ithink they drifted towards Henri simon and the Echanges Et Movement crowd.

Actually pensions figures into a lot of discussions around building trades agitation up here, is that in Dolgoff's book?

Midnight Notes talks about how in the 70s profits from investing in pensions outstripped dues money, which helps create inertia in organizing. good shit.

i think it's in the book though i read it photocopied so...