Radical America

Archive of Radical America magazine, a left-wing journal published in the US 1967-1999. It began life as an official journal of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) but later became independent.

Submitted by Steven. on August 6, 2012

Radical America was founded by members of SDS in 1967. The initial editors were Paul Buhle and Mari Jo Buhle in their graduate school days, operating in Madison, Wisconsin. In the first few years, it served as the "unofficial journal of SDS."

Initially, subscriptions were sold at a discount rate to national SDS members. The Buhles relocated to the Boston, Massachusetts area, and brought the journal with them. By the time of the Boston move the journal was independent from the SDS.

The journal, published in Somerville, Massachusetts, focused on topical issues of concern to the left and society at large, such as women's liberation and working class radicalism. Beginning in 1970, each issue had a dedicated focus upon one issue. Mainly, during the 1970s, the journal evolved in a direction concerned with New Left issues, rather than traditional, Old Left concern with strengthening ties with trade unions. It was particularly active in the 1970s, as authors related the experiences of feminist activists and autonous work-place activists.

Many of the PDF issues here have been taken from this website and we are grateful to Reddebrek for posting them here.

Comments

Reddebrek

11 years 6 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Reddebrek on August 11, 2013

And thats the last of the scans uploaded.

Steven.

11 years 6 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Steven. on August 11, 2013

Reddebrek

And thats the last of the scans uploaded.

mate, that's amazing, thank you so much! That was a huge bit of work that we didn't have the time for ourselves, so much appreciated.

Reddebrek

11 years 5 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Reddebrek on August 24, 2013

Thanks, but you should also thank Wojtek for adding the images to most of the early issues. When I tried the images were tiny and enlarging them left them in such a poor resolution you couldn't make them out.

Oh and some of the missing issues aren't actually missing. For some reason near the end of its life Radical America would re-issue the last one from the previous volume as issue number one. As far as I know there was no differences between the versions.

Radical America #01.02: The workers produce all

Issue 2 of the first volume of Radical America published in September-October 1967, most articles concern the Industrial Workers of the World.

Submitted by Reddebrek on June 24, 2013

Constituent articles:

- They didn't suppress the Wobblies (Thompson, Fred)
- Wobblies and draftees The I.W.W.'s wartime dilemma, 1917-1918 (O'Brien, James P.)
- American liberalism in transition, 1946-1949 an annotated bibliography (Buhle, Mari Jo)
- Toward history a reply to Jesse Lemisch (Scott, Joan Scott, Donald)
- New left elitism a rejoinder to the Scotts (Lemisch, Jesse)
- Summary list articles in American Radical History, January-August 1967 (Buhle, Paul)
- A paperback approach to the American radical tradition I (MacGilvray, Daniel)

Attachments

Comments

Steven.

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Steven. on June 24, 2013

Hey, many thanks for this, just a quick note that the volume number should be written in two digit formats as there were more than nine volumes. And also the Radical America tag should be in the "authors/groups" box rather than the tags box. Cheers!

They didn't suppress the Wobblies - Fred Thompson

An article by Fred Thompson contesting the myth that the IWW was smashed by repression during World War I.

Submitted by Juan Conatz on October 9, 2012

There is a widespread misunderstanding that the government and big business suppressed the IWW during World War I. They tried. They hurt and hampered, but they did not suppress. The record is a practical subject for study by those who find themselves unpopular with those in power today.

The IWW was used to the lawlessness of "law and order" from its birth in I905. In the summer of l9l9 opposition grew fierce. The IWW faced bullpens and stockades, mass "deportation" of the Bisbee miners to the desert of New Mexico, frequent arrest by immigration authorities of anyone suspected of being a foreigner, and the intervention of federal troops. In September the federal authorities raided the national office and all branch offices, collecting five tons of evidence to use against those it named and convicted on three mass indictments in Chicago, Wichita and Sacramento. In the immediate postwar years the IWW was victimized by what the Undersecretary of Labor called the "deportation delirium," by the general rabid anti-radicalism, by a lynching raid on the lumberworkers' hall in Centralia,, Washington, and subsequent manhunts, and even more by the passage of criminal syndicalism laws in various states and the arrest and trial through l923 of far more members under these state laws than had been tried under the earlier federal enactments. One can find this story detailed in the appropriate chapters of Perlman and Taft, History of Labor in the United States, Vol. IV;in Taft's article on Federal Trials of the IWW, Labor History, Winter, I962; or in Michael Johnson, “The I.W.W. and Wilsonian Democracy," Science § Society, Summer, I964; also in Eldridge Foster Dowell, History of Criminal Syndicalism in the United States; and most readably in KornbIuh's, "Rebel Voices."

During all this repression the IWW grew. Its peak membership was in 1923. It sunk rapidly the following year, not from repression which had eased, but from internal disputes. And it is still in there trying.

The academic fiction that the IWW was crippled by wartime persecution rests on an overestimate of wartime strength. The IWW has never been very large. Its smallness, coupled with the mark it has made on American labor history, shows a handful enrolled in it were more effective than if they had been enrolled elsewhere. Its prewar peak in l9l2, the year of the big Lawrence strike, was an average membership for the year of between eighteen and nineteen thousand. The defeat in Paterson took the last penny it could raise, and the depression that followed almost killed it in 1914. The European war helped it step up a campaign among agricultural workers in 1915, and to branch out into lumber and iron mines the following year, and to grow among copper miners and in the oil fields in l9l7. It tied up copper mining and, in the northwest lumber industry shortly before the September l9l7 raids.

The following calculation of membership from l9l6 through l924 is based on a percapita payment of seven and one half cents per month per member to the general organization. The periods used are those the national office used for cumulative financial statements, usually for the information of a general convention. The average dues-paying membership for any period would have been somewhat higher than that shown because some unions were always behind on percapita, and conventions usually "excused" the non-payment so it was not made up later.

Taft, Labor History, Winter, I962, page fifty-eight gives some figures for the five month period of April, l9l7 to September,1, l9l7, showing dues paid of $75,4l9.75. Since dues were 50¢ per month or $2.50 For the five month period, this figures out to a wartime peak of 30,168. The same source shows 32,000 members initiated in the same five months, but evidently they paid dues only for a month or so, and while adding to RTE revenue did not do much to swell membership. The statement is often made that at this time IWW membership was about 100,000, e.g. in Michael R. Johnson, Science & Society, Summer 1964, p.266: "On Sept.l, l9l7, the IWW possessed between 90,000 and 105,000 paid-up members

However, the purpose of this article is not to show how small the IWW has been, but to show that during this period of repression it actually grew. What gave the IWW this capacity to resist suppression?

Senator Borah spoke about the difficulty of jailing a mere understanding between workingmen. His oft- quoted remark gives part of the answer. The fact that the hardcore members of the IWW “knew what the score was”, and were dedicated to their ideals, must be counted,too. Democracy, organized self-reliance, and local autonomy explain more, and the fact that the employers wanted these men back at work explains still more.

Had the IWW been a highly centralized organization, the September l9l7 raids and the arrest of its officers, staff members, editors, speakers,etc, would likely have knocked it out. They were replaced, so far as they were replaced at all, by men direct from the point of production, who can be assumed to have sensed the feeling of the man on the job somewhat more accurately than their predecessors. Solidarity, the IWW paper, came out October 13, 1917 with a long list of those arrested, but the editor who replaced the jailed Ralph Chaplin had the good judgment to run on the first page the following wire from Philadelphia: “Out last night, Nef will be out today. Rush five thousand dues stamps and two thousand dues books --Doree.” From there on, there was a growing emphasis on the practical, and a discarding of leftish rhetoric, without ever losing sight of such ultimate aims as a new social order.

They proved it is very practical to provide as much local autonomy as the needs for coordinated effort can permit. The return to the woods in September, 1917 illustrates the point. The lumber workers had struck in early July. They were getting hungry, and weary of being run around by town bulls and federal troops and being herded into stockades. They decided to go back to the lumber camps and continue the struggle there. The outstanding demand was for the eight-hour day. Some took whistles with them, blew them at the end of eight hours, walked into camp, and, if they were fired, they switched places with men from other crews playing the same general sort of game, until they had eight hours, showers, better food, and better pay. There was no fixed pattern what to do, each crew used its own best judgment.

Neither repression nor resistance to it was uniform. The greatest efforts to get rid of the IWW came in the lumber, oil, copper and iron mining industries--places where unionism was relatively new. Where the IWW was organized in fields where unionism was more taken for granted, it continued, as on the docks of Philadelphia where it retained job control up to 1925, In the iron mines of the Mesaba Range and Michigan, its 1918 strike was met with a wage increase at the request of the government, to head off the strike. In the oil fields it fared poorest. In copper it was reduced to minority union status, but press accounts of postwar strikes assign it major influence. In the lumber Industry its strength grew, despite Centralia and the subsequent man-hunt, up to the calling of a strike by a "militant minority" against majority judgment in September I923. This radical disrespect for democracy in its ranks precipitated the destructive dissensions of I924 and proved far more harmful than all the efforts at repression and the membership soon recognized this fact.

The variation in resistance to repression should prove helpful in any full scale study of how to avoid getting suppressed. The IWW survived all this to engage in the first strike to unite all coal miners it Colorado (see McClurg in Labor History, Winter, l963); to efforts among the unemployed in the big depression to assure that they would strengthen picket lines instead of breaking them, thus stimulating the first instance of union growth during a depression; major organization efforts in Detroit and Cleveland, with steady job control--and union contracts--in metal working plants in the latter from I934 to I950. Since then its membership has been largely "two-card," with recent welcome input from the young new left, and a current determination to get back to its old specialty of "conditioning the job" under its own banner.

Fred Thompson

Originally appeared in Radical America (September-October 1967)

Comments

Radical America #01.03: The New York rent strike

Submitted by Reddebrek on June 24, 2013

Constituent articles:

- Studies on the left R.I.P. (Weinstein, James)
- The rent strikes in New York (Naison, Mark D.)
- Comment (Gabriner, Robert)
- A paperback approach to the American paperback tradition (MacGilvray, Daniel)
- Leaflet the genius of American politics
- Books on the American labor movement, 1877-1924

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Comments

petey

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by petey on June 25, 2013

another winner, thanks
is there a Mark Naison tag? there should be maybe, there's more by him in the library here and he's still publishing, afaik

Steven.

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Steven. on June 25, 2013

There is now

Radical America #02.01: Failure and lessons

Submitted by Reddebrek on June 25, 2013

Constituent articles:

- Hazard, Ky. document of the struggle (Sinclair, Hamish)
- The Hazard project socialism and community organizing (Wiley, Peter)
- A revolutionary rent strike strategy (Naison, Mark D.)
- The meaning of Debsian socialism an exchange (Buhle, Paul Weinstein, James)
- The stray intellectual (Lowenfish, Lee)
- Did the liberals go left? (Buhle, Paul)

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Comments

Reddebrek

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Reddebrek on June 25, 2013

Put this in the wrong place could someone move it?

Steven.

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Steven. on June 25, 2013

Reddebrek

Put this in the wrong place could someone move it?

no problem, will fix it now. But for future reference, you are able to do this yourself just click "edit" then in the "book outline" section shifted round in there.

(Alternatively, if you can see the "outline" tab next to the edit one then you can just click that and move it around there)

Radical America #02.02: The Guardian from Old to New Left

Submitted by Reddebrek on June 25, 2013

Constituent articles:

- Evolution of the organizers some notes on ERAP (Rothstein, Richard)
- The Guardian from old to new left (Munk, Michael)
- Socialist opposition to World War I (Leinenweber, Charles)
- On the lessons of the past (Strawn, John)

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Radical America #02.03: The New Left 1960-65

Submitted by Reddebrek on June 25, 2013

Constituent articles:

- The early days of the new left (O'Brien, James P.)
- The student movement in the 1950's a reminiscence (Schiffrin, Andre)
- Poetry & revolution (Wagner, Dave)
- A revolutionary strategy (Ewen, Stuart)
- The radicals' use of history II (Lynd, Staughton)
- Again, the radicals and scholarship (Wood, Dennis)

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Radical America #02.04: Historical roots of Black liberation

Submitted by Reddebrek on June 25, 2013

Constituent articles:

- The historical roots of Black liberation (Rawick, George)
- Revolutionary letters #15 (DiPrima, Diane)
- Africa for the Afro-Americans George Padmore and the Black press (Hooker, J. R.)
- Document: C.L.R. on the origins
- Black editor an interview
- Boston Road blues (Henderson, David)
- New perspectives on American radicalism an historical reassessment (Buhle, Paul)
- The poets (Georgakas, Dan)
- I sing of shine (Knight, Etheridge)
- Convention resolution: Madison SDS

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Comments

Steven.

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Steven. on June 25, 2013

Hi, many thanks for continuing to post these. However could you please make sure to keep the article titles consistent so that they automatically go in alphabetical order? They should go in the format:

Radical America #xx.xx: Issue name

where the "xx" denote the volume then the issue number in two digit format, and the issue name is given if it has an issue. I.e.:

Radical America #01.03: The New York rent strike

Steven.

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Steven. on June 25, 2013

Also, the sector tag "journalism" is for journalism workers' struggles so unless that is what the issues are about please don't add that.

(Please don't take any of this as criticism, as we are very grateful, just some technical pointers!)

wojtek

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by wojtek on June 25, 2013

.

.

Radical America #02.05: New Left, 1965-67

Submitted by Reddebrek on June 25, 2013

Constituent articles:

- The new left, 1965-67 (O'Brien, James P.)
- Chicago (Kryss, T. L.)
- Black liberation historiography (Starobin, Robert Tomich, Dale)
- Homage to T-Bone Slim (Rosemont, Franklin)
- Visualized prayer to the American God, #2 (Levy, D. A.)
- The universal incredible generational gap story (Beck, Joel)
- The STFU failure on the left (Naison, Mark D.)
- Black liberation & the unions (Glaberman, Martin)
- Images of the Socialist scholars' conference (Gilbert, James)

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Radical America #02.06: Radicalism & culture

Submitted by Reddebrek on June 25, 2013

Constituent articles:

- Toward a radical theory of culture (Gross, David)
- Notes on a radical theory of culture (Shapiro, Jeremy J.)
- Follettes & further (The Willie)
- The new left, 1967-1968 (O'Brien, James P.)
- Sitting on a bench in TSquare (Levy, D. A.)
- El cornu emplumado a narrative (Georgakas, Dan)
- Cartwheel flashes (Blazek, Doug)
- Three poets (Wagner, David)
- Suburban monastery death poem (Levy, D. A.)
- R.E. vision #2 fragment (Levy, D. A.)

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Radical America #03.01: Komiks

Submitted by Reddebrek on June 28, 2013

Constituent articles:

- Black Icarus (Williamson, Skip)
- Smiling Sergeant Death and his merciless mayhem patrol the battle story! (Shelton, Gilbert)
- God Nose in You am what you 'snot
- The meth freaks fight the Feds to the finish (Wilson, S. Clay)
- Scenes from the revolution Billy Graham preaches the dope mystics (Shelton, Gilbert)
- Poo-Poo Cushman (Lynch)
- Freak Brothers

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Radical America #03.02: Working class & culture

Submitted by Reddebrek on June 28, 2013

Constituent articles:

- French new working class theories (Howard, Dick)
- A dream of bears (Torgoff, Stephen)
- Anarchist (Torgoff, Stephen)
- Che Guevara (Sloman, Joel)
- Working class self-activity (Rawick, George)
- Literature on working class culture (Brumbach, Will Evansohn, John Foner, Laura Meyerowitz, Ruth Naison, Mark)
- Automobiles (Lesy, Michael)
- Working class historiography (Faler, Paul)

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Comments

Radical America #03.03: Alternative education project, May-June 1969

Submitted by Reddebrek on June 28, 2013

Constituent articles:

- On the proletarian revolution and the end of political economic society (Sklar, Martin J.)
- Advertising as social production (Ewen, Stuart B.)
- Preface to The future of the book
- The future of the book (Lissitsky, El)
- Preface to Tasks of the Communist press (Breines, Paul)
- Tasks of the Communist press (Fogarasi, Adalbert)

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Radical America #03.04: Alternative education project, July-Aug. 1969

Submitted by Reddebrek on June 28, 2013

Constituent articles:

- RA Conference report
- Science fiction in the age of transition (Maglin, Arthur)
- Some comments on Mandel's Marxist economic theory (Mattick, Paul)
- Genetic economics vs. dialectical materialism (Howard, Dick)
- R.E. vision #8, part II (Levy, D. A.)
- Where is America going? (Mandel, Ernest)
- Epilogue to the new German edition of Marx's 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (Marcuse, Herbert)
- Abolitionism (Lynd, Staughton)
- In revolt (Breines, Paul)

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Some Comments On Mandel's Marxist Economic Theory

Paul Mattick reviews Ernest Mandel's book Marxist Economic Theory.

Submitted by Nate on June 13, 2010

Originally appeared in Radical America Volume 3, Number 4 (July/August 1969)

Attachments

mattick_mandel.pdf (42.21 KB)

Comments

Radical America #03.05: Alternative education project, Sept. 1969

Submitted by Reddebrek on June 28, 2013

Constituent articles:

- Theodor Adorno (Gerth, Hans)
- Althusser (Levine, Andrew)
- Comment (Glaberman, Martin Piccone, Paul Tomich, Dale Calvert, Greg)
- Rabbits (Kryss, T. L.)
- Plucking the slack strings of summer (Gitlin, Tod)
- Political preface to Sklar (Kauffman, John)
- We will fall toward victory always (Torgoff, Stephen)
- CLR James' modern politics (Wicke, Bob)
- With Eisentstein in Hollywood (Crowdus, Gary)
- Karl Kraus (Rabinbach, Anson)

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Radical America #03.06: Alternative education project, Nov. 1969

Submitted by Reddebrek on June 28, 2013

Constituent articles:

- What is youth culture? (Buffalo Collective)
- Technology, class-structure, and the radicalization of youth (Delfini, Alexander)
- From youth culture to political praxis (Piccone, Paul)
- Rifle no. 5767 (Rodriguez, Felix Pita)
- Rock culture and the development of social consciousness (Ferrandine, Joseph J.)
- Ho Chi Minh good-bye and welcome (Parsons, Howard)
- Stand still suitcase till I find my clothes (Gavon, Paul A.)
- Left literary notes masses old and new (Sonnenberg, Martha)

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Comments

Steven.

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Steven. on June 28, 2013

Hey, thanks for continuing with this it's really great! Although please do not use the tag "social movements" for all of them. The social movements tag is for articles with the history of a social movement in, i.e. the anarchist movement in Japan, the movement against slavery in the US etc

Radical America #04.01: Surrealism in the service of Revolution

Submitted by Reddebrek on July 5, 2013

Constituent articles:

- Introduction to 1970 (Rosemont, Franklin)
- Letter to the chancellors of European universities (Artaud, Antonin)
- Preface to the International Surrealist Exhibition (Breton, André)
- Excerpts from an interview with André Breton (1940) (Breton, André)
- Art poetique (Breton, André Schuster, Jean)
- The period of sleeping fits (Crevel, René)
- Excerpts from a review of The communicating vessels (Kalandra, Zavis)
- Hearths of arson (excerpt) (Calas, Nicolas)
- Surrealism and the savage heart (Bounoure, Vincent)
- Gardeners' despair or surrealism & painting since 1950 (Pierre, José)
- Introduction to the reading of Benjamin Péret (Courtot, Claude)
- The gallant sheep (Chapter 4) (Peret, Benjamin)
- The hermetic windows of Joseph Cornell (Rosemont, Penelope)
- Where nothing happens (Benayoun, Robert)
- The seismograph of subversion notes on some American precursors (Rosemont, Franklin)
- Electricity (T-Bone Slim)
- The devil's son-in-law (Garon, Paul)
- Such pulp as dreams are made on H.P. Lovecraft & Clark Ashton Smith (Parker, Robert Allerton)
- The neutral man (Carrington, Leonora)
- Dialectic of dialectic (excerpts) (Luca, Gherasim Trost)
- Surrealism a new sensibility (Mabille, Pierre)
- We don't ear it that way trace, 1960
- The invisible ray (excerpts) (Vancrevel, Laurens)
- The platform of Prague (manifesto, 1968) (excerpts)
- Notes on contributors
- Poems (Cesaire, Aimé Duvall, Schlechter Greenberg, Samuel Joans, Ted Legrand, Gérard Lero, Etienne Magloire-Saint-Aude, Clement Mansour, Joyce Mesens, E. L. T. Rosemont, Franklin Rosemont, Penelope Silbermann, Jean-Claude)

Comments

Radical America #04.02: Women

Submitted by Reddebrek on July 5, 2013

Constituent articles:

- The American family decay and rebirth (James, Selma)
- Women's liberation & the cultural revolution (Kelly, Gail Paradise)
- Where are we going? (Dixon, Marlene)
- Women and the Socialist Party, 1901-1914 (Buhle, Mary Jo)
- Women, Inc. and women's liberation (Sanchez, Vilma)
- Project: company kindergartens (Sander, Helke)
- From feminism to liberation bibliographic notes (Altbach, Edith Hoshino)

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Radical America #04.03

Submitted by Reddebrek on July 5, 2013

Constituent articles:

- Dear Herbert (Aronson, Ronald)
- Marcuse's Utopia (Jay, Martin)
- Notes on Marcuse and movement (Breines, Paul)
- Intellectual in the Debsian Socialist party (Buhle, Paul)
- Comments on Paul Buhle's paper on socialist intellectuals (Gilbert, James)
- Toward a critical theory for advanced industrial society (Schroyer, Trent)
- Poems (Temple, Norman)
- Poems (Sloman, Jose)

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Radical America #04.04: CLR James

CLR James issue of Radical America, a left wing magazine established by members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

Submitted by Juan Conatz on May 25, 2012

Vol. IV, No. 4 MBV. 1970

Introduction by Martin Glaberman

PHILOSOPHY AND MODERN SOCIETY
Excerpt from Modern Politics (1960) ............ 3

AMERICAN SOCIETY
The Revolutionary Solution to the Negro Problem
in the United States (1947) ................ 12
Excerpt from State Capitalism & World
Revolution (1949) ..................... 19
Excerpt from Facing Rea/ity (1956) ............. 31

THE CARIBBEAN
The Making of the Caribbean People (1966) ......... 36
Excerpt from Party Politics in the West Indies (1962) .... 50
The Artist In the Caribbean (1959) .............. 61

LITERATURE & SPORTS
Excerpts from Mariners, Renegades & Castaways (1953) . . . 73
Excerpts from Beyond a Boundary (1963) .......... 67

SOCIALISM AND THE THIRD WORLD
Excerpt from Nkrumah Then And Now (forthcoming) . . . 97

Attachments

clrra.pdf (8.84 MB)

Comments

OliverTwister

12 years 8 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by OliverTwister on May 25, 2012

This is great Juan!

Gotta love that IWW union bug: "Abolish the Wage System; Abolish the State; All power to the Workers"

Radical America #04.05: Society of the Spectacle

Radical America #04.05: Society of the Spectacle

Author
Submitted by Reddebrek on July 5, 2013

Constituent articles:

- Separation perfected (Debord, Guy)
- Commodity as spectacle (Debord, Guy)
- Unity and division within appearance (Debord, Guy)
- The proletariat as subject and as representation (Debord, Guy)
- Time and history (Debord, Guy)
- The organization of territory (Debord, Guy)
- Negation and consumption within culture (Debord, Guy)
- Ideology materialized (Debord, Guy)

NB: This translation was criticised by the American section of the Situationist International in their poster To nonsubscribers of Radical America.

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Radical America #04.06: I don't eat that bread

Submitted by Reddebrek on July 5, 2013

Constituent articles:

- Benjamin Peret: an introduction (Rosemont, Franklin)
- The dishonor of poets
- The factory committee
- Poetry above all
- The thaw a surrealist tale
- William A. Williams his historiography (Meeropol, Michael)
- Comment (O'Brien, James P.)
- A reading of Marx, II (Levine, Andrew)
- Comment (Tomich, Dale)
- Review of Armed struggle in Africa (Nzongola, Georges)
- Review of Walter Lowenfels (Blazek, Douglas)

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The factory committee: motor of the social revolution - Benjamin Péret

Article by Benjamin Péret arguing for the power of the factory committee as a vehicle for revolutionary change.

Submitted by Fall Back on July 10, 2009

The following article was originally published in the French anarchist paper Le Libertaire on September 4, 1952. The first English translation appeared in Radical America vol. IV, no. 6, August 1970. Thanks to Don LaCoss for supplying the article.

No one will deny that capitalist society has entered a period of permanent crisis, which induces it to reassemble its weakened forces and to concentrate, more and more, all political and economic power in the hands of the state, by means of nationalizations. To this concentration of capitalist power, are we going to continue to oppose the scattered forces of the workers? To do so would be to run into definitive defeat. And one of the principal reasons for the present apathy of the working class resides in the interminable series of defeats suffered by the social revolution throughout this century. The working class no longer has confidence in any organization because it has observed them all at work, here and there, and seen that all of them, including the anarchist organizations, have revealed themselves to be incapable of resolving the crisis of capitalism - that is to say, of assuring the triumph of the social revolution. One must not be afraid to say that all of these organizations are outdated and no longer valid. On the contrary, only this very realization - the importance of which should not be reduced by more or less circumstantial considerations, nor by blaming others for the consequences of one's own errors - provides a point of departure from which we can truly prepare ourselves to revise all doctrines (which today share a substantial portion of outdatedness), perhaps resulting in a fundamental ideological unification of the workers' movement in the direction of the social revolution. It goes without saying that I do not by any means dream of a movement whose thought would be monolithic, but a movement unified from within, and in which diverse tendencies could enjoy the most ample freedom to manifest themselves.

On the other hand, it is no less true that action is called for immediately. This action must obey two general principles: first, it must facilitate the ideological regroupment mentioned above; and second, it must cease considering the revolution as the work of future generations for whom we are supposed to make the preparations. We are faced with this dilemma: either the social revolution and a new impetus for humanity, or war and a social decomposition of which the past offers only a few pale examples. History is granting us a breathing space the duration of which we do not know. Let us make use of it to reverse the course of the present degeneration and to bring about the revolution. The present apathy of the working class is only temporary. It indicates, at this time, both the workers' loss of confidence in all organizations, and a certain detachment on their part. It depends on us, as revolutionaries, to draw the lessons, which will enable this detachment to be transformed into active revolt. The energy of the working class asks only to exert itself. Nevertheless, it is necessary to give it not only an end - it has had a presentiment of this for a long time - but also means of attaining this end. If the task of revolutionaries is to bring about a fraternal society, this necessitates, beginning immediately, an organism in which this fraternity can form and develop itself.

At the present time, it is on the factory level that workers' fraternity attains its maximum. Thus, it is there we must act, but not in clamouring for a trade-union which is chimerical today, in the actual conditions of the capitalist world, and which, moreover, could only come forward AGAINST the working class, since the trade unions represent now only different tendencies of capitalism. In fact, a "united front" of the unions could happen only on the eve of the revolution - and would act against the revolution since the major unions would all be equally interested in torpedoing it to assure their own survival in the capitalist state. Henceforth, as integral parts of the capitalist system, they defend this system by defending themselves. The interests of the union are essentially their own and not those of the workers.

Moreover, one of the most powerful obstacles to a workers' regroupment and a revolutionary renaissance is constituted by the apparatus of the union bureaucrats, even in the factory, beginning with the Stalinist apparatus. The enemy of the worker, today, is the union bureaucrat every bit as much as the boss, who without the union bureaucrat, would most of the time be powerless. It is the union bureaucrat who paralyzes workers' action. And thus the first watchword of revolutionaries must be: Out the door with the union bureaucrats!

But the principal enemy consists of Stalinism and its union apparatus, because it is the partisan of state capitalism - that is to say, the complete fusion of the state and unionism. It is therefore the most clear-sighted defender of the capitalist system, since it outlines, for this system, the most stable state conceivable today.

Meanwhile, one should not destroy an existing organization without proposing another in its place, better adapted to the necessities of the revolution. And it is precisely the revolution that has taken t upon itself to show us, each time that it has appeared, the instrument of its choice: the factory committee directly elected by the workers assembled on the shop-floor, and the members of which are revocable at any time. This is the only organization which is able, without alteration, to direct the workers' interests within capitalist society while looking to the social revolution; and which is also able to accomplish this revolution and, once having attained victory, to constitute the base of future society. Its structure is the most democratic conceivable, since it is directly elected in the workplace by all the workers, who control its actions from day to day and are able to recall a member of the committee, or the entire committee, at any time, and choose another. Its creation offers the minimum of risks of degeneration because of the constant and direct control that the workers are able to exercise over their delegates. Furthermore, the constant contact between elected and electors favours a maximum of creative initiative in the hands of the working class, which is thus called upon to take its destiny in its own hands and to directly lead its own struggles. This committee, which authentically represents the will of the workers, is called upon to administer the factory and to organize the workers' defence against the police and the reactionary gangs of Stalinism and traditional capitalism. After the victory of the revolution, it is the factory committee which must indicate to the regional, national and international leaders (these also are directly elected by the workers), the productive capacities of the factory and its needs of raw materials and manpower. Finally, the representatives of each factory would be called to form, on the regional, national and international scale, the new government, distinct from the management of the economy, and whose principal task would be to liquidate the heritage of capitalism and to assure the material and cultural conditions of its own progressive disappearance.

At once economic and political, the factory committee is the revolutionary organism par excellence. That is why even its establishment represents a sort of insurrection against the capitalist state and its trade-union branches, because it assembles all the workers' energies against the capitalist state, and even assumes the latter's economic power. For the same reason one sees it burst forth spontaneously in moments of acute social crisis. But in our epoch of chronic crisis, it is necessary for revolutionaries to passionately defend and advocate this conception starting now if they wish, in the first place, to put an end to the meddling of union bureaucrats in the factories, and to restore to the workers the initiative of their emancipation. Let us therefore destroy the unions in the name of the factory committees, democratically elected by the workers in the plant, and revocable at any time.

Published in Red and Black Notes #20, Autumn 2004, this article has been archived on libcom.org from the Red and Black Notes website.

Comments

soyonstout

14 years 11 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by soyonstout on March 19, 2010

I don't speak or read French, but for those who do and are interested, here is the full text of Péret & Munis' book Les Syndicats Contre La Révolution:

http://raforum.apinc.org/bibliolib/HTML/Peret-Munis.html

The chapters in Péret's section before this one seem very good (from the Babelfish translation I made for myself) and could be good to add to the list on this thread.

Radical America #04.07: Special Lenin-Hegel issue

Submitted by Reddebrek on July 5, 2013

Constituent articles:

- Introduction (Telos Staff)
- Towards and understanding of Lenin's philosophy (Piccone, Paul)
- Lenin and Luxemberg the negation in theory and praxis (Jacoby, Russell)
- The concept of praxis in Hegel (Paci, Enzo)
- Youth culture in the Bronx (Naison, Mark)
- On the role of youth culture (Heckman, John)
- Nations of youth culture (Buhle, Paul Morgen, Carmen)
- Youth culture and political activity (Delfini, Alexander)

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Radical America #04.08: Double issue on radical histiography

Submitted by Reddebrek on July 5, 2013

Constituent articles:

- American Marxist historiography, 1900-1940 (Buhle, Paul)
- W.E.B. DuBois and American social history evolution of a Marxist (Richards, Paul)
- The legacy of Beardian history (O'Brien, James P.)
- New radical historians in the sixties a survey
- Symposium on the teaching of history (Gordon, Ann)

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Radical America #05.01: Special issue on radical historiography

Submitted by Reddebrek on July 5, 2013

Constituent articles:

- Theses on contemporary American trade unionism (Booth, Paul)
- Old and new working classes (Hodges, Donald Clark)
- Working class communism (Peterson, Brian)
- Labor history reviews
- Reviews
- Index to Volumes I-IV

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Radical America #05.02: Black labor

Submitted by Reddebrek on July 5, 2013

Constituent articles:

- The demand for Black labor (Baron, Harold M.)
- Poetry (Yusuf)
- The league of revolutionary Black workers introduction (Perkins, Eric)
- Documents at the point of production
- From repression to revolution (Cockrel, Ken)
- Racism and the American experience (Starobin, Robert S.)

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The League of Revolutionary Black Workers and the coming of revolution - Eric Perkins

Contemporary article on the League of Revolutionary Black Workers from Radical America which, though uncritical of their nationalistic sentiments, contains a lot of interesting information.

Submitted by Ed on March 13, 2009

(Radical America Vol 5, #2 1971)

One finds it exceedingly difficult to introduce a new organization without seizing the opportunity to note that this is a black organization and, unlike all the others, offers a bright new strategy to the quiescent black movement. Black workers, with their important location in US industry and service, have demonstrated the need for a working-class movement within this advanced section of the American proletariat. Without recognizing the importance of black workers, any Leftist group or organization will be doomed to failure.

This introduction is designed to fill in some important gaps in our knowledge of the struggle. It is not a polemic, nor unfolding rhetoric proclaiming condemnations of America's futile attempt to deal with the race problem. Instead, the writer wishes the reader to know about this organization and its crucial importance in the development of a revolutionary movement in America. For far too long the plight of the black worker has been subjugated to the interests of the rulers and of their white working-class associates. What the League brings to the realm of analysis is surely nothing new (Need I remind our readers of Garveyism?), but is something which must be immediately realized­ that the American labor movement is now a memory, and something must be done now about its inability to deal with the problems of black workers.

With the establishment of DRUM (the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement) in the Dodge plant at Hamtramck, Michigan in 1968, the white rulers and their infected proletarians got a taste of "a real black thang"! Wildcat strikes and electoral turmoil have characterized the automobile industry since. The League of Revolutionary Black Workers is indeed a timely response to the growing stagnation and alienation many of us now feel- black radicals and their frustrated so-called compatriots. Black labor has seldom been understood, and as Abram Harris remarked nearly half a decade ago: "An estimation of the role the Negro will play in the class struggle is futile if the economic foundation and its psychological superstructure from which issue antipathy or apathy are ignored." (1) The League perfectly understands this - that racism is the result of a two-fold process which involves economic inferiority and its internalization.

What is the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and where did it come from? John Watson gives us the answer in an interview from the Fifth Estate:

The League of Revolutionary Black Workers is a federation of several revolutionary movements which exist in Detroit. It was originally formed to provide a broader base for organization of black workers into revolutionary organizations than was previously provided for when we were organizing on a plant to plant basis. The beginning of the League goes back to the beginning of DRUM, which was its first organization. The Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement was formed at the Hamtramck assembly plant of the Chrysler Corporation in the fall of 1967. It developed out of the caucuses of black workers which had formed in the automobile plants to fight increases in productivity and racism in the plant ... With the development of DRUM and the successes we had in terms of organizing and mobilizing the workers at the Hamtramck plant many other black workers throughout the city began to come to us and ask for aid in organizing some sort of group in their plants. As a result, shortly after the formation of DRUM, the Eldon Axle Revolutionary Movement (ELRUM) was born at the Eldon gear and axle plant of the Chrysler Corporation. Also, the Ford Revolutionary Union Movement (FRUM) was formed at the Ford Rouge complex, and we now have two plants within that complex organized. (2)

Centered in the extremely-important auto industry, the League has had an extremely wide and successful impact. It is now expanding its organizing activities to other areas - hospital workers and printers are now being organized, as well as the United Parcel Workers black caucus, which is one of the League's affiliates. Why this sudden turn from community organizing and the organizing of "street brothers and sisters", the black lumpen proletariat? The remarks of John Watson sum up the League's attitude toward this crucial and strategic shift in organizing policy:

Our analysis tells us that the basic power of black people lies at the point of production, that the basic power we have is our power as workers. As workers, as black workers, we have historically been, and are now, essential elements in the American economic sense. Therefore, we have an overall analysis which sees the point of production as the major and primary sector of the society which has to be organized, and that the community should be organized in conjunction with that development. This is probably different from these kinds of analysis which say where it's at is to go out and organize the community and to organize the so-called "brother on the street". It's not that we're opposed to this type of organization but without a more-solid base such as that which the working class represents, this type of organization, that is, community based organization, is generally a pretty long, stretched-out, and futile development. (3)

Community-based organizations throughout Black America have been failures. Stung by that fatal disease known as opportunism, many of these organizations either have dissolved or have been the subject of in-fighting for the pay-off. The ruling class has again demonstrated how it can pick up on anything and subvert it for its own use. It has again demonstrated that integration is a forced tool, and that no black man has the power to join white society without the sanction of the ruling class. (4) This shift is crucial.

For the last fifteen years the black movement has ridden the back of its middle-class leadership, following the white lead while they got the pay-off. The benefits (or bones) resulting from the "Civil Rights Movement" were distributed to the black middle class. In the fields of education, employment, and business, the black nouveau riche have made a small mark. The expansion of the black middle class is the unwritten policy of the white rulers. The black masses, predominantly workers (5), have been totally left out of this progress, and expressed their dissatisfaction by conducting their own "unorganized general strike" in the summers of 1966 and 1967.

The concessions granted to the new black rulers are meager, but they are real enough to raise, for the first time in a long while, the question of class antagonism. The League is responding to developing antagonisms of class in black America. Growing slowly is the black petit bourgeoisie, which consists of two wings: an educated black elite composed of technicians, managers, professionals, and others, and a small "ghetto bourgeoisie" composed of the owners of small ghetto shops and services. The ideology of this class is bourgeois nationalism which can be roughly summed up in the memorable words of Booker T. Washington in his speech before the Atlanta Exposition in 1895: "In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." (6)

Although this was said almost eighty years ago, it still characterizes the positions of most black nationalists. They see social revolution coming about in the disguise of white philanthropy and concern. To them the question of class struggle is an outmoded European idea which does not conform to their conception of black reality. The struggle lies in the institutional set-ups they can extract from the white paternalists, without ever stopping to think about the interest involved - that of the bourgeois nationalist or the white paternalist. Confusion and chaos have now replaced the moral glue which once held this class together, and there is no doubt that there is a huge gap in black leadership. (7)

With these facts to guide, the League has undertaken a very-difficult task - the organizing and leading of a national movement of black workers. Their local work clearly testifies to their national thrust. By organizing workers in strategic industries, the League plans to create the foundation for a black revolutionary party. Undoubtedly the perils of building a widespread national movement while laying the basis for a revolutionary party are difficult both to envision and to comprehend. But this is certainly one of their ultimate political tasks. The triumph of the downtrodden is inevitable.

The central theoretical concern of the League is the inevitable recognition of the black working class as the vanguard of the social revolution. As Ernie Mkalimoto suggests, the socialist revolutionary movement in the US must consider the black working class as leader.

Thus owing to the national oppression (principally through institutionalized racism as the dominant form of production relations) of black people in the United States, the black proletariat is forced to take on the most dangerous, the most difficult - yet absolutely necessary - productive work in the plants, the most undesirable and strenuous jobs which exist inside the United States today. The demands which it poses ­the elimination of economic exploitation (hence of capitalism) and of institutionalized racism (which thoroughly pervades the plant, not to mention North American society in general), and which allows capitalism to maintain itself, are more basic to the dismantling of US capitalist society than those of the white productive worker, who up to now has been able to defend his "white-skin privilege". That is why we say that any socialist revolution which is to be successful must take the class stand of the vanguard class of this revolution: the black proletariat.

Many white radicals and Iabor leaders will be unable to accept this position expressed by Mkalimoto (8). Why? Because the subtleties of racism have invaded their hearts and minds and prevent them from understanding the obvious. But it is this fundamental question which must be recognized before one begins to overthrow capitalism. Many so-called revolutionaries and others will say: This is a threat to the unity of the working class! This violates Marxism's first principle of international solidarity and all the rest. But with a basic understanding of the history of the black race, they will see how their arguments fail.

The League's basic position is revolutionary nationalism. One cannot forget that there are conservative and Leftist elements among the black nationalist spectrum. The League represents a Left-wing position. For those who are unfamiliar with the developing ideological debate within small black circles, revolutionary nationalism is an important and very complicated position to hold. Ernie Mkalimoto outlines revolutionary nationalism as follows:

A fusion of the most progressive aspects of the contradiction:

Bourgeois Reformism / Bourgeois Nationalism, Revolutionary Black Nationalism snatches the African-American from the puerile stage of Elizabethan drama, restores his sense of balance and direction in the universe, and sends crashing down to earth the clay idol of (Negro/American) emotional duality which has plagued the broad trend of black ideology from slavery to the present. From the activist wing of Bourgeois Reformism it takes the tactic of mass confrontation, struggles on all fronts, and integrates it into the existing order; from Bourgeois Nationalism comes the idea of the necessity for the development of national (revolutionary) culture and of both self-determination and self-reliance, as well as of the black world view which sees the struggle of African-Americans as inseparable from the struggles of all other peoples of color around the globe. The Revolutionary Nationalist views the concept of black nationhood not as any "sacred" unquestionable end in itself, but as a concrete guarantee to insure the dignity and full flowering of every individual of African descent. (9)

Revolutionary nationalism will indeed be difficult for the majority of whites to accept. It begins by taking into account the unusual degree of subjugation black people are forced to accept. It understands the unique feature of psychology and the internalization of economic phenomena. This indeed is timely. For one who does not admit the primacy of race compounded by class oppression refuses to recognize the most-central problem in American society.

The League dispenses with revolutionary rhetoric and commercial suicide, because that allows America to survive. The brother appearing on television and the revolutionary orator do not really contribute to capitalism's downfall; if anything they contribute to its maintenance.

By seizing on these images of blacks finally entering the mainstream, America controls the latent explosiveness present in most black men and black women. This is the current picture - black television, black business, black economic development, black executives - a swallowing of the "Negro revolution" by the imperialist giant.

America has created a grand illusion for most people - and black people are now subject to that illusion. The petit-bourgeois will not be able to succeed as long as it remains dependent on government and private help. The myth of the Negro capitalist is just that; but many of the brothers will not even acknowledge that. The myth of the "black capitalist and Negro market" must be dealt with. (10) There are few really-suggestive works on the problem of the class struggle in Black America. It is hoped that this issue will truly be a starting point for the emergence of a dialogue on this crucial question. The revolutionary nationalists have already begun.

The League is solidly committed to international struggle, but not without modifications. The international capital-versus-Iabor struggle is long ceased. It is now more the struggle of the rich nations versus the poor nations. It is no accident that the former are Europe and the US (with its Eastern satellite, Japan) and the latter are predominantly non - white countries. This is the major contradiction - of the West versus the non-West, and it is this contradiction which assumes the primary significance within the black workers' movement. This chief contradiction was aptly summed up in DuBois's often-quoted dictum:

The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line. Their international commitment rests on the success or failure of the development of the national movement. This is how internationalism is introduced - by fully realizing the international importance of one's movement. Cuba, China, and Vietnam all testify to that fact, and so will the League.

Undoubtedly the above will confuse many. Yet the common knowledge of black workers is that white labor has left them in the cold. What characterizes the race relations of the American working class is a long history of betrayal and neglect. The fact is simple: Organized labor and the labor movement were instrumental in crushing black labor, A few remembrances would be in order.

The plight of the black slave and his super-exploitation has been skillfully handled in Robert Starobin's Industrial Slavery in the Old South, and I suggest that the interested reader come by a copy of this book. Following Emancipation, the black slave with his newly-acquired freedman's status entered the labor market. He was powerfully met by his poor-white counterpart. The black wretch possessed innumerable skills, and, as one writer noted, the black artisan held "a practical monopoly of the trades" throughout the South. (11) This represents an important chapter in radical history that deserves our full attention. For much of the Nineteenth Century, the black artisan controlled much of Southern Iabor, DuBois notes with his usual clarity the effects of this development:

After Emancipation came suddenly, in the midst of war and social upheaval, the first real economic question was that of the self-protection of freed working men. There were three chief classes of them: the agricultural laborers in the country districts, the house - servants in town and country, and the artisans who were rapidly migrating to town. The Freedmen's Bureau undertook the temporary guardianship of the first class, the second class easily passed from half-free service to half-servile freedom. But the third class, the artisans, met peculiar conditions. They had always been used to working under the guardianship of a master, and even that guardianship of artisans in some cases was but nominal, yet it was of the greatest value for protection. This soon became clear as the Negro freed artisan set up business for himself: If there was a creditor to be sued, he could no longer be sued in the name of an influential white master; if there was a contract to be had, there was no responsible white patron to answer for the good performance of the work. Nevertheless, these differences were not strongly felt at first - the friendly patronage of the former master was often voluntarily given the freedman, and for some years following the war the Negro mechanic still held undisputed sway. (12)

This progress was not lasting. As Northern industry invaded the South, it brought with it the strength of organized labor, The triumph of this organized labor in the South did not match its more-egalitarian works up North. The black artisan was crushed without the usual oratorical hesitation about such things as rights and equality. The labor movement crushed this small class of black artisans, subordinating them to the greedy desires of white labor and to the advantage of the capitalist. This is indeed a sad chapter in the American labor movement's history and one that still needs to be written in full.

By driving the black laborer from the skilled trades, organized labor forced him to become a scab in strikebreaking activities. The resulting friction was ominous of Detroit and Newark in 1967. (13) The black laborer was forced to accept the dual-wage system, menial jobs, and continual confinement within industry. There was little or no chance for upgrading or betterment. He was denied apprenticeships and was forced into separate local unions while his brother stole his livelihood lock and stock. Capitalism brought with it white labor which drove black labor to extinction in the skilled trades. And as black labor was driven from its work, it was also forced to leave home and migrate to the shining North - the land of golden opportunity.

The effects of black urbanization have yet to be understood. But one thing is sure. The coming of blacks to large industrial cities such as Chicago, Detroit, and Pittsburgh had important aspects. With the great war of 1914 came the great demand for black labor, Black labor came in herds to wartime industry. This was a timely break for black people. With work came money and the satisfaction of basic needs. Although blacks came in on the bottom and remained there, they did manage to implant themselves in industry and lay the groundwork for the future entrance of more black workers.

The tensions which developed out of the great migrations to the North are a part of a large transition made by Afro-Americans during the Twentieth Century. The shift was mainly from a rural proletariat to an urban industrial work force. This shift was dramatic, racial, intense. Rebellions were found everywhere from Arkansas to Illinois, And the results are not without strategic importance. The industrial shift had paved the way for a wide black revolutionary movement. The Garvey movement was a movement of the black masses - the black industrial, service, and domestic workers, as well as "the brother on the street". Garvey was totally rejected by the black intelligentsia and middle class and depended wholly on the masses for support and sustenance. This was the most-threatening movement the American Republic had ever had to face. (14)

Garveyism was a response to the racial fuel boiling in black people. This rage was in part the result of organized labor's unwillingness to deal with "the Negro problem" and of Jim Crow in the "golden North". Moreover Garveyism elevated black consciousness into realizing itself as independent. Garvey grounded with black people and told them of the imminent dangers of life in America - cultural rape, psychological instability, moral destruction. Garvey shouted "Up You Mighty Race!" because he foresaw the oppression strengthening its hand over black people. He was crushed: hounded, attacked, abused, accused of fraud. The US Government was instrumental in "ridding America of Garvey' while putting out the flames of revolution in Black America.

During this period organized labor was no-less oppressive. Craft unionism and its rise spread the gospel of the black workers' downfall. The AFL's unwritten exclusion policy was commented on by two black writers in 1931:

By refusing to accept apprentices from a class of workers that social tradition has stamped as inferior, or by withholding membership from reputable craftsmen of this class, the union accomplishes two things: It protects its "good" name, and it eliminates a whole class of future competitors. While race prejudice is a very-fundamental fact in the exclusion of the Negro, the desire to restrict competition so as to safeguard job monopoly and control wages is inextricably interwoven with it. (15)

The AFL refused to investigate and prohibit discrimination in its own internationals because it "would" create prejudice instead of breaking it down. (16) The CIO also was guilty of racism, but managed to escape this guilt because of the war-time expansion during its emergence and growth. (17) Following World War n, the black movement turned from institutional gains to "civil rights". It took Malcolm X and a host of other well-known black leaders to point out what so many black people had largely forgotten -that they are still oppressed, and that the only acceptable solution would be black-created and black-led.

The League responds to this oppression with a new and vital vigor, Black workers "entered industry on the lowest rung of the industrial ladder" (18), and that is where they remain. Organized labor has not contributed much to black labor, and the few exceptions like the IWW and the UMW have not been enough to offset the systematic exclusion and assault of black Iabor, The League knows this. It recognizes this fact of betrayal as a fossil. What follows is that something must be done, and the League is doing it. Sense the tone of the following, and remind yourself of history.

We fully understand, after five centuries under this fiendish system and the heinous savages that it serves, namely the white racist owners and operators of the means of destruction. We further understand that there have been previous attempts by our people in this country to throw off this degrading yoke of oppression, which have ended in failure. Throughout our history, black workers, first as slaves and later as pseudo freedmen, have been in the vanguard of potentially-successful revolutionary struggles in all black movements as well as in integrated efforts. As examples of these we cite: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the beautiful Haitian Revolution; the slave revolts led by Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser; the Populist movement and the labor movement of the Thirties in the US. Common to all these movements were two things: their failure and the reason why they failed. These movements failed because they were betrayed from within, or, in the case of the integrated movements, by white leadership exploiting the racist nature of the white workers they led. We, of course, must avoid that pitfall and purge our ranks of any traitors and lackeys that may succeed in penetrating this organization. At this point we loudly proclaim that we have learned our lesson from history and we shall not fail. So it is that we who are the hope of black people and all oppressed people everywhere dedicate ourselves to the cause of black liberation to build the world anew realizing that only a struggle led by black workers can triumph over our powerful reactionary enemy. (19)

The League's purpose is two-fold: to dissolve the bonds of white racist control, and thus, in turn, to relieve oppressed people the world over. It is fitting that the League's motto embodies the challenge: DARE TO STRUGGLE, DARE TO WIN!

As the reader goes through this issue and the important documents and analyses of black workers, I suggest that he remember the incisive comments of Karl Marx:

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. (20)

Certainly there is no more-fitting way to begin our own self-criticism.

Footnotes
1. Abram L. Harris Junior: "The Negro and Economic Radicalism" in The Modern Quarterly,2, 3 (1924), Page 199.
2. To the Point of Production(Radical Education Project pamphlet, 1970), an interview with John Watson, Page 1.
3. Ibid., Page 3. The interested person might reflect on the import of this organizing shift. The League breaks with all black organization by emphasizing organizing at "the point of production". Community organizing represents a diversity of conflicting interests; for example the New York school conflict of 1968 centers on the antagonism of the black school board elite and conscious concerns of the black masses.
4. The ruling class had the power to integrate existing minorities. The existing minorities are powerless in decisions affecting such basic issues as housing, education, transportation, and employment. All the action by the integrationists takes place with the consent of the white ruling class. For a more-detailed discussion of this important ruling class tactic, the reader is urged to consult Robert L. Allen's important book Black Awakening in Capitalist America(Garden City, New York, 1969). The author was a Guardian correspondent during the birth of the Black Power age, and has some useful incisive analyses.
5. The myth of middle-class expansion has certainly taken its toll. More than 80% of Black America are engaged in some sort of service, industrial, or domestic employment or in the everyday struggle for survival because they are unemployed or underemployed. The "brother on the street", when considered within this framework, becomes not a lumpen proletarian, but an unemployed worker. Although there is a black lump en proletariat, it does not characterize the class reality of black people in America.
6. Booker T. Washington: "The Atlanta Exposition Address", quoted in Eric Perkins and John Higginson's "Black Students: Reformists or Revolutionaries?" in R. Aya and N. Miller: America: System and Revolution(New York, forthcoming). The reader should also consider the documents offered in Bracey, Meier, and Rudwick (editors): Black Nationalism in America(Indianapolis, 1970), relating to bourgeois nationalism and accommodation.
7. The Black Movement has been unable to regain much of the fuel it ignited during the lives of Martin Luther King Junior and Malcolm X. The leadership vacuum is widespread, resulting in a marked decline in struggle.
8. Ernie Mkalimoto: Revolutionary Nationalism and Class Struggle (Black star Publishing pamphlet, 1970). This pamphlet will soon be available in revised form. It is an extremely-important statement on black ideology, and should be possessed by all persons who consider themselves revolutionary. For more information write to Black star Publishing, 8824 Fenkell, Detroit, Michigan
9. Ibid. This is the most-important definition and refinement of the revolutionary-nationalist position to date.
10. Some fruitful analysis has already begun. Although the economics of racism is a sorely - neglected area, some people are beginning to realize its centrality. See the essay by Harold Baron in this issue and his forthcoming The Web of Urban Racism, and also the fresh analysis brought by economist William K. Tabb, The Political Economy of the Ghetto (New York, 1970).
11 Charles Kelsey: "The Evolution of Negro Labor", The Annals, 31 (1903), Page 57. This article is useful despite its Darwinist bias. The reader should also know of the two important studies conducted by W. E. B. Du Bois : The Negro Artisan and The Negro American Artisan, published in 1902 and 1912 respectively.
12. W. E. B. DuBois and associates: The Negro Artisan(Atlanta
University Press, 1902), Page 23.
13. The great race riots in East Saint Louis in 1917 and Chicago in 1919 underscored many other riots and rebellions. The causes of these events were the same as those of the great rebellions of July 1967 in Newark and Detroit - economic oppression coupled with the failure to meet rising expectations.
14. The work of a young Jamaican brother, Robert Hill, indicates that the Government felt itself threatened by the widespread success of the Garvey movement among the urban poor and unemployed. An essay of his on Garvey in America is soon due in an anthology on Garveyism edited by John H. Clarke. Any radical who refuses to acknowledge the stimulus of Garveyism will be forever learning about the Black Power movement.
15. Sterling D. Spero and Abraham L. Harris: The Black Worker (New York, Columbia University Press, 1931), Page 56.
16. statement of John P. Frey, molders chief, as quoted in Marc Karson and Ronald Radosh: "The AFL and the Negro Worker, 1894 to 1949", in Julius Jacobson (editor): The Negro and the American Labor Movement(New York, 1968), Page 170.
17. Sumner Rosen: "The CIO Era, 1935-1955", in Jacobson, Ope clt., Page 207. Also see Herbert R. Northrup: "Organized Labor and NegroWorkers", Journal of Political Economy, Number 206 (June 1943), and Organized Labor and the Negro(New York, 1944).
18. Lorenzo J. Greene and Carter G. Woodson: The Negro Wage Earner (Washington DC, 1930), Page 322.
19 :constitution of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, 1968.
20. Karl Marx: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon(New York, 1966), Page 15.

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syndicalist

12 years 9 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by syndicalist on May 6, 2012

Old Spartacus League article on the former Detroit League of Revolutionary Black Workers.

Classic SL style!

"Soul Power or Workers Power? The Rise and Fall of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers"
http://www.marxists.org/history/erol/1960-1970/wv-lrbw.htm

RedHughs

12 years 6 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by RedHughs on July 31, 2012

While I wouldn't agree with SL vanguardism in the WV article, the overall article actually seems to make stronger and more substantial critique than any of the "non-aligned marxist" critiques that I have seen.

Marty Glaberman is well-respected here and his text

Having established itself with direct rank-and-file activity, DRUM decided to take advantage of an accidental vacancy on the local union executive board to run a candidate for that office (trustee). DRUM’s candidate, Ron March, made it clear that he was not following the usual course of union caucuses in attempting to get a share of the power. There was no pretence that a revolutionary black trustee would effect any change in the union.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/glaberman/1969/04/drum.htm

Which seems rather contradictory. DRUM ran for union office 'cause they knew it would make no difference?

Radical America #05.03: Labor's Mayday

Submitted by Reddebrek on July 5, 2013

Constituent articles:

- Introduction
- Marxism and Black radicalism in America (Naison, Mark)
- An interview with Aime Cesaire (Tomich, Dale)
- Poetry (Uhse, Stefan)
- Personal histories of the early C.I.O. (Lynd, Staughton)
- Counter-planning on the shop floor (Watson, Bill)
- Reviews

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Counter-Planning on the Shop floor - Bill Watson

Submitted by libcom on October 28, 2005

It is difficult to judge just when working-class practice at the point of production learned to bypass the union structure in dealing with its problems, and to substitute (in bits and pieces) a new organisational form. It was clear to me, with my year's stay in an auto motor plant (Detroit area, 1968), that the process had been long underway.

What I find crucial to understand is that while sabotage and other forms of independent workers' activity had existed before (certainly in the late nineteenth century and with the Wobbly period), that which exists today is unique in that it follows mass unionism and is a definite response to the obsolescence of that social form. The building of a new form of organization today by workers is the outcome of attempts, here and there, to seize control of various aspects of production. These forms are beyond unionism; they are only secondarily concerned with the process of negotiation, while unionism made that its central point.

Just as the CIO was created as a form of struggle by workers, so, out of necessity, that form is being bypassed and destroyed now, and a new organizational form is being developed in its place. The following, then, is by implication a discussion of the self-differentiation of workers from the form of their own former making. The activities and the new relationships which I record here are glimpses of a new social form we are yet to see full-blown, perhaps American workers' councils.(1)

Planning and counter-planning are terms which flow from actual examples. The most flagrant case in my experience involved the sabotaging of a six-cylinder model. The model, intended as a large, fast "6", was hastily planned by the company, without any interest in the life or the precision of the motor It ran rough with a very sloppy cam. The motor became an issue first with complaints emanating from the motor-test area along with dozens of suggestions for improving the motor and modifying its design (all ignored). From this level, activities eventually arose to counter-plan the production of the motor.

The interest in the motor had grown plant-wide. The general opinion among workers was that certain strategic modifications could be made in the assembly and that workers had suggestions which could well be utilized. This interest was flouted, and the contradictions of planning and producing poor quality, beginning as the stuff of jokes, eventually became a source of anger In several localities of the plant organized acts of sabotage began. They began as acts of mis-assembling or even omitting parts on a larger-than-normal scale so that many motors would not pass inspection. Organization involved various deals between inspection and several assembly areas with mixed feelings and motives among those involved-some determined, some revengeful, some just participating for the fun of it. With an air of excitement, the thing pushed on.

Temporary deals unfolded between inspection and assembly and between assembly and trim, each with planned sabotage. Such things were done as neglecting to weld unmachined spots on motor heads; leaving out gaskets to create a loss of compression; putting in bad or wrong-size spark plugs; leaving bolts loose in the motor assembly; or, for example, assembling the plug wires in the wrong firing order so that the motor appeared to be off balance during inspection. Rejected motors accumulated.

In inspection, the systematic cracking of oil-filter pins, rocker-arm covers, or distributor caps with a blow from a timing wrench allowed the rejection of motors in cases in which no defect had been built in earlier along the line. In some cases, motors were simply rejected for their rough running.

There was a general atmosphere of hassling and arguing for several weeks as foremen and workers haggled over particular motors. The situation was tense, with no admission of sabotage by workers and a cautious fear of escalating it among management personnel. Varying in degrees of intensity, these conflicts continued for several months. In the weeks just preceding a change-over period, a struggle against the V-8s (which will be discussed later) combined with the campaign against the "6s" to create a shortage of motors. At the same time management's headaches were increased by the absolute ultimate in auto-plant disasters - the discovery of a barrage of motors that had to be painstakingly removed from their bodies so that defects that had slipped through could be repaired.

Workers returning from a six-week change-over layoff discovered an interesting outcome of the previous conflict. The entire six-cylinder assembly and inspection operation had been moved away from the V-8s - undoubtedly at great cost to an area at the other end of the plant where new workers were brought in to man it. In the most dramatic way, the necessity of taking the product out of the hands of laborers who insisted on planning the product became overwhelming. There was hardly a doubt in the minds of the men in a plant teeming with discussion about the move for days that the act had countered their activities. A parallel situation arose in the weeks just preceding that year's changeover, when the company attempted to build the last V-8s using parts which had been rejected during the year The hope of management was that the foundry could close early and that there would be minimal waste. The fact, however, was that the motors were running extremely rough; the crankshafts were particularly shoddy; and the pistons had been formerly rejected, mostly because of omitted oil holes or rough surfaces.

The first protest came from the motor-test area, where the motors were being rejected. It was quickly checked, however, by management, which sent down personnel to hound the inspectors and to insist on the acceptance of the motors. It was after this that a series of contacts, initiated by motor-test men, took place between areas during breaks and lunch periods. Planning at these innumerable meetings ultimately led to plant-wide sabotage of the V-8s. As with the six-cylinder motor sabotage, the V-8s were defectively assembled or damaged en route so that they would be rejected. In addition to that, the inspectors agreed to reject something like three out of every four or five motors.

The result was stacks upon stacks of motors awaiting repair, piled up and down the aisles of the plant. This continued at an accelerating pace up to a night when the plant was forced to shut down, losing more than 10 hours of production time. At that point there were so many defective motors piled around the plant that it was almost impossible to move from one area to another.

The work force was sent home in this unusually climactic shutdown, while the inspectors were summoned to the head supervisor's office, where a long interrogation began. Without any confession of foul play from the men, the supervisor was forced into a tortuous display which obviously troubled even his senses, trying to tell the men they should not reject motors which were clearly of poor quality without actually being able to say that. With tongue in cheek, the inspectors thwarted his attempts by asserting again and again that their interests were as one with the company 5 in getting out the best possible product. In both the case of the "6s" and the V-8s, there was an organized struggle for control over the planning of the product of labor; its manifestation through sabotage was only secondarily important. A distinct feature of this struggle is that its focus is not on negotiating a higher price at which wage labour is to be bought, but rather on making the working day more palatable. The use of sabotage in the instances cited above is a means of reaching out for control over one's own work. In the following we can see it extended as a means of controlling one's working "time."

The shutdown is radically different from the strike; its focus is on the actual working day. It is not, as popularly thought, a rare conflict. It is a regular occurrence, and, depending on the time of year, even an hourly occurrence. The time lost from these shutdowns poses a real threat to capital through both increased costs and loss of output. Most of these shutdowns are the result of planned sabotage by workers in certain areas, and often of plantwide organization.

The shutdown is nothing more than a device for controlling the rationalization of time by curtailing overtime planned by management. It is a regular device in the hot summer months. Sabotage is also exerted to shut down the process to gain extra time before lunch and, in some areas, to lengthen group breaks or allow friends to break at the same time. In the especially hot months of June and July, when the temperature rises to 115 degrees in the plant and remains there for hours, such sabotage is used to gain free time to sit with friends in front of a fan or simply away from the machinery.

A plantwide rotating sabotage program was planned in the summer to gain free time. At one meeting workers counted off numbers from ~ to 50 or more. Reportedly similar meetings took place in other areas. Each man took a period of about 20 minutes during the next two weeks, and when his period arrived he did something to sabotage the production process in his area, hopefully shutting down the entire line. No sooner would the management wheel in a crew to repair or correct the problem area than it would go off in another key area. Thus the entire plant usually sat out anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes of each hour for a number of weeks due to either a stopped line or a line passing by with no units on it. The techniques for this sabotage are many and varied, going well beyond my understanding in most areas.

The "sabotage of the rationalization of time" is not some foolery of men. In its own context it appears as nothing more than the forcing of more free time into existence; any worker would tell you as much. Yet as an activity which counteracts capital's prerogative of ordering labour's time, it is a profound organized effort by labor to undermine its own existence as "abstract labour power" The seizing of quantities of time for getting together with friends and the amusement of activities ranging from card games to reading or walking around the plant to see what other areas are doing is an important achievement for laborers. Not only does it demonstrate the feeling that much of the time should be organized by the workers themselves, but it also demonstrates an existing animosity toward the practice of constantly postponing all of one's desires and inclinations so the rational process of production can go on uninterrupted. The frequency of planned shutdowns in production increases as more opposition exists toward such rationalization of the workers' time.
What stands out in all this is the level of cooperative organization of workers in and between areas. While this organization is a reaction to the need for common action in getting the work done, relationships like these also function to carry out sabotage, to make collections, or even to organize games and contests which serve to turn the working day into an enjoyable event. Such was the case in the motor-test area.

The inspectors organized a rod-blowing contest which required the posting of lookouts at the entrances to the shop area and the making of deals with assembly, for example, to neglect the torquing of bolts on rods for a random number of motors so that there would be loose rods. When an inspector stepped up to a motor and felt the telltale knock in the water-pump wheel, he would scream out to clear the shop, the men abandoning their work and running behind boxes and benches. Then he would arc himself away from the stand and ram the throttle up to first 4,000 and then 5,000 rpm. The motor would knock, clank, and finally blur to a cracking halt with the rod blowing through the side of the oil pan and across the shop. The men would rise up from their cover, exploding with cheers, and another point would be chalked on the wall for that inspector This particular contest went on for several weeks, resulting in more than 150 blown motors. No small amount of money was exchanged in bets over the contests.

In another case, what began as a couple of men's squirting each other on a hot day with the hoses on the test stands developed into a standing hose fight in the shop area which lasted several days. Most of the motors were either neglected or simply okayed so that the men were free for the fight, and in many cases they would destroy or dent a unit so that it could be quickly writ ten up. The fight usually involved about 10 or 15 unused hoses, each with the water pressure of a fire hose. With streams of crossfire, shouting, laughing, and running about, there was hardly a man in the mood for doing his job. The shop area was regularly drenched from ceiling to floor, with every man completely soaked. Squirt guns, nozzles, and buckets were soon brought in, and the game took on the proportions of a brawl for hours on end. One man walked around with his wife's shower cap on for a few days to the amusement of the rest of the factory, which wasn't aware of what was happening in the test area.
The turning of the working day into an enjoyable activity becomes more of a necessary event as the loneliness and hardship of constant and rapid production becomes more oppressive. Part of the reality of concrete labour is that it is less and less able to see itself as merely an abstract means to some end, and more and more inclined to see its working day as a time in which the interaction of men should be an interesting and enjoyable thing. In this way the campaign against the six-cylinder motors does not differ from the rod-blowing contest or the hose fight: each is the expression of men who see their work as a practical concrete process and their relations as men as simple and spontaneous, to be structured as they see fit. Whether they should work together at full steam or with intermittent periods of diversity-or even cease working altogether - comes to be more and more a matter for their own decision. The evolution of these attitudes is, needless to say, a constant target for bureaucratic counter-insurgency.(2)

This constant conflict with the bureaucratic rationalization of time is expressed dramatically each day at quitting time. Most workers not on the main assembly line finish work, wash, and are ready to go a full four minutes ahead of the quitting siren. But with 30 or 40 white-shirt foremen on one side of the main aisle and 300 or 400 men on the other side, the men begin, en masse, to imitate the sound of the siren with their mouths, moving and then literally running over the foremen, stampeding for the punch clocks, punching out, and racing out of the plant as the actual siren finally blends into their voices. With a feeling of release after hours of monotonous work, gangs of workers move out from the side aisles into the main aisles, pushing along, shouting, laughing, knocking each other around - heading for the fresh air on the outside. The women sometimes put their arms around the guards at the gates, flirting with them and drawing their attention away from the men who scurry from the plant with distributors, spark plugs, carburetors, even a head here and there under their coats - bursting with laughter as they move out into the cool night. Especially in the summers, the nights come alive at quitting time with the energy of release: the squealing of tires out of the parking lot, racing each other and dragging up and down the streets. Beer in coolers stored in trunks is not uncommon and leads to spontaneous parties, wrestling, brawling, and laughter that spills over into the parks and streets round the factory. There is that simple joy of hearing your voice loudly and clearly for the first time in 10 or 12 hours.

There is planning and counter-planning in the plant because there is clearly a situation of dual power A regular phenomenon in the daily reality of the plant is the substitution of entirely different plans for carrying out particular jobs in place of the rational plans organized by management.

On the very casual level, these substitutions involve, for example, a complete alternative break system of workers whereby they create large chunks of free time for each other on a regular basis. This plan involves a voluntary rotation of alternately working long stretches and taking off long stretches. Jobs are illegally traded of{ and men relieve each other for long periods to accomplish this. The smuggling of men through different areas of the plant to work with friends is yet another regular activity requiring no small amount of organization.

The substitution of alternative systems of executing work has its counterpart in areas of the plant which have become, strictly speaking, off limits to non-workers; they are havens of the plant where men are not subject to external regulation. Usually they are bathrooms, most of which are built next to the ceiling with openings onto the roof. Chaise lounges, lawn chairs, cots, and the like have been smuggled into most of them. Sweepers, who move around the plant, frequently keep tabs on what is called "john time"; the men line up an hour here or there when they can take a turn in the fresh air of the roof or space out on a cot in one of the ripped-out stalls. The "off-limits" character of these areas is solid, as was demonstrated when a foreman, looking for a worker who had illegally arranged to leave his job, went into one of the workers' bathrooms. Reportedly he walked up the stairs into the room, and within seconds was knocked out the door, down the stairs, and onto his back on the floor That particular incident involved two foremen and several workers and ended with the hospitalization of two participants with broken ribs and bruises.

The coexistence of two distinct sets of relations, two modes of work, and two power structures in the plant is evident to the worker who becomes part of any of the main plant areas. But that coexistence is the object of constant turmoil and strife; it is hardly an equilibrium when considered over time. It is a struggle of losing and gaining ground. The attempt to assert an alternative plan of action on the part of workers is a constant threat to management.

During the model changeover mentioned above, the management had scheduled an inventory which was to last six weeks. They held at work more than 50 men who otherwise would have been laid off with 90% of their pay. The immediate reaction to this was the self-organization of workers, who attempted to take the upper hand and finish the inventory in three or four days so they could have the remaining time off. Several men were trained in the elementary use of the counting scales while the hi-lo truck drivers set up an informal school to teach other men to use their vehicles. Others worked directly with experienced stock chasers and were soon running down part numbers and taking inventory of the counted stock. In several other ways the established plan of ranking and job classification was circumvented in order to slice through the required working time.

The response to this was peculiarly harsh. Management forced it to a halt, claiming that the legitimate channels of authority, training, and communication had been violated. Being certified as a truck driver, for example, required that a worker have a certain amount of seniority and complete a company training program. There was a great deal of heated exchange and conflict, but to no avail. Management was really determined to stop the workers from organizing their own work, even when it meant that the work would be finished quicker and, with the men quickly laid off, less would be advanced in wages.

The threat which this unleashing of energy in an alternative plan of action presented to the authority of the bureaucracy was evidently quite great. Management took a stand, and, with only a limited number of men involved in a non-production activity, retained its power to plan that particular event. For six weeks, then, the "rational" plan of work was executed - which meant that the labour force was watched over and directed in an orderly fashion by foremen and various other agents of social control. The work which men want to do together takes four days-at most a six-day week; the work which is forced on them, in the same amount, is monotonously dragged out for six weeks, with all the rational breaks and lunch periods which are deemed necessary for the laborers.

We end, then, more or less on the note on which we began: stressing a new social form of working-class struggle. The few examples here have been a mere glimpse of that form and hardly entitle us to fully comprehend it. But we can see that as a form it is applied to the actual working day itself and to the issues of planning and control which, in my view, make it distinctly post-unionism as a practice. The use of sabotage as a method of struggling for control will increase as this form of struggle develops further, but this is merely the apparatus of movement. A crucial point to focus on is the differentiation of this new form of struggle from its former organization: mass unionism.

Within these new independent forms of workers' organization lies a foundation of social relations at the point of production which can potentially come forward to seize power in a crisis situation and give new direction to the society. I would urge, in closing, that our attention and work be focused on the investigating and reporting of the gradual emergence of this new mode of production out of the old. "Like a thief in the night" it advances relatively unnoticed.

NOTES
1. In this plant more than half the workers were either black or newly arrived Southern whites; that percentage may be as high as 75%. The remainder were mixed; whites of Northern origin, many Italians and Mexicans, and a small Hungarian and Polish segment. The women constituted from 5% to 10% of the work force and were generally black or Southern white. in the actions and organizations of workers which this paper describes, the most operative relationships were between blacks and Southern whites. Despite the prevalence of racist attitudes, which were a regular substance of interaction and even a source of open talk and joking, these two groups functioned together better than any other groups in the plant. Also in the events described women were no less active than men. Finally, there was a definite relationship between age and action. Younger workers were more willing to fight back and risk their positions than older workers. The workers from 18 to 35 were the most militantly antiunion and the most willing to go beyond the established channels in their work actions.

2. The overt expressions of the men themselves about their activity are closely tied to the actual work experience. There is little if any notion that the daily struggle in the plant has anything to do with the state or the society as a whole. Rather it is seen as a struggle waged against an immobile bureaucracy in the company and against the labour establishment so as to improve working conditions. A kind of populist mentality is crucial here, particularly with the Southern whites who showed an immediate dislike for all organizational authority and believe (like a religion) that the only way to get anything done well is to do it themselves.While workers clearly design activity to control the length of the working day, for example, these same men are unaware that the relationships and organization involved could also function to plan and control their own production. Yet it is not so important that workers so often miss the social significance of their activities; the vital point is not their consciousness, but what they actually do. Their activity smashes into the contradictions of productive relations and motivates the evolution of counter-structures in the plant.

First printed in Radical America May-June 1971.

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Juan Conatz

12 years 10 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Juan Conatz on March 28, 2012

Image and PDF added.

Radical America #05.04: Alternative education project, July-Aug. 1971

Submitted by Reddebrek on July 5, 2013

Constituent articles:

- Introduction
- Women in American society an historical contribution (Buhle, Mary Jo Gordon, Ann G. Schrom, Nancy)
- Remember the "fifties" a photo-essay
- Work in America , II, The work community (Valmeras, L.)
- Reviews

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Radical America #05.05: Italy 1969-1970

Issue of Radical America from September-October 1971, predominantly about the mass struggles in Italy in the previous two years.

Submitted by Reddebrek on July 5, 2013

Constituent articles:

- Introduction
- Italy new tactics & organization
- Two steel contracts
- Their time & ours (Schanoes, David)
- Black studies (James, C. L. R.(Cyril Lionel Robert))

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Radical America #05.06: Alternative education project, Nov.-Dec. 1971

Submitted by Reddebrek on July 5, 2013

Constituent articles:

- Introduction
- Peasants and workers (James, C. L. R. (Cyril Lionel Robert))
- George Jackson (James, C. L. R. (Cyril Lionel Robert))
- The way out world revolution (James, C. L. R. (Cyril Lionel Robert))
- Marxism in the U.S. (Buhle, Paul)
- Black Workers Congress

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Radical America #06.02: Alternative education project, Mar.-Apr. 1972

Submitted by Reddebrek on July 5, 2013

Constituent articles:

- Introduction
- The textile industry keel of southern industrialization (Boyte, Harry)
- Radicalization of Quebec trade unions (Black Rose Books Editorial Collective)
- The general strike (Chartrand, Michel)
- Reflections on organizing (Truth, Sojourner)
- Factory songs of Mr. Toad (Glaberman, Martin)
- Work in America the rubber factory (George, Ed Paul, Jeff)

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The Factory Songs of Mr. Toad - Martin Glaberman

In addition to his political writings, Martin Glaberman was also a published poet. Here is an example of his work.

Submitted by Fall Back on July 11, 2009

Wildcat I

A most practical cat.

Walking silently on padded feet
Unseen, unheard
Power concentrated
in a compact body

Lean, lithe, less
in appearance
Than the explosive leap,
periodic culmination
of growing power
of growing hunger

Amber, black, mottled, gold.
All colors help to hide
its invisible path

Slowly it climbs and waits
on limb
on cliff
on overhang

All right, Buddy
Let's not get romantic.
Shut her down and let's go
A most practical cat

The Factory Songs of Mr. Toad, Detroit: Bewick/ed, 1994

This article has been archived on libcom.org from the Martin Glaberman archive on the Red and Black Notes website.

Appeared in Radical America Volume 6, Number 2

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Radical America #06.03: Alternative education project, May-June 1972

Radical America #06.03: Alternative education project, May-June 1972

Submitted by Reddebrek on July 5, 2013

Constituent articles:

- Introduction
- Theses on mass worker and social capital (Baldi, Guido)
- The struggle against labor (Tronti, Mario)
- Fables for Mr. Lear (Rikki)
- Class forces in the 1970's (Weir, Stan)
- Primary work groups (Guttman, M.)
- Poems (Torgott, Steve)

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Theses on the mass worker and social capital - Silvia Federici and Mario Montano

Charlie Chaplin in "Modern Times"

A text from the first wave of Italian ‘autonomist Marxist’ theory, first published under the name Guido Baldi in Radical America (Vol. 6, No. 3, May-June 1972).

Submitted by Joseph Kay on February 21, 2007

1
The years from the beginning of the century up to the English general strike of 1926 witness this crucial new feature in class struggle: Whereas deep contradictions between developed and backward areas characterize capitalism at this stage and confine it to national levels of organization, the political autonomy and independence of the working class reach an international level: For the first time, capital is bypassed by the workers at an international level. The first international cycle, roughly 1904 to 1906, is a cycle of mass strikes which at times develops into violent actions and insurrections. In Russia, it starts with the Putilov strike and develops into the 1905 revolution. 1904 is the date of the first Italian general strike. In Germany, the spontaneous Ruhr miners' strike of 1905 on the eight-hour issue and the Amburg general strike of 1906 lead a class wave that overflows into a large network of middle-sized firms. In the US, the miners' strikes of 1901 and 1904 and the foundation of the IWW in 1905 seem to be a premonition of the struggles to come.

2
The second cycle starts with 1911. We see the same class vanguards initiate the struggle: In the US the vanguards are the coal miners of West Virginia, the Harriman railroad workers, and the Lawrence textile workers; in Russia they are the Lena gold miners of 1912; in Germany they are the workers of the 1912 mass strike of the Ruhr. World War I represents the occasion for the widest development of class struggle in the US (1,204 strikes in 1914; 1,593 in 1915; 3,789 in 1916; and 4,450 in 1917 - and the National labour Board sanctions a number of victories: collective bargaining, equal pay for women, guaranteed minimum wage) while laying the groundwork for a third international cycle.

Since the War has produced a boom in precision manufacturing, electrical machinery, optics, and other fields, the class weight of the superskilled workers of these sectors is enormously increased in Germany and elsewhere. They are the workers who form the backbone of the councils in the German revolution, the Soviet Republic in Bavaria, and the Italian factory occupation of 1919. By 1919, the year of the Seattle General Strike, 4,160,000 workers in the US (20.2% of the entire labour force) are mobilized by the struggle. In the international circulation of struggles, Russia, the "weakest link", breaks. The capitalist nightmare comes true : The initiative of the working class establishes a "workers' state". The class that first made its appearance in the political arena in 1848 and that learned the need for political organization from its defeat in the Paris Commune is now moving in an international way. The peculiar commodity, labour power, the passive, fragmented receptacle of factory exploitation, is now behaving as an international political actor, the political working class.

3
The specific political features of these three cycles of struggle lie in the dynamics of their circulation. The struggle starts with class vanguards, and only later does it circulate throughout the class and develop into mass actions. That is, the circulation of struggles follows the structure of the class composition that predominates in these years. That composition consists of a large network of sectors with diverse degrees of development, varying weight in the economy, and different levels of skill and experience. The large cleavages that characterize such a class composition (the dichotomy between a skilled "labour aristocracy" and the mass of the unskilled is one prominent example) necessitates the role of class vanguards as political and organizational pivots. It is through an alliance between the vanguards and the proletarian masses that class cleavages are progressively overcome and mass levels of struggles are reached. That is, the "political re-composition of the working class" is based on its industrial structure, the "material articulation of the labour force (labour power)".

4
The organizational experiments of the working class in these years are by necessity geared to this specific class composition. Such is the case with the Bolshevik model, the Vanguard Party. Its politics of class consciousness "from the outside" must re-compose the entire working class around the demands of its advanced sectors; its "politics of alliances" must bridge the gap between advanced workers and the masses. But such is also the case with the Councils model, whose thrust toward the self-management of production is materially bound to the figure of the skilled worker (that is, the worker with a unique, fixed, subjective relationship to tools and machinery, and with a consequent self identification as "producer"). In Germany in particular, where the machine-tool industry developed exclusively on the basis of the exceptional skill of workers, the Councils express their "managerial" ideology most clearly. It is at such a relatively-high level of professionalization - with a worker/tools relationship characterized by precise skills, control over production techniques, direct involvement with the work plan, and co-operation between execution and planning functions - that workers can identify with their "useful labour" in a program for self-management of the factory. In the heat of the struggle, this program gains the support of productive engineers.

5
With the Councils, "class consciousness" is expressed most clearly as the consciousness of "producers". The Councils do not organize the working class on the basis of a political program of struggles. The Council structure reproduces - by team, shop, and plant - the capitalist organization of labour, and "organizes" workers along their productive role, as labour power, producers. Since the Councils assume the existing organization for the production of capital (a given combination of variable and constant capital, of workers and machines) as the basis for their socialist project, their hypothesis of a workers' democratic-self-management can only pre-figure the workers' management of the production of capital, that is, the workers' management of their very exploitation.

6
Yet, the revolutionary character of all workers' struggles must always be measured in terms of their relationship to the capitalists' project. From this viewpoint, it becomes clear that the organization of the Councils, by reproducing the material articulation of the labour force as it is. Also freezes development at a certain level of the organic composition of capital (the level of fixed, subjective relationship between workers and machines). Therefore, it challenges capital's power to bring about whatever technological leap and re-organization of the labour force it may need. In this sense the Councils remain a revolutionary experience. As for the ideological aspect of the self-management project, the hypothesis of a workers' management of the production of capital, it also becomes clear that "the pre-figuration of a more advanced level of capitalist development was the specific way in which workers refused to yield to the capitalist needs of the time, by trying to provoke the failure of capital's plan and expressing the autonomous working-class need for conquering power". (De Caro) It is in the workers' refusal to be pushed back into a malleable labour force under capitalist rule, and in their demand for power over the productive process (whether in the form of the Councils' "self-management" and freeze over development, or in the Bolsheviks' plan for development under "workers' control") that the fundamental political novelty of these cycles of struggle lies: on an international level, the workers' attempt to divert the direction of economic development, express autonomous goals, and assume political responsibility for managing the entire productive machine.

7
When the capitalists move to counter-attack, they are not prepared to grasp the two main givens of the cycles of struggle : the international dimension of class struggle, and the emergence of labour power as the political working class. Thus while the international unification of the working-class struggle raises the need for an international unification of capital's response, the system of reparations imposed on Germany by the Versailles Treaty merely seals the inter-capitalist split. While confronted by the international working class, the capitalists can only perceive their national labour powers. The outcome is a strategic separation between their international and domestic responses. Internationally, world revolution appears to the capitalists as coming "from the outside", from the exemplary leadership of the USSR: hence the politics of military isolation of the Revolution in Russia. Domestically, all the capitalists know is the traditional tools of their rule: (1) the violent annihilation of workers' political organizations (the Palmer raids and the destruction of the IWW; Fascism in Italy; bloody suppression of the "Red Army" in the Ruhr, and so forth), which breaks the ground for (2) technological manipulation of the labour force (Taylorism, the "scientific organization of labour") as a means of politically controlling class composition.

8
Taylorism, the "scientific organization of labour", the technological leap of the Twenties serves but one purpose: to destroy the specific articulation of the labour force which was the basis for the political re-composition of the working class during the first two decades of the century (Thesis 3). The introduction of the assembly line cuts through traditional cleavages in the labour force, thus producing a veritable revolution in the composition of the entire working class. The emergence of the mass worker, the human appendage to the assembly line, is the overcoming of the vanguard/mass dichotomy upon which the Bolshevik Party is modeled. The very "aristocracy of labour" that capital created after 1870 in its attempt to control the international circulation of the Paris Commune (the very workers supposedly "bribed" by the eight-hour work day, Saturdays off, and a high level of wages) became one of the pivots of the circulation of struggles in the Teens. Through the assembly line capital launches a direct political attack, in the form of technology, on the skills and the factory model of the Councils' professional workers. This attack brings about the material destruction of that level of organic composition which served as the basis of the self-management project. (The political unity between engineers and workers is also under attack. From Taylorism on, engineers will appear to the workers not as direct producers, but as mere functionaries of the scientific organization of exploitation; and the self-management project, devoid of its original class impact, will reappear as a caricature, the "managerial revolution" to come.)

9
Thus, capital's response to the struggles follows the Nineteenth Century's "technological path to repression": It entails breaking whatever political unification the working class has achieved during a given cycle of struggles, by means of a technological revolution in class composition. Constant manipulation of class composition through continual technological innovations provides a tool for controlling the class "from within" through its existence as mere "labour power". The re-organization of labour is a means to the end of the "political decomposition" of the working class. Since the working class has demanded leadership over the entire society, to push it back into the factory appears as an appropriate political move. Within this strategy, factory and society are to remain divided. The specific form of the labour process in the capitalist factory (that is, the plan) has yet to be imposed on the entire society. Social anarchy is counterposed to the factory plan. The social peace and the growing mass production of the Twenties seem to prove that traditional weapons have been successful again. It will take the Depression to dissipate this belief.

10
With 1929, all the tools of the technological attack on the working class turn against capital. The economic and technological measures for containing the working class in the Twenties (re-conversion of the war economy, continuous technological change, and high productivity of labour) have pushed supply tremendously upward, while demand lags hopelessly behind. Investments decline in a spiral toward the great crash. In a very real sense, 1929 is the workers' revenge. Mass production and the assembly line, far from securing stability, have raised the old contradictions to a higher level. Capital is now paying a price for its faith in Say's law ("supply creates its own demand"), with its separation of output and market, producers and consumers, factory and society, labour power and political class. As such it remains caught in a tragic impasse, between the inadequacy of the economic and technological tools of the past and the lack of new, political ones. It will take Roosevelt-Keynes to produce them.

11
While Hoover resumes the old search for external "international causes", Roosevelt's approach is entirely domestic: a re-distribution of income to sustain the internal demand. Keynesian strategy is already emerging - keeping up demand by allowing wages to rise and by reducing unemployment through public expenditure. The National Industrial Recovery Act (NRA) of 1933 raises wage rates, encourages unionization, and so forth at the same time that it authorizes both massive investment in public works through the PWA and large relief funds. The political break with the past is enormous. In the classical view, the flexibility of wages is the main assumption. Workers' struggles are seen as an outside interference with a self-regulating economy: labour organizations belong with other "institutional factors" that maintain wages "artificially", while it is the State's role to preserve the economy against such artificial interference. In the Keynesian model, the downward rigidity of wages is the main assumption; wages are taken as independent variables. The State becomes the economic subject in charge of planning appropriate redistributions of income to support the "effective demand".

12
Keynes' assumption of the downward rigidity of wages is "the most important discovery of Western Marxism" (Tronti). As wages become an independent variable, the traditional law of the "value of labour" collapses. No "law" but only labour through its own struggles can determine the value of labour. Class antagonism is brought into the heart of production and is taken as the material given on which capital must rebuild its strategy. The NRA is precisely a political maneuver to transform class antagonism from an unpredictable element of risk and instability into a dynamic factor of development. Through its emphasis on the income effect of wages, as opposed to the mere cost effect, the New Deal chooses wages as the mainspring of growth, but within precise limits: Wages must rise harmoniously with profits. The necessary control over wage dynamics requires the institutionalization of class struggle. For workers' struggles inside capital's plan means working class inside capilal's State. Hence the need for the emergence of two new political figures in the Thirties: capital as the new "State-as-Planner" and the working class as organized "labour".

13
The turn toward State-as-Planner is a radical break with all previous policies of State intervention. The NRA regulates the whole of industrial production. The certainty of a capitalist future has been shaken to its roots by the crisis: The NRA "codes", involving the totality of the capitalist class (95% of all industrial employers), guarantee that a future exists. As the depth of the crisis makes the State's function of "correcting mistakes" obsolete, the State must assume the responsibility of direct investment, "net contribution" to purchasing power. The State must expose the myth of "sound finance" and impose budget deficits. It is no longer a juridical figure (the bourgeois government of law); it is an economic agent (the capitalist plan). (All this represents a historical watershed, the beginning of a long political process that will culminate in the "incomes policy", the wage-price guideposts of the New Frontier.) Most important, as the representative of the collective capitalist, the State's main function is the planning of the class struggle itself. Capital's plan for development must establish an institutional hold on the working class.

14
Hence, the need for labour as the political representative of the working class in the capitalist State. But the technological leap of the Twenties has entirely undermined the trade unions, by making their professional structure obsolete: By 1929. the AFL controls only 7% of the industrial labour force. By cutting through the old class composition and producing a massification of the class, Taylorism has only provided the material basis for a political re-composition at a higher level. As long as the mass worker remains unorganized he/she is entirely unpredictable. Thus with "Section 7a" of the NRA and later with the Wagner Act the collective capitalist begins to accept the workers' right to organize and bargain collectively. It will be no smooth process, for while capitalists as a class support the NRA, the individual capitalist will resist its consequences at the level of his own factory. The birth of the CIO will make the victory of a thirty-year-long struggle for mass-production unionism. Capital and the mass worker will now face each other as the State-as-Planner and organized labour.

15
Class struggle, once the mortal enemy of capitalism to be dealt with through bloodshed, now becomes the main-spring of planned economic development. The historical development of labour power as the political working class is acknowledged by capital's plan in this major theoretical breakthrough. What was conceived of as a passive, fragmented object of exploitation and technological manipulation is now accepted as an active, unified political subject. Its needs can no longer be violently repressed; they must be satisfied, to ensure continued economic development. Previously, the working class was perceived as capitals immediate negation and the only way to extract profits was to decrease wages and increase exploitation. Now, the closed interdependence of working class and capital is made clear by the strategy of increasing wages to turn out a profit. Whereas the reduction of the working class to mere labour power was reflected in a strategic split between factory (exploitation) and society (repression) (Thesis 9), capital's political acknowledgment of the working class requires the unifying of society and factory. Capital's plan is outgrowing the factory to include society through a centralized State.

This involves the development of the historical processes leading to the stage of social capital: the subordination of the individual capitalist to the collective capitalist, the subordination of all social relations to production relations, and the reduction of all forms of work to wage labour.

16
The signing of the NRA by the President (June 1933) marks the beginning of a new cycle of struggle. The second half of 1933 witnesses as many strikes as the whole of 1932 with three and a half times as many workers. By June 1934, with sharply reduced unemployment and a 38% growth of the total industrial payroll, the strike wave gathers momentum: 7.2% of the entire labour force (a peak not to be matched until 1937) is mobilized by the struggle. The crucial sectors are being affected - among them steel and auto workers, the West Coast longshoremen, and almost all textile workers, united behind wage, hours, and union recognition demands. 1935 is the year of both the CIO and the Wagner Act. Between the summer of 1935 and the spring of 1937, employment surpasses the 1929 level, from an index of 89.2 to 112.3. In a context of relative price stability, industrial production moves from an index of 85 to 118, and wages move from 69.1 to 110.1. The massification of the working-class struggle and the economic development of capitalist recovery are two sides of the same process: The struggle circulates to small factories and marginal industries while the sit-downs begin at Fire stone, Goodyear. and Goodrich. 1937 is the year of 4,740 strikes, the peak year in the generalization of the mass worker's struggle. In February GM capitulates; in March US Steel recognizes the Steel Workers Organizing Committee and accepts its basic demands: 10% wage increase for a 40-hour week.

17
The crucial aspect of the struggles throughout the New Deal is the general emergence of wages (wages, hours, unionization), the workers' share of the value produced mutually acknowledged by both capitalists and workers as the battlefield for the new stage of class struggle. For capital, wages are a means of sustaining development, while for the workers they represent the weapon that re-launches class offensive. It is precisely this contradictory political nature of wages (the means of workers' "integration" on one hand, and the basis for the class's political re-composition and attack on profit on the other) that causes Roosevelt's failure to ensure steady growth while at the same time maintaining control of the working class. To the threatening massification of struggles, big business responds with an economic recession, a refusal to invest, a "political strike of capital". (B.Rauch: The History of the New Deal)

18
The economic recession of 1937-38 is the first example of capital's use of the crisis as a means of regaining initiative in the class struggle. Inflation, unemployment, and wage cuts are weapons that break the workers' offensive and are means for a new political de-composition of the working class. The political necessity of the economic crisis shows dramatically that the Keynesian model is not sufficient to guarantee stability; only through an act of open violence can capital re-establish its domination over workers. Yet, it is only with the introduction of crises as a means of controlling the class that the Keynesian model can show its true value. While in 1933 the use of class struggle as the propelling element of capitalist development was the only alternative to economic recession, five years later, with the "Roosevelt recession", "crisis" is revealed as the alternative face of "development". Development and crisis become the two poles of one cycle. The "State-as-Crisis" is thus simply a moment of the "State-as-Planner" - planner of crisis as a pre-condition for a new development. From now on, capital's crises will no longer be "natural", uncontrollable events, but the result of a political decision, essential moments of actual "political business cycles". (Kalecki)

19
The political figure which dominates class struggle from the 1930s on is the mass worker. The technological leap of the Twenties has produced both the economic recession of 1929 and the political subject of class struggle in the Thirties (Thesis 8). The "scientific organization" of mass production necessitates a malleable, highly interchangeable labour force, easily movable from one productive sector to another and easily adjustable to each new level of capital's organic composition. By 1926, 43% of the workers at Ford require only one day for their training, while 36% require less than a week. The fragmentation and simplification of the work process undermine the static relationship between worker and job, disconnecting wage labour from "useful labour" entirely. With the mass worker, "abstract labour" reaches its fullest historical development: The intellectual abstraction of Capital is revealed as worker's sensuous activity.

20
From the plant to the university, society, becomes an immense assembly line, where the seeming variety of jobs disguises the actual generalization of the same abstract labour. This is neither the emergence of a "new working class" nor the massification of a classless "middle class", but a new widening of the material articulation of the working class proper. (In this process, however, lies the basis for much ideology. Since all forms of work are subsumed under capital's production, industrial production seems to play less and less of a role, and the factory seems to disappear. Thus, what is in fact an increasing process of proletarianization - the main accumulation of capital being the accumulation of labour power itself - is misrepresented as a process of tertiarization, in which the class dissolves into the abstract "people". Hence the peculiar inversion whereby the notions of "class" and "proletariat" appear as "abstractions", while "the people" becomes concrete.)

21
From the worker's viewpoint, interchangeability, mobility, and massification turn into positive factors. They undermine all divisions by productive role and sector. They provide the material basis for the political re-composition of the entire working class. By destroying the individual worker's pride in his or her skills, they liberate workers as a class from an identification with their role as producers. With the political demand of "more money and less work", the increasing alienation of labour becomes a progressive disengagement of the political struggles of the working class from its economic existence as mere labour power. From the workers' viewpoint, wages cannot be a reward for productivity and work, but are instead the fruits of their struggles. They cannot be a function of capital's need for development, they must be an expression of the autonomous needs of the class. In the heat of the struggle, the true separation between labour power and working class reaches its most threatening revolutionary peak. "It is quite precisely the separation of the working class from itself, from itself as wage labour, and hence from capital. It is the separation of its political strength from its existence as an economic category." (Tronti)

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Juan Conatz

12 years 8 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Juan Conatz on May 23, 2012

PDF added.

Comrade

10 years 9 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Comrade on May 12, 2014

yes but as know its not their article but, in radical amerika its published under gulio bardi s name

Radical America #06.04: Alternative education project, July-Aug. 1972

Submitted by Reddebrek on July 5, 2013

Constituent articles:

- The eclipse of the new left some notes (Buhle, Paul)
- Beyond reminiscence the new left in history (O'Brien, James P.)
- Picture from my life (Rizzi, Marcia Salo)
- Reading about the new left (Hunter, Allen O'Brien, James P.)
- Sports and the American empire (Naison, Mark)

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Radical America #06.06: Alternative education project, Nov.-Dec. 1972

Submitted by Reddebrek on July 5, 2013