What is a "mass organisation"?

What was your line? A "juvenile internet vendetta"? Anyway, I'm done arguing with you. As I stated, i'm on Libcom to engage in productive discussions and, yes, build a movement workers can relate to and will want to be involved in, not argue with anti-social childish little fool like yourself who is incapable of backing up his arguments with any sort of rational, logic, or argumentation. Go read a book, cause I'm done responding to you.

There's been no argument, just you delivering a few insults and, in so doing, demonstrating how your organisations are kept in stasis by the marginalised psychologies that make them up. One of life’s little rules of thumb, those most concerned with building movements are the least capable of doing so. As I said earlier, the question facing revolutionaries is not the structure of their organisation, but the tasks the organisation should undertake beyond its own maintenance.

No, it was a straightforward question. I just want you to clarify what you're saying, just so its not ambigious.

I'm guessing the answer is yes but I'd like it to be clear. As a follow up question, is that just your own opinion or would it also be Organise's position?

do they have official positions? (not sarcastic)

Nate i think one thing people fail to consider is that if workers wanted to be in unions (and by the word "union" i mean anything like what currently exists, even if far more democratic and leftist), nothing would stop them. Look at the 1930s: the bureaucrats were having to create entirely new unions to contain all of the worker unrest, the initial organizing always happened without any paid staffers but was due to worker militancy.

Now Glaberman was saying 40 years ago that workers had left behind the union form as far as any struggle goes, and weren't looking for new leaders of the old unions, or replacement unions, but rather that they were looking for new forms to struggle with. Maybe he was wrong but if so i think the only conclusion could be that workers for the most part arent struggling at all - its only a small minority who are struggling through unions.

Two points, make of them what you will:

I heard a statistic cited by an AFL-CIO official that if given the opportunity, 75% of workers would choose to join a union. Of course, if this is true, this does underscore the fact that many workers view unions as something above and beyond them--something they wait to organize them--but still view as advantageous in terms of benefits and pay.

I also heard a talk by Chomsky where he mentioned a survey where like three-quarters of Americans agree that workers should have more say in their workplace. But if you ask how many Americans view unions positively the number is much smaller. Chomsky claims this is due to a highly successful right-wing propaganda campaign: unions--designed to give workers more say in their workplace--have been maligned in the public's perception over the past 30-70 years. Yet, this does not undermine the fact that Americans are fundamentally dissatisfied with the nature of capitalist work relations.

I've heard it was 56%. Regardless its on the same level as "75% of americans will vote for Hillary", in that it means about the same thing: unions are groups that go and lobby on behalf of you.

Chomsky? He seems like a nice guy, and he's good at describing the current state of things, but whenever he tries to explain why things are the way they are he draws a blank.

Its certainly true in this case. 1) the fact is that many times unions simply act like an extra boss - this isn't just "right-wing propaganda" 2) Everyone, in or out of a union, is dissatisfied with the nature of work relations. Its work.

I'm not sure the Hillary analogy is appropriate, but your second comment was in fact part of my critique.

Really? Have you read much Chomsky? The breadth of his historical understanding is mind-boggling. In regards to capitalist relations, have you read Chomsky on Anarchism or Gov't in the Future or Profit Over People?

Not sure it is this simple. Why then are American evidently so conflicted over the role of unions? Your point regarding them being a second boss is all too often true, but I think the fact the many American still hold them in some regard demonstrates the fact that it is not what unions ideally stand for that turns people away, but the structure of the mainstreams unions and the way they operate. This is exactly what right-wingers attempt to generalize to bash unions wholesale. We should be providing a critiques and offering a better alternative. Given the statistics, if we do that affectively I think American's perceptions of union could rather easily be changed. My assumption would be that this was one of the reasons you joined the IWW in the first place? I know it was for me.

I think we've hashed this out before, but the issue is not "work relations" or work itself, it is the capitalist work relations and the non-productive work and exploitative, undemocratic, anti-social working conditions that capitalism creates. [note I'm skipping an all-too-easy crimethinc joke here] Work is always going to be necessary for society to exist, and productive work itself can be inherently rewarding--even under capitalism. It is the nature of toil under capitalism that people so strongly and rightfully object to.

It sounds like you have a core of politicos who are trying to recruit and radicalise workers, which is what I think you were arguing against.

Right, while I haven't called anyone trots (so please don't put words in my mouth) the answer is basically yes, that is increasingly my opinion of the orientation and operation of platformist organisations. It is not Organise's position as such because we do not have an agreed position on this. Do you think we should?

And anyhow you really needn't have bothered to ask your follow up question, I think its pretty apparent that I was posting a personal response to the quote from the anarkismo article that joeblack posted - and the position outlined in that quote, and its definition of mass organisation, is basicaly ballix. That is also my opinion.

SRB - issues of civil rights, 'equality', gender... where these issues are relevant to the working class they exist on the terrain of class struggle. I am not interested in pursuing the concerns of middle class feminists, I do not give two fucks about the number of women elected to office, about how many catholics are in the Police Service of Northern Ireland, about how well gay businessmen and women are doing out of the pink pound or about whether the Muslim community suceed in getting a Muslim school set up (actually I do care about that - I'm opposed to religious control of education). Engaging in the issues you describe in the manner you describe is what really stinks of liberalism (and opportunism).

Oliver I think that's a flawed line of reasoning. Along the lines of "people continue to die in really large numbers, they must want to do so." Some people really do want to die. Many others do not. Or "people continue to work in low waged jobs in large numbers, they must like those low waged jobs." Likewise with the "low numbers of workers in unions must mean people don't want to be in unions." I think that doesn't follow. I also think the "what do people want" as they currently look at the world is not a particularly helpful category. Your "if people really wanted it they would have it" sounds to me exactly like conservative relatives and friends of friends I've met - "if people really don't like their low-paying crappy jobs then they can go find a new one."

I've been stopped in my efforts to form a union twice, lost my job both times. I don't find the "nothing would stop them" line useful in the slightest. That said, I'm fine with just agreeing to disagree about the use of the word "union," like some of the other stuff in this thread about definitions I don't know that much hangs on people using words exactly the same way.

How do you mean? We do recruit. I'm all for recruiting. I just don't think the recruiting should be based on people's politics (in my experience that tends to fail as an organizing tactic), it should happen through workplace organizing, and I don't think it's true that the politicos do all the organizing. I may be using "politico" in a weird way, though, like I guess I was doing with "mass organization."

To be fair boul, knowone from the wsm either in a personal capacity or in policy supports any other the stuff you write about in the third paragraph unless you can point to this.

It just sounded as if you're talking about it being the IWW's job to recruit and keep workers, rather than the IWW being composed of such workers. Might just be the way you put it or the way I read it, but that's how it seemed to me and to my mind that stepped on your point a bit.

Bobby could you please read the relevant posts in this thread before talking shite?

The third paragraph is in reply to SmashRichBastards not anyone in the WSM. Thats why that paragraph starts with "SRB", so there is no need for me to point to the WSM doing this cos I never suggested they did.

ok

Nate: what i mean is that, as libertarian communists, its pretty central that we realize the capacity of the working class to self-organize. Not only that, but self-organization and direct action continually take place, although sometimes at much greater levels than others.

The 1930s in the US was when workers formed the unions that we have today, for the most part. (Although i think looking at all the evidence, one could safely say that a lot of the unions were formed by labor fakirs to contain the workers struggle). These unions were formed in massive waves of sit-downs and other unrest. To an extent, the unions were a method of struggle that the workers found appropriate. However even during WW2 workers were using new forms of struggle and were wildcatting against the orders of the unions. By the 1960s Marty Glaberman was theorizing that the workers had left the unions behind for good as a form of collective struggle, and that they were not looking for better leaders nor for new unions; maybe he's wrong but i think there's a lot to learn from him and that analysis seems to match up pretty well with reality.

What i meant when i said that nothing would stop the working class if they wanted to be in unions, was referring to the workers on a large scale not on a small one - if mass strikes began occurring demanding 'unions' as an abstract goal, then yes the working class would be able to form unions. That didn't happen during the 1930s, and it isnt gonna happen now. The fact is that that's never gonna happen - if/when workers struggle, they will struggle for real demands (even abstract real ones such as "power") and if unions spring up around those struggles its probably gonna be as an act of containment.

Is that what I was arguing? I thought I was saying that class struggle anarchists should get involved in these struggles (when relevant) in a organized capacity that, among other things, seeks to highlight the class component/antagonism within them... which, unless I am mistaken, is the sort of thing you claimed was "elitist" in the approach of platformists.

if you can explain how you see a mass organisation becoming libertarian communist that'd be deadly.

Apparently it just happens. Might have something to do with planet alignments and weather patterns, I'm not sure.

don't pick a fight, its not a loaded question, just something that has never been made clear.

sorry, DP

Sorry, wasn't directed at you. Just making light of the often determinist mentality of some of the Libcom anarchos who seem to think that social conditions alone will spontaneously bring about mass radicalization among the working class.

Ah, cos of course there haven't ever been libertarian communist mass organisations. Mass organisations simply can't be political... Just like there have never been loyalist/unionist or republican/nationalist mass organisations in Ireland right? I mean, having the correct politics and being the leadership of ideas is the role of the Platformist organisation so I suppose that if you believed that there could be (as historic precedent shows) a libertarian communist mass organisation (and not a broad or single issue campaign to be turned into such a movement) then yer role sorta goes out the window, no?

A libertarian mass organisation has to be built on those 'bread and butter' issues that develop out of the class antagonism at the heart of capitalism. I don't accept the false division between the economic and political, it increasingly seems that Platformists do. If you don't think thats possible you really should just give up on this whole social revolution, direct action and direct democracy thing now.

stop arguing against the wind and answer the question. it is not loaded, and I am asking it honestly.

OT, I'm not sure what to say. I think what your saying involves an implied distinction between you/me/us and the working class, and I think the working class sounds kind of homogenous sometimes when you talk about it here, and it sounds like struggle is some substance that every worker gets an equal quantity of. Of course the working class has a capacity for self-organization. You work for a living, me too. Our organization stuff is us exercising our capacity for self-organization. I personally think of organization (any one that's worth anything) as made up of members of the working class who work together based on their interests (short term and/or long term), and perhaps on larger interests shared by more people in the class.

Put differently, to my mind the sort of great big uprising of the whole class (or most of it or major sections of it) stuff will happen two ways - it just sort of happens, or it's the result of a lot of small conflicts and organizing etc. I think you sound like you're saying the first. I think that might be the case, but I don't see what practical result follows from it. It sounds like wait and see to me. (I also think that those moments of major stuff happening are basically just moments when a whole lot of little stuff happens really fast, so the little stuff still counts a lot.)

Does that make sense?

dara: instead of asking it abstractly, why not ask yourself about the role of political groups, revolutionary unions and mass organisations (or the lack of it) in East Germany '53, Poland and Hungary '56, Czechoslovakia '68 (the workers movement in the Autumn more than the Prague Spring), Paris '68, Italy '69, Portugal '74. Not to mention the smaller scale stuff that went far beyond "trade union consciousness", especially during the wildcats of the '60s and '70s where the entire organisation of the work process, and work itself (and the unions, lefist sects and the rest) were called into question. In other words - any cursory glance at the last 60 years of class struggle finds a whole range of examples where workers have thrown up mass organisations with revolutionary or proto-revolutionary demands despite (or because of) minimal, or purely negative, influence from various attempts at a leadership of ideas. Counter-examples are very sorely lacking.

Err Dara actually asked "if you can explain how you see a mass organisation becoming libertarian communist that'd be deadly.

Your history lecture doesn't actually address that question at all. Nor is it clear why you have introduced the phrase "trade union consciousness" and even less so why you put it in quotation marks - are you suggesting someone has used it on this thread?

The idea that workers' own organisations are unable to go beyond immediate demands and need an injection of ideas from outside is the absolute classic usage of 'trade union consciousness', perhaps dara would like to explain how his conception is so strikingly different. Putting it in scare quotes is quoting Lenin, which ought to be quite obvious, you seem to take the use of inverted commas a bit literally these days.

Do you think none of those events had libertarian communist tendencies then? If not then that's very sad. It addresses the question quite clearly - in that all of the major upheavals of the past 60 years have not been tied to either specifically anarchist or marxist ideologies - let alone the minor upheavals, so asking how mass assembly movements - many of which were communising property and land, occupying factories and the rest, will 'become libertarian communist' has it all arse backwards.

So I think dara's premises are wrong. If it helps, I answered a very similar question a bit more seriously today on another thread - might as well repost it.

Where do I use the phrase "libertarian communist tendencies " in relation to these events? As I don't why are you implying a position that I have not argued for?

You are giving your strawman, complete with its cute little 'Lenin' pin, a hell of a battering tonight. I'd say the poor thing will never walk again.

More seriously I think these events actually show the flaw of spontaneity, that is where there is not a pre-existing large libertarian communist organization(s) whatever spontaneous "libertarian communist tendencies" emerge are swamped by the organized forces pushing other ideas (nationalism, orthodox leninism, maoism etc). I find your reading that all that is needed is to mention these events to prove such advance organizations is unnecessary if not counter productive to be bizarre in the extreme. They are in fact nearly all examples of 'it will be all right on the night' failing to deliver and of well organized forces with ideas actually out of step with the spontaneous direction of the movements still ending up in a position to direct them because they were the only (sizeable) show in town.