Unions and Communists

bump

Very interesting post Chris, it's a pity no-one has picked up on the discussion but I guess it wasn't controversial enough.

Anyway I'll offer a couple of quick comments.

redtwister

5) The unions have always been fundamentally premised on the existence and acceptance of wage labor, and therefore capital,

There's a good article by Wildcat (UK) about how the very first modern union - the miners union in the UK - acted to pacify the class struggle. It can be found in this pamphlet I just uploaded: http://libcom.org/library/outside-and-against-the-unions-long-version-treason-pamphlet

Where there are no unions or few unions, wages, benefits and working conditions are usually worse.

No doubt true but in which direction does the causality go? Do unions win better wages or does capital accept and even encourage unions in workplaces where there has been worker militancy and/or in the more important sectors of the economy?

cheers
Pete

redtwister

6) All class struggle is fundamentally within capital, and therefore is always essentially trade unionist. Participating in class struggle is implicitly engaging in the trade unionist struggle and this is unavoidable. Critiquing the unions from a class struggle perspective is irrelevant, a kind of moralism that fails to recognize that it shares the same ground. There is no reason to not participate in the unions in principle, only for practical reasons. The problem is how to move from class struggle to communisation, the abolition of class struggle. The unions are no more an impediment than the class struggle as a whole. This view, unique as far as I know, is that of Theorie Communiste and groups and individuals influenced by their view.

I disagree with the way this view is discussed here and since I'm one of the proponents of the idea of class struggle as trade unionist I would like to correct this.

Engaging in class struggle is essentially trade unionist and it is unavoidable. Critiquing the unions from a principal standpoint is meaningless in the end, the critique must take place in practice and not by judging workers who participate in unions and struggles of unionist character. The unions are however based on the premise of wage labour, as is self-organised struggle. The unions are however a bigger impedement than self-organised struggle, but this does not imply that one should disregard workers fighting through unions or disdain from the use of unions on an as-needed basis. The critique is a critique of the whole problematic of leftists (ultra-leftists, leninists, anarcho-syndicalists, social democrats, autonomism etc.), basically stating that normative critique is normative (ie. moralism) and that critique must be the practical and theoretically concrete critique of unions as well as class struggle and its premise: wage labour.

Thus the need for wage-workers' self-activity is imperative, which must imply the abolishment of all representation of self-proclaimed "communists". We do not act on a "higher" level in the class struggle than any other wage-worker, we do not have any special tasks implied by our self-proclamation.

redtwister

Aufheben wrote:

In our experience the attitude of workers to unions varies: some are relatively pro-union, others anti-union, some both at the same time or both in different situations, and many are indifferent; yet in concrete situations of disputes, their attitude to the union is more likely to be based upon practical considerations, rather than ideological ones -- their criterion is more likely to be whether something is to be gained by following the union, or alternatively acting outside the union.

A bit off topic, but shit, i wonder how long it took to come up with that.

I think Aufheben’s description of the left communist position on the unions is a bit of a caricature. To say, as we do, that unions are part of the state from top to bottom does not imply that they are always holding the workers back at every moment, while the workers champ at the bit to enter into massive struggles. That is the unions’ historical role; it doesn’t translate mechanically into every situation. It greatly depends on the balance of class forces, the level of militancy in the class, and so on. Unions can equally ‘push’ workers forward for their own ends, in particular when workers are demoralised or passive and it’s not a favourable moment to enter into open struggle.
I also don’t agree with Redtwister’s idea that unions can be anti-communist but not anti-working class. This strikes me as being very close to the view of some radical Trots that unions will indeed oppose the revolution, and may even have to be destroyed, but still need to be supported and even strengthened today. It seems to introduce a complete separation between the immediate class struggle and the future revolutionary movement. If workers don’t begin to develop their autonomy from the unions in defensive struggles, it’s difficult to see where a revolution could come from. And the need for this autonomy is not a simple matter of good ideas against bad ones. It's a necessary product of material interests, because the unions stand as an immediate obstacle to workers' unity.
That said, I think Redtwister has made a good attempt to pose the different elements of the debate and it could serve as the basis for taking it forward.

redtwister

In that sense, the unions can very much defend workers within the confines of capital at times.

What times?

redtwister

I am not thrilled with my phrasing, however, and am willing to take suggestions on a better way to express the idea succinctly.

the unions support the class in itself and oppose it for itself?

Joseph K.

redtwister

I am not thrilled with my phrasing, however, and am willing to take suggestions on a better way to express the idea succinctly.

the unions support the class in itself and oppose it for itself?

I don't think the phrase in bold makes any sense...

Steven.

Joseph K.

redtwister

I am not thrilled with my phrasing, however, and am willing to take suggestions on a better way to express the idea succinctly.

the unions support the class in itself and oppose it for itself?

I don't think the phrase in bold makes any sense...

Perhaps if you hyphenate it: -

the unions support the class-in-itself, and oppose [the class]-for-itself.

I think that makes it clearer, but I still don't agree with it, like.

i mean unions do rely on the existence of a class-in-itself for their own existence, and at some point they tend to oppose conscious self-organisation (class-for-itself) - is such a generalisation on the role of unions is untenable? probably, or at least not very useful.

(not my thoughts; i was just trying to rephrase 'succinctly' what redtwister said ;))

Trade Unions are nessary for the time, but only as a defensive reaction. What is really needed is workers control and mangement of industry - it is exciting to see this happening in certain Latin American countries as part of a revolutionary agenda of co-operation and co-management.

Communism fails to give over power to the workers, with its belief in what Michael Albert calls the co-ordinator class - that those revolutioanries who implement revolution are necessary to manage the state, rather than put the workers at the heart of the decision making process. I'm sceptical about Albert's PArecon view of the future, but he is right on this point.

Unions are a great base for collective workers action, but the agenda must now move to workers control rather than jsut protecting (slave) wages and negotiating conditions, IMO of course.

I think the issue here is whether or not the unions even defend the most basic interests of the class

Clearly it is a contentious issues if they do or not - but disbanding unions is not the right way to go because they are an important as an organisation of workers - hence my post saying that unions agenda needs now to change to pushing for workers control of industry via takeovers and buy-outs - this would make them sucessful defenders of class interest.

It seems to me there is a problem here, one of, to paraphrase Chris, treating unions as a positive, sociological entity. What 'the unions' do is not the same as 'unions' as a concept or in general, anymore than 'the Marxists' is the same as 'Marxism.' The actions of organizations calling themselves unions have been and often are problematic, counter-revolutionary, etc. The same is true of organizations and individuals calling themselves Marxist. The latter do not discredit Marxism. Without a clear idea of what 'union' is supposed to mean in abstraction, it's not at all clear what 'the unions' tells us about 'unions' in general. Pete once made a distinction between Unions and unions, which works for Communists and communists. The former are definitely no good. The latter are a matter for more discussion.

I think Pete's question is really important:

does capital accept and even encourage unions in workplaces where there has been worker militancy and/or in the more important sectors of the economy?

A friend of mine told me that in HR school they teach now that a union (a Union, I mean), can be a valuable part of managing the workers, providing "labor peace" in the way the CIO used to sell themselves to bosses. I don't know of situations of management actually encouraging unionization, though I wouldn't be surprised if it happened in some situations.

cheers,
Nate

ps- hi Chris! xox!

Nate

Pete once made a distinction between Unions and unions,

Actually I'm pretty sure I was paraphrasing the late Harald Beyer-Arnesen (for those who don't know he was a Norwegian anarcho-syndicalist who died last year, and an intelligent and comradely contributor to many online discussions). Harald meant IIRC that there is a difference between 'Union' as a structured organisation and 'union' as in solidarity among workmates against the boss. But thinking about it now I'm not sure it's especially useful to use union.

cheers
Pete

PS. Good to see you here Nate.

revol68

for once I think Alf is onto something, the role of Unions in sabotaging even the most defensive of struggles is clear as day.

Hell just froze over

A Union would be any attempt at a permanent organisation of workers in the workplace, outside periods of struggle. These are indeed hopeless in all cases.

Good to be here Pete, and thanks for saying so. I'm always behind the times so of course I catch onto libcom late. :)

I'm not married to any of the terms here, but I do think it's important to be clear on what we mean and how the same word can mask differences. So, to be honest, in my opinion some of what the IWW has done fits into the category of Union. Some of what it's done, though, is more like a council or a spontaneous action which doesn't lead to organization after a particular situation has changed. Other times it's a union, like what I'm for.

Alibadani, I don't see why a permanent organisation in the workplace is hopeless. My relationships with my co-workers and their relationships with each other forms something organized, in the sense of being patterned or having a structure/shape that could be mapped. That it's an informal organization doesn't make it necessarily any less organized. Let's say my co-workers and I decide that we are going to deal with our problems as workers at work - the problems which are in my view ineliminable from the wage relationship - for as long as we work there, to the best of our ability and in as uncompromisingly a way as possible. Let's say we also decide that part of that effort is going to be to talk to new people about why and how we do this and try to get them to take part in that effort. Is that hopeless no matter what? Cuz that's not much more than what I mean by the word union.

Well my fellow mid-westerner Nate,

The scenario you describe is likely if you and your colleagues decide to struggle for something. The problem is when the struggle ends, it ends. Workers, except perhaps a combative minority, go back to life, maybe a little more conscious and maybe a lot more. Trying to maintain the organisation at this point always fails, or else it ends up becoming the old crap union. The examples are endless.

If, unlike many on this forum, you are open to left-communist ideas, and if you don't mind reading long pamphlets laced with Marxist terminology, then take a while to read Unions agaisnt the Working Class by the ICC. It all boils down to one word: decadence. (Sorry guys I obviously can't live without that word.)

If not then I guess experience teaches in the long run.

Just to add: the "combative minority" can indeed decide to stay together, to draw lessons, to agitate, or whatever, but they will be deceiving themselves and their fellow workers if they claim to be the unified organisation for the next struggle. That's what unions were once, and are no longer (as explained in our pamphlet); it's what general assemblies have to be in today's conditions, but by definition, they can only exist for the struggle and during the struggle.

Thanks for the reference Ali. I'm open to left communist ideas and would eventually like to read what I understand are the classics - Bordiga, Pannekoek, etc. I don't know that stuff at all. It'll take me a minute to read that pamphlet but I will definitely take a look at it, and let me be the first to say all power to the midwest. ;)

Certainly there are rises and falls both in the shop and outside it. The struggle, though, can come in both given and produced forms. Two scenarios. First - the boss says "we're going to cut your wages." People may say "oh well" and do nothing. Not a struggle. Or people might say "let's get together and do something." The role of the union or the shop/organizing committee - what y'all are calling the combative minority - is to push for people to do this and to provide whatever experience they have in doing this effectively (for instance, trying to get people to see why ideas like "we'll just appeal to the boss's humanity" are less likely to succeed than other tactics).

Second scenario - nothing may change in the shop objectively, no cuts etc, but the union or shop/organizing committee could agitate people so they start to change their minds. This could involve getting people to move from finding some practice unacceptable that they used to find acceptable. Or it could involve getting people to move from resignation to thinking they can make some impact in the workplace by collective action.

In either scenario, if a struggle does start what is likely to happen is exactly what you said - the struggle ends. A rise, then a fall. One of the tasks during the struggle is to try to get a few more people to be part of the union /shop committee/organizing committee/combative minority - to get a few more people plugged into the group who has made a decision to try to start new struggles and to try to contribute as much as possible to struggles that come up on their own.

alibadani

periods of struggle.

which (climbs back up on hobbyhorse) NOBODY has been able to define. if we know them only in retrospect, what's the use?

hey all, glad to see this discussion. I'd be excited to see redtwister characterizations of positions expanded. Personally I vascillate on these questions, and would benefit from the exercise. Thanks redtwister for breaking it down like that.

Responding to the above debates, I'm curious what people would say about a thread of struggle that exists within some places and groups in the IWW. The form of organizing that takes place there is not to try and establish an administrative body for bargaining, but instead tries to assist and further direct workplace struggles, and bring active workers out of those struggles. The organization then is more like a group of revolutionary workers that tries to build off of experience and drive struggle towards revolutionary ends. There has been success both in winning gains outside of the contractual model, and of building revolutionaries out of these struggles.

Some days I worry about the role of such a group in controlling struggle, and also degenerating into leninist-esque vanguardism. On the otherhand the characterization seems in line with informal workgroups/workplace resistance groups/whatever.

More broadly I think this addresses what is something of a turning point for anarchist groups, that is can syndicalist unions transcend the Union form or is even coordinating workplace bodies institutionally such that it will build bureaucracies. I take it that is how the "permanent" bodies critique intends it.

hey Booey,

I don't know. For one thing, there's not really one IWW way of doing things. There are contract campaigns and service unionism in the IWW, and in some cases the left communist critique has something to grab onto there. There's other forms as well, some of which have less for the left communist critique to grab hold of or maybe nothing at all for it to grab.

The idea that permanent structure is automatically going to lead to reactionary stuff is ridiculous, and it fetishizes a lack of structure. Most people I know who are pro-permanent structure and organization will concede that structure and organization are subject to risks - they can be abused, they can create certain problems if we're not careful etc - which is to say that nobody's perfect. I've heard a lot less willingness to criticize lack of structure/permanent bodies from folks who are for lack of structure/permanent bodies.

Two things about this are really frustrating. First, if the negative dynamics of permanent organizations are simply what permanent organizations _must_ do, then any attempt to challenge negative dynamics in a permanent organization is quixotic. If most members of the IWW held this belief that would actually make it more likely for the IWW to act in negative ways, because those members wouldn't try to prevent negative dynamics. They would just say "this is what permanent organizations do."

Second, there's a confusion which goes on. Lack of a permanent formal body does not mean there's a lack of a permanent informal body. Informal work groups can last a long time and be shot through with negative dynamics just as much as formal organization, and it simply is the case that these exist all throughout the class. Many forms of spontaneous struggle are actually the product of longterm organization, just not formal organization. (For instance, intermodal trucker strikes a few years ago in the US.)

I would go so far as to say that informal organizations are so much a part of the material existence of the class that if permanent organization = counterrevolutionary then the class is not capable of revolution, because the class's existence is largely predicated on permanent informal organizations (networks of friends, families, workplace support and action groups, etc).

Luckily it's not the case that permanent = reactionary. Nor does permanent = set in stone or nonrevisable.

Just to clarify, Nate mate: the "left communist" position that I hold to is that there can't be permanent mass organisations in this period of history, except during an openly revolutionary period. It's not based on any unchanging distrust of permanent organisations as such. The crucial issue is indeed whether an organisation seeks to act as some kind of permanent representative body, i.e.to assume the function of a trade union. It does indeed seem that most 'revolutionary unionist' groups, whether of the IWW or Solfed type, are caught in this dilemma between being a minority grouping of militants who want the revolution, and a general 'union' that aims to organise workers as workers and not just as revolutionaries.

Thanks Alf. I think that's a pretty fair point. I mean, if there _were_ permanent mass organizations who were pro-revolution then this moment would not be what it is! It would be much more like a revolutionary period. We might disagree on this (do we?), I think that working to build mass organization has the potential to bring the revolution closer. Other (counter-revolutionary) outcomes are possible too of course, like the case of the CIO in the US.

Also, if the quote you put around "left communist" are meant to indicate that I've used the term wrong or misrepresented some position, then I apologize. Any misuse on my part was accidental and not an attempt to insult. I know very little about what I think is left communism (Bordiga, Pannekoek - councilists). I'm really interested but am not sure where to start and don't have much time.

I think nate does a good job of drawing out what sometimes seems to me a false dichtomy that I think ultimately comes from looking at organizations purely structurally and deterministically. That is people make an analysis based on something having some set of properties, and then deduce that any organization with those properties must follow some other institution with the same features.

More realistically it seems like the path of an organization is a complex dynamical evolution across time. The structure itself is moved by and constituted by the microlevel interactions of the people and groups within. On the other hand some paths clearly have dangers (i.e. contracts, paid staff,etc)., but seems less like something you can prejudge ahistorically and without knowledge of the deeper dynamics and context.

I personally have never followed the similarly deterministic arguments that either you have a worker's organization that accepts anyone or you have an ideologically based one... an ideological one naturally exclude a mass base and therefore can only be political sects (this is a gross oversimplification since my fucking spacebar is dying! but is innuciated from strange bedfellows such as malatesta leninists and insurrectionists). That line of thought always seemed to me to miss the fact that these unions admit people not who are revolutionaries but instead agree to be a part of a revolutionary organization. The whole point of such organizations is to build revolutionaries through struggle. I feel like that's too simple of a reply to be right though. Maybe I'm missing something in the critique that's more subtle.

Thanks Alf. I think that's a pretty fair point. I mean, if there _were_ permanent mass organizations who were pro-revolution then this moment would not be what it is! It would be much more like a revolutionary period. We might disagree on this (do we?), I think that working to build mass organization has the potential to bring the revolution closer. Other (counter-revolutionary) outcomes are possible too of course, like the case of the CIO in the US.

Except left communists claim social-democracy as part of their heritage and so maintain all of the fictions about anarchosyndicalism that the second international built up. Their theory makes them unable to conceptualize that some 'mass organizations', like the IWW, are built by the working-class, and some, like the CIO, are built by the employing class. Instead they are all "Unions" and because the "Unions" which were created by the bourgeoisie (particularly in their marxist flavor) acted in the interest of the bourgeoisie, then all "unions" must act in the interest of the bourgeoisie.

Decadence in a nutshell: the second international was right until 1914, including by saying that all of its revolutionary critics were "petty-bourgeois" and "unscientific". After that, it was only the left-wing to emerge from the second and third internationals (but who had supported them in the meanwhile against revolutionaries) which was right; those who had seen where the second international was headed all along were still "petty bourgeois" and "unscientific".

Nate, I'm not at all insulted, but the term "left communist" can cover a number of different points of view, including on the union question. The Bordigist current (or parts of it) for example, still argues that some kind of class unionism is possible.

Oliver, I think you are making a bit of a caricature of our view of social democracy - fine and dandy till 1914, bad and bourgeois after. From the very start, Marx and Engels had all kinds of criticisms of the social democratic parties, and the rot set in well before 1914. Neither do we reject all the criticisms raised by some of the anarchist currents before 1914. But this is a thread about unions today rather than the class nature of social democracy in the 19th century.

We don't deny that the old IWW was a class organisation, but the old IWW and today's IWW are not the same thing.

When did the IWW switch over and become an "anarchist sect"?

My point is that the anarchists/revolutionary socialists as early as 1890 were clearly and coherently predicting which road the second international was going to go down, when it forced all delegates to its congresses, even delegates of unions, to support electoral politics.

Thus flash forward to 1914 and the "petty bourgeois" CGT, at this point admittedly heavily divided between revolutionaries and reformists, proposes a joint general strike against the war with the german trade unions lead by the "marxists" of the SPD using "sound proletarian science". Obviously the leaders of the german unions, who had worked so hard at removing 'politics' from their mass organizations in order to make the SPD hegemonic, said no, they supported the war. Thus they provided the major factor in the takeover of the CGT by class traitors and towards the occurence of the Great War.

Certain Marxists, from Pannekoek to Castoriadis, are among those who I will recognize as revolutionaries, and they all had some decent insights, but their biggest theoretical failure was their pride in "scientific socialism" and their heritage in social-democracy which did not allow them to admit that the anarchists had been rights all along. Any rational revolutionary from 1914-1921 should have seen that both social-democracy and leninism had nothing to offer and ought to have based their critiques/insights on the fact that the anarchists were right. Instead they came up with reasons why anything interesting that they had to say was in fact based on the 'marxism' of the second international and/or Lenin and in contraposition to the anarchists who said the same things (and said them better) as early as 1890. I look at decadence theory as a continuation of this tradition.

But you're right, this is about unions today and not social democracy in 1890, and my point was that you don't offer convincing critiques of syndicalist unions today, you can only say that since class collaborationist "unions" are "mass organizations in a non-revolutionary period" (and this is the reason why they are fucked up), then syndicalist unions are also/will become fucked up since they also want to become "mass organizations in a non-revolutionary period".

Meanwhile I think the AFL (not to mention the SPD, and the german unions to the extent they were controlled by it), were state organs from birth. I don't think a dichotomy between "revolutionary" and "non-revolutionary" times is useful, I think the class war forces workers to organize on their own terms and that they can create organizations (that we'd call 'syndicalist unions' for short) which will be chock full of contradictions just as anything else created by the working-class, from temporary strike committees to federations of soviets. The point is that the working-class can (and hopefully will) work through the contradictions existant in any of the organizations it creates, up until the point when it has solved its own ultimate contradiction and thereby ceased its own existence.

OliverTwister, paraphrasing left-c's,

"mass organizations in a non-revolutionary period".

if i had a nickel...

OliverTwister

I don't think a dichotomy between "revolutionary" and "non-revolutionary" times is useful

i should say not

Indeed, the whole "revolutionary period" logic smacks to me of determinism and is something of a chicken or the egg. That is since people organizing and organizations have a role in creating situations of struggle it is hard from the armchair to call it out so to speak. The IWW for one wasn't built over night but had a series of gradual jumps sequentially. Likewise its mass base deflated incrimentally rather than whenever the dubbed potentially revolutionary period ended.

Are people saying that it is not ideal to organize against unions. Why?

Or is it just practical? If you go against your principles for practical purposes it does not mean that they are not your principles anymore.

No, I think people are saying that building mass organs of struggle outside of what we perceive to be a 'revolutionary period' is both constructive and entails no violation of principle.

Really :confused:

A few random thoughts...

To ask about "permanent organization" seems to me to be the wrong question. I agree with Nate that the informal socialization of the working class in many cases may be more permanent than the most bureaucratic of trade unions or socialist parties. Workers' power does not come from being organized (whether permanently or temporarily, formally or informally). It comes from our ability to be disruptive. So the question then is what kinds organization gives us the most disruptive capacity.

The IWW is a strange mixture. I've worked and not worked with IWW chapters in different cities. It seems to me that the IWW wants to be both a union and not a union. In different cities and on different campaigns it approaches workplace struggle in two completely different ways. Sometimes it goes about things by trying to organize all the workers of a shop into an IWW local, and getting legal recognition. Other times it organizes workers without the goal of forming a recognized IWW local. These two approaches seem to me to be contradictory--not just trying out different tactics.

Hi,

OK, let's look at what really happens when the working class begins to break free of the trade unions. Poland 1981 being a good example; anti-CPE movement being a more contemporary one. Workers hold mass meetings, general assemblies etc. and elect delegates to a strike committee, which in turn co-ordinates the struggle with other strike committees. These are proto-soviets, embryonic workers' councils. Communists participate in these meetings and comittees as workers and militants of political organisations to encourage the greatest control of the struggle by these committees and the extension of the struggle to other sectors.

When the struggle dies down the general assembies aren't held and the strike committee dissolves. The elan of the movement isn't there any more and its an illusion to think that it can be artificially maintained. However, all is not lost. The most militant participants in the struggle may form struggle groups, discussion circles etc. to draw the lessons of the struggle for the future struggles to come. Revolutionary organisations, such as the ICC, actively encourage such groups and have decades of experience of working with them.

Revolutionaries CAN form permanent political organisations outside of periods of open struggle, which unite people around a common set of positions and that publishes its press, books, pamphlets, websites etc. It can also intervene in struggles as and when they develop.

This is the nature of the class struggle in this period, that of the MASS STRIKE.

So where does the IWW/SolFed model fit in with this reality? Let's assume that a permanent federation of industrial unions has been formed and a period of intense struggle opens up. Workers begin to form assemblies and committees. But who controls the struggles: the permanent industrial unions or the temporary organs thrown up by the struggle?

There seems to be a potential conflict here. Also, it seems like it's the @-syndicalists who ar stuck in the 19th century with their visions of artificially preparing the General Strike outside of the real movement taking place under their noses. It would be good to hear what the syndicalists think of Luxemburg's pamphlet The Mass Strike, which is in the Libcom library:
http://libcom.org/library/the-mass-strike-rosa-luxemburg

B.

Lem, I don't know why this is such a surprise to you, its what IWW members have been arguing on this thread since it started. Or maybe you thought that we were arguing that building unions was a neccessary compromise of principles in order to move the struggle forward. If I thought it involved a compromise that would make me an opportunist wouldn't it?

Of course I'm curious to know why unions are more likely to degenerate into collaboration than a small political groups. Or for that matter why a small group is less likely to sell out than a large one. Also I, and I'm pretty sure a few others would like to know how you can tell we are in a period of mass struggle.

To me the left communist position relies on too much sponteneity and an attitude that everything will work out. It's a sort of radical millenarianism where the left communists don't want to get involved until the struggle is revolutionary enough. The day to day struggles of workers on the job has plenty of revolutionary content the only reason I've been given not to engage in this struggle in an organised manner is because somehow people are more prone to collaborationism when not in periods of mass struggle.

As for new organisations that are thrown up I would advocate working along side them, hell if the situation was right even joining them.

Just to follow on from Beltov: as well as hearing what the IWWers or anarchosyndicalists think of Luxemburg's text, I would also like to hear what they say about quint's post about the contradictory aspects of the IWW's practise, which seems to pose the issue very sharply.

Agreed, and indeed there's some tension but not as much as you'd think. Ultimately one of the main assets of the IWW is willingness to experiment and not grow too dogmatic. That said I have little sympathy or love for the other approach.

The above reply was meant as reply to quint. I missed something though. I think on some level we get tangled in semantics, which is fine. An increasingly dominant trend in the iww is solidarity unionism where the union is workers taking collective actions to solve workplace grievances irrespective of recognition and without contracts.

Now maybe we should call that workplace resistance groups or something, but there are parallels to pre-1930s unions. Personally I push for cleansing the IWW of 'union' language and service union practices, but I think the contradiction is less than you might think. For one most of the Union-istic people are new comers who have no idea otherwise. But there are structures and people who are increasingly able to bring people along so mistakes don't have to be made. There's other older wobs who are commited to the union ideal, but they tend to be inactive and so increasingly irrelevant or are becoming marginalized by the failures and problems of that model.

I've read Mass Strike, what in particular are you wondering about?

On the Mass Strike, basically the argument against the traditional conceptions of the 'general strike', whether the social democratic or the anarchosyndicalist version. The mass strike is not declared or decreed, it is the culmination of a process in which the workers are compelled to spread their struggles as widely as possible. It is thus a refutation in practise of the notion of gradually building up your general classwide organisations inside the old society, of creating the organisational structures that will call and lead the general strike; in reality the organisations of the mass strike are a product of the struggle, like the Soviets in 1905.

hey all,
I think one of the disconnects that keeps happening here is terminological. I for one see no reason why "union" has to be the name for something revolutionaries oppose. I say that while being quite convinced of many left communist attacks on entities they call unions. I mean, if communism is revolutionary such that so-called communist states were antithetical to communism, then why should the term union be simply conceded to the dustbin of history in a way which conflicts with the idioms of many working class militants. Sorry, terminology and implied insistence that one speak the way another demands is kind of a personal hang up of mine.

Quint, I disagree with you when you say that class power doesn't come from organization. Disruption on a mass scale only ever happens from organization. I don't mean formal organization, or even necessarily particularly longstanding informal organizations. But, to disrupt capital is precisely to organize collectively in a way which exerts power against the boss class. What gets called spontaneity can then be considered really rapid organization. Questions of formal organization can be considered questions of how different organizations - formal, informal, temporary, permanent, longstanding, new - will relate to each other. This is part of the basic model of workplace organizing - you map the organization of the place, figure out who has what relationships, etc, looking for the locations where production is weakest (technical composition) and where the existing organization is strongest (political composition).

You're absolutely right about contradictions in the IWW, and it's not all due to an open and experimental spirit. We're not perfect and we don't have the kind of ideological unity that I think a lot of groups do. (NEFAC has a term for it, but I forget what it is. Theoretical and tactical unity, maybe?) There are disagreements in some quarters, some strong ones sometimes. There's also varying political perspectives and levels of theoretical understanding (or maybe just theoretical interest). We're an organization of workers, albeit more left in ideology than the class as a whole, and like the working class we have our contradictions even among folks who largely agree politically - I think Booey and I are on the same page mostly in terms of over all politics and opposing service unionism in the IWW but I totally oppose dropping the term union, for instance. We're also set up in a way, procedurally and in material practice, so that people can do a wide range of things in the organization. That has real downsides, but is over all a strength I think.

Alf, I haven't read that piece. I'll print it out and respond. Should we do that here, or start a new thread? (I don't know how to do that, if one is started, please make a note here.)

So where does the IWW/SolFed model fit in with this reality? Let's assume that a permanent federation of industrial unions has been formed and a period of intense struggle opens up. Workers begin to form assemblies and committees. But who controls the struggles: the permanent industrial unions or the temporary organs thrown up by the struggle?

Sorry to post twice, I forgot to reply to this. Beltov, in answer to this, ideally the control should belong to the workers themselves. The union's role is to support and put forward proposals based on analysis and experience. That said, the union shouldn't put resources into an idea it's convinced is a definite loser. But there's no guarantee that this stuff will play out right, just as there's not guarantee if it's all councils and assemblies and no permanent organization. One council might sell out or get infiltrated by spies, and one assembly might back out because of fear, etc. The same things are all possible in the revolutionary union. Not having paid staff and building both policies for and a culture of accountability help I think, but I don't think there's ever a guarantee. Restless labor of the negative and all that...

Alf

On the Mass Strike, basically the argument against the traditional conceptions of the 'general strike', whether the social democratic or the anarchosyndicalist version. The mass strike is not declared or decreed, it is the culmination of a process in which the workers are compelled to spread their struggles as widely as possible. It is thus a refutation in practise of the notion of gradually building up your general classwide organisations inside the old society, of creating the organisational structures that will call and lead the general strike; in reality the organisations of the mass strike are a product of the struggle, like the Soviets in 1905.

I remember that. Throughout I found her characterizations of the general strike to be caricatures and essentially straw men. Likewise with her discussion of anarchism. She seems to think either you're a blanquist (who weren't anarchists) or your an anarchosyndicalist who she claims aren't anarchists since they believe in organization. I've never encountered syndicalist literature that was as linear and simple minded as what she claimed. It's possible, I've just never seen it. It seems like such an obvious critique i would have never considered it since I honestly doubt whether that many people believed otherwise. Historically it would make sense too. By embracing the concepts she was in that essay she was edging towards anarchist thought, and was called that by other marxists so I think she needed a straw man to keep her marxist street cred.

quint- I missed this part. "Workers' power does not come from being organized (whether permanently or temporarily, formally or informally). It comes from our ability to be disruptive. So the question then is what kinds organization gives us the most disruptive capacity."

I'm not so sure that workers' power is simply disruptive. Equally important (if not more important) is its constructive power. I have little faith that if we can merely disrupt capital that a revolutionary society will come to us. It seems more likely that it will take some work and building constructive socially along the way.

Beltov:

I spoke earlier about how annoying it is that when Marxists begin to drop a little of their counter-revolutionary baggage, rather than admit anarchists were (at least mostly) right, they invent new Marxian ways to claim their theoretical superiority over anarchists, often simply out of their embarassment of being 'socialist intelligentsia' whom history has proved wrong by deciding in favor of workers.

Rosa Luxemburg dichotomozing between the 'mass strike' and the 'general strike' is the perfect example of this. Rosa knew that any such dichotomy was false and turned the general strike, and the anarchists by extension, into strawmen, while the 'mass strikes' somehow confirmed the counter-revolutionary theses of the second international (or at least it's left-wing). However, if she had admitted that the anarchists were right all along, that workers could and would struggle outside of the control of the parties of 'scientific socialism', then that would have invalidated her entire political career (including voting for war credits).

Frankly, the ICC's collective amnesia that the CNT(s) of France played leading roles in the struggle against the CPE is in the same vein. Yes, obviously the class-collaborationist unions opposed or sabotaged the struggle and the assemblies, but the CNT(s) did not, and it is dishonest to simply state that 'the unions' sabotaged the assemblies and include the revolutionary unions in that group.

Nate: I agree that in order to be disruptive, we need to be organized. And large disruptions usually need serious organization... But this doesn't mean that being organized means being powerful. Forming a large well-organized group that is not disruptive, or at least does not pose a serious threat of disruptiveness, is not going to bring us any power. I can generally agree that "to disrupt capital is precisely to organize collectively in a way which exerts power against the boss class." But what is the power? I would argue that it is mainly disruption or the threat of disruption.

Booeyschewy: I'm not saying that there is no other way that workers can exert power except by being disruptive. If workers, for example, let each other crash at each others apartments when they're out of work for a while, it takes off some small amount of pressure to take any job no matter how shitty. This does figure into a total balance of power. I'm not saying that merely causing disruptions to capital will make a communist society. I'm saying that in the class struggle, we have very little control over what happens. There are those, including many unions, and some IWW members, who make the argument that just having an organized recognized group means that the boss will have to take that into account in some way, and we can change our situation for the better. I am saying that what puts pressure on the boss is not whether we are organized, but whether we are going to potentially disrupt their business. Think of all the people who work horrible, shitty, jobs but are part of large well-organized unions. Of course we can accomplish our goals more effectively if we are well organized, but being well-organized is not one of our goals.

I don't think I'm disagreeing that much in practice with either of you, but to go back to the IWW thing. I'm not trying to say anyone is a bad person or anything. Let me make an analogy. If you had an organization that advocated say direct action against evictions, as well as running it's members for local city council seats to get better housing laws, we would see this as a contradiction. It wouldn't negate the good work people were doing stopping evictions, but it would be a serious criticism of the organization that the two contradictory strategies existed side by side.

Quint, the degree to which you can disrupt is the degree to which you are organised. Furthermore to a certain degree production is what organises workers, not unions. Often a union is just a corrolary of the organisation imposed on workers by the production models of the company.

That is why comparing the IWW to a large well organised (business) union is spurious. What we are doing is fundamentally different. We aren't a legalistic entity agitating for better treatment under existing conditions*, we are the sum total of workers relationships on the shop floor straining business as usual and trying to make gains as we step forward.

*Though we may register with the government as such to protect our livelihoods.

OliverTwister

Rosa Luxemburg dichotomozing between the 'mass strike' and the 'general strike' is the perfect example of this. Rosa knew that any such dichotomy was false

there was an article about this in ASR last winter i think?

quint

I don't think I'm disagreeing that much in practice with either of you, but to go back to the IWW thing. I'm not trying to say anyone is a bad person or anything. Let me make an analogy. If you had an organization that advocated say direct action against evictions, as well as running it's members for local city council seats to get better housing laws, we would see this as a contradiction. It wouldn't negate the good work people were doing stopping evictions, but it would be a serious criticism of the organization that the two contradictory strategies existed side by side.

Oh yeah totally. I think we do agree mostly. I think there are really unhealthy and potentially counterrevolutionary currents that exist. I also think that that is natural for a young organization that has activists and politicos in it. The key is to organize within. Ultimately I think the wind is falling out of their sails. They aren't suceeding, and all the discussion within and energy is going into building "solidarity unionism" (but that's just my opinion). I'm routinely impressed by wobblies I meet who by some act of magic have come to have serious critiques of the union form with literal interaction from the rest of us.

Quint, I think we're on the same page. I didn't get it at first. Thanks for clarifying. Your analogy about a group took direct action against evictions and also ran candidates is a good one. I think the wobs on here have been pretty open about the differences of opinion in the IWW. I can see how from the outside it could look really weird, especially if folks think that every IWW member agrees with everything the IWW is doing. If anything, the opposite is closer to true - everyone disagrees with everything! - as anyone who has attended one of our General Assemblies could tell you. ;)

I'm routinely impressed by wobblies I meet who by some act of magic have come to have serious critiques of the union form with literal interaction from the rest of us.

Agreed. The way I see members of the IWW organizing against the internal contradictions that they see (and which I think are valid contradictions) has impressed me more about our actual potential than anything else.

hi Chris,

spontaneity, in Marx's sense, is not something that develops out of thin air. It is the coagulation of years of unseen, hidden struggle bursting forth into a new level of overt and more conscious conflict.

When you talk about spontaneity, the years of unseen hidden struggle, do you think that every single last worker participates in this, and participates equally? If not, then what's the difference in participation and how do you make sense of that? I suspect the answer will be relevant to this question of yours.

Why do you separate the unions from the workers in this way and find it defensible?

If the workers are in control, who are these "unions" that can offer guidance and experience? Are these not implicitly the union officials and organizers? Are these any better then than the professional revolutionaries of Lenin?

The union is the group of workers who participate. I thought I defined the term earlier, if not I apologize. The union at a basic level is two or more workers coming together to solve problems together at work, problems they face because of work being imposed on them. It's not really much more than that, except that some of us think this should happen in a sustained fashion over time - and we work to try to make this so - in a way which tries to link up in theory and in practice with the need to abolish wage labor. The people who offer experience aren't anything nefarious Chris. You, for instance, have experiences that many workers don't - how to write a newsletter etc. That's a contribution you can make. Another co-worker who knows everyone, or knows the production process well in a way that can identify pinch points in order to formulate actions, they contribute something else. Does the struggle in your workplace stand or fall because of your or someone else's participation? Not in general, though in specific conflicts sometimes yes.

And no, the people with experience are not necessarily officials and I'm against paid staff. Absence of paid staff does not mean that there are no problematic dynamics. We have to be on guard for those still. There can be unpaid people who still fulfill the function of paid staff (they get paid in satisfaction and in the feeling of being large and in charge, so to speak).

You write

any organization generated by a struggle which survives the struggles which created it of necessity makes some general compromise with capital. if it did not, it would be destroyed.

And that totally makes sense. I'm gonna call these organization B, or "organizations left after a major struggle". These start out as organization A, organizations thrown up during a major struggle. To exist after a major struggle, an organization A must become an organization B. Agreed.

Then you write

the transformation from an organ of the abolition of capital to one which functions permanently as an organ of capital is pretty much a complete transformation

which also totally makes sense. We'll call these organization C, or "organizations which manage and maintain the capital relation." You suggest that every organization B must automatically become an organization C -

such organizations become an impediment the next time social struggles escalate

There's a logical leap here. To "make some general compromise with capital" is not to become "an organ of capital" and nothing else. The working class itself is an organ of capital (I learned that point from you) - it's our labor which produces capital, and which produces us as capital. In a sense, every time a worker who sells their labor power and/or their boss makes use of their labor (ie makes them work) they "make some compromise with capital" in a way which produces and reproduces the capital relation. That's not the only thing that happens, though, and that doesn't mean that there's no other possibility. As I see, in at least some cases, things I call organzation B don't necessarily have to make much of a compromise greater than that which every worker makes all the time, the one required to exist. (That also includes things like this forum, which aren't organizations in the same way you're talking about but I think the point still holds - if we were dangerous for the capitalists to find us a threat then we'd be dealing with a lot more trouble than we currently are, given that there's not a major struggle going on that this forum is part of.)

Lastly, how do you define the struggles which are generative of everything else, such that you can tell good organization from bad in your schema?

cheers,
Nate

I'm taking a moment to respond to Chris' post. I have to say, Chris, this post is far below your usual high quality- it is nearly non-sequitur and I can only assume that you really did not read my post well.
redtwister

OliverTwister

Rosa Luxemburg dichotomozing between the 'mass strike' and the 'general strike' is the perfect example of this. Rosa knew that any such dichotomy was false and turned the general strike, and the anarchists by extension, into strawmen, while the 'mass strikes' somehow confirmed the counter-revolutionary theses of the second international (or at least it's left-wing). However, if she had admitted that the anarchists were right all along, that workers could and would struggle outside of the control of the parties of 'scientific socialism', then that would have invalidated her entire political career (including voting for war credits).

Rosa Luxemburg never rejected the need for political organization. Nor did Gorter, Pannekoek, the IKD, or any of the Left Communists.

I never said that any of them did reject the need for political organization. What I did say was that they (and any other marxists who did not cross the class line but continued to slander anarchists) halfway realized just what counter-revolutionary depths the 2nd International had sunk to, but were too embarassed at the leading roles they had played in the 2I to give up everything it stood for and admit that the anarchists had been right since 1890.

Or, to bring up my exact words:
OliverTwister

I spoke earlier about how annoying it is that when Marxists begin to drop a little of their counter-revolutionary baggage, rather than admit anarchists were (at least mostly) right, they invent new Marxian ways to claim their theoretical superiority over anarchists, often simply out of their embarassment of being 'socialist intelligentsia' whom history has proved wrong by deciding in favor of workers.

Moving on,

RedTwister

Nor is the distinction between a mass strike and the general strike incorrect. One is the product of workers' self-activity, going beyond the limits of the existing organizations, and is immediately political in nature. The other, the general strike, is called by the unions or the political activists and is not spontaneous.

I'm not sure what the name of this logical fallacy is, but maybe someone else does? If I claim that Rosa was in fact constructing a straw man with her definition of the general strike, then that means I already know what she said about it, and regurgitating her false dichotomy does nothing to refute my claim.

I would in fact say that 'general strike' has two meanings, the original one used by the anarchists was exactly how you are using 'mass strike' here, and the second, more vernacular, simply means a large scale strike in a specific city or country (which may be direct action, or completely orchestrated). Simply because a term takes on a second, broader, meaning does not invalidate the original - or else you would drop 'communist'.

With that in mind, I would say that Rosa, consciously and with full knowledge, used the broader term of general strike in the worst possible way as a strawman in order to paint the anarchists with that meaning when in fact they meant something entirely different, much closer to what she meant by 'mass strike'. She was well read enough that this could not have been an accident, and the most clear possible motive was that she was simply too proud to admit that the 2I's, and her own, criticisms of the anarchists had been wrong all along.

If you want to present a theorist who can debunk anarcho-syndicalism as the high tide of the class struggle, you're going to have to do better than a vain liar (who voted for the war).

The historical difference is quite stark. No one called for the strikes in 1905 or 1917 which started both Russian Revolutions.

No one called for them, but of all the tendencies on the left, only the anarchists supported them in and of themselves, as opposed to all the marxist factions who supported them only as far as they could use them, and bitterly attacked them otherwise. It was this that led to G.P. Maximoff saying that "The anarchists are the best marxists."

On the other hand, look at the travesty which was the 1926 General Strike in England. in fact, I know of no general strike that could not be called off by the people who called it, whereas the mass strike takes on a life of its own and while it may fail to develop further, is immediately recognized as a threat to capital (May-June 68 in Frnace, the Hot Autumn in Italy in 69, in the Iranian oil fields in 1978, etc.)

Yeah, the english general strike of 1926 was a travesty. This doesn't change the fact that the spanish general strike of 1936 unleashed the deepest social revolution yet to occur and was the culmination of a series of events all of which make France 68, Italy 69, and Iran 78 look like jokes.

This is the exact same kind of fallacy as if I were trying to dichotomize between 'libertarian' and 'communist' by saying "On the other hand, look at the travesty which was the communist movement in Russia."

Now, Luxemburg's characterization of the anarchist and syndicalist positions is indeed unfair, and one common in the 2nd international with its shameful expulsion of the anarchists, but this does not imply my agreement with anarchism or the rejection of political organization, that is, the systematic organization of class power, of class violence, against all of the aspects of capital.

Chris

What the hell does this even mean? "Systematic organization" means someone is organizing the working class systematically - talk about a path towards recuperation!

I can demolish your entire last paragraph simply by saying that the FAUD, and the IWA generally, did far more in terms of the "organization of class power, of class violence, against all of the aspects of capital," then the entire German and Italian Communist Left could have even begun to do.

Oliver

The fallacy you're looking for is false dichotomy good post O.T. Extra points for bringing up Maximoff.

Thanks EW.

BTW - I was gonna post your article from this months IW, "Talkin' Union", but could not find it online. Do you have it electronically?

Also: note the irony that I even used the phrase 'false dichotomy' but could not remember that it was the name of the fallacy.

Chris,

My understanding is that the FAUD was larger and had much more lasting roots than the KAPD, but looking on an international scope we can see that the anarcho-syndicalist presence in Latin America dwarfed that of the Leninists even into the 30s, and it was not until the latter allied with military dictatorships that they were able to supplant the former.

I basically agree with the rest of what you wrote.

Chris,

I can't tell to what degree we really disagree. I think you're making a very basic confusion as I said in my initial comment, which is that you're taking most actually existing unions ("the unions") and using them to define the form of a union. You do not do this with all communists or all marxists, when there are very many communists (all Communists, for instance) and marxists who are also on the wrong side of things. This is, in my view, a sociological view akin to that which you rightly reject re: workers. I agree that there are unions who do what you say, and I share your criticisms. What I don't understand is why for you this is the only thing the word 'union' can mean, that this is in some way the essence of the word or concept, what a union really is.

Let's say there's an organization which consists entirely of members of the working class - no paid staff, no professionals - and which works together to fight for improvements at work and provide mutual aid as needed, with the long term goal being the abolition of capitalism and with the middle term goal being to get bigger and gain more experience in order to better carry out the short term goal and attempt to get closer to the long term goal. They do this by trying to build the spontaneity of the sort that you talked about, and they do that by trying to get more co-workers to move from bad positions and inactivity into being more active in a collective fashion in and against the workplace. (Think for example of the rank and file factory committees connected with the LRBW and STO back in the day.)

That's more or less what I mean by the good sense of the term union. Your position implies that if people in a group like that call themselves a union they're either reproducing the capital relation in a way which needs abolishing, or that they are making a mistake and are not really a union. In regard to the latter, I don't see why that should be so and what business it is of anyone else's to say "you lot should talk like I do, your name for your endeavor is wrong."

take care,
Nate

Oliver is wrong about Spain 36, and this with 70 years of hindsight available to him. The Spanish general strike of 36 didn't "unleash the greatest social revolution" but the greatest bourgeois backlash which confirmed, once and for all, the role of the trade unions as integral organs of the capitalist state. The components of this were supported by stalinism, trotkyism and anarchism (elements of the right wing also supported this "development) and was exemplified in the "collectives" of the CNT.

Baboon this is asserted a lot in your literature, but frankly I haven't seen any proof. I might take that point more seriously if you provided some evidence.

EdmontonWobbly

Baboon this is asserted a lot in your literature, but frankly I haven't seen any proof. I might take that point more seriously if you provided some evidence.

i second that emotion

Comrades, this is a fantastic thread. I've already linked to it for a discussion i was having about unions elsewhere. It's great to see such intelligent forethought conversation on a pivotal issue without the dick-slapping and hand waving on so many threads, especially after the unfortunate lows of the bonfire thread and recent ranty binned threads initiated by raw etc. It's also really good to see constructive engagement from all sections with the left communists on this board. This is what libcom should be about.

From my own perspective I'll be following this thread with keen interest. Chris has summed up various perspectives so that we can have a useful conversation, however I don't feel that these positions are contradictory. Positions 1, 20, 5 & 6 could almost all be held at the same time.

From my own perspective I don't know enough about labour history to be able to come to a final appraisal. I've been having a discussion with someone in the Alliance for Workers Liberty (a UK based Trotskyite group) on the Scottish Socialist Youth forums where the argument has centred around whether TUC (and by extension AFL-CIO etc) unions can even theoretically be taken over or subverted in a useful way towards workers struggle.

Now on a personal level I'd really like for the AWL poster to be right - that it is possible for a rank-and-file movement to emerge that wrest de jure, or de facto control over a TUC union, but my feeling is (coupled with what happened to Militant etc in the labour party/labour movement) that this is not possible, and that more, "[By] trad[ing] material improvements for a section of the class in return for aiding in the establishment of social peace (although at a price of course), and institutionalizing differences by industry, trade, skilled and unskilled, etc., each union looking after “it’s own”, also known as corporatism or sectoralism. The unions, in seeking to secure better working conditions, wages, etc. tend to accept legalism (at least via contracts) and tend to become incorporated into the state via state recognition and labor laws, making them even more likely to enforce the conditions that protect their institutional existence and to regard capital’s prerogatives as their own."

Where I disagree with Chris, like some posters on here, is that I do not accept that this is also true for specifically syndicalist/industrial/anarcho-syndicalist projects, even in-as-much as at times it might be.

There is always a contradictory nature in any struggle between the 'reformist' and 'revolutionary' demands of the class, but as Nate and others have elucidated these 'polar oppositions' can actually be contiguous.

In our wee group in Glasgow we've had a number of arguments about whether or not the establishment of tenants associations which force repairs and maintenance make a revolutionary movement more or less likely (small fry perhaps); this seems to be a repeat of the same argument - that a mass struggle organisation of the working class cannot help to move towards revolution on one end, or that the existence of such an organisation, through the struggles it participates in, and through the infrastructure it creates CAN - given that specific forms of historical development and evolution and organisational criteria are fulfilled - bring the class closer to revolution.

It's an interesting debate and one that I feel would be all the better examined on this thread (for those of us without copious knowledge of the historicity of these things - eg me) through historical example and evidencial analysis.

I also think this is a good thread. There are a number of issues raised by it. The discussion about Rosa Luxemburg and the mass strike is particularly important. I agree with Chris's distinction between the mass strike and the general strike and would like to come back to some of Oliver's criticisms of Luxemburg when I have a bit more time. There is a real debate here, although Oliver's description of her as a "vain liar" because she couldn't admit that the anarchists had been right all along is not only unhelpful, it also obscures the degree to which her analysis was a new and significant theoretical development.

For the moment I just want to say that the issue about "unions" isn't a matter of names. It's a matter of real live experience. There have been plenty of organisations that haven't called themselves unions but have played what most left communists would define as the capitalist role of the unions. For example, many of the coordinations and base committees that appeared at different moments in Italy and France in the late 60s or again in the 80s began as genuine expressions of the class movement, and even rejected the existing unions, but time and time again turned into corporatist, legalist obstacles when they tried to turn themselves into permanent representatives of the struggle after it had died down. In my view, they became unions without the name.

The term union is not therefore the sole issue. But it is still an issue because when you say that you are trying to build a union, this has a meaning to the vast majority of workers - they take it to mean that you are proposing a way of organising large numbers of workers, and even the majority of the working class, on a permament basis with the aim of resisting exploitation. They don't take it to mean that it's just a group that is for the struggle, whether immediate or revolutionary. They take it to mean that it is the actual organisation of the struggle. And that's where most left communists would disagree, because we would argue that such a project is bound to end up creating a new CNT, a new SAC, or a new set of Commissiones Obreras.

A mnemonic I came up with:

"Unions" which exist as seperate from the workers involved (i.e. organizes them are bourgeois institutions which can not be taken over, cannot be reformed, and the best that can come from them is using their networks of communication to encourage unreliance on them.

"Unions" which exist as a forceful declaration of the already existing social organization (i.e. self-organization) among workers can play a large role in enouraging class solidarity, self-reliance, etc. and can give workers practice in large scale, militant self-organization.

Those who mix the two, whether reformist or 'revolutionary', are retarding the development of consciousness of the proletariat. They are the bourgeoisie in workers' clothes.

Alf, thanks for that. Certainly there are organizations who do what you and Chris are talking about - the business unions, and many other groups that don't use the word union (community organizations etc). My objection is two fold. I don't see why using the word 'union' to name some collective project automatically makes that project subject to the critique of unions you put forward. Nor do I see why attempts at permanent collective organization in and against the workplace have to turn into what you call a union. You seem to be saying they do have to, unless I misunderstand you.

As for what the meaning of the word union is to most workers, I don't agree with you. In my experience, the word means next to nothing to most workers. Unionization in the official state recognized sense in the US is about 9%. That means the word 'union' is really wide open to most people, so that its meaning isn't so determined as you suggest. Maybe that's different in other countries. In any case, it's certainly a less heavily determined word than "communism" is in the US (unfortunately!).

I also don't see why an attempt to build permanent organization is predetermined to result in reinforcing the capital relation. You've said that several times and I don't understand the argument. Is there a text you can point me to that makes the case for this position?

As I see it the goal - or rather, one goal which can contribute to laying some groundwork for the revolution - is precisely

organising large numbers of workers, and even the majority of the working class, on a permament basis with the aim of resisting exploitation

.

I forgot about the Luxemburg piece, sorry. I'll read it soon.

Nate - try reading this text which gives an overview of why the conditions facing the working class have fundamentally changed since the time unions were a working class form of organisation. http://en.internationalism.org/ir/023_proletariat_under_decadence.html
Just to make it clear, we think that minority groups of revolutionaries can have a more permanent existence in today's conditions (although they too are subject to massive pressures from the dominant society) and, in the workplace, there can also be minority groups who fight for proletarian methods of resistance which don't dissolve after each struggle. But they can't be unions because they are not capable of regrouping workers simply on the basis of being workers.

I think the statements from the CNT and the collectives themsleves (some of which are quoted on the CNT thread, around the end of October)clearly demonstrate the capitalist management role of the CNT and the trade unions in the war effort and the tendency towards world war.
To call a self-organised expression of the working class a union can only be, at least, a confusion, particularly when the bourgeoisie's unions will, by their very nature, attempt to subvert such an expression from the off.

Thanks Alf, will read that piece plus the Luxemburg later and soberer in this weekend.

Bassoon, I don't understand this:

To call a self-organised expression of the working class a union can only be, at least, a confusion, particularly when the bourgeoisie's unions will, by their very nature, attempt to subvert such an expression from the off.

What do you mean by "the bourgeoisie's unions"? If the enemy class has unions does that mean that any union of our class is automatically bankrupt? I mean, as far as I'm concerned much of Marxism is (state) capitalist. That doesn't mean we abandon Marxism but quite the opposite: we fight for it and in it, against its bourgeois forms. The fact that the class enemy has seen it necessary to express itself in that/our language means that it's worth fighting for and in that langauge. Similarly I'm inclinded to say the same about the union in its bourgeois forms (except that I don't in any way mean boring-from-within, I mean outside and against the business unions, rank and file controlled self-organization exclusively).
cheers,
Nate

Chris,

"Less than generous" is an understatement. I'm pissed about your post and will respond more later when I'm less pissed. Among other things your "fiction" and "in the head" and the scare quotes around union are rather insulting. I've lost two jobs related to what I call union activity in small workplaces. If you want to say that my co-workers and I were delusional in some way (taking "fiction" for reality), that's your right but I'll be fucked if I smile in the face of it. It's also a very typically bad move you're making, pretending you've got the magic (as in "scientific") vocabulary that expresses the truth of the situation that the merely trade union conscious working class are too dumb to get on their own. Call that objection one of semantics if you like, I'm not fussed, but it still doesn't sit well.

I've said repeatedly, you're using "union" as a sociological category in the way you are the first to argue against when people think of the working class that way. That "the unions" meaning some unions, even many unions or most unions, have done this or that says very little about "unions" - in the sense of "the union form" meaning "all unions". Just as what "the marxists" and "the communists" have done says very little about "marxists" and "communists" in the sense of "all marxists" and "all communists."

As for it being impossible to make someone active, you're simply wrong. I was made active by friends at work sitting me down to a one on on meeting, pushing me to attend shop committee meetings and to take part in job actions. The implied problems your post halfway points to are important - voluntarism and representative organizational forms, but your use of "activist" as an epithet is not an argument. I don't buy your understanding of spontaneity. It sounds theological to me, in the sense of being like an act of god or something that falls from the sky fully formed, and I fail to see how you have the future reading power to know in advance precisely that certain efforts will automatically be recuperated.

Lastly, if one person says "I seek the abolition of capital" does that mean their actions really point toward that outcome? And if someone else doesn't say that does that mean they are a priori incapable of contributing toward the historical abolition of the capital relation? If so, that sounds like idealism. If not, then what does it matter that "every communist is for the abolition of capitalism, regardless of how miserable their actual politics are, while the vast majority of people who describe themselves as unionists do not at all seek the abolition of capital"

later,
Nate

I've said repeatedly, you're using "union" as a sociological category in the way you are the first to argue against when people think of the working class that way. That "the unions" meaning some unions, even many unions or most unions, have done this or that says very little about "unions" - in the sense of "the union form" meaning "all unions". Just as what "the marxists" and "the communists" have done says very little about "marxists" and "communists" in the sense of "all marxists" and "all communists."

This misses the point that unions are oragnised groups (whether formally or informally depending on how far you're going to stretch the word), "marxists", "communists" are not - they're categories of people who may or may not be organised into groups. So if you suffix "marxist" or "communist" with groups, or parties or whatever, you've got a point of comparison, or if you compare "unionists" with "marxists" or "communists" you have, but as it stands you're doing the equivalent of comparing "courgettes" to "fruit".

hi Chris,

Thanks for the kinder tone in your message. While I wasn't keen on the tone in the first post it also came at a hectic time in the rest of my life, which exacerbated stuff. Sorry for getting heated on you.

I was a bit frustrated at your implication that these struggles are failing because they're (still) small and not generalized. That's true, but it's not a failing - actually it's even less of a failing in terms of your vision of spontaneity than it is in terms of my outlook. That was kind of insulting because organizing as an employee in a small shop has all the stakes for the individual workers organizing (though it of course does not have the same stakes in terms of the wider class). I was also frustrated at your implication that either the people in those situations are doing what you say all unions do (and which I agree with in most cases actually, just not every case), or that there were making a mistake in calling their project a union. That struck me as insulting and patronizing.

Much of our disagreement is largely one of words I think. Basically, I think that some uses of the word "union" refer to working class self-organization. That means the critique of unions doesn't refer to everything that is called a union by its participants. You have sometimes seemed to suggest that those instances aren't really unions. That was part of my initial objection, which again may be more a matter of words. Those instances may not be what you mean by 'union' when you use that word in a critical way, fair enough. I don't see why that use of the word should be the real truth of it and other people's uses of the word are a mistake.

Also, I may be wrong but I don't think I've argued - certainly I haven't argued very strongly - that one group or many groups of workers self-organizing will automatically lead to the creation of a situation where all or most workers are self-organizing. I do see being part of workers self-organizing as one of the very few things one can do that might contribute to such a situation, and I do think that workers self-organization can be created where it didn't exist. That's what I mean by "making active." It is of course not mechanical. All I've ever seen happen in organizing (certainly in any form of organizing that I care about) is the posing of decisions to people, and attempts to encourage them to decide in the direction of being part of organizing collectively. People often decide against being part of that. People often decide to be part of it. The latter is not the mechanical result of the activity of organizers, but it wouldn't have happened when and where it did without the organizers' activity. I also do think that some instances of unions/workers' self-organization has a communist content or at least has the potential to make more communists. Not least by changing the individual workers who participate, including changing the ones who believe in leftist ideas - which is to say I don't think that it's just noncommunist workers who get radicalized or that the goal is to make other workers just be like leftists, leftists change just as much from participating in the struggles though sometimes in some different ways. Though in many cases if they come at the world from ideas first they can be a real obstacle.

I should also note that the organizer's role is one that is designed to become obsolete (to wither away, ha!). This doesn't happen in all cases (but presumably there are communist groups that inadvertently reproduce the capital form too), but it does happen in others and can be quite powerful.

For the record, I'm okay with "activist" as an epithet, by the way, but I'm not okay with epithets in place of argument.

As for permanent and formal organization, that'll have to be bracketed for the now. We disagree on this and will probably continue to.

Okay now that I've missed my bus I'm gonna go have a second cup of tea.

cheers,
Nate

hi Chris,
Maybe this is a new thread topic or topics - the political and economic split, and permanent organization? Anyhow, can you say more about what you mean by the cultural level and the political level? I'm not sure I understand.
cheers,
Nate

I've enojyed reading this thread. But it still really hasn't addressed the key question for me in today's situations for mainstream unions (sorry, but facing up to reality, alternative unions are so small to be insignificant in most countries). The question i would like to raise is basically what is the current role of (mainstream) unions after their defeat and retreat in the face of the global imposition of neo-liberalism?

The ultra-left critique that the unions main aim, or one of their main aims, is to recuperate struggles seems to me to be less relevant today. Such a critique seems more suited to mroe revolutionary or radical times when workers are actually trying to struggle outside official channels. But now workers are not really being held back by unions. There is little struggle for them to recuperate. True, they still do recuperate struggles here and there, but they aren't as important or essential for capital as they once were. In NZ, with less than 20% of workers in unions these days, capital prefers to deal with workers directly through individual contracts rather than collective union based ones. That is, they simply by-pass unions. Perhaps unions still play a key role for capital in some strategic industries, such as on the wharves/docks, but I cant see they dont play such a rolen elsewhere.

i'd appreciate any thoughts or links to articles about the current role of unions from an ultra-left view. cheers.

Skraeling: In Sweden, the large union actively attempts to block every local attempt at work-place organisation. With its influence in Labour Court, LO paralysed the political strike called by SAC.

Neither SAC nor LO seem to be viable options in our current situation. SAC could be interesting if they got rid of all the union-bullshit (growing in numbers, legalism etc.), but at the moment I have to say that we can't find much of anything in the unions, and definitely not in LO (even if this doesn't mean that workers using LO as a platform are "stupid", they are using methods different from mine and I would listen to them in a discussion, but for me and my comrades at work it is not viable).

The right place to start is in your own backyard, I've never used the union as a struggle platform, but we've still been able to push forward and realise some of our demands.

cph what do you mean by "growing in numbers"?

Skraeling: it's true that when workers are extremely atomised, the ruling class doesn't need unions so badly. However you analyse its origins, there was certainly a serious retreat in the class struggle during the 90s and so there was 'less to recuperate' during that period. But even then there was never any serious question of the unions losing their fundamental role for capital. They remain extremely important in all the key sectors, as you say. In Europe, for example, they have a central role in the public sector, among postal workers, the bigger industries, etc. Neither is it the case, as the leftists usually claim, that the 'anti-union' legislation in a country like the UK 'weakened' the unions. On the contrary, it was aimed precisely at strengthening the unions' ability to stamp on any wildcat strikes, general assemblies, secondary action, etc. So all the talk about the 'weakening of union power' coming from both right and left has to be viewed quite critically.

In any case, we are entering a new period of struggles, with a much stronger tendency towards spontaneous outbreaks and expressions of class solidarity (examples: Belfast postal workers, Heathrow, Vigo, the anti-CPE movement in France, New York transport workers, strike wave in Argentina, mass strike of Bangladeshi garment workers, etc). Faced with such a development, there is no question that the most intelligent fractions of the bourgeoisie will recognise that social order cannot be maintained through anything as crude as 'individual' contracts. We will see a revival and radicalisation of the unions in response. This will make clarity about the real role of the unions absolutely essential.

Alf, do you see the recent AFL splits as a forerunner of this?

Skraeling, the unions, most of last century and certainly all of this one, have been active everywhere in the service of the ruling class. Like any good weapon, their range and effectiveness can be adapted to circumstances. See them also, for example, as prison guards, cops, firemen, assassins - they are an extremely adaptable weapon for the bourgeoisie. It was the unions in Britain in the late 70s, early 80s that paved the way for privatisations (so-call part of "globalisation"), privatisations which in fact turned into greater state control of the industries involved and greater regulation of the wages and working conditions of the workers. Initially, during the late 80s and after the miner's strike in GB, the unions were pushed to the background as the workers were bamboozled, but they are back with a vengance now. Though it is an essential part of their role, the unions do not have to be involved in subverting strikes or even calling strikes in order to subvert a class movement. Their day to day role is policing and dividing up the working class, an essential task for capitalism. Capitalism, everywhere, now needs a full, frontal attack on the conditions of the working class. The brighter (and they don't have to be too bright) elements of the ruling class know that this is inevitable and it must happen sooner rather than later. The role of the unions in this present historical period is to prepare for this attack (which,in great part, the unions are already helping to implement)and the possible response from the workers. The trade unions are structured and run for such activity.
I agree with what Nate says about the question of language and the defence of the word "communism". It is one of the main ideological weapons of the ruling class to equate the former with Stalinism (even the collapse of Stalinism). We are not talking about words though but content. Any trade union means the trade union framework and must be an expression of the ruling class. Redtwister cites Solidarnosc, COSATU and we can add the unions set up in Germany and Japan after WWII by the British and Americans (as well as the "radical" unions of leftism and the CPs).
Some see some unions, their own "favourite" ones, as positive, they are "radical" and therefore open to defending workers' interests, and so on. Such a view of unions is an idealist one, a sentimental yearning for a bygone age of radical trade unionism(which never existed anyway). Once the unions went over to the defence of nationalism and the interests of the capitalist state during WWI (and certainly by Spain 1936), there was no way back. Unions can't fluctuate between bourgeoisie and proletariat, can't be organs of the ruling class one day and for the workers the next. And throughout then last hundred years, the trade unions, time and time again, have demonstrated in practice, in the class struggle their integration into, and their active role for capital.

OliverTwister: I mean the union's battle for more members, whereby the goal is more members, not more struggles. In order to develop struggles and radicalise ourselves we must focus on the struggle and not on the number of members in an organisation.

hi, Nate. This is how our US comrades analysed the split at the time: more to do with the political divisions within the ruling class than the pressures of the class struggle. But I haven't really followed the situation since then. The comrades wrote quite a bit about the radical posturing of some union leaders during the transport strike, however.
http://en.internationalism.org/inter/135_unionsplit.html

Good posts Alf and Baboon, and i agree with them. You've pointed out my mistake, which is to claim that unions in today's conditions play a new role, when in fact they aren't. They still play the policing role, but cos they are smaller and less influential their role is not as prominent as before.

I suppose this decline in the unions is good, cos it means when struggle does break out, it is unmediated (as we are seeing around the world).

My only criticism of Baboon's post is that you seem to see unions as static, unchanging.

Baboon,
Just to play devil's advocate, why can't unions or other organizations play the capitalist's role one time then the workers' role another? The working class ourselves play contradictory roles - we act as variable capital, and so we create/recreate capitalism, and we act as communism/breakdown of capitalism too. Workers might get various things they need and even be able to push forward positive changes using all sorts of institutions on a temporary basis. None of that means that those institutions are places for ideological communists to target for anything meaningful. I think there's a difference between those two things, class/communist content of something (which can vary in different instances though there are certainly over all tendencies like the reactionary nature of business unions) and political or strategic orientation of communists.
cheers,
Nate

If I were a marxist and I cared about dialectics I'd accuse y'alls of of ignoring them. Dialectically speaking, workers organizations aren't determined forms, but evolve dialectically. Likewise what's Nate's saying holds and indeed we'd see a dynamic between the tension of worker's and capital's interests manifesting in those organizations. The above arguments seem right in many historical contexts, but seem a little syllogistic and determinist to me.

Exactly, to paraphrase Engels "the nature of the dialectic is that something is itself and not itself at the same time."

ah man. that makes my brain hurt. Death to Hegel! Nothing like violating the law of contradiction.

Skrae, there's nothing static about the trade unions throughout their entire existence. Originally workers' organisations, effective workers' organisations, during the mid to late 1800s, they provided the impetus for the workers to come together and fight. They were real schools of and for the struggle, not revolutionary in themselves, because, in their hay-day, they existed in a period that wasn't itself revolutionary. But they nevertheless provided an enormous propulsion to the workers' struggle, both at the everyday level and at the level of historical, political reforms - when such reforms were possible.
Taken over and integrated into the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie up to and after WWI, with the defence of the national capital, the unions were adapted to the twists and turns of the 20th C., in attacking the struggles and conditions of the working class. From the "house" unions of the day to day management of the working class, to the "radical" unions, they, according to circumstances required, honed their attacks on the working class. There is nothing "static" about the unions and this is what gives them their strength for the ruling class.

Why can't the unions play a role for capital at one time, and, at another, for the working class? Nate is correct to pose this "devil's advocate" question on the "dual" role of the unions because it is an essential one for the working class.
The dual role argument is what the leftists feed off. The Acid Test is what happens when the two historic classes confront each other and it's here that the class nature of an organisation is determined once and for all. From the union's mobilisation for WWI, their counter-revolutionary role in the revolutionary wave, the CNT managinig the interests of Spanish capital from 1936, the union's primordial role in the Popular Fronts of democratic France and Belgium in the 30s. amd the union's mobilisation for WWII, all demonstrate the union's function for the bourgeoisie (its bourgeoisie). All the workers' actions and the union's role, from the 1960s to yesterday confirm this analysis. There is no contradiction in the "dual" role of the unions - maintaining capitalist order and productivity in the workplace, and being "militant" and "radical", they are just two (unstatic) aspects of the same bourgeois apparatus.
Unions wouldn't be a lot of use to the bourgeosie if they just remained "house" unions - see the weakness of the CP trade unions in the eastern bloc from the 1950s to the 1980s (and, incidentally, look at the strength of the CP unions for the western bloc during the same time). The "right to organise in unions" is an entrenched part of the democratic mystification where the unions are given the ability to use their "radical" edge by the bourgeoisie itself. Whether the unions are "tame" or "radical" simply depends on the historical circumstances of the class struggle, but always in the interests of the bourgeosie, always from the point of view of the national capital. Rank and filism, base committees, and so on, if it's within the union framework (and they always are) is the bourgeoisie's, particularly with the help of its leftist appendages, response to the development of class struggle.
This is a vital question for the working class which can only be clarified overall in the struggle. The basic necessity for anyone who call themself a communist is to have a framework for understanding the unions, ie, that they were integrated into the capitalist state at the beginning of the 20thC. With this framework you can understand the anti-working class role of the unions from Spain 1936, for example, to their attacks on the working class from Brazil to Belgium last week. Such a framework does away with the idealism, confusion and sentimentality about the unions ("they're all the workers have got"; "what about genuine shop stewards?"; "the unions can be pushed to radicalise") and, however minority the view, gives a clear, communist perspective to the working class.

Booey, you're in luck: Hegel's dead. :)

Baboon, I don't get this:

the union framework is the bourgeoisie's, particularly with the help of its leftist appendages, response to the development of class struggle. (...) the unions (...) were integrated into the capitalist state at the beginning of the 20thC

I assume you mean that the unions or all forms of union serve the class interests of the bourgeoisie, is that right? Or do you mean literally that the bourgeoisie builds unions?

You slip from a mode of organization (the union framework) to some specific examples of a mode of organziation (the unions). That argument doesn't really hold. The actions of this or that party does not tell us the essence of the political party such that we can make claims about what the party always is. The actiions of this or that party or many parties may be the grounds for suspicion or even rejection of the party, but that's based on estimations and pragmatic considerations, not a claim like "the party will always...."

I take it your argument is not that some organizations (most unions or every union at the time) sold out or whatever, but that at the beginning of the 20th century a certain mode of organization (the union framework) became exhausted/recuperated/etc, so that it became something reinforced the capital relation. Why then? And what do you mean by the union framework? Do you mean permanent workplace organization? Permanent legal workplace organization? Permanent legal workplace organization with paid officers and staff?

These aren't meant as hostile questions, by the way. We certainly agree on some criticisms of some unions (and I think Alf is right on that there will be more left positions within many unions as class struggle heats up, the same will happen in political parties, in the attempt to divert our class away from going on the offensive). I think we do disagree on some things, but I want to make sure I understand you.

Nate,
The 19thC was an ascendent period for capitalism where the working class could organise within this system in order to gain effective reforms. Parliament could be used by the working class to effect legislation favourable to the working class and the trade unions, built up and used by the workers themselves, could organise and fight for wages and conditions as well as wider political issues.
A sea change occurred with the First World War, an event which signalled the definitive end of capitalism as an expanding, progressive system into one that could only turn in on itself. While marked by the dramatic event of 1914 this process, and with it the role of the unions, had gradually, in the decades before, worn out the usefulness of reformist and permanent structures for the working class. With the trade union's everywhere (with one or two late exceptions)support for imperialist war (worker killing worker, a fundamental betrayal of internationalism), they passed over into the hands of the bourgeoisie. The definitive decline of capitalism meant the material basis for the revolutionary perspective and this was underlined by events in Russia 1917. The unions, and everything involved with them, ideology not least, passed over to and henceforth became appendages of capital.
The bourgeosie are capable of building new unions from scratch, they did so in Germany and Japan after WWII and effectively created and bolstered the Solidarnosc trade union in Poland 1980.
In the 20thC the crying need for the working class is for the self-organisation and the extension of its struggles and for this general assemblies unifying as many workers as possible are the form already well found by the working class. The role of the unions in this period is do anything and everything to obstruct, hinder and stop any expression of the working class towards self-organisation and extension. They will radicalise, they are elastic but their essential role remains that as one for the bourgeoisie and the maintenance of capitalist order. The whole history of the 20thC demonstrates this again and again.

Is that why anarchists today are involved in parliamentary and union politics?

Can you give me any instance of anarchists being involved in parliamentary politics today, please?

It makes sense to accept that at some times, in some situations, unions are good things for workers; in others the reverse; but it's ridiculous to identify this rigidly with a particular period of capitalism.

For instance, I'd argue, the fact that traditional blue-collar unions are fucked for members means that they're interested in organising, direct action, and winning things for poor working people.

What I don't get about the position of the die-hard, outside and against the union position, is that it appears to me to totally ignore the positive character of stuff like this: Houston Janitors news item 1; Houston Janitors news item 2; and the 'justice for cleaners' stuff which the T&G is running.

I also don't believe it's remotely plausible to say that any of that sort of stuff would have happened at this time without union involvement. This is because unions - as permanent organisations which've been around for a while - have lots of resources, which they can use to pay organisers, and campaign. So: are you for or against these things happening, and happening now?

Accepting that these things amount to a Good Thing for workers does not imply or require accepting that the SEIU and T&G don't do things that we politically oppose. It only means that, on balance, it makes sense for workers to get involved in unions in certain situations for reasons of collective struggle against Capital, and for greater power at work - and (I argue that this follows necessarily) for us to support those struggles. (It's probably almost always worth being a member for personal support. And yeah, I know it's sometimes quite shit, but still. Oh, and you can do non-wildcat industrial action.)

Also, just while I'm posting on roughly this topic, I think it's weird that people: (a) all agree that the language of the 'unethical job' is bullshit, but make an exception for working for unions; and (b) take a similar stance with regard to boycotts. It's sometimes held to be bullshit to boycott Nestle; or suggest that people shouldn't work for arms manufacturers - but perfectly sensible to adopt just those attitudes toward trade unions.

Thanks to redtwister for starting this.

Battlescarred asked:

"Can you give me any instance of anarchists being involved in parliamentary politics today, please?"

Spain 1936 would be one example - the CNT was completely caught up in 'municipal' parliamentarism in particular, with a whole number of CNT mayors and councillors running the local state. Closer to home and rather more recently, we've had the the 'Community Action' conference at which it was acceptable to talk about standing in local elections but ruled out of order to talk about revolution; and how many threads have there been on libcom about whether we should vote Labour to keep out the BNP? The least we can say is that a whole lot of people who call themselves anarchists are indeed mired in parliamentary politics.

Certainly I never havre done any of these things, nor any of the anarchists I know!!

Alf, no disrespect intended, but that "whole lot of people" is something I've never heard of before. Maybe it's a UK thing, I don't know of anything like that happening in the US. In any case, those folks are no more anarchists than the CP-USA are communists. Which means that those folks are no more use for a criticism of anarchists than the CP-USA are for a criticism of communists. (And FWIW I don't see anarchist and communist as incompatible.)

As for the periodization of their being gains possible before and not anymore, Posi answered that in a way that I'm convinced by. There's an implied standard at work in that periodization, which says that some things count as a real gain and others don't. Fair enough, but the standard needs to be made explicit so that we can discuss it. To my mind, there were significant gains made in big strikes in Minneapolis in 1934, for instance, and around the US during and immediately after the second world war (pre- the passage of the Taft-Hartley act).

Also, economic gains aside, an action which fails to win stated goals can still have an organizational use (Luxemburg says this in criticism of Kautsky). I know you don't recognize growth of a union as a good. I think I agree with you in relation to the business unions, at least in general. But a strike could still lead to the growth of informal organization in the workers who participated, either in or outside an official union, and radicalize them. That is still the case.

That said, I don't like the Justice For Janitors campaign (and similar campaigns around the AFL/CTW unions). The big corporate style campaign may win better wages and conditions for workers, and that's excellent, and it may have a radicalizing effect on some workers, also great, but I don't like it. Since the success of the campaign is not at the point of production it doesn't rely as much on worker self-organization and there are even less factors that contribute to the workers having some input into their unions. One of the early JFJ campaigns supports this I think. SEIU local 399 members who came into the union as a result of the janitor campaign ran for leadership and in response their local was placed under the control of the national union. (Leaving aside the worth(lessness) in communist terms of trying to capture officer positions in a union.)

Alf: on the libcom threads about voting Labour against the BNP thing; a few people did advocate that (including me), but I don't think they're the same people who'd call themselves anarchists - I wouldn't.

Nate

But a strike could still lead to the growth of informal organization in the workers who participated, either in or outside an official union, and radicalize them. That is still the case.

That's absolutely right. Organisation is just relationships of trust between workers, and recognition of, and confidence in, those relationships, and themselves. That's the important thing. Where unions support that, they're good; where they don't, they're not much more relevant than the AA. (That's a British breakdown insurance service, for people from elsewhere).

Nate

That said, I don't like the Justice For Janitors campaign (and similar campaigns around the AFL/CTW unions). The big corporate style campaign may win better wages and conditions for workers, and that's excellent, and it may have a radicalizing effect on some workers, also great, but I don't like it.

I think this is a worthwhile discussion to have. I'm going to say, tentatively, that while there's a point there; I think you're wrong to think they're a bad thing.

The first thing to say isn't they haven't been plucked out of the air. They're a response to the lower industrial strength of cleaners, as compared to workers in, say, manufacturing. Industrial action, as a matter of objective conditions, not as a function of a choice on the part of cleaners or the union, is less effective for them than it might have been for workers in traditionally unionised industries. This is because they are lower skilled, easier to replace, more vulnerable in terms of immigration status, etc. It follows, therefore, that to maximise their impact, workers must take the struggle outside the workplace - and this would be the case whether or not the struggles were mediated by unions or not. As with anything radical that unions do, they only use illlegal direct action, such as blocking streets, when there's no other way. (I will avoid making a wanky point about the 'social factory'. oops.) I think it also opens up great opportunities for workers to participate more fully in each others struggles, which is a good thing, since it will tend to produce solidarity.

Anyway, damnit, how the hell can we really object to poor migrant workers blocking roads in Houston of all places and winning? The campaigns are 'corporate' in the sense that they involve alot of resources, have professional branding, etc - but the important thing is that they do direct action, involve workers, etc.

Nate

Since the success of the campaign is not at the point of production it doesn't rely as much on worker self-organization and there are even less factors that contribute to the workers having some input into their unions. One of the early JFJ campaigns supports this I think. SEIU local 399 members who came into the union as a result of the janitor campaign ran for leadership and in response their local was placed under the control of the national union. (Leaving aside the worth(lessness) in communist terms of trying to capture officer positions in a union.)

I think the first sentence of this extract is problematic; in that it seems to say that the lack of proper democracy inside (e.g. Change To Win) unions is a result of struggles not taking place at the point of production. I agree that there is a lack of proper democracy (there was an excellent article at this URL - from the Sep 2004 edition of Labor Notes, but it's gone, though this one is still up); and I agree that the Organising model has placed a greater than traditional stress on struggles outside the workplace; but I can't see how the former follows from the latter.

I can see how industrial action relies to a greater degree on workers acting themselves - but given the considerations above, and given that non-industrial action doesn't actually harm workers' control (and can give workers in general more control), I don't think that's entirely a bad thing.

On the other hand, if you were to say that the US Organising model places stresses on union democracy, I'd agree - though I'd offer different reasons. I think it's basically because centrally coordinated control of resources is very useful in organising: union bosses want, for example, to be able to send a hundred organisers down to a Southern city - and their wages and backup expenses need to come out of a central pot. This implies drawing resources away from a local level. (I think this is a real tension, btw, not just a political failing, though it is that as well.) Also, there are inevitably political struggles inside unions over organising, and that means bureaucratic power struggles, with the winner consolidating power through typical bureaucratic means.

Though I think that you could also argue that non-Organising-related variables are more important - i.e. there are non-organising unions which are less democratic than comparable organising ones. (In the UK, this is clearly true for the T&G, which organises, in relation to AMICUS, which doesn't - though we'll see how that pans out following the probably-forthcoming merger.)

Lastly, I don't think it's irrelevant whether rank n file workers hold positions, or someone parachuted in from on high does. I agree that 'capturing' union positions shouldn't be a tactic of political intervention within unions, but that's different from a question of workers vs. bureaucrats.

Posi Wrote

What I don't get about the position of the die-hard, outside and against the union position, is that it appears to me to totally ignore the positive character of stuff like this: Houston Janitors news item 1; Houston Janitors news item 2; and the 'justice for cleaners' stuff which the T&G is running.

I think Nate is right to be wary about the US Justice for Janitors campaign. IMO it tells us quite a lot about the situation in the US and why the country's second biggest union is busy recruiting.

First though, it's encouraging to see the struggle and solidarity displayed by the Houston janitors, though quite why the SEIU union picks up all the credit for this, I'm not sure. It was over 5,000 mainly migrant, mainly female workers on strike for 4 weeks over really lousy pay, the restricted hours they were allowed to work, lack of formal contracts and healthcare provision and the bosses' and state's contempt towards them that drove this struggle.

Sure that class consciousness and militancy was expressed within the union prism (or prison): not only are the trades union the thermometer stuck up the working class's arse, letting the bosses know when its temperature is rising and likely to lead to social convulsions, the unions also fill the workers heads: day and night, for decades and decades we are told: 'If you want to struggle, you gotta join the union'. This command is all the more powerful because the unions did once serve some interests of the workers who struggled to create them. So it's hardly surprising that when the Janitors' anger first boiled over last year, the unions were their first port of call. In fact the union was on a very specific recruitment drive to sign them up.

The result of the Janitors' strike has been hailed nationwide in the US as a victory. But a victory for whom? Living mainly off a fairly meagre pension I appreciate any extra income and the headline 'gains' won by the Janitors (or won by the union 'for' the janitors as it is presented) are mightly impressive: a wage rise of 126% over three years; a doubling of income by 2009; proper contracts and health insurance. But even on this economistic, immediate level, it's not quite so brilliant as it appears.

The Janitors were on $5.15 an hour (the Federal State minimum wage). They had demanded $8.50. They'll now get $6.25 next year and $7.25 in 2008. That's still below the minimum wage set by some US states ($7.50 an hour and upwards) and a long way behind the $9.45 an hour janitor members of the same union receive in Denver, or the $13.50 they get in Chicago. No union discrimination against 'poor migrant workers' there then. Oh, and the health insurance will, of course, come out of workers' wages - $174 a month if all the family is to be covered, and it won't start until 2009. This and 6 days paid holiday a year was the 'victory' which ended the workers' strike.

Yep, the unions and media (including the Wall Street Journal) are sure making a big deal over such modest immediate gains. And aside from the genuine fighting spirit and militancy of the strikers themselves, there seems to me to be a certain air of stage-managed theatre over proceedings, another agenda being played out.

Now I know that members of the Houston Police Department don't need too much encouragement to crack the heads of the working class, particularly migrant women. But the ferocity with which they drove horses into protestors, the 50-odd arrests, the veritable torture of some of those put in jail and the discipline imposed on them there, the ludicrous $888,888 bail initially demanded by the DA's office for each striker - all this played out mostly in front of the cameras or relayed to them pretty quick - could not have been better designed to raise the stakes and attract attention and publicity for the strikers, portrayed more as migrants fighting for their rights than workers defending themselves against exploitation. ( See www.firedoglake.com/2006/11/21/worker-victory-in-houston-texas/ ).

Two days later the strike was over and victory was proclaimed. The winner was ... the union. Its credibility enhanced, it's now got a foothold in the traditionally hard-to-unionise South and a higher profile for its recruitment drive. "SEIU has been waiting for an opportunity to successfully organize in the South. Houston is the SEIU's 'sweet spot,' home to many low-wage workers without health insurance, said Michael Lotito, an employment lawyer." (firedoglake.com)

This is a time when the militancy and anger of many US workers is rising, as it appears to be internationally. It is a period (2000-2005) in which US productivity (one measure of the exploitation of workers) has risen by 16% while "the median family's income slid by 2.9%" and "the share [of the economy] allotted to corporate profits has increased sharply, from 17.7% in 2000 to 20.9% in 2005, while the share going to wages is has reached a record low," (BBC News, The End of the American Dream?, September 10 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5303590.stm)

In this period of political re-adjustment for the US ruling class, one of the tacks it is taking is to strengthen its union apparatus. It is not doing this for the benefit of the proletariat. On the contrary.

If the message from the Houston events is that it is necessary for workers to struggle to defend themselves, and that through struggling they can temporarily force the bosses on the defensive, gain confidence in themselves, then all well and good. It's positive. But if the message is that we should join unions, struggle through unions, leave things in the hands of the unions, then it's a victory for the ruling class, IMO.

Absolutely agree with Lurch's post. As soon as you look at the detail of any union "victory" over the last hundred years or so, therein lies the defeat and the strengthening of the ruling class. As soon as you strip away the ideological brainwash and the sentimentality about trade un ions, you are able to effect an analsysis as incisive as the one above.
First to get revol out of the way: the CNT in Spain 1936 is one answer to your question. The details can be found on the what happened to the CNT, or some such titled site, in the history section. As to your "If I wished to be childish" comment, you can't stop being childish, to the point of being babyish sometimes.
This thread is called "unions and communists". The word "communist" implies you agree with some sort of revolutionary perspective. So if you're a "communist" your position on the unions can only be in relation to a revolutionary perspective; or not, which in that case means you are not talking about communism at all. So it should be under the heading, leftist and the unions, reformist and the unions, supporter of capitalism and the unions, that the post will be clearer to everyone.
But as a communist intervening here on the union question, then a classification of historical periods is essential (the general lines of march that is, things don't change from one day to the next for example). This is a more than a useful tool for communists. Such a major change in a period of an economic system from its ascendency to its decadence can only have an enormous impact on the class struggle and its needs. To ignore this would be to ignore one of the most important lessons for the working class over the last two hundred years. The unions - I repeat, and most of you ignore - called for worker to kill worker in the run up to WWI. They then defeated major strikes during the revolutionary wave of 1917-1927 across the whole world. The mobilised the working class for inter-imperialist slaughter in the 30s which culminated in the trade union supported World War Two. After the war, when the critics of communism make their posts about the "gains" of the unions, the unions set about destroying every single attempt of working class self-organisation and through the 60s to the 90s dragged the working class into many serious and degrading defeats. What "gains"? There's no "gains", particularly when you set them against the losses. I agree with Nate (along with Rosa) that workers' struggles don't have to make "gains" in themselves to be effective, that the struggle itself can in a sense be the victory. But this doesn't mean glorifying a pointless, carved up, isolated defeat led by the unions. It means learning from the struggle itself, learning about self-organisation and effective means of spreading the struggle - this is what Rosa meant and this is what we understand as communists. and it is precisely the trade unions that stand in the way of this self organisation and extension the struggle, and thus stand in the way of the possibility of a revolutionary perspective.

Forgive the double-post, please. I haven't trod these boards for a year and there is a lot to say on this subject.

That's in part down to the serious way Redtwister introduced this discussion (and clearly stated his own position within it) and the generally well-argued posts of other contributors, whether or not I agree with them. It's good stuff. It's important stuff.

A couple of points then.

Nate Wrote:

"But a [union organsised] strike could still lead to a growth of informal organization in the workers who participated, either inside or outside an official union, and radicalize them. That is still the case.

I think I agree with this statement, with certain caveats, but it's not really an argument 'for' trades union. The important thing is to see the context and dynamic of the workers' struggles, and that of the union action, which aren't necessarily (IMO are certainly not) the same thing.

There's an unstated assumption here that if a union hadn't called this or that strike, then the workers wouldn't have entered into open struggle, wouldn't have developed whatever level of solidarity they achieved, wouldn't have become more 'radicalized.' You could turn this on its head and argue that the workers may have developed all these positive aspects to a greater degree had the union not been present. This is speculation, of course.

What is fact is that workers are very, very rarely 'left alone' to develop their struggles because they are either members of or are very quickly surrounded by the state's omnipresent organs of control, foremost amongst these being the unions whose specific task is to corral and derail the proletariat. That's not to dismiss or piss on every strike that's apparently led by or called by the unions. It's not what I'm arguing.

But if 'radicalization' means anything, it's in relation to the proletariat's consciousness, the growth towards its awareness of itself as an historic, international, exploited, producer, revolutionary classs. A class absolutely unique in history. A class with a task but no future in the sense that it aims to abolish itself along with the whole epoch of class society. The stakes are socialism or barbarism. The unions are obstacles to the development of consciousness and hence of the struggle.

In relation to Nate's quote, cited above, Posi wrote:

"That's absolutely right. Organisation is just relationships of trusts between workers, and recognition of, and confidence in, those relationships, and themselves. That's the important thing. Where unions support that, they're good; where they don't, they're not much more relevant than the AA."

It's a beguilling argument but one which, in the context of this discussion, hides more than it illuminates, IMO.

For example, workers have produced very definite forms of organisation over the past decades, forms which correspond with the nature, to the content of the proletariat and its needs: general assemblies in which all workers can participate; strike committees elected by and responsible to those general assemblies; negotiators and spokesmen who are charged with carrying out the workers' will, and revocable if they don't; coordination between different assemblies, centralisation; at certain moments, the appearence of workers councils, the mass strike... All this is known. All this is the product of the proletariat's own history. Trust, solidarity, have found specific expressions through concrete forms of organisation.

I won't waste space contrasting these expressions with the reality of the majority of union life over the past century. All I will assert is that the unions aren't neutral, sometimes allowing solidarity, sometimes not. And they are never, ever irrelevant. Whether as recruiting sergeants for war, policemen of the proletariat at the point of production, or the state's fifth column inside the proletariat, they are vital to the survival of the bourgeosie: they play a role even and perhaps especially when they are banned, made illegal, de-recognised, presented as 'alternatives' to 'traditional' unions or whatever.

Finally, the question of whether 'rank-and-file' workers should hold positions of responsibility in unions as opposed to 'bureaucrats'. As has been asked many times on these boards: how come that honest, militant workers take union office and almost inevitably become the worst toadies unless they get the hell out? Perhaps because "it is not men's consciousness that determines their being, but their being that determines their consciousness."

Chris,
I think the thanks are sincere. They are in my case anyway, I'm enjoying this thread and getting clearer on my thoughts, so just take it as gratitude when folks say thanks. Thanks. (Fucker.)

Lurch,
In the post where you write "the workers may have developed all these positive aspects to a greater degree had the union not been present" I think we're in complete agreement, except I might substitute "most unions" or "business unions" for "the unions."

As for the Justice for Janitors campaign and corporate style campaigns, I'm really raelly keen to discuss that but I think it's a new thread. Mixing that discussion with this one will I think cloud some of the issues here. I'll start one eventually if no one else does, and quote the comments from this thread that are relevant. I think that stuff gets repeated often when activists take on workplace issues - there's a similar logic in activism as in much unionism of doing things for people, rather than doing things yourself as a worker with other workers.

later,
Nate

sorry posted on the wrong thread. I've moved the comment.

Sorry that this has been a long time coming and is going to be such a long post. I’d like to make it clear, once again – and I really hope this isn’t forgotten in replies to this post – that I am not uncritically endorsing unions, or shrinking from a structural critique of them (by reducing it to a failure of leadership, or some such). Rather, I am arguing that the view being presented by some other posters is reductive, made of sweeping generalisations, and in some ways simply implausible. I’m also sorry if this is in academic-ese at times, I will try to explain better if asked. And yes, I’m a big geek for even bothering to write this…

My general view of Lurch’s first post is that it a polemic built around a hollow centre. The central thesis is that the union intervention was inconsequential or detrimental to workers’ self-organisation, and the material gains they won. The relevance of everything else hangs on this. But, for the case-study in question, there is no evidence for this view. Anyway, to a detailed response.
Lurch

First though, it's encouraging to see the struggle and solidarity displayed by the Houston janitors, though quite why the SEIU union picks up all the credit for this, I'm not sure.

Who said the union (considered apart from the workers) picks up all the credit? That’s not the issue: it’s whether what happened would have happened without the union intervening in the way that it did. It’s a factual question.
Lurch

It was over 5,000 mainly migrant, mainly female workers on strike for 4 weeks over really lousy pay, the restricted hours they were allowed to work, lack of formal contracts and healthcare provision and the bosses' and state's contempt towards them that drove this struggle.

Of course the workers faced terrible predations and fought courageously. That’s not under dispute. The question is, rather, as I previously posed it; or perhaps – did the union support or hinder the struggle of the workers?
Lurch

Sure that class consciousness and militancy was expressed within the union prism (or prison): not only are the trades union the thermometer stuck up the working class's arse, letting the bosses know when its temperature is rising and likely to lead to social convulsions, the unions also fill the workers heads: day and night, for decades and decades we are told: 'If you want to struggle, you gotta join the union'. This command is all the more powerful because the unions did once serve some interests of the workers who struggled to create them. So it's hardly surprising that when the Janitors' anger first boiled over last year, the unions were their first port of call. In fact the union was on a very specific recruitment drive to sign them up.

So here’s the story you’re telling, if this is wrong, let me know how you do see it: Last year, the workers were all ready to self organise and fight – their anger was about to ‘boil over’ into a wave of action. Had not the union intervened, organised them paternalistically and sold them out, greater gains would have been made. It was a coincidence that the SEIU sent 100 full time organisers into Houston last year, luckily (for the union) coinciding with the point when the workers were ready for self organising anyway. Whereupon, otherwise sensible workers were duped into abandoning their insurgent self-activity, and began to believe that the union was a good thing for them – though in fact it wasn’t. I want to clarify that, and then ask: do you have a single piece of evidence for your presumption that we would have seen mass struggle without union intervention? For example, can you point to any wildcat industrial action? Any action of any kind, organised outside, or in spite of a union, or even one which didn’t rely on it? Now, of course you don’t need to show that precisely the same, or better, gains would have been made – or even that it wouldn’t have taken another few years to break out. But what evidence is there, please?

Also, I’d like to understand how you perceive the objective conditions for Houston janitors, and whether you can see why they might have chosen to organise through a union. Don’t you think that the individual back up a union can provide would be useful if you’re a very vulnerable worker, who’s taking a big risk by getting involved in any struggle at all? Don’t you think that the media savvy of the union’s PR department helped get the TV cameras down to the blockade (which generated the positive campaign outcomes which you allude to later in your post)? Don’t you think that a wildcat strike might have been easier to defeat in such an anti-working class environment? Don’t you think that the workers were likely so dog-tired, and down trodden that it was actually a big relief, and a reassurance to know that someone else (i.e. a full-timer) would take a bit of the pressure off you, and speak to workers who you’d likely never get a chance to see in your normal schedule? Can’t you see that’s it’d be a massive risk to spend your time doing something like that, leaving your kids at home, in case it would work? In your view, could things ever be so difficult that a paid full-time organiser (a substantial proportion of whom are former cleaners) would make a difference? And if yes, wouldn't you agree that it follows, unavoidably, that the union had a positive, not negative, impact on the struggle?

nb. Nothing I am saying amounts to the view that 'If you want to struggle, you gotta join the union’. It is a different point: that the resources and organisation which unions can have, if set to helping stimulate workers’ organisation and struggle, can be valuable in that respect.
Lurch

The result of the Janitors' strike has been hailed nationwide in the US as a victory. But a victory for whom? Living mainly off a fairly meagre pension I appreciate any extra income and the headline 'gains' won by the Janitors (or won by the union 'for' the janitors as it is presented) are mightly impressive: a wage rise of 126% over three years; a doubling of income by 2009; proper contracts and health insurance. But even on this economistic, immediate level, it's not quite so brilliant as it appears.

Nb. It’s only “won by the union ‘for’ the janitors”, as you spin it, if you consider the union to be a body wholly distinct from the workers – of course, very many people don’t see it like that, as Nate’s earlier posts on this topic attest. (I’m not entering here into the semantics of that debate.)
Lurch

The Janitors were on $5.15 an hour (the Federal State minimum wage). They had demanded $8.50. They'll now get $6.25 next year and $7.25 in 2008. That's still below the minimum wage set by some US states ($7.50 an hour and upwards) and a long way behind the $9.45 an hour janitor members of the same union receive in Denver, or the $13.50 they get in Chicago. No union discrimination against 'poor migrant workers' there then. Oh, and the health insurance will, of course, come out of workers' wages - $174 a month if all the family is to be covered, and it won't start until 2009. This and 6 days paid holiday a year was the 'victory' which ended the workers' strike.

You missed the increase in hours. But anyway (firstly), this is totally irrelevant to the question at hand, unless things would have been better, greater gains could have been won, without union intervention. Of course it’s a compromise with the power of capital; so is everything except revolution. So is every return to work after a wildcat.

Secondly, what on earth do you mean by ‘No union discrimination against 'poor migrant workers' there then’? Of course the level of janitors’ wages is well below that elsewhere. That’s because, due to a whole host of factors which you should know as well as me, it’s much harder to organise in Houston than in Chicago, and there’s a much weaker tradition of organising – within or without unions. I can’t believe you’d try and claim that the lower wages won are a result of union discrimination and not objective social conditions in different areas. You think that janitors in Chicago, New York or Los Angeles aren’t poor migrants? You really think that to level out wages nationwide is something which unions have within their gift?

Thirdly, what’s your point about the minimum wage variance between states? What explains that? Tell me about recent increases in state minimum wages (New York, California, any others you can think of); how have they been one? (It’s ACORN and SEIU organised activity, respectively, if I remember rightly.) If you want, you can claim that minimum wage rises are irrelevant – fine – but in that case, it’s not in good faith for you to try and use them in argument in this way.
Lurch

Now I know that members of the Houston Police Department don't need too much encouragement to crack the heads of the working class, particularly migrant women. But the ferocity with which they drove horses into protestors, the 50-odd arrests, the veritable torture of some of those put in jail and the discipline imposed on them there, the ludicrous $888,888 bail initially demanded by the DA's office for each striker - all this played out mostly in front of the cameras or relayed to them pretty quick - could not have been better designed to raise the stakes and attract attention and publicity for the strikers, portrayed more as migrants fighting for their rights than workers defending themselves against exploitation. ( See www.firedoglake.com/2006/11/21/worker-victory-in-houston-texas/ ).

Two days later the strike was over and victory was proclaimed. The winner was ... the union. Its credibility enhanced, it's now got a foothold in the traditionally hard-to-unionise South and a higher profile for its recruitment drive. "SEIU has been waiting for an opportunity to successfully organize in the South. Houston is the SEIU's 'sweet spot,' home to many low-wage workers without health insurance, said Michael Lotito, an employment lawyer." (firedoglake.com)

Of course the union as a body has benefited. But this is only problematic if: a) you’re right (as I say you’re not) about the unions being necessarily, universally anti-worker; and b) you’re right about the settlement not constituting a significant victory (which I also say you’re not). The reason for me making comments like this is just to reduce what appears to be a whole host of points into the one or two which seem to me to be the genuine issue. (Oh, and I don’t believe you are suggesting that the Houston Police’s brutality was in anyway orchestrated to the benefit of the union, but just to be clear, let me know if you are.)

My second point here responds to your implication that the union called off the fight earlier than it needed to; whereas the workers could have continued the struggle, and won a greater victory. Why do you think this is true? Any calculation to end a struggle must be a function of the political resources which your side, and your opponent have left. Perhaps the workers were tired and scared by that point, and perhaps the level of the bonds meant that the union didn’t have the resources to cover them, and people wouldn’t go and do a similar action without cover. Perhaps it wasn’t clear that morale could be sustained for the fight ahead, and perhaps the cleaning companies weren’t really feeling the heat. It’s obviously better to end something on a high than just drag on… e.g. that UNITE-HERE strike in Chicago which has been going on for about three years with little prospect of victory… Now I don’t know what the weight of all these considerations might have been in Houston. But unless you do, you’ve got no capacity to make a relevant judgement.
Lurch

This is a time when the militancy and anger of many US workers is rising, as it appears to be internationally. It is a period (2000-2005) in which US productivity (one measure of the exploitation of workers) has risen by 16% while "the median family's income slid by 2.9%" and "the share [of the economy] allotted to corporate profits has increased sharply, from 17.7% in 2000 to 20.9% in 2005, while the share going to wages is has reached a record low," (BBC News, The End of the American Dream?, September 10 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5303590.stm)

This only says that things are bad for workers in the US, and look likely to continue getting worse. It has no relevance to the debate at hand, unless there’s an attempt to hint at some imminent wave of militant industrial action external to unions, which unions might reasonably be expected to restrain. Is that what you’re trying to say? It might be true, though I'm sceptical, but please make a bit more of a case for it...
Lurch

In this period of political re-adjustment for the US ruling class, one of the tacks it is taking is to strengthen its union apparatus.

Leaving aside the union bureaucrats, can you give some evidence for how you think that any other element of the US ruling class is acting to ‘strengthen its union apparatus’? Or are you just making a point under the rubric of ‘functional explanation’? That’s fine, but the way you phrased it does make it sound intentional, like there’s some actor who’s got a plan to make unions beat business in pitched battle every so often. Of course, I know that the US ruling class has done such things intentionally before, e.g. under Roosevelt, but that was expressed through particular legislation; by analogy, I’m not aware of anything comparable, recently. Furthermore, the US ruling class is facing lower levels of militant insurgency than practically any time since the ‘50s. In contrast (it is interesting to note), it is facing almost unprecedentedly high levels of investment in ‘organising’ by unions, workers’ associations and community institutions.
Lurch

If the message from the Houston events is that it is necessary for workers to struggle to defend themselves, and that through struggling they can temporarily force the bosses on the defensive, gain confidence in themselves, then all well and good. It's positive. But if the message is that we should join unions, struggle through unions, leave things in the hands of the unions, then it's a victory for the ruling class, IMO.

Hopelessly reductive. We do not have to choose between these two alternatives, so counterposed. Here’s my interpretation of the ‘message’ of these events. Workers’ fought a damn hard battle; and won what amounts to a politically significant, but, in terms of financial returns, relatively meagre victory. The experience those workers had, and the power they have built, are perhaps the most important gains. That they came to fight the battle, and that they were able to win it (and that it was no doubt compromised in some ways), was possible because the SEIU union put a lot of resources, particularly organisers whose job was to stimulate self-organisation, behind the battle. The SEIU did this as part of a strategy of high investment in organising unorganised poor immigrant workers; which results from the fact that if the union didn’t do this, it would be, as we have characterised it, ‘fucked’. This is my point now, and it was my point from the start. It appears to have been airbrushed from all replies.

Sometimes, most often, I think that we should join unions (for reasons of struggle that is; I’ve already said I think it’s worth joining for individual reasons anyway). I think that it would have been wrong, for example, to be a janitor in Houston during this struggle and not join the union. Though, of course, we should never rely on them, conceived of as agents apart from the rank and file.
baboon

Absolutely agree with Lurch's post. As soon as you look at the detail of any union "victory" over the last hundred years or so, therein lies the defeat and the strengthening of the ruling class. As soon as you strip away the ideological brainwash and the sentimentality about trade un ions, you are able to effect an analsysis as incisive as the one above.

Go on then: explain how the janitors’ “victory” amounts to a victory for the ruling class (without begging the question – i.e. that the unions are necessarily anti-working class). And, frankly, I think it’s indicative of a poor standard debate if a post with barely any factual substance on the important question counts as ‘incisive’.
baboon

This thread is called "unions and communists". The word "communist" implies you agree with some sort of revolutionary perspective. So if you're a "communist" your position on the unions can only be in relation to a revolutionary perspective; or not, which in that case means you are not talking about communism at all. So it should be under the heading, leftist and the unions, reformist and the unions, supporter of capitalism and the unions, that the post will be clearer to everyone.

Solidarity

Meaningful action, for revolutionaries, is whatever increases the confidence, the autonomy, the initiative, the participation, the solidarity, the equalitarian tendencies and the self -activity of the masses and whatever assists in their demystification. Sterile and harmful action is whatever reinforces the passivity of the masses, their apathy, their cynicism, their differentiation through hierarchy, their alienation, their reliance on others to do things for them and the degree to which they can therefore be manipulated by others - even by those allegedly acting on their behalf.

Which seems a fair enough starting point. Of course, I don’t say, I repeat, that even at the best of times (even in the 19th Century), that unions have an unambiguously positive role by these criteria. All I have to be able to say is that, in certain circumstances, such as I have attempted to begin to define, their effect (when contrasted with alternate real possibilities) is more positive than negative.

I want to address an argument which I suspect may be levelled at me in reply: to wit, that any worker “self-organisation” stimulated or sustained by union organisers is, ipso facto, not self-organisation; rather, it is the workers’ being organised by others. My reply is two-fold. 1) This argument begs the question by assuming that the organisers are not part of a broadly working-class movement, and hence to be counted as apart from the workers. 2) The argument involves an unduly crude and demanding definition of what self-organisation requires – confidence in a series of skills and dispositions, which to some people come naturally, but for many have to be learned through experience. (Also, if anyone thinks that it’s possible to do workplace organising entirely from outside, without developing activists as independent agents, you’re having a laugh.)
Theorie Communiste

If, to repeat a formulation we are fond of, communism is the real movement, it is not fundamentally about the adoption of a set of principles, lines and positions. Of course, the positions of the ultra-left emerged out of the class struggle, but such positions were only more or less right when they were made - they are approximations, an expression of 'as revolutionaries best saw it' - and thus something more needs to be done than just agree with them and proselytize. The class struggle can be seen as a wave that advanced to a high point around 1919 and as it receded left ideas around like flotsam in its wake. What these traditions represent is an attempt to maintain the historic lessons of this high point in the class struggle, despite the retreat of that movement.

baboon

But as a communist intervening here on the union question, then a classification of historical periods is essential (the general lines of march that is, things don't change from one day to the next for example). This is a more than a useful tool for communists.

What defines a ‘period’, except the usefulness of unions for workers? What other aspects of capitalism in general, or the unions, does the classification rely on? And how do those aspects imply the anti-worker character of unions during the period? Or, if there are no such aspects, then isn’t it the case that we’re in the presence of a totally useless piece of theory? (In that it gives us no deductive hypothesis with which to examine the next, or any, struggle. This may have been the point newyawka makes on p1.)

Furthermore, you’re being hopelessly soft on 19th Century unions. The view that there was some golden age of trade unionism before WWI is ridiculous (or if that’s not your view, how is your classification useful?). For evidence, check out, for example, the first few chapters of Brecher’s Strike, and the Wildcat pamphlet someone’s already mentioned.
baboon

It means learning from the struggle itself, learning about self-organisation and effective means of spreading the struggle - this is what Rosa meant and this is what we understand as communists. and it is precisely the trade unions that stand in the way of this self organisation and extension the struggle, and thus stand in the way of the possibility of a revolutionary perspective.

That’s you just stating your conclusion again… it advances the argument not at all. I know, and I have never attempted to deny that unions do horrible things. I only resist the attempt to characterise these rigidly by poorly defined ‘periods’.
baboon, in a previous post which it's worth revisiting

Why can't the unions play a role for capital at one time, and, at another, for the working class? Nate is correct to pose this "devil's advocate" question on the "dual" role of the unions because it is an essential one for the working class. The dual role argument is what the leftists feed off. The Acid Test is what happens when the two historic classes confront each other and it's here that the class nature of an organisation is determined once and for all

That’s a totally false argument and it’s worth demonstrating this. The question is: Why can’t x be a one time, but b another?

Baboon’s answer, because:
1: in some set of cases, w, x is always a.
2: (false latent premise): if x is a in a sub-set of cases defined by w, x is a in all cases.
3: (conclusion) Therefore: x is always a, never b.
(where x is 'the unions'; a is 'anti-working class'; b is 'pro-working class'; w is 'when the historic classes confront each other' - whatever that means.)

#2 is nonsense, of course; but necessary to baboon's conclusion, #3.
Lurch, responding to my characterisation of 'self-organisation'

It's a beguilling argument but one which, in the context of this discussion, hides more than it illuminates, IMO.
For example, workers have produced very definite forms of organisation over the past decades, forms which correspond with the nature, to the content of the proletariat and its needs: general assemblies in which all workers can participate; strike committees elected by and responsible to those general assemblies; negotiators and spokesmen who are charged with carrying out the workers' will, and revocable if they don't; coordination between different assemblies, centralisation; at certain moments, the appearence of workers councils, the mass strike... All this is known. All this is the product of the proletariat's own history. Trust, solidarity, have found specific expressions through concrete forms of organisation.

Just because certain forms of organisation are important at times of immense upheaval, and instability in the structure of capitalist society, doesn’t meant that those forms of organisation are also appropriate to janitors in Houston in 2006. And by ‘appropriate’ I mean ‘plausibly likely to help workers win things’. And by ‘plausibly likely to help workers win things’ I don’t just mean ‘plausibly likely’ if all workers concerned organised in that way, with all the militancy that involves, I also mean ‘plausibly likely to be adopted in the first place, given the risks of organising in the different ways, and subjective and objective conditions in which they are bred’. I agree that workers’ councils have been a signature of insurgent working class organising in the 20th Century. I agree that unions have done may shit things – some of which were listed, like it was news, by baboon – but I don’t agree that this should take over analysis of actual current events. That said, I do accept your later point that ‘the unions aren't neutral, sometimes allowing solidarity, sometimes not.’
Sorry that this has been a long time and coming and is going to be a long post. I’d like to make it clear, once again – and I really hope this isn’t forgotten in replies to this post – that I am not uncritically endorsing unions, or shrinking from a structural critique of them (by reducing it to a failure of leadership, or some such). Rather, I am arguing that the view being presented by some other posters is reductive, made of sweeping generalisations, and in some ways simply implausible. I hope that comrades will not take offence if my tone occasionally verges on the belligerent – none is intended. I’m also sorry if this is in academic-ese at times, I will try to explain better if asked. And yes, I’m a big geek for even bothering to write this…

Lurch, responding to my characterisation of 'self-organisation'

It's a beguilling argument but one which, in the context of this discussion, hides more than it illuminates, IMO.
For example, workers have produced very definite forms of organisation over the past decades, forms which correspond with the nature, to the content of the proletariat and its needs: general assemblies in which all workers can participate; strike committees elected by and responsible to those general assemblies; negotiators and spokesmen who are charged with carrying out the workers' will, and revocable if they don't; coordination between different assemblies, centralisation; at certain moments, the appearence of workers councils, the mass strike... All this is known. All this is the product of the proletariat's own history. Trust, solidarity, have found specific expressions through concrete forms of organisation.

Just because certain forms of organisation are important at times of immense upheaval, and instability in the structure of capitalist society, doesn’t meant that those forms of organisation are also appropriate to janitors in Houston in 2006. And by ‘appropriate’ I mean ‘plausibly likely to help workers win things’. And by ‘plausibly likely to help workers win things’ I don’t just mean ‘plausibly likely’ if all workers concerned organised in that way, with all the militancy that involves, I also mean ‘plausibly likely to be adopted in the first place, given the risks of organising in the different ways, and subjective and objective conditions in which they are bred’. I agree that workers’ councils have been a signature of insurgent working class organising in the 20th Century. I agree that unions have done may shit things – some of which were listed, like it was news, by baboon – but I don’t agree that this should take over analysis of actual current events. That said, I do accept your later point that ‘the unions aren't neutral, sometimes allowing solidarity, sometimes not.’
redtwister

Your second parapgraph is based on a logical fallacy. There is no proof that X (unions are fucked) implies Y (that unions are for workers.)

There is no such logical fallacy. I never claimed that unions have become, in essence, ‘for the workers’. My claim was that X (on which we agree) has meant some (non-Y) Z: 'unions doing things which are productive for workers on the basis of criteria, indicated above, that we should see (not unproblematic) value in'. In any case, it was never a logical claim, it was a factual one (just as the claim that ‘turning on the tap lets water flow’ is factual, not logical). The reasons to suppose that the connection between X and Z is as I say it is should not be controversial: (i) that is why the unions themselves say they do it; (ii) observably, different unions Organise to the extent that X is true of them; (iii) as you and Lurch accept, Z has mitigated the extent of the application of X to unions, and is hence a rational strategy for them to employ, assuming that they are institutionally self-interested (which is your argument anyway).
redtwister

I can just as easily, and with a much greater wealth of evidence, argue that when the economic crisis of the 1970's hit, and already before, the value of the union-management collaboration was wearing thin and finally became too expensive

Though I would be interested to hear that argument, and wouldn’t presume to have an opinion on it now, I don’t see what this has to do with the matter in hand. (From your sentence, I’m not even sure what your view of that thesis would be.)
I find the rest of redtwister’s post hard to deal with. The reason for this is that earlier in the thread, he’s expressed views which I find to be similar to, albeit less specific and detailed than, ones I’m trying to put forward. I don’t know how far this has to do with our theoretical disagreement about communism, about which more below. But leaving that aside for now,
Redtwister, in the original post,

Unions do not always hold the workers back. Sometimes unions enable radicalism that otherwise might be difficult. A multitude of examples can be raised for this as well, esp at the level of local struggles within a particular workplace.

But then, redtwister in his most recent post

I have to say, Lurch pretty much explained why this [my allegation of unions enabling radicalism in a specific situation] is not true. his detailed discussion of the particulars of the situation show that the idea that the union did something great is suspect.

Except, as I indicate above, there was no such ‘detailed discussion of the particulars of the situation’. There were allegations without evidence, or even substantial exegesis, nothing more. Even if, as I believe is extremely unlikely, substantial evidence is provided that comparable gains (as I style them) would have taken place without the unions in the case of Houston; I’m confident that you won’t find such evidence in the case of London, where similar, albeit far more fluffy events have taken place in recent weeks.
redtwister

Also, if you need a union to get the workers active, then I suppose you need a party to get them active too. Or why not a party?

Again, it’s not a universal truth that ‘you need a union to get the workers active’. It’s a contingent possibility; just as its inverse is – or that is my argument, at any rate. (By ‘union’ here I understand a large membership-based workers organisation, the relevance of which being that it has enough money to pay people to ignite and support workers’ campaigns; by ‘need’, I mean that you can’t tell a plausible story in which the object of the need is missing.) And – again I say this – the question in each instance can only be resolved factually. Of course you need a theoretical prism, but it should be a more subtle and detailed one than you set out.

And anyway, if you think it’s the case that any statement about workers involvement in unions can necessarily be applied to workers involvement in parties (which you imply you do, even though I suspect you don’t really), why isn’t it the case that ‘Sometimes parties enable radicalism that otherwise might be difficult’? Or if it is the case, what is your attitude toward it?

The last question you ask is too complicated for it to be appropriate to have it out on this thread. For starters, I’d have to ask how you would define ‘party’… and whether you’d include organisations AF or NEFAC within that definition, for example.
redtwister

As was said in my original post, no one denies that workers try to make use of the unions for their own ends. They do the same with politicians and parties. Are you saying that we should get involved in electoral politics also? Or is the state a purely capitalist institution, unlike the workplace?

I don’t have a problem with people getting involved in electoral parties (as I’ve actually already indicated, in my previous post), just as long as they do it with their eyes open. (In certain circumstances, that is, in others, it may be unfailingly counterproductive). I know that this puts me beyond the pale as far as many people are concerned, but let’s not pick parties up as a separate dispute on this thread now. In any case, if this conclusion does follow from what I’m saying (I don’t know if it does) then that’s a debate we can have when we’ve more thoroughly thrashed out the basics here. (And I don’t even understand your final question in the paragraph.)

My point, anyway, is (firstly) ‘that workers try to make use of the unions for their own ends’. You say no one denies it; though Lurch did go to some length to show that the unions (in our case study at hand) were not useful for the workers; and you agreed with his analysis. Perhaps you both meant to say that in fact the workers did succeed in using the unions for their own end; but re-reading Lurch’s posts, and your agreement with him, frankly, it’s hard to extract that. Or perhaps you think it's possible sometimes, but wasn't true this time. But if that's the case, I’d have expected a more thorough dismissal of my question. I'd also be interested to hear pf an example in which you think that unions did enable radicalism?

My argument also has another component. (Secondly and more controversially, as I argue is shown by our case study): not only did the workers make use of the unions for their own purposes, but the unions, under certain pressures, can actually tend to seek out the workers, and structure union activity in such a way as to allow the workers the opportunity use the union to advance both their self-organisation and other interests. (Albeit in a manner motivated and constrained largely by the institutional self-interest of the unions – but it’s the specifics of this, not the broad brush stroke that is interesting.)
redtwister

Workers can organize to defend their particular interests in all kinds of mediums.

I agree. This is my point.
redtwister

That may not have anyting to do with communism and in fact may well sacrifice one part of the class for the immediate gains of another.

I think that unless it sacrifices one part of the class for another, it unfailingly has something to do with communism – i.e. ‘the real movement which abolishes the present state of things’. Anything which abdicates from this creates a division between the interests of the class, and the interests of communists – who become a lobby for political idealism within the class, and not an integral part of its material progress. They even risk becoming advocates for the real immiseration of sections of the class (of course, not for the ideal immiseration of anyone, but who cares about that when the real’s on the table?). Perhaps this is the nub of our disagreement all along? (I believe the view I offer here is your point #6 from the original post, and the view expressed by cph_shawarma and revol68 in response to it; I note this in the hope that we don’t just go round in circles.)
redtwister

The unions in the US certainly did that along lines of race, gender, national origin, etc. and still do. The wonderful organizers of poor, immigrant workers are also nationalist and protectionist. In fact, in the case of the LA drywall workers, the workers forced the union to take up their fight, somethign the union had long been reluctant to do. The workers made the union look better than it deserved, and the union took credit after the fact.

Sure. I agree. Anyway…

Redtwister asked a lot of other good questions in earlier posts, particularly about the role of union organisers, which I don’t have time to come back to now. I think the most interesting were raised in the original post and have never been addressed in any serious detail, though some people have offered an opinion. Instead, discussion has revolved around Rosa Luxemburg, the nature of the IWW, and a lot of people spouting off about 'decadence' in a totally unhelpful way.

redtwister

• Are the COBAS and other such unions the “new unionism” or will there be no “new unionism”?

• What does workers’ defending their day-to-day conditions by whatever means available have to do with communists? That is, do we have means or methods to prescribe to those struggles?

What is the relationship between the practical critique of the unions by the workers (break with the unions in 1917-23; wildcats in the 1960’s and 70’s; etc.) and the critique of the unions as organizations whose limits reside fully on this side of capital? This is clearly the sorest spot because it involves figuring out how one relates, if at all, to the unions in practice. To put it another way, while workers may develop a practical critique of the unions (one I would argue they must develop in a process of radicalization), while that practical critique and the communist critique reside fairly comfortably in a revolutionary situation or era, what is the proper attitude and practice of communists in a period when the workers are on the defensive or, as today, quite atomized?

Oh, and by the way Nate

I don't know of situations of management actually encouraging unionization, though I wouldn't be surprised if it happened in some situations.

I know a couple. TESCO, our largest supermarket chain, often encourages workers to join USDAW in the UK (so they won’t join a more militant union); and someone I know, who was sacked for political action at work, had his bosses encourage fellow workers to join the union, and vote against solidarity with him…

Alf: "there can't be permanent mass organisations in this period of history, except during an openly revolutionary period. It's not based on any unchanging distrust of permanent organisations as such."

But of course mass organizations actually exist. You must mean: "There can't be permanent revolutionary mass organizations in a period of history that isn't revolutionary." But then it's clear that it's an empty tautology. And then there is newyawka's point: How can you tell what "period of history" you're in except after the fact? And how do we slip into a revolutionary period of history? In particular, how does the working class become revolutionary without a protracted process of internal change, due to the experience of collective struggle and increasing collective strength? And how does that happpen without mass organizations?

t.

syndicalistcat

And then there is newyawka's point: How can you tell what "period of history" you're in except after the fact? And how do we slip into a revolutionary period of history? In particular, how does the working class become revolutionary without a protracted process of internal change, due to the experience of collective struggle and increasing collective strength? And how does that happpen without mass organizations?

cheers, s-cat. i mean, someone may have a list of revolutionary-period characteristics, but nobody will tell me what they are :(. in the meantime, keep the organizations alive. a theoretical justification for doing so is simply that as long as there exists corporate capitalism, we're never not in a period of w/c potentiality.

syndicalistcat

Alf: "there can't be permanent mass organisations in this period of history, except during an openly revolutionary period. It's not based on any unchanging distrust of permanent organisations as such."

But of course mass organizations actually exist. You must mean: "There can't be permanent revolutionary mass organizations in a period of history that isn't revolutionary." But then it's clear that it's an empty tautology. And then there is newyawka's point: How can you tell what "period of history" you're in except after the fact? And how do we slip into a revolutionary period of history? In particular, how does the working class become revolutionary without a protracted process of internal change, due to the experience of collective struggle and increasing collective strength? And how does that happpen without mass organizations?

t.

Agreed I need to clarify: there can't be proletarian mass organisations outside a revolutionary period. It's not a tautology because not all proletarian organisations are revolutionary, either in the sense of advocating communist revolution or practically moving towards a direct assault on the capitalist regime. There can be defensive proletarian organisations, and this is what the trade unions once were; in today's period assemblies and strike committees have the same character.
The difference here is one of method and shouldn't be drowned in endless 'facts'. For marxists, indeed for anyone who conistently applies a class analysis to social reality, it is surely inconceivable that organisations so absolutely central to the confrontation between the two majaor classes in society should not have a definite class nature. All posi offers us in his long post (but in this he is echoed by many others, even by Redtwister in his weaker moments)is a kind of agnostic position which can never rise above the snapshot of what this trade union did at this moment at this particular workplace. In this view, unions just don't have a definite class function or nature and it's surely too rigid and dogmatic to try to define one. It's a method which is completely incapable of preparing the way for what is probably one of the most difficult tasks of the proletarian revolution, but one that was already recognised by the KAPD in 1920: the destruction of the trade unions as an integral part of the bourgeois state.

On the basis of the prior experience of the proletarian movement, how else? I am not talking about a "potentially" revolutionary period (one in which the old mole is burrowing underground, and which can last for decades) but an openly revolutionary one, i.e. one in which the working class is massively challenging the legitimacy of the present system, like, for example, in Russia in 1917 or Germany in 1918. We are not in a period like that today or am I too thick to have noticed it?

Alf

We are not in a period like that today or am I too thick to have noticed it?

i wouldn't say you're thick alf, but the ICC wrote this in the spring 2006 Internationalism

the ICC

As we noted in our statement on the MTA strike published on the internationalism.org Website, this “was the most significant workers’ struggle in the U.S. in 15 years,” because of its international context, the development of class consciousness exhibited by the striking workers, and the potential impact of the struggle on other workers (the importance of solidarity, resistance to further attempts to slash pensions). Events since December confirm the validity of this analysis.

The transit struggle occurred in an international context in which the working class worldwide is going through a process of returning to class struggle after a decade and a half of disorientation since the collapse of the imperialist bloc system that had prevailed since the end of World War II.

http://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_lessons_MTA_strike.htm

so ... are we or aren't we?

Revol: pish, posh. Try reading Rosa Luxemburg on the mass strike about the partial struggles that, over a number of years, prepared the way for the 1905 eruption, alongside the patient work of revolutionary organisations. Try reading Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution about how the 1917 revolution was the product of a whole process of subterranean maturation. Try reading what the ICC has written about the mass strike as a whole period of struggles and about the subterranean maturation of consciousness, which we have always defended against the mechanical councilist idea of massive struggles coming from nowhere in reaction to the economic crisis. And then maybe we could have a serious discussion about this.

newyawka: the passage you cite does not talk about a revolutionary period. It talks about a long, slow process of revival of struggles after a long retreat, struggles that are still on a defensive terrain, but which can prepare the ground for more massive movements in the future and, eventually, for a revolutionary confrontation with capital. So, no, we are not in a revolutionary period; we can affirm the growing potential for one opening up in the future, but there is nothing fixed in advanced and there is also the possibility of the working class being ground down and defeated on a historical scale.

First, apologies to Posi who’s put a lot of effort into replying to me and everyone else who has in some way suggested that trades union are not organs which can defend the interests of the proletariat in this period. Apologies, because I’m not going into the same level of argumentation as his post. It would take more time than I have right now. Originally Posi wrote:

“What I don't get about the position of the die-hard, outside and against the union position, is that it appears to me to totally ignore the positive character of stuff like this:
[url=http://]Houston Janitors news item 1; Houston Janitors news item 2; and the 'justice for cleaners' stuff which the T&G is running.’

[/url]

My post on the Houston janitors’ strike merely and rather crudely attempted to show why, even at the “economistic, immediate level” (which is not the level on which communists or other class conscious workers should operate, even if we must always be ‘concrete’) there was reason to question ‘ the positive character” of this specific episode.

And apologies because I’m going to refer (defer?) to Alf’s post above and the methodology to be employed in answer to all the detail Posi subsequently raised.

The question is not, IMO, as Posi rephrased it, “did the union support or hinder the struggle of [these particular] workers’, but ‘what lessons can we draw about the role of trade unions from our experience of the past 100 years in the light of the evolution of capitalism and needs of the working class in this period (and how does this affect our view of this or that movement of the working class?)’

This is, unless I’ve got it completely wrong, the kind of level at which Redtwister raised (or rather re-posed) the on-going debate. Posi says this approach is one of “sweeping generalisations.” Or, it’s ‘reductionist.’ I disagree. It is, as Alf says, the framework through which we attempt to understand particular events and periods.

Talking of periods, syndicalistcat and Newyorker have asked questions about what period of history the working class is operating right now: how do we know, how can we tell?

A serious, detailed response demands a different, if connected thread. It would have to consider, amongst many other aspects: the rise and fall of previous class societies, and to what extent capitalism conforms and departs from these experiences; the position of different revolutionary classes within different class societies (by revolutionary, I mean those corresponding to new and progressive ways of organising society, which also have the material means to effect the necessary changes) and, specifically, the nature of the current revolutionary class, the proletariat. It would have to examine the evolution of capitalism specifically and the position of the proletariat within it. In more detail, and studying actual history, it would pose the different conditions under which the proletariat as a whole has actually tended towards a revolutionary consciousness and practice (1917, for example, arising out of the First World War), and the differences and similarities of today’s period. And considering the last 40-odd years, such a debate would look at the ebbs and flows of the proletarian struggle within the material situation of capitalism and the political and economic response of the ruling class to the period and the proletariat.

Or, (for Newyorker, who wants a list of ‘pre-revolutionary criteria) what is it exactly you don’t understand about the extract you quoted from Internationalism?

Lurch

Talking of periods, syndicalistcat and Newyorker have asked questions about what period of history the working class is operating right now: how do we know, how can we tell?

A serious, detailed response demands a different, if connected thread. It would have to consider, amongst many other aspects: the rise and fall of previous class societies, and to what extent capitalism conforms and departs from these experiences; the position of different revolutionary classes within different class societies (by revolutionary, I mean those corresponding to new and progressive ways of organising society, which also have the material means to effect the necessary changes) and, specifically, the nature of the current revolutionary class, the proletariat. It would have to examine the evolution of capitalism specifically and the position of the proletariat within it. In more detail, and studying actual history, it would pose the different conditions under which the proletariat as a whole has actually tended towards a revolutionary consciousness and practice (1917, for example, arising out of the First World War), and the differences and similarities of today’s period. And considering the last 40-odd years, such a debate would look at the ebbs and flows of the proletarian struggle within the material situation of capitalism and the political and economic response of the ruling class to the period and the proletariat.

so, after a year of asking, an answer. it's a start. it also seems, however, that it involves a freakin' lot of analysis, and the list here isn't even the complete list of criteria to examine, i'm told. i wonder what the function of such an analysis would be, other than definition-giving. it still appears that we'd be past such a time before we knew we were in such a time.

but i can't get past why i had to ask so often before anyone even ventured a response on this apparently fundamental issue. the cynic in me wonders if the lack of content in this response is a motion to buy yet more time.

BECAUSE IT HITS YOU IN THE FACE

Do you seriously think you could have 'missed' moments like the 1980 mass strike in Poland or the May 68 events in France if you had been there? Well, a revolution is even bigger.

Or is there something I'm not getting here?

Alf

BECAUSE IT HITS YOU IN THE FACE

this makes much more sense than lurch's answer, but it seems wholly to contradict his claim that a looooooooooooooooooooong list of criteria must be examined before an identification can be made.

but the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and if a revolution doesn't ultimately take, then what hit me in the face might not be what i thought it was at first. so i wonder about alf's definition too.

full discolosure: i'm a skeptic, allergic to all teleology, keenly sensitive to the contingency of both past and future events and the imponderable nature of human experience, and hence perhaps just incapable of thinking like a left communist.

The proletariat is not the only "revolutionary class." A revolution, i take it, is a change in the mode of production, and of who the dominant class is. The Russian revolution, and the revolutions in China, Vietnam, Cuba, eliminated the capitalist class, and the class of managers and top professionals -- we can follow Albert & Hahnel and call it the coordinator class -- became the dominant class. The mode of exploitation of labor changed. Capital is a power relation in which the capitalists use their money-capital to acquire thru the market land, equipment, labor power etc to produce commodities that can fetch a price on the market higher than what they pay for the resources to produce it. What replaced that in the USSR was a centrally administered economy where money no longer had the same social meaning, and a new mode of exploitation presided. The prospects in life, the mode of exploitation, of the new ruling elite wasn't based on private accumulation but on their relative monopoly of situations giving them power, thru managerial and political positions, connections, accumulated expertise of certain kinds, etc.

So in principle two anti-capitalist revolutions are possible, a proletarian revolution or a coordinatorist revolution. A coordinatorist revolution preserves the class system, and tends to create an unstable system whose elite often figures out a way, in time, to privatize the resources and resume a market system, i.e. a capitalist revolution from above, as in Russia and China.

Which type of revolution is likely will depend on which is prefigured in the period leading up to the change. For a proletarian revolution to be prefigured, there has to be a process, more or less protracted, in which the working class acquires the self-confidence, solidarity, cohesion, skills and organizational strength, as well as increasing clarity about the possibility of getting beyond class subordination, that raises the real possibility of freeing itself.

t.

Vis-a-vis a revolutionary situation, newyorker asked: how do we know when we're in one?

Lurch gave a big long list to consider.

Alf wrote:
BECAUSE IT HITS YOU IN THE FACE

And newyorker replied:

"And this makes much more sense than lurch's answer, but it seems wholly to contradict his claim that a looooooooooooooooooooong list of criteria must be examined before an identification can be made."

Not in contradiction with, perhaps the other side of the coin of: two elements of a whole: a historical, theoretical approach and proletarian gut instinct: a combination of historically-based theory which arms the workers and their political minorities to look out for the signs, and the evolution of the bleedin obvious when, on an international scale, the proletariat is more or less constantly mobilised, advancing, retreating and rising up once more in an accelerating rhythm (waves? contractions?) making economic and political demands, insisting on a change to the fundamentals of the status quo, making itself the force in the land, offering a way forward to the rest of exploited society.

Lenin defined such a situation (to paraphrase, I haven't got the exact quote to hand), as when 'the ruling clas can no longer govern as before, and the exploited class refuses to be governed as before.'

IMO, such a situation could (at some stage) emerge from the present period. IMO, we ain't at that stage yet.

As part of this (now off-opic) debate, syndicalistcat wrote:

"For a proletarian revolution to be prefigured, there has to be a process, more or less protracted, in which the working class acquires the self-confidence, solidarity, cohesion, skills and organizational strength, as well as increasing clarity about the possibility of getting beyond class subordination, that raises the real possibility of freeing itself."

I think I agree with that, as far as it goes.

I don't agree when he writes that 'the proletariat is not the only "revolutionary class". I don't agree when he lumps in the Russian Revolution together with "the China, Vietnam and Cuba revolutions." IMO we're talking of totally different things here, the expression of different classes.

Lurch:"I don't agree when he writes that 'the proletariat is not the only "revolutionary class". I don't agree when he lumps in the Russian Revolution together with "the China, Vietnam and Cuba revolutions." IMO we're talking of totally different things here, the expression of different classes."

A class that emerges as a dominant class in a period that changes the mode of production is a "revolutionary class." The capitalists have been in the past a "revolutionary class" in this sense. The coordinator class were a revolutionary class in the Russian, Chinese, Cuban revolutions. It is true, as he hints, that there was a difference between the Russian revolution and the others in that, in the Russian revolution, the working class played a revolutionary role, it was an active factor, but it was defeated by the emerging coordinator class, via the Bolshevik party taking state power, instituting central planning, one-man management, top-down army, etc. The working class was not sufficiently strong because, in part, it lacked a clear conception of a strategy and program that would actually empower it. Backing the Bolsheviks or the Mensheviks would not lead to the empowerment of the working class. And the peasantry's illiteracy and lack of adequate self-organization prevented it from being a more active factor.

Sorry if this is a bit off-topic.

t.

I think most of what redtwister writes is very helpful, just a couple of comments.
redtwister

I agree that Lurch posed a series of ways in which the union could be said to have imposed limitations on the struggle that otherwise would not have been there, just as I agree with you that this action might not have actually happened without the intervention of the union. It is not an either/or situation.

True... I did say that as well as enabling, the union probably constrained the struggle in some ways; though I don't see that Lurch offered a 'series of ways' that the union limited the struggle. I also don't know about the extent of it, I don't know whether it'd be true to say that 'it clearly seems to have had much more potential'.
redtwister

an extension of the strike outside the corporatist boundaries.

For example, how could this have happened? e.g. what sectors could have been involved (I think security guards already are, for example. But given whose offices they're cleaning, cleaners are in the 'finance capital' industry, and the opportunity for solidarity is therefore limited...)
redtwister

the argument about "objectively different conditions" ignores that there are such conditions only for capital, and that for us there is only what we can fight to win.

Not sure I understand this. Obviously, there are objective conditions in which everyone finds themselves - i.e. conditions beyond their control. I guess it might be true that the working class as a whole has no objective constraints; only 'subjective' ones, i.e. that it doesn't realise its real situation, interests of power. But even those subjective restraints (conceiving of the class as a subject) arise from what are objective constraints to the members of the class. Also, we're part of capital, no?
redtwister

In some unions, dues are $200-$300/mo, so if you do not get a $2-3/hr raise, you lose money by unionizing.

I've got to say, I'm genuinely amazed by this. By way of comparison, I pay less than £10 (about $20) per month to the GMB (a general union in the UK, not one of those things the IWW has). I believe that AMICUS is the most expensive - perhaps up to £20 per month - but organises mostly higher grade industrial workers. But most (e.g. T&G) are around £10-12. On the other end of the spectrum, CWU charges £3 per month for part-time workers in non-recognised companies. So I hadn't realised that this would be an issue.

Yeah I was struck by how low dues are in the UK when I visited and my friend told me how much she pays to AMICUS.

A belated response to some elements of Posi's post of the 17th.
"What is period". A big discussion as Lurch says. The answer is an essential basis for the historical framework of communists and the union question. It's ABC in some sense. A: what is the economy? B: how does that economy arise? and C: how does it fall? Slavery had a rise, an apogee and a, well documented fall. The former constituted well defined, different periods and the consequences of those periods are historical witness to them (eg Rome). Likewise with feudalism; ABC, characteristics of the economy, rise and fall. The same for capitalism; definition of its economy; rise and a fall, the latter being the period we are living through now and that has existed for the last hundred years. That's how marxists would, more or less, define a period and periods must have real, material consequences. The period of capitalism's rise was not a "Golden Age" for the trade unions, but one where the latter could materially defend the interests of the working class and were part of the organisation of the working class. The fall, the decadence of capitalism, is a period where the unions can not only no longer defend the material interests of the working class but must, as an organism integrated into the capitalist state, attack the short and long term interests of the working class. It is essential to have an overall framework of the period, what it is, in order to define the interests of the working class.
Almost all on this thread (and others concerning the unions), from the limpist union supporters to the anarchoid criticisers of the "union leadership", ignore the question of unions and imperialist war. The wholesale slaughter of worker against worker, by their millions, in WWI, was engineered in no small part by the trade unions. This not only demonstrated once and for all the decay of capitalism (the "period") but the role of the unions (one of the consequences of the period) as organs of the capitalist state. Opposed to this world war the working class concretely posed its revolutionary alternative. This was one of the "major events" (they don't come much more major) that seems to have confused you from my previous post. Major clashes of class v class where issues are fought by force and clarified politically. The overwhelming tendency of trade unionism was to support imperialist war and counter revolution in the first 30 years of the 20th C. When the working class was beaten by the 30s (with more and more active union involvement) the unions supported the build up to and running of WWII, to the point where they were essential to it. Millions of workers, more than before, brutalised and sacrificed on the alters of capital with the full support of the trade unions. Why do all you supporters of the unions, "critical" or otherwise, ignore these four decades or so of unprecedented carnage as if they were inconsequential, as if they mean nothing, as if they have nothing to tell us about the unions and the working class?
Those that are "critical" are only critical in terms of their "critical support" which is precisely the role of leftist appendages to capital everywhere. Your position posi is that the unions are "useful in protecting vulnerable workers", that union PR is a good thing, wildcats are "easier to defeat", unions "take the pressure off workers", they are "unavoidably positive", "help to stimulate the workers", "stimulations". What about the two world wars and the counter-revolution? Your statements look sick in this perspective.
There's a feeling on these boards that because today only a minority of workers are in the unions they are not the force they were. Look at any strike. I work in an industry that's vital to the British economy. About one in five of us is in one of the three unions. They sit with management all the time, they decide everything about work, conditions, wages and job cuts. And they act radical when necessary.
You say the state doesn't encourage workers to join unions. How do you explain the setting up of trade unions in Germany and Japan by the "victorious" Allies after WWII? How do you explain the unprecedented co-operation between easten and western blocs at the height of the Cold War in helping to set up Solidarnosc and encouraging workers in Poland to join and adhere to it, thus defeating a powerful movemnt? How do you explain the total integration into the state by legislation, finances, formal and informal networks of the trade unions in all the major democracies? If you're saying that some times, in some places, some factions of the ruling class disagree with one another, like some aspect of unions, then you're saying nothing new. But you are not saying that because of that unions can represent the interests of the working class. Factions of the bourgeoisie will fall out with each other, or may be more or less stupid, and that doesn't at all negate the marxist position that the unions have become totally integrated into the (decaying) capitalist state.
The unions wouldn't be a lot of good to the bourgeoisie if they simply blatently hammered the workers day in day out or simply muscled them back to work when they went on strike. The day to day hammering of the working class, the overt policing, intimidation and discipling of the working class in factories and workplaces in certainly a reality for many workers in the heartlands of capital. It is much more extensive, I suspect, than many would think.
But it's the union's role as "defenders" of the working class, its "supporter", "negotiator", as well as its "critical supporters" that are really dangerous for the communist perspective. Forget for the moment about theorems of x, y and z. Concentrate on ABC.

I'm off for a while, so again.
Newyawka's post of the 19th appears to be interested in the question of periods, it a "start" he says, which is certainly a start. He then goes on to say is this a "response to buy more time". What a ridiculous thing to say. It's not a question here of buying time, time is a question for the working class but here it's a question of content, a question of framework. "What would be the function of such an analysis other than definition giving" he asks. Fundamental question. A marxist analysis has as its function a tool for action otherwise it's meaningless. You can read all you like, and that's generally a good thing, but if you are serious about supporting the working class, about changing society then you are wasting your time unless theory and practice intertwine. In its intervention - which it does far more often, extensively and effectively than those on these posts who criticise it as "abstract" - the ICC uses the framework of marxist analysis of the periods of societies, particularly capitalism and periods within periods. The counter-rervolution, for example, was a period within the period of capitalism's decadence. There is the period of the collapse of the eastern bloc - the most important period within most of our lives so far. There were events leading up to it, consequences, heavy consequences from it, but it clearly marks a period of the decomposition of capitalism within the latter's decadence. Within this we have to look at all episodes of the class struggle and their perspectives and within this the role of the trade unions based on an already extensive historical grasp of their role in capitalism. Any revolutionary intervention in the class struggle worth its salt during this period has to be clear about the role of the unions, whether it goes "against the current" or not.
In this particular period, which is the decomposition of capitalism - general disarray, irrationality of warfare, economic collapse - the role of the unions, as agents of the capitalist state, as we understand from real, historical experience, will become even more important for the bourgeoisie. We know that they will do everything to control and divide the working class and when the class moves strongly the unions will go along with it in order to drive its struggle into a dead end.

Chris, in 2003 AFSCME dues were I believe $28 a month for fulltimers and less for part timers.

Shit that's cheap, I pay 70$ to CUPW and I'm part time.

Here is a more recent brief summary of how this particular Left Communist group (not the ICC) understands the role of pro-revolutionaries towards the economic class struggle of workers and to different union formations: www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2016-02-26/theses-on-the-role-of-communists-in-the-economic-struggle-of-the-working-class Although I'm sympathetic to this view it doesn't reflect all the nuances expressed in the discussion thread here which (despite one or two over-long digressions on the historical period) is certainly one of the more rewarding that anyone searching for something along these lines might find, so I thought was worthy of giving a bump up the list.