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Title: Workplace Papers
Author: Sojourner Truth Organization
Date: 1980
Language: en
Topics: United States of America, organization, workplace struggles, trade unions, race
Source: Retrieved on 15th November 2021 from http://www.sojournertruth.net/workplacepapers.html
Notes: A 1980 pamphlet of a collection of writings on workplace organizing by the American based ‘new communist movement’ group, Sojourner Truth Organization.

Sojourner Truth Organization

Workplace Papers

Preface

Sojourner Truth Organization came into existence in the winter of

1969–70. For its first five years, it existed only in the Chicago area.

During a good portion of that time, it was thought of in movement

circles as “the people who organize in factories.” (Almost no one else

on the left in Chicago was then following a policy of industrial

concentration.) Our “corner” on this sort of work had its advantages and

disadvantages: it meant that we were able to recruit a number of people

from the movement who were moving toward working class politics and

impressed by the seriousness of our commitment; it also meant that many

of these people came to us with little understanding of the differences

between our approach to the workplace and the various alternatives which

existed in theory, if not, at that actual moment in Chicago, in

practice.

Over the next five years we were able to establish a political presence

in a number of work centers, including the following: International

Harvester Tractor Works, IH Melrose Park, IH Broadview, Grant Hospital,

Montgomery Ward, Intercraft, Motorola, Stanadyne, Western Electric,

Appleton Electric, American Can, U. S. Steel Gary Works, U. S. Steel

South Works, Inland Steel, Methodist Hospital (Gary), South Chicago

Hospital, Bell & Howell and Stewart Warner.

Our experience included work in heavy industry and light industry, in

plants with a “good” union, a “bad” union and no union, in predominantly

male, predominantly female and mixed environments, in plants with a tie

to the surrounding community and in plants with no such tie; we

participated in union organizing campaigns and union ousting campaigns,

in wildcat strikes, slowdowns and sitdowns; we used sabotage; we

published newsletters, held social affairs, showed films and conducted

study groups — in short we had a breadth of experience which I believe

to be unequaled by any group of comparable size and few of any size.

From the beginning we counted among our possessions more than a

traditional commitment to the working class as the principal agent of

social revolution; we also had a political line, which we had come to

through individual and collective study of the writings of Antonio

Gramsci, W. E. B. DuBois and C. L. R. James, as well as through an

examination of the recent experience of the League of Revolutionary

Black Workers, the Italian “Hot Autumn” of 1969 and the 1968 French

General Strike, and the earlier experience of the Industrial Workers of

the World. Briefly stated, this perspective was as follows: in modern

industrial societies, bourgeois rule depends on the development of a

variety of “systems” that channel the outbreaks of the exploited class

and allow their absorption by capital; that the specifically American

framework for this process is the white-skin privilege system — the

conferring of a favored status on the white sector of the proletariat;

and that the trade unions cannot be understood apart from this

framework. It was this political perspective — to which we remain

committed to this day — and specifically the critique of trade unions,

that led other sectors of the left to criticize us as “dual unionist” or

“anti-union” and to instruct us with the proper quotations from Lenin’s

Left-Wing Communism.

On the Lenin business, there are two opinions in STO: one holds simply

that Lenin was wrong (gasp!) and the proof is that he changed his mind

and helped organize the Red International of Labor Unions only a year

after he wrote that unfortunate pamphlet. The other (I may be alone in

believing this) holds that Lenin is universally misinterpreted, and that

while he certainly argued (correctly) the need to work within the

right-wing unions, he never put that forward as the only, or even the

main, work of communists. Whatever the result of the debate (and I’m

sure Lenin’s reputation will survive it), one thing we are all agreed

upon (and I have instructed the typesetter to put it in boldface in

order to reduce the possibility of misinterpretation), is that STO is

not dual unionist in principle and it is not anti-union.

Now, I am not so naive as to think that a simple declarative statement,

even one set in bold type, can lay to rest all doubts on this score.

Just as sure as God made little green apples, some reader of this

preface and of the articles to follow will deliver yet another attack on

STO as “dual unionist.” Nevertheless, owing to a defect in my character,

I persist: STO cannot be dual unionist in principle, because the

question is not one of principle but of tactics. There are times when it

makes sense to break with an existing union and organize another; one

example of this is the Fraternal Association of Steel Haulers, which is

made up of people who seceded from the Teamsters Union. (The Teamsters

Union will probably offer up additional examples in the next few years.)

The Committee for Industrial Organization (later Congress of Industrial

Organizations) was originally a dual union in relation to the American

Federation of Labor, as was the AFL in relation to the Knights of Labor.

Other times it makes sense to work to bring about a change in leadership

and policy in an existing union; the recent experience of the United

Mine Workers gives a picture of the possibilities and limitations of

such a course. There can be no dogma on this matter, and those who

oppose dual unionism “in principle” should be aware that in so doing

they are opposing the trade union movements of virtually every country

in Europe, where the rule is that competing unions and union federations

exist within the same enterprise.

Unions are instruments workers use to improve their living conditions

under capitalism. By representing the interests of groups of workers

within the wage system, they provide a means of mediating conflicts that

threaten to disrupt the system, in addition to being an arena in which

conflicts develop.

One can search diligently through the left press, encountering page

after page of denunciation of this or that union official, without ever

coming across a statement such as the above, which seems to us

undeniable. Fortunately for its continued rule, the bourgeoisie has been

able to bring forth class conscious ideologists who are not bound by

inherited dogmas as are most of our leftists. Two of these ideologists,

Richard B. Freeman and James L. Medoff, both on the faculty at Harvard

University and Research Associates at the National Bureau of Economic

Research, have published a study entitled, “The Two Faces of Unionism.“1

They begin with the observation, “Trade unions are the principal

institution of workers in modern capitalist societies, as endemic as

large firms, oligopolistic organization of industries, and government

regulation of free enterprise.”

“In modern industrial economies,” the writers observe, “and particularly

in large enterprises, a trade union is the vehicle for collective voice

— that is, for providing workers as a group with a means of

communicating with management.” Writing in the purest sociologese, they

say: “By providing workers with a voice both at the workplace and in the

political arena, unions can and do affect positively the functioning of

the economic and social systems.”

The writers take up the arguments against unions that have been

traditionally put forth by management interests — that they raise wages,

introduce new work rules, lower output through strikes, etc. — and show

that these objections to unions, while not entirely without foundation,

are outweighed by the beneficial effects of unions in actually

increasing productivity by reducing quit rates, regulating the time

workers spend on breaks, and in general providing a more stable work

force. They conclude that, “the positive effects of unions are in many

settings more important than their negative effects,” and that “the

on-going decline of private-sector unionism — a development unique to

the U.S. among western developed countries — deserves serious public

attention.”

Three cheers for Harvard. Now we in STO, similarly unbound by

traditional dogmas and in addition motivated by something other than the

search for industrial peace, have gone even further than the two

professors. We have noted that although labor unions at times have grown

out of mass struggles which had a revolutionary component, unions, as

such, do not play a revolutionary role. This consistency (it cannot be

called a failure) is the logical consequence of their character as

institutions structured to bring about an improvement in the terms of

the sale of labor power, while the aim of the proletarian revolution is

to abolish the sale of labor power. In fact, unions which develop as

working class institutions, even if not as revolutionary institutions,

increasingly become separated from working class interests and become

the structures within the working class that support the hegemony of

capital over it.

We have come to the conclusion (I do not wish to anticipate the articles

that follow) that work within the unions cannot be the center of a

communist labor policy, that something else, which embodies the

revolutionary aspirations of the proletariat, as distinct from the

reform interests of groups of workers, is needed. To discover the

character of that “something else” and to help bring it into existence

is the central feature of STO’s labor policy. But it by no means follows

that we wish to destroy or weaken the present unions in general (we do

wish to weaken or destroy some of them, in certain aspects) or that we

are indifferent to the quality of a particular union in a particular

place, or any of the other things that could conceivably be implied in

the charge of being “anti-union.” Indeed, a necessary consequence of the

development of a mass revolutionary working class current will be the

revitalization of the trade unions. This will be impelled both as a

direct response to the radicalization of their constituency, and because

of the heightened interests of capital in maintaining their legitimacy

as a structure able to confine the working class within the capital

relation.

We observe that unions are not revolutionary institutions. Immediately

our opponents attack us as “anti-union.” We say that something is needed

to represent the mass revolutionary aspirations of the proletariat, and

they accuse us of “dual unionism” since the only form of organization of

a mass character which could possibly exist in the workplace is a union.

Trade unions our leftists can understand. Speak to them of revolutionary

organization and they respond on cue with a lecture on the

“Marxist-Leninist Party.” But the notion of developing an organizational

form which encompasses and focuses the mass subversive destabilizing

motion of the working class — an organizational form which is mass, but

is not a union, which is revolutionary, but is not a party — is beyond

the scope of their categories of thought. In their view, the masses of

the working class will only be revolutionary at the moment of the

seizure of power, and, even then, this content will be expressed for the

most part in an identification with a vanguard party.

In our view, it is not only possible, but absolutely essential, that the

class that must “emancipate itself” be organized in forms which permit

it to play an active creative role in the revolutionary process.

What did our experience show?

We began in 1970 with the estimate that the working class was getting

ready for a big upsurge comparable to the May ’68 or the “Hot Autumn.”

We had the evidence of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and

some indication that the ferment was reaching out to white workers as

well. It seemed to us a relatively simple matter to bring into existence

out of the spontaneous movement some form of mass revolutionary workers’

organization. (I remember writing out a model constitution for such an

organization, based on the expectation that it would shortly have

chapters in all the major plants in Chicago and be widely recognized as

a force in industry. Fortunately, that document has been lost.)

It didn’t happen that way. We found that, while we were able, for

pedagogical purposes, to clearly distinguish between the autonomous and

subordinated aspects of workers’ behavior, in practice the distinction

wasn’t so clear. We found direct action mixed up with inner-union

maneuvering, sabotage along side of legalistic activities, etc. — and we

found that the workers we encountered were unwilling to make a

categorical separation between one course of action and the other.

Time and again we encountered workers, with whom we had cooperated in

shop-floor battles and who understood that no fundamental change could

come through union reform, being drawn into unproductive inner-union

squabbling — usually starting with the notion that it was purely

tactical but, after a time, being wholly absorbed by it.

Now, if this happened regularly over a period of years in a number of

different industries, it could not be attributed to individual

backwardness, or poor methods of work, or any such accidental

consideration. The workers were saying to us by their actions that they

doubted the workability of our perspective.

The groups we were able to develop assumed a mass character and were

able to exert an important influence over the struggle for only short

periods of time; when they were able to maintain an existence over a

fairly long period of time, their mass impact, at best, was of a

propagandistic nature. In no case were we able to develop groups that

exerted an important influence over events over a long period of time.

I can hear our opponents now: Practice is the test of theory, they say,

and here are these ultra-left dual unionists who admit that in five

years of trying they were unable to build stable organization of the

type they claim is necessary. Shouldn’t that convince them of the error

of their ways?

Not quite. Practice is the test of theory only over the course of

history. Only at moments of historic shock, at moments of crisis and

qualitative change, when social forces are polarized and masses of

previously atomized individuals are acting together as classes, will

valid theories be conclusively proven and mistaken ones decisively

refuted. In the normal routine of political work, we will constantly be

reminded that every theory, no matter how sublimely improbable, can find

some justification in practice; just as every type of political practice

will be articulated in some form of theory.

We are laboring away at the development of organization which embodies

the revolutionary aspect of the proletariat. We are doing this at a time

when the proletariat is under the intellectual domination of the

bourgeois class, when the expressions of its revolutionary aspect are

isolated, fragmentary and sporadic, when its organizations have turned

into fetters. Is it surprising that revolutionary organization built

under these conditions should be fragile? Tomorrow, when the workers

smash all routine, when millions break with current patterns of behavior

and hurl up forms beyond the imagination of the boldest thinker, we

shall see who made the greatest contribution to the emergence of the new

society — those who spent their time ferreting within the structures

that maintained the subordination of the workers to capital, or those

who strove, under difficult circumstances, to give a fleeting existence

to those forms which foreshadowed the coming upheaval.

To return to my story, the result of our work was nothing to write home

about, but it wasn’t too bad, given the times and the fate of other left

groups coming out of the sixties. But beyond the task of iii developing

independent workers’ groups, STO faced a problem to keep itself

together. We had recruited a number of people out of the left who went

to work in industry with the expectation that their labors would lead,

in the short term, to the creation of a large, organized current. If

such a thing didn’t happen, why so far as they were concerned, the hunt

was over and they were going home.

And that is what they did. In less than a year, from the fall of 1974 to

the summer of 1975, STO went through two major splits, which cost it

threefourths of its membership and most of its industrial concentration,

and left those who remained with little but their bodies and shadows to

comfort one another. These splits certainly involved political

differences, but the severity of them can only be understood against a

background where a majority of the membership of STO felt that the work

was not going as it should and that it was not worth the effort to stick

around and figure out why.

Those of us who were left decided that we had to re-evaluate our

approach to work. As a part of the process of re-evaluation, we decided

on a temporary withdrawal from the workplace as a major focus of

activity, in order to give attention to other areas of work which we had

been more or less ignoring. Specifically, we decided to put a much

greater priority on internal education and the development of a

theoretical conception of the period in which we were working; we

decided to attempt to intervene in ongoing debates on the left towards

the goal of developing an organized conscious anti-imperialist current

among those sectors which were already radicalized; we decided to put

major effort into developing working relations with leading forces from

among the national liberation movements in this country — relations

which had eroded to pretty much nothing during our period of

overwhelming workplace concentration; finally, an important part of our

new direction was to attempt to reach out to cothinkers in the

revolutionary left in other countries, particularly in Europe.

It was during this period of tactical reorientation that STO was invited

by a group of activists in New York City to speak publicly there, and to

meet informally with small groupings of people who were interested in

its general line and immediate estimate of the situation. We accepted

the invitation, and in the fall of 1977 I addressed a meeting there on

the general topic of strategy for revolution.

The meeting was “reported” by William Gurley in the November 23, 1977

Guardian. The published account carried not one word from the talk I

gave, which lasted for three quarters of an hour and ranged over a

number of strategic questions; most of the column space was devoted to

quoting fragments from STO documents dealing with the “white-skin

privilege.” Gurley’s sole reference to the talk I actually gave was the

following:

“The problem is to get white workers to resign from the white race,”

says Noel Ignatin, a leading spokesman for STO.

Ignatin defended STO’s position at a recent talk on “Strategy for

Revolution” in New York City, at which he formally announced the

organization’s switch from factory organizing to liberation support

work.

He stated that STO’s concentration on factory organizing was a “major

mistake.” STO “had lost contact with the Black and Puerto Rican

movement,” Ignatin said. He announced that STO’s main work would now be

to provide material support for national liberation movements in the

U.S.

Gurley concluded his “report” with the summary, “Whereas before STO had

abandoned the working class in theory, it has now abandoned it in

practice.”

That was all. (We note, however, that even that little bit was enough to

stimulate several letters to us from persons we had not previously

known, explicitly supporting our positions as against the Guardian’s.)

Was the decision we made in 1975, to make a temporary, tactical shift in

our work, the right one? We do not know and do not expect a conclusive

answer from events, but we do note that in the ensuing years we have

regained the numerical strength we had prior to our splits and

defections, we have changed from a local Chicago organization to one

with a national presence, we have reached out to a number of new friends

and allies on the left — and all this at a time when most of the smaller

left groups have undergone a shrinking and fragmenting process.

The last general membership meeting of STO resolved that it was time to

reactivate an organizational concentration in production work. The

publication of this pamphlet is part of the process of achieving that

end.

This pamphlet brings together documents published during the first five

years of STO’s existence. All are out of print and have been unavailable

for some time. Together, they represent the theoretical and analytical

foundation for STO’s intervention in workplace situations.

The Theses on Workplace Organizing, which open this collection, were

adopted at a general membership meeting in 1973, when STO was still only

a Chicago organization. It is placed first in the collection, out of

normal chronological order, because of its character as Theses, an

attempt to state, in barest possible form, the elements of a position.

The second piece in the collection, A Call to Organize, was the first

document STO published. It was written in 1970 and was published over

the next few years in several different versions, including one with the

title Mass Organization At the Workplace. The present version is a

composite of several of the earlier ones, assembled with the aim of

leaving intact both the most forceful arguments and most obvious

mistakes, while avoiding duplication.

Reflections on Organizing, which appears next in order, was written

later in the same year for a discussion within STO of methods of work;

it is a challenge to another approach which then enjoyed a certain vogue

within the movement in general and within STO as well. Reflections on

Organizing was published in Radical America in March-April 1972; an

important “not” omitted from that version has been restored to its

proper place.

Review of “Reflections on Organizing” was a response to the Radical

America piece, written by a member of the English organization Big

Flame. STO learned of the existence of this review only in 1978.

Black Worker/White Worker was previously published in the STO collection

Understanding and Fighting White Supremacy, as well as in Radical

America, July-August 1974, and as a separate pamphlet by both STO and

the New England Free Press. As the title indicates, it deals with a

subject that plays a crucial part in determining STO’s labor policy,

with implications that go beyond the workplace.

The Steward’s Position was written by someone who was at the time of

writing a member of a group with which STO was associated. The writer is

today a member of another left organization whose line is totally

contrary to the line of this article, and would in all likelihood be

embarrassed were his/her authorship of this piece to become known.

Although it is somewhat rigid and one-sided in its conclusions, we are

including it here because it poses sharply certain considerations which

are routinely ignored.

Trade Unions/Independent Organizations was written as a contribution to

an internal debate in STO. It was an attempt to examine the

organization’s experience in implementing its line, and to correct some

unrealistic expectations which had arisen from an over-simplified

critique of trade unionism. It was previously published in an earlier,

poorly typed and poorly printed collection of workplace papers.

A Golden Bridge was first published in the collection referred to above,

and reprinted in Political Discussion number 2, April 1976.

The American Labor Movement in 1974 is the final piece in this

collection. It was originally prepared for the National Lawyers Guild’s

labor conference in Atlanta on March 22, 1974. After its initial

distribution there, it was reprinted in the April 1974 issue of the

Guild’s Labor Newsletter. Some minor errors were corrected when it was

reprinted in Political Discussion number 1, December 1974, from which it

was taken for this collection.

As an appendix to this collection, we are including a selection of

leaflets and shop papers. These are not STO leaflets or “line” papers.

In every case they are the product of collaboration between STO members

and workers who have no affiliation to any Marxist organization. They

are included here to give the reader some of the “flavor” of STO’s

notion of independent organization at the workplace.

Noel Ignatin

March 1980

Theses on workplace organizing

• Socialist movements in advanced capitalist countries have

traditionally been based in organization at the point of production. At

point of production, workers experience the exploitation and

irrationality which is capitalism. They also experience the process of

social labor which is the foundation for socialism. The mechanism of

capitalist production “disciplines, unites and organizes” the working

class in ways which undercut the national, racial, sexual and age

divisions that the ruling class fosters as a matter of policy.

• Participation in large-scale capitalist production gives rise to

certain perceptions and ideas which represent the elements from which a

socialist worldview will emerge. In the ordinary course of life under

capitalism, these ideas are submerged by the bourgeois ideology which is

able to call upon vastly superior resources, tradition and organization

to impose itself. The development of these revolutionary elements of

working class life is the primary responsibility of communists and these

elements cannot be sufficiently developed to permit their triumph

without mass workers’ organizations able to clarify their features and

give them distinct form.

• Trade unions are not adequate to fulfill this function. Unions are a

necessary development out of workers’ spontaneous struggles against

their oppression. While many of those who fought and died to build

unions were moved by far loftier aspirations, for particular historical

reasons, in this country the purpose of unions has come to be the

attainment of better terms in the sale of labor power through a written

contract with the employer. The unions have emerged as institutions

which channel workers’ discontent into paths which are compatible with

bourgeois rule. The U.S. trade union movement, in particular, has

developed ways which even undercut the workers’ ability to wage the

reform struggle. Most important of these is the widely recognized

complicity of U.S. unions in maintaining and promoting national and

sexual divisions in the working class.

• Our stress on independent organization does not entail opposition to

struggles in the union arena. When union struggles involve masses of

workers, communists should be there. However, at times when the level of

mass struggle is not high, and the revolutionary current among the

workers is weak, communists must be particularly conscious of the danger

of entrapment in schemes of union reform, which, in fact, isolate them

from the workers. In such conditions, particular care must be used to

distinguish the position of revolutionaries from that of reformists in

practice, not just in rhetoric. Essential to this is the development of

mass organizations able to deal with the problems of workers from a

position of independent strength. Furthermore, such an external

challenge to the union provides the best conditions for union reform.

• The degeneration of the unions in this country has led to a general

alienation from union procedures and the union apparatus by the masses

of workers, especially the unskilled, the young, the Black, nonwhite

workers generally, and women workers. Many workers are searching for

means to deal with their problems which by-pass the established union

forms and procedures. It is undoubtedly true that such extraunion

struggles, except in some cases involving Black workers, still usually

represent group rather than class interests and may even take a

reactionary turn. Nevertheless, such struggles represent a starting

point for the work of communists. Their responsibility is to help the

workers involved in such struggles develop mass organizations that break

with the trade unionist, reformist framework of the existing unions; it

is not to channel these struggles into a program of union reform.

• It is Utopian to attempt to lay out detailed characteristics of an

organizational form whose shape must be concretely determined in the

course of the class struggle. However, we can indicate three basic

features which it must contain in order to solidify and extend its

challenge to capitalism.

• Through dealing with the immediate issues facing workers, it cannot

capitulate to the legitimacy of capitalist property.

• The organization must be self-motivated and the stands and actions it

takes must be a true reflection of the will of its members. In no sense

can it be regarded as an arm of the “party,” nor can any such Marxist

group be permitted to impose a line by virtue of its organization,

technical skills and resources.

• Only a group formed with a firm and unshakeable commitment to full

equality for non-whites will be able to evolve sound positions on all

issues of concern to working people, and a group that hedges on its

commitment in this regard will inevitably find itself compromised on

other issues.

These points must guide the approach of communists to their work, or the

potentials to which that work is directed will not be realized.

A Call To Organize

by Don Hamequist and Noel IgnatinWorkplace Papers1970

“The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.”

Despite all the propaganda to the contrary, these words are as true

today as when they were first written in 1906, in the Preamble of the

Industrial Workers of the World. Peace, the equality of the darker

peoples with the white, equality of the female sex with the male,

economic security and the full development of human creativity are

beyond reach so long as the vast majority of humankind — those who labor

to produce wealth — are subjugated by the small minority who own and

control the mines, the banks, the land and the factories.

Capitalism has attained technological marvels in production,

transportation and communications, but the benefits of these have been

denied to the people. It is up to the working class to break the power

of the capitalist class and gain the benefits of modern society for all

of the people. In order to do this, the working people must organize

themselves as a class, politically and economically. Such organization

involves two tasks:

• defense of the day-to-day interests of the working people;

• preparation of the working class to abolish capitalism.

Many workers in the past have looked to the labor unions to solve their

problems. It has become increasingly obvious in recent years that the

unions fail to meet the needs. The reason for their failure is that they

are guided by the principle of collaboration with the employers instead

of struggle against them.

Labor unions in this country hardly deserve to be called unions. Those

in which members enroll voluntarily are generally not open to all of the

workers in their industry — the building trades unions, which deny

membership to Black workers and often to any workers but the relatives

of members, are the bestknown example of this type of “union.” On the

other hand, those unions which are open to all in the industry usually

have compulsory membership based on the dues check-off system — the UAW

is an example of this type. Neither the existing craft nor the

industrial unions meet the qualifications for a labor union — freely

open to all workers in a given industry.

BANKRUPTCY OF CONTRACT UNIONISM

All existing unions accept the contract system, in which labor and

management agree to certain terms of employment for a given time period.

In a contract, management agrees to provide a certain standard of wages,

fringe benefits and working conditions. The union, for its part, agrees

to keep its members working at the agreed-upon terms. The role of the

union is to gain and enforce a contract with the employer. Its ability

to do this depends, first, on its ability to pull a strike during

negotiations and, second, on its ability to prevent strikes and

slowdowns during the life of the contract.

Thus the nature of the contract demands that the union do what no

workers’ organization should ever do — maintain labor discipline for the

boss. The unions become a part of the company’s apparatus, present at

every point of grievance in order to prevent any disruption of

production.

At the heart of the union’s regulatory role is the grievance procedure,

whose effect is to make direct action by the workers “illegal.” Behind

the grievance procedure is the arbitration machinery which has builtin

conditions encouraging collaboration instead of struggle.

Even the ability of a union to fight at contract time is limited by its

acceptance of the contract system. Employers, for example, are able to

prepare for strikes by building up inventories through compulsory

overtime during the last months of a contract. The unions are forced to

accumulate huge treasuries to sustain a long strike, and these

treasuries make them more vulnerable to injunctions and legal suits.

They also make the unions into banks, insurance companies and real

estate holders — with a stake in the status quo.

The pillar of all this accumulation of wealth is, of course, the dues

check-off. This measure, which was originally aimed at providing the

unions with a sound financial base, has become a means of removing them

entirely from any control by their members. What can one say about such

an institution as the United Auto Workers, whose treasury is totally

dependent on the multi-million dollar checks it receives every month

from General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, the checks being called “dues”

by virtue of a slip of paper that every worker is compelled to sign if

he wishes to be hired?

We could go on and on. But the point is that every one of the great

gains of the CIO drive to organize the mass production industries —

seniority, the grievance procedure, the written contract, dues checkoff,

paid time for officials — has been transformed into a means of

strengthening the authority of management. It is not possible in this

paper to review the steps in this transformation. For now, it is enough

to note that the regulating role which unions always fulfilled to some

degree has become their dominant aspect.

It is easy to cry “sell-out” at the typical labor agreement. Certainly

sell-outs are common. But the root of the problem does not lie in bad

leadership — although there is plenty of that — but in the institution

of contract unionism itself. Indeed, one could well argue that the more

conscientiously, within its own lights, the union defends the

contractual interests of its members the more firmly it “rivets the

laborer to capital” as “the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheus to the

rock.”

UNION REFORM NO SOLUTION

No solution will come through working within the existing union

structure. Consider the minimal demand for the abolition of the “no

strike” clause, which would not fundamentally alter the role of the

union, since it would legalize strikes in cases of the employer’s

violation of the contract but not in cases where an inadequate contract

needs amendment. In spite of its minimal character, winning the

abolition of the “no strike” clause would represent an advance for the

workers.

Why has the “no strike” clause, universally hated by the workers,

persisted as a fixed part of virtually every union contract? The

employers generally insist on its inclusion in the contract because it

ensures smooth operations. Union officials tend to support it because

frequent strikes make their work harder, expose them to closer

examination by their constituencies and jeopardize their prerogatives.

Yet, in spite of these obstacles, some union locals have passed

resolutions calling for the abolition of the clause.

These resolutions have remained on paper. The reason is not hard to

discover. Those moments at which the “no strike” clause is the greatest

barrier to struggle — when the workers wish to strike during the term of

the contract — are precisely the times when it cannot be negotiated out

of the contract. And those times when it can be negotiated out — when

the contract has expired and strikes are legal — the “no strike” clause

fades into the background as an issue with the potential for mobilizing

large numbers of workers. It is the old story of the leaky roof: when it

is raining you can’t fix it and when the sun is out you don’t have to.

Time and again, opposition caucuses with the primary goal of winning

union elections have been proven either futile or dangerous. They are

futile because the masses of workers, particularly the unskilled, the

young, the Black and the women workers, are rightly cynical about

unionism, and will not respond to any programs, no matter how good they

sound, which offer only another version of trade unionism.

On those occasions where inner-union opposition caucuses are successful

in attracting a large following, they prove to be dangerous because they

can and do pull the most militant workers away from struggle with the

employer into inner-union politics, thus undermining the growth of

working class consciousness.

THE LEAGUE OF REVOLUTIONARY BLACK WORKERS

To our knowledge, the most significant exception to the sorry state of

the labor movement is the League of Revolutionary Black Workers — made

up of its component groups DRUM, ELRUM, FRUM and others — with its main

present base in the Detroit auto plants. The program of the League, of

ending racism and fighting for workers’ power in the plants, is in the

interests of all workers. This program, combined with its militant

practice of direct mass action and its systematic efforts at raising the

class consciousness of the workers, makes it an instructive contrast to

official unionism.

Of course, the League, as its name indicates, is an organization of

Black workers. We feel that it is necessary in many situations for Black

workers to organize separately. It would be wrong to expect them to wait

for white workers to repudiate their racial privileges and join in the

fight against racism. By organizing themselves and carrying on a fight

against white supremacy, Black workers are making a tremendous

contribution to the struggle of the entire working class. In addition,

the special oppression and experience of the Black workers makes it

possible for them to provide leadership for the whole working class.

NEED FOR A NEW ORGANIZATION OF WORKERS

The separate organization of Black workers is not sufficient to build a

working class movement able to take power in industry and in the country

generally. Something else is needed, not in competition with the

organizations of Black workers, but in addition to them. That something

else is an organization open to all working people, that is based at the

work place and that carries on a constant struggle, using all forms of

direct action, in the political and economic interests of the workers as

a class.

What would such an organization look like?

Membership should be universal — a member once in one industry, a member

always in all industries. The structure should be built along plant and

industry lines — that is, there should be locals in each organized place

of work, and locals in the same industry should be grouped together in

an industrial council.

Dues should be low — an organization that relies on direct action and

on-the-job strikes does not need a large war chest. Under no

circumstances should the organization sign an agreement with an employer

which limits its freedom of strike action in any way. Nor should

“winning” pension and welfare plans which tie the worker to his present

employer ever be a goal. Instead, the fight must be for universal

pension and welfare plans for all workers, regardless of service to any

one employer.

Aside from locals formed along purely industrial lines, the organization

should encourage locals of Black and Spanish-speaking workers, and

locals of women workers, as well as Black and Latin caucuses and women’s

caucuses within mixed locals, and any other forms necessary to ensure

the freedom and independence of action of these specially oppressed

groups.

It should strive to establish the closest relations and organic unity

among all sections of the working class, recognizing that the principal

responsibility for achieving such unity rests with the privileged group

— the white male workers.

“SOLIDARITY FOREVER” MEANS “PRIVILEGES NEVER”

One of the greatest crimes of contract unionism is that it has given

legal force to the color and sex privileges of white male workers.

Contract unionism, in this regard, has been both a result and a

reinforcement of their tendency to place their own immediate individual

and group interests over the interests of the entire working class, and

to act in ways that amount to scabbing on the class as a whole. White

and male supremacy, which have been built in through “seniority,”

“training,” “qualifications” and other devices, have given a virtual

monopoly of the better jobs — better in terms of pay, conditions and

security — to white men. Their racism and chauvinism leads them to fight

to preserve and extend these privileges. This attachment to special

favors from the boss is the real underlying cause of disunity within the

working class, which works to the detriment of the entire class,

including the sectors it is supposed to protect.

A programmatic challenge to the exclusion of Black and women workers

from full equal job competition with white men, which includes a

challenge to all the mechanisms by which such exclusion is enforced, is

a central feature of the workers’ organization that we are committed to

build. Without such a challenge, all talk of “revolutionary class unity”

is empty.

And we must be clear that while these privileges cannot be broken down

without a challenge to contract unionism, their elimination will not

come automatically from such a challenge. Special attention must be

given to ensure that demands which presently are seen, especially by

white male workers, as demands of the Black or women workers become

demands of all workers for the Black and female members of the working

class. The slogan, “An injury to one is an injury to all,” must be

applied literally to the fullest extent.

POLITICAL ACTION

The political face of contract unionism, which consists of electoral and

legislative maneuvering within the framework of capitalist politics, is

as bankrupt as the economic face, and for the same reasons. A workers’

organization must represent the interests of the working class in the

political, as well as the economic, arena. Such issues as opposition to

aggressive, imperialist war, and domestic repression of the people, the

winning of full freedom for the Black, Puerto Rican, Mexican, and other

oppressed peoples, equal rights for women, the defense of the socialist

countries, and the general fight to improve the people’s livelihood are

questions of the deepest concern to wage workers.

In the political, as in the economic sphere, the stress must be on

direct action by the workers, to make the bosses pay for their crimes

against the people. The recent mass walkout by Black workers at the Ford

plant in Chicago in response to the police murders in Augusta and

Jackson State is a fine example which should be extended through U.S.

industry.

The central weapon of the organization we are projecting is the general

political strike, and by more limited actions and propaganda and

agitation the workers must be prepared to use this tactic effectively.

THOSE WHO AGREE MUST BEGIN

People who appreciate the need for an organization along the lines we

have described must begin to build the foundations for it immediately.

How do we propose to work toward such an organization?

The masses of workers haven’t ceased to struggle for an instant.

Beginning with individual goofing-off, pilfering and absenteeism,

including sabotage of production and the organized evasion of work

standards, increasingly taking the form of rejection of contracts

negotiated for them by their union officials, now and again breaking out

in wildcat strikes and violent confrontations with government authority

— the workers daily demonstrate that where there is oppression, there is

resistance.

We recognize the limitations of such spontaneous struggles. Except in

some cases involving Black workers, they usually represent group rather

than class interests and sometimes even take a reactionary turn. Without

a clear idea of how local struggles fit into a total picture, the

tendency of the workers involved is to fall back into the usual patterns

of contract unionism and acceptance of the employers’ control over their

lives.

We propose to start with the struggle that exists. We do not propose to

channel the energies generated in such spontaneous actions into a

program of union reform. Instead, we propose to build a revolutionary

mass workers’ organization which can take part in on-going struggles and

initiate new ones, which can develop these struggles both tactically and

politically, coordinate them, transform them from group to class

struggles, and change their character from spontaneous to conscious acts

... until they are seen as a part of the path to the smashing of

capitalism and the taking of power by the working class.

We expect attacks from the union officials, who will see us as a threat

to their elaborate structure which guarantees “good relations” between

labor and capital. To these officials we answer, “Exactly!” You have got

yourself in command of a ship, the ship of contract unionism, and it is

sinking. We don’t intend to go down with it, and we don’t think the

masses of workers will either. We have begun work on a new ship and, if

in the course of our work we have to tear a few planks out of your

vessel, or even blow the leaky old barge to hell, so be it. As for your

soft jobs and big expense accounts and fancy dinners with the bosses, we

couldn’t care less.

Aside from the union officials, other forces who can see no further than

inner-union caucuses will call us “dual unionists,” and the charge will

be made that we propose isolating the most advanced workers and

abandoning the mass of workers to the official union structure. But in

the first place, since membership in most existing unions is compulsory,

the question does not arise of individuals “leaving” them — their dues

will still be checked off from the paycheck, right next to the federal

income tax.

In the second place, we are not suggesting that work in the unions stop.

Agitation within the union can often be a useful means of helping the

workers overcome their illusions about what can be done within them.

The fact is that few workers are active in the unions. Most don’t bother

to vote in union elections, and the recent spectacle of an open meeting

of Local 65 of the United Steelworkers, “representing” 11,000 people at

the South Works of U.S. Steel in Chicago, being attended by a total of

sixteen members ought to teach us something. But in cases where

participating in union elections, organizing to run and support

candidates, fighting over union policy and other such activities within

the union can be useful in organizing workers to strengthen a mass

revolutionary workers’ organization, by all means such activities should

be undertaken. The main point is that the aim is to build an

organization that can confront individual employers and the capitalist

class on the basis of independent power, not to build caucuses to

influence union officials.

The great labor upsurge of the 1930’s led to the pushing aside of the

old craft unions and the formation of the CIO. The coming upsurge of the

1970’s represents a challenge to the past more profound even than that

which produced the CIO. If it is to have any lasting impact, it must

lead to the pushing aside of the old unions, more thoroughly than was

done by the CIO, and the formation of new-type organizations. It is the

task of revolutionaries to recognize this process, align themselves with

it and help it to fruition.

Reflections on organizing

The revolutionary potential of the working class flows from its role in

a system of social production that requires interdependence and

co-operation. This class role provides the social basis for workers to

first sense, and then understand, that they have a position of power to

use against their oppression. They have the power of being collective

producers without whom there is no production. Individual actions, even

those which border on the heroic — and most of the ones that we are

considering are quite the opposite of heroic — do not make the workers

more aware of this power. They manifest the fact of the workers’

oppression without showing the possibility and the efficacy of

collective action by the workers. Thus they can’t be used to draw

general lessons about both the necessity and the possibility of

independent working-class organization. Since this awareness is vital to

our perspective, and since it cannot be lectured into the workers, some

experience of collective action, no matter how minimal, is the necessary

social condition — the only real base — for our perspective.

The spontaneous individual actions at the point of production are

separated into a few different categories. The practical reasons why

none develop logically into collective struggle will become clearer.

Three such divisions are logical: actions which damage the final

product, actions which cut down on production, actions which challenge

the authority of the management. Though in practice these categories of

individual struggle seldom appear very distinctly, it is helpful to make

the separation here in order to clarify different sorts of limitations

of spontaneous individual struggle.

The first case amounts to either direct or indirect sabotage, and the

end result of sabotage of the product is to the benefit of the

capitalist class in its role as the major consumer and taxpayer.

Capitalism spends a great deal of effort to artificially maintain its

profits by marketing unnecessary and shoddy goods. Sabotage by the

workers only adds a statistically insignificant quantity to the mass of

defective merchandise that capitalism produces deliberately. For

example, it doesn’t begin to compare with the deliberate pressure by the

management to get the workers to work harder and faster. So long as the

amount of workers’ sabotage is fairly uniform across the economy, even

individual firms can’t be hurt very much by it. And in the event that

such a variation exists for a while, at most it could only mean a few

plant closures and company failures — minor readjustments for the system

as a whole and of no advantage to the workers one way or the other.

Individual actions that restrict output and lower productivity do hurt

management, and it will immediately take retaliatory action to change

the situation. If we assume that the individual action is covert, that

it does not involve a direct challenge to the authority of the

management (a legitimate assumption since we will consider this aspect

separately), then the management response will be to fix blame on a

group of workers and take punitive action against the group as a whole.

This can take many forms, but it usually means either that other workers

will have to do the job of whoever is screwing around, or they will have

to force him to do his share. Beyond this, such a situation is bound to

bring down additional supervision, perhaps even undercover cops posing

as workers, and jeopardize all the little ways that workers find to make

the job more tolerable: sitting in the John, walking around and talking

to other workers in slow periods, reading or eating on the job.

When a major disruption of production occurs, like the sabotage of an

important piece of machinery as opposed to spending too much time in the

toilet, the danger to other workers is even greater. They can be put in

a position where their own job is in jeopardy, where they must choose

between risking their job or fingering someone else. In any case, all

examples of such covert individual actions involve risks for other

workers that they haven’t agreed to take, not to mention putting extra

burdens on other workers.

There is another factor at play. Both variants of individual action

involve screwing up the work in one way or another, and this makes the

time pass slower and the work more difficult for everyone. Most workers,

especially the more conscious ones, take pride in being able to do their

job well. If they choose to do it badly for a while, that is one thing;

but if somebody else prevents them from doing it well, they get

irritated. Since workers are hostile to these sorts of individual

actions for partially justifiable reasons, not just company-sucking

inclinations, there is no reason to think they form a basis for

initiating organized struggle.

What about challenges to the power and authority of management — usually

in the person of the foreman? On the surface it would appear that these

are forms of individual struggle which would demonstrate to all workers

the possibility of resisting oppression on the job in an organized way.

Unfortunately it is not the case. Most of these challenges concern just

one worker’s particular area of competence and responsibility. And often

this worker has some particular ability or some other peculiar feature

that makes it possible for him to challenge the authority of the

management while it is not possible for every worker to do it. Sometimes

it is a question of a more experienced or skilled worker, sometimes a

worker who is able to get another job, sometimes a worker who is white

or male when most of the work force is Third World or female, sometimes

a worker who knows that the union will support him. Any of these sorts

of things can give an individual worker more latitude in defending his

own interests than the average worker will have. And because this is the

case, the average worker will not learn from watching such

confrontations that he also has the power to stand up for his rights

successfully.

Often these challenges are not really challenges with the management as

such, but just with an element of it. For example, it is not uncommon

for a worker, particularly an older one, to appeal over the head of the

foreman to someone further up the management hierarchy, bolstering the

illusion that the problem is that some people in management are “fair,”

but others are “chickenshit.” A smart manager from time to time will

over-ride a foreman who gets too zealous just to encourage such notions.

In one way or another all of these individual confrontations are

channeled away from any area where they might encourage collective

action. You can yell at the foreman, but do it in the office, not out on

the floor. When an attempt is made to use a confrontation as a means of

organizing a struggle, the latitude that is normally allowed is quickly

taken away. For example, a worker can refuse to work at a job because it

is not safe, and it is likely that the foreman will just try to assign

someone else to do it. But if the same worker tries to make an issue out

of the unsafe condition and to get everyone to refuse the job, he’d

better be ready for trouble.

The conception of the omnipresence of class struggle in “Call to

Organize” (a 1970 manifesto by Sojourner Truth), although necessary to

counter the widespread idea on the Left in this country that the point

of production is a sea of tranquility, is too Utopian to provide a firm

basis for a plan to work. The spontaneous resistance at the point of

production which has just been discussed has two features which both

must be taken into account. It is action, struggle — but it is

individualistic. This dual character means that any attempt to

mechanically transfer such individual forms of resistance to oppression

into a base for a coherent struggle against this oppression is bound to

understate the real difficulties and to lead to an uncritical submission

to spontaneity or to silly attempts to provide “leadership” by providing

“models of individual militance.”

What are really important are the examples of collective struggles in

the factory and the conditions for further developing these. Though this

narrows the initial base, the base is still there, more evident in some

factories than in others, of course. So the question is: How can a mass

independent working-class movement be built from these elements of

collective struggle? Where do we begin? How do we work? These are the

issues I will deal with in the rest of this paper.

Almost all Left groups have standard advice for people who are doing

production work. It generally goes something like this: Learn the job

and the grievances; single out the natural leaders and most advanced

workers; make friends, but keep low until you have some time on the job

and people will listen to what you have to say. Then try to get the

advanced workers together, perhaps in a discussion group, so more

general political issues can be raised; maybe at that time it will be

possible to begin pushing a definite program, circulating some leaflets,

and so on.

Usually this advice is put within the framework of the inner-union

caucus perspective, but that isn’t essential. Then there are variations

depending on the Left-wing group involved. In the Communist Party the

emphasis will be put on studying the contract, attending union meetings,

and getting on a committee. Other groups will stress developing cadre

through communist education as a pre-condition for mass work or

involving the advanced workers in the “movement.”

Depending on the conditions, any or all of these bits of advice can be

all right. But they leave all of the real questions and all of the

difficult problems unanswered. In the first place, any job has a number

of more or less distinct groupings among the workers, not uncommonly

with a good deal of hostility between them. Once a worker gets

identified with one of these groupings, it is difficult to break that

identification down. The reason it is important to be aware of this is

that there are at least three or four social groupings which have the

potential of providing an initial cadre of people to work with. There

are the younger workers, the Black and Latin workers, the various

opposition groupings within the union local, and the de-facto leadership

of various department struggles. Each of these social groupings presents

specific possibilities and problems for pulling together a working

cadre. This is not understood by most Left groups. Their tendency is to

select one or another of these social groupings to work in, ignoring its

limitations and the potentials elsewhere.

For example, it is very common to find Left people who argue that Black

and Latin workers are more open to struggle in general, and to

revolutionary organization in particular, than are workers generally.

The same basic argument is commonly extended to young workers. In fact,

it is often claimed that the organizing potential in the basic

industries flows almost exclusively from the influx of young and Black

and Latin workers into these jobs. The implication is that the

experience which these workers have gained outside of the process of

production — in the ghetto communities, in the schools, in the army — is

what makes them potentially more revolutionary inside of the factory.

What does it mean to say that a worker is open to revolutionary ideas?

Fundamentally it means that he is open to seeing that working people are

a class that has the power to make a revolution (a socialist revolution,

that is). Are Black, Latin, and young workers more open to such an

understanding? The answer is that they are more open to some aspects of

it and less open to other aspects of it than most workers.

These workers have a relatively vivid experience of aspects of the

capitalist structure where the contradictions are sharper and the crises

more advanced than at the point of production. Certainly this makes them

more aware that the only real answer to their needs and grievances is a

revolutionary answer. But it does not necessarily make them more aware

that the working class and only the working class can make the

revolution. It is true to say that Black, Latin, and young workers (not

to ignore the differences between the three groups) are more open to

general revolutionary propositions than are the masses of workers, but

it does not necessarily follow from this that they are more open to the

specific forms of revolutionary organization and action which are suited

to the point of production.

In fact, it is quite common for such workers to define their

revolutionary position in distinction to the non-revolutionary, or even

counter-revolutionary, essence of the masses of workers. This inevitably

leads to sectarianism, avoiding the grievances flowing from the work

process and the fight for the programmatic leadership of the masses of

workers, and seeing the revolution occurring independently of any of

this. Beyond this, many of the struggles that these workers have

experienced have been in arenas where mass mobilization was a tactic

that didn’t immediately raise the issue of power in the way it does at

the point of production. Thus many of these workers don’t understand the

importance of mass participation in struggle, and are likely to

counterpose various Leftist military or semi-military tactics and small

group conspiratorial organization to a mass line and mass organization.

This is not to deny the tremendous positive impact on the consciousness

and activity of workers that struggles outside the point of production

have had — particularly the struggle for Black liberation. Certainly it

is a greater advance that a large percentage of Black workers in basic

industry consider themselves “revolutionaries.” Workers have learned a

lot from these struggles, but, to repeat, nothing they have learned will

magically create the specific forms of revolutionary organization and

action which are suited to the factory.

Wherever there is any life in the local union there will always be a

number of individuals or groupings that make up more or less of a “Left”

or militant opposition to local leadership forced to be “mature” and

“responsible” by the terms of the contract and by the web of working

relationships with the management that are a part of their offices.

Since in most situations there is little alternative to the union for

those workers who want to be active on economic issues, it would be

foolishly sectarian to discount the possibility of recruiting some

workers from this grouping into an initial cadre. This is particularly

true since almost every older worker who has some contact with socialist

ideas and many of the leaders in dealing with departmental issues and

grievances will be in the union opposition.

But care is needed in relating to this grouping of workers. A lot of

militant talk has got to be discounted as rhetoric, and a lot of

activity has got to be examined for various opportunistic and

careeristic motives. The local union leaderships are filled with people

who were known for their militance and activism — until they were

elected. That in itself should rule against taking such workers at face

value. Two important tests when considering such workers as potential

cadre are whether most of their work is organizing against the

management or whether that is subordinated to a fight against the union

leadership, and whether the agitating and organizing that is done

actually develops the involvement and participation of other workers and

doesn’t just build blocs for campaigns for union office. Most important,

a communist should never get so involved with the inner-union opposition

that he or she becomes isolated from the workers who are cynical about

union politics.

The last grouping from which members of initial cadres might be

recruited is the leadership which develops in departmental or shop

struggles. (Though sometimes this group is thoroughly mixed in with the

union opposition, that isn’t always the case, particularly if there has

been a lot of job action.) At first it might seem that these workers are

already engaged in direct struggle with the management and should easily

see the importance of building independent organization. In fact, there

are Left groups which argue as if the revolution would be successful

already if various union bureaucrats and self-proclaimed socialist

vanguards would just leave these militant workers alone. But that is

just another brand of utopianism. Though these workers have a good sense

of the power of collective action and the importance of unity, they lack

any clear perspective which could take job actions out of the framework

of reactions to oppression and incorporate them into an offensive

strategy. This limitation of leadership is one of the reasons why

virtually all job actions fail to develop a continuing momentum that can

place a constant pressure on the capitalist control of the production

process. And, as should be expected, the lack of any perspective for the

activity on the job is paralleled by a confused and contradictory

position on all general political issues.

In short, the initial cadre of workers must have a number of different

characteristics which show up among different social groups in the

factory. It must be open to a general revolutionary critique of

capitalism; it must be aware of the importance of organization; it must

be able to provide leadership for the struggles that develop on the job.

Workers radicalized outside of the job are more likely to accept a

radical critique than they are to see the possibility and necessity of

building mass struggle and organization. The trade-union opposition

might want to get organized and even accept a few revolutionary

propositions, but they won’t see why this should go beyond a struggle

for control of the union. The leader of job actions is likely to be

great whenever a spontaneous struggle arises, but to have no idea of

what to do in other situations or how to relate job issues to general

political issues. Each of these limitations in areas of possible support

for our perspective help spell out the sorts of political problems that

are involved in implementing it.

The first goal of a communist in a factory is to become a political

center so that his or her ideas and approaches are more than just talk,

so that after a few months they have the force and prestige that

ordinarily would come only after years of experience on a job. In the

future it is likely that this will be easier because of the

possibilities of identifying with known and admired struggles in other

factory situations, as, for example, identification with the Flint

Strike would have been possible and helpful in the early CIO period.

Now, however, it is a difficult and delicate problem.

Still, there are a number of ways to approach the difficulty, any one of

which may work depending on the circumstances. At this point also it is

necessary to stress the fact that there are a number of different ways

to achieve the end, because every Left group seems to have a favorite

tactic which it puts forth as a necessary first step in factory

organizing. Such fixation on a certain tactic is dangerous because it

maximizes the chance of a mistake, and a mistake involves more than just

wasting some time or even getting fired. It can mean polarizing the

workers in the immediate area in such a way that no work is possible.

It is often argued that revolutionaries are obligated to make their

positions known to other workers, to keep their “politics up front,” as

the phrase goes. This then, assuming that the proper politics are kept

up front, is supposed to coalesce the advanced workers around the source

of such wisdom. There is a little validity to this notion, but it

shouldn’t lead anyone to hasten to publicize his revolutionary

credentials. Besides the clear danger of being fired before being

prepared to make an issue of it, there is the greater danger of not

being taken seriously by the more conscious workers, while being taken

too seriously by the most backward workers. Then the potential base

regards you as a nut while the opposition thinks that you are a real

threat — and that’s bad.

The stress on arguing politics on the job needs to be overhauled. It is

a hangover of a movement that functioned primarily among students. This

doesn’t mean that it is wrong to confront political positions directly

and that one should skirt around the edges of the touchy issues. It just

means to use good sense. Don’t feel obligated to challenge everything

you don’t like; don’t confuse stating your own mind with changing

someone else’s; don’t waste time arguing with lost causes; don’t

overestimate the importance of “winning” or “losing” arguments. It is a

lot easier to win arguments, or even to make verbal converts, than it is

to change the way the workers act. But the fundamental way that

consciousness is changed is by changing social practice. Unless this is

done, polemical victories and ideological converts are not going to be

very meaningful. In fact, talking too much can polarize the workers over

abstract or peripheral issues in a way that inhibits direct action.

There are no magic “raps” which can transform a new worker into a leader

on the job, and there are no heroic actions which can accomplish this

either. If a communist is so careful about risking his job that he takes

a lot of crap from the foreman, other workers are going to have some

questions about him. But on the other hand, getting a reputation for

“not taking any shit” won’t automatically change his status either. In

the first place, that posture is likely to involve the political mistake

of putting too much stress on the foreman or other low management

figures. Then, most workers aren’t impressed with confrontations which

appear to be over pretexts rather than real issues, and a clever foreman

can make this appear to be the case most of the time. In fact, the

foreman can easily make it appear that what is actually wanted is

preferential treatment. But, of course, the most serious drawback of the

confrontation approach is the risk that your neck will get overextended

and you will get suspended or fired. Then that is the issue, and it is

hard to organize around yourself, especially at the beginning.

Another common idea should be brought in at this point. Many Lefties

begin work in a factory convinced that there are one or two issues which

they must emphasize. These issues might be valid ones, for example the

denial of equality to women workers and workers of color or the

necessity to expose the role of the union, or they might be foolish. But

assuming that they are issues of over-riding importance for a production

organizing strategy, that does not mean that they must always be the

initial or the most important tactic when the work is just beginning.

Here again good sense is needed. There will be times when taking a clear

stand on such issues, either in discussions or in a leaflet, either on

the job or at a union meeting, will be absolutely essential. But this

will not always be true. On this point as on all others, any time a

communist allows a sense of moral obligation to over-ride political

judgment, a mistake is being made. That point has to be made, but it

should not be allowed to obscure the fact that certain organizing issues

do have a strategic importance, and the strategy must always determine

the tactics. Any approach which evades these issues when they are

relevant is opportunistic — and historically that has been the main

weakness.

A traditional way to begin work is to attempt to take advantage of the

union structure by filing a lot of grievances; or, perhaps, running for

shop steward or trying to set up a department grievance committee. At

times this sort of work can help, but it must be combined with more

independent forms of activity, or no basis will be laid to explain the

sharp break with the union structure that must occur relatively early in

the work. Unless this kind of activity is undertaken very carefully, it

can raise false hopes that basic changes in working conditions can be

won through the grievance procedure. Then, when this illusion is

shattered, the result can be an even greater cynicism and sense of

futility. Two other implications of this approach should be recognized.

It will involve a lot of reliance on the inner-union opposition —

usually not a good idea — and it will make it more difficult to address

all of the issues which cannot be directly attacked at department level,

and these of course are usually the most important issues.

Perhaps the most popular initial approach to factory work is to “put out

a leaflet,” to begin distributing in-plant agitation and propaganda.

Just the ability to lay out a more or less coherent line, put it in

writing, and handle the technical problems of producing and distributing

a leaflet or a newsletter will give a communist some political leverage,

assuming, of course, that other workers know who is responsible. But

this won’t exist forever, and, more important, it can be effectively

canceled if the material has bad or incomprehensible politics. But

beyond the problem of bad politics that don’t improve because they are

written rather than spoken, there are several other issues involved in

this approach.

The first is the problem of security. It is almost always risky just to

distribute leaflets and newsletters, and it is even more so to let it

get known by the management and union leadership involved in the

preparation of them. But, on the other hand, if we want the written

material to be of maximum help, it is important that the workers be

generally aware of who is behind it. If this is kept secret, much of the

political potential will be lost, particularly the possibility of

getting support when the union and the management combine to suppress

the material, as they almost inevitably will.

Since the function of leaflets and newsletters is not just general

education or agitation, but to help create a base of independent

organization, they must aim toward mobilizing the workers for certain

specific struggles. It can easily happen that the literature can make

threats, pledges, and calls to action that it can’t back up with a base

of real strength. This hurts. When something is put on paper, the

authors are committed to it; and if they can’t deliver, the credibility

of their organizing work is damaged.

If written material is too heavily relied on, a few mistakes of this

sort can lead to pulling back from a practical program toward more

general and sometimes more “revolutionary” propaganda. But then, instead

of linking together a cadre of workers around a definite plan of action,

the literature attracts a circle of contributors and readers who agree

with its general stance on the issues but are not necessarily committed

to — or even interested in — doing any organizing work in the factory.

While the production and distribution of literature will definitely help

to stir things up in the plant, by itself this work will not pull

together the elements of an independent organization. Because this can

often be the path of least resistance, it is necessary to be constantly

on guard against the tendency to let the written work become a

substitute for the other sorts of organizing work which are also

necessary. Generally on this point it is important not to let the

rhetoric get out of hand; to develop a practical program that flows from

the general perspective; and to avoid letting the analysis outstrip the

program or the program outstrip the actual base of support among the

workers.

Once a beginning is made and a group of workers begins to pull together

around our perspective, then what do we do? Though this question raises

a host of issues, this paper is basically concerned with just one: the

role of direct action on the job. The “Call to Organize” placed a great

deal of emphasis on direct action, treating it as the direct opposite of

parliamentary legalistic maneuvering inside the union structure, which

in turn was the essence of everything that we opposed.

There is a base of growing struggle, of direct action, in the factory,

though as pointed out earlier the “Call” exaggerated this base. But this

is a base of spontaneous struggle, and some attention must be paid to

just what that word “spontaneous” means. A spontaneous action is not

held together by a leadership which sees it as part of a general

strategy for sharpening the class struggle. Lacking such leadership, its

demands are seldom clearly stated and related to its tactics. Because it

is not incorporated into a conscious class-struggle perspective, by a

combination of some selective concessions and repression by the

management and union working in tandem the action will be absorbed and

its energy dissipated over a period of time. The management seldom has

to respond to spontaneous direct action, even when it reaches the stage

of large-scale wildcat strikes, with blanket repression: firings,

suspensions, transfers, not to mention injunctions and police.

It makes a great deal of difference, however, when a conscious grouping

is deliberately organizing direct action as a part of a strategy to

supplant the union and make things tough for the management. The

leadership of such direct actions can expect management to use all of

its resources to isolate and crush it. “Direct action” organized as a

part of a perspective will entail an entirely different risk-benefit

calculus for the workers than the direct actions that occur

spontaneously as a response to the conditions of work. It is clear that

the risks will be increased enormously. This leads some people to argue

that we can’t afford direct action, or that we will only be able to

afford it after we build a strong organization. But along with increased

risks go increased benefits, so that direct action, while more difficult

by far than the “Call” would lead us to expect, is no less essential

than it claimed.

The following selection from Gramsci helps to lay a theoretical base for

this argument.

Philosophy in general does not in fact exist: various philosophies and

conceptions of the world exist, and one always makes a choice between

them. How does this choice come about? Is it merely intellectual, or is

it more complex? And does it not often happen that there is a

contradiction between the intellectual fact and the norm of conduct?

What then will the real conception of the world be: the one which is

logically affirmed as an intellectual fact, or the one which results

from real activity of a certain person, which is implicit in his action?

And since actions are always political actions, can we not say that the

real philosophy of anyone is contained in his politics? This conflict

between thought and action, that is the co-existence of two conceptions

of the world, one affirmed in words and the other explaining itself in

effective actions, is not always due to bad faith. Bad faith can be a

satisfactory explanation for some individuals taken singly, or even for

more or less numerous groups, but it is not satisfactory when the

contrast shows itself in the life of large masses: then it cannot be

other than the expression of more profound contradictions of a

historical and social order. It means that a social group, which has its

own conceptions of the world, even though embryonic (which shows itself

in actions, and so only spasmodically, occasionally, that is, when such

a group moves as an organic unity) has, as a result of intellectual

subordination and submission, borrowed a conception which is not its own

from another group, and this it affirms in words. And this borrowed

conception it also believes it is following, because it does follow it

in “normal” times, when its conduct is not independent and autonomous,

but precisely subordinate and submissive. (Antonio Gramsci: The Modern

Prince, page 61)

The working class as it exists under capitalism has two conceptions of

the world. One is essentially capitalist. It accepts private property as

necessary; sees competitiveness, acquisitiveness, and selfishness as

basic characteristics of “human nature”; and does not challenge the

notions of right, justice, and freedom which serve to maintain the

dominance of the capitalist class. As Gramsci says, this capitalist

conception of the world is not just an intellectual fact. It is a

pattern of conduct. The working class, in “... ‘normal’ times when its

conduct is not independent and autonomous, but precisely subordinate and

submissive ...” acts as if capitalism would be here forever. But not all

times are “normal” times. There are instances when sections of the

working class move “as an organic unity,” as part of a potential ruling

class, and in the process demonstrate in action that class’s “own

conception of the world, even though embryonic.”

When do workers act as an organic unity? Clearly, individual workers

can, and do, participate in collective activity outside of the factory,

as Black or Latin people, women, consumers, taxpayers, students, or even

“citizens.” But even if these struggles are totally composed of workers

in a sociological sense, they don’t develop conditions where the

participants in them become aware that they are members of a class that

has the capacity to make a revolutionary transformation of the entire

society. This happens when workers struggle in an area that is closer to

their collective social role of producers.

The place where workers, as workers, can move in “organic unity” at this

stage of the political development of the class is at the point of

production. Does this mean strikes, for example? It does, and it

doesn’t. Some strikes involve mass participation in struggle, but most

clearly do not. No alternative conception of the world is manifested in

those strikes where the union and the management co-operate in the

orderly closure of operations; where picketing is only a dull and tiring

public-relations chore; and where the bulk of the workers just disappear

till a new contract is signed. And this is the character of most

present-day strikes.

It is in the course of the struggle of the workers themselves to gain

some control over the large part of their lives which is spent at work

where the alternative conception of the world is most likely to show

itself. Such direct actions, as opposed to most officially sanctioned

strikes, allow workers to directly participate in defining the problem,

setting the goals, working out the tactics. This makes them a party to

the various confrontations with the other side. And it is through such

participation and confrontation that the “embryonic” alternative

conception of the world manifests itself in changed ways that workers

think, act, and relate to other workers.

While job action is the necessary basis for building a mass

revolutionary movement, in itself it is not sufficient. Gramsci is very

careful to use the adjective “embryonic” when talking about the new

attitudes and relationships which materialize during a struggle. Like

anything embryonic, these characteristics will not survive unless proper

conditions for their survival are created. For present purposes, only

one such condition needs to be mentioned. There must be a conscious

leadership that puts the lessons of the particular struggle into a form

in which they can be understood and socialized — made into the basis for

a new sort of “normal” behavior for the workers. Without such a

leadership, both reason and experience indicate that the job actions

will peter out and the routine of capitalist control over production

will be speedily re-established.

If the direct action is not integrated into a revolutionary perspective,

it will just buttress one or another aspect of false consciousness among

the workers. Either it will support exaggerated reformist ideas about

what is possible to win (“if we just stick together”), or it will

support cynicism and resignation (“the workers won’t stick together when

the going gets rough”). Either direct action is integrated into a

revolutionary perspective, or it is absorbed within the framework of

capitalism. There is no other alternative.

Direct action at the point of production creates the conditions for the

workers to begin to appreciate the necessity and possibility of

socialism, but this lesson will only be learned to the extent that there

is some grouping attempting to teach it. In the absence of such

teachers, the various lessons that capitalism constantly beats into the

workers (you get what you deserve, look out for Number One, take it to

the union, nobody gives a damn about anyone else) will be the lessons

that are learned. Any Left group which relies on direct action to

develop an autonomous working-class consciousness and an independent

revolutionary workers’ movement by itself, is going to wait forever.

Though this last position is present in the Left in this country, it is

not a big factor. Perhaps this is because production organizing is in

such a primitive stage here that most groups haven’t discovered all of

the ways of relying on spontaneity in this area. However, the opposite

position, that direct action is only one among a number of possible

tactics and approaches toward building a mass revolutionary working-

class movement, not an essential part of any such attempt, is very

popular.

It is easy to see how conditions support this position. On one hand, it

is extremely difficult to build a base of direct action in a factory

situation in a short time. Management repression is immediate and harsh.

The issues at hand for such actions — departmental and shop issues for

the most part — are often not the issues which concern the workers most.

On the other hand, there is a growing group of workers radicalized by

experiences outside of the production process who are already open to

revolutionary ideas and organizations. So it seems that the risks far

outweigh the benefits, and that a revolutionary mass movement can be

built without taking the risks involved in emphasizing organized job

actions.

Without downgrading this process of radicalization at all, it is no

substitute for the sort of collective experience involved in direct job

action. A grouping whose individual members all regard themselves as

“revolutionaries” is not necessarily a revolutionary group. This is the

case, not so much because the individuals may be mistaken or

hypocritical about their own politics, though that is far from uncommon,

but because the test of whether a group of workers is revolutionary is

whether it is able to find a programmatic link between the immediate

needs of workers and the struggle for socialism. No amount of propaganda

and education will build such a link by itself. It comes through the

workers’ experiencing in struggle their distinctiveness from the

capitalist class; the weakness of the capitalist class; the possibility

of working-class unity; and the possibility of constructing a society of

freely associated producers — socialism.

But the argument goes even further. Direct action is also needed in

order to develop a cadre of workers who can provide the skeleton of a

future mass movement. Why is, this true? Because we can’t take an

individual’s politics at the value he or she places on them. A worker is

revolutionary because he shows in action that he can act in the way

necessary to create the conditions for making a revolution, not just

because he is willing — or even anxious — to be called a

“revolutionary.”

Members of any sort of cadre group must be constantly tested, not by

seeing if they can re-state the “correct” position on all of the major

questions, but by seeing if they can develop a revolutionary practice

and provide leadership for the masses of workers. Everything said in the

course of this paper means that this practice must involve developing

and leading job struggles of masses of workers in ways which maintain

and strengthen the revolutionary potentials that are manifested in such

struggles. What should be thought of a worker who claims to be a

revolutionary but who is constantly opposed to attempts to generate and

lead struggles of the workers? — who always argues that such actions are

“premature,” that “the workers aren’t ready”? We should think that it is

best to look elsewhere for cadre, that’s what we should think. If the

program doesn’t stress direct action from the outset, how can potential

cadre be put to this sort of test? As was said earlier, it is not

necessarily the case that the workers most ready to adopt a generally

“revolutionary” political stance are also those workers most ready to

act out a revolutionary political practice.

Up to now mass struggle, mass organization, and mass movement have been

used loosely, but they are not interchangeable. We must consider the

general issue of organization: what we mean and what we don’t mean by

mass revolutionary organization; the relationship between mass

organization and cadre groupings of revolutionary workers, and the

relation of communist organization to both.

If all that was needed was a change in the leadership of the existing

trade unions, a caucus of all those interested in fighting to reform the

union and get a different leadership would be all the organization

necessary. To expand the base of support for the caucus, communists

would urge the masses of workers to participate more fully in the

existing unions. It is quite conceivable that the goal would be to get

revolutionaries into the union leadership, in which case the caucus

would be limited to those willing to work on such a program.

However, it is necessary to do more than just change the leadership. (If

more evidence of this is needed, consider the European labor movement,

where much of the leadership is composed of various types who would be

indignant at any suggestion that they weren’t revolutionaries.) The

problem with the unions isn’t primarily bad leadership — and the

solution isn’t to replace it with good leadership. The problem is that

the existing unions are more of a buffer between classes than an

instrument of the workers, and this class collaborationism of the

existing trade unions is so deeply rooted in their historically

developed structure and function that organizations must be built that

are a real alternative to the trade unions for the masses of workers,

that are independent of the existing trade-union structure, and that aim

at supplanting it. Such organizations will have two distinct

characteristics: They will be revolutionary organizations, and they will

be mass organizations. It is important to understand just what is — and

what is not — entailed by each of these characteristics.

In the current movement, virtually anything that appears to be

worthwhile is called “revolutionary,” so naturally the term is losing

any distinctive content. In applying the term to mass workers’

organizations, something more specific is meant here. Such an

organization is revolutionary if it rejects the bounds and limits placed

on the class struggle by capitalist legality, which is fundamentally

based on the current requirements for maintenance of capitalist property

relations. It is revolutionary if it sets its goals and determines its

tactics according to what the workers think is necessary and not what

capitalism says is possible. The other side of the sloppy popular talk

about revolution is the revisionists’ attempt to restrict its relevance

to the direct struggle for state power, which, of course, is not

currently “on the order of the day.” That too conveniently eliminates

any distinction between revolutionary and reformist methods of work in a

non-revolutionary or prerevolutionary situation. On one hand, everything

is revolutionary; on the other hand, nothing can possibly be

revolutionary.

To supplant the existing trade unions, we need a form of organization

that struggles for reforms, but does not confine that struggle according

to capitalist criteria of practicality and rationality. In other words,

these organizations will not go along with the management- rights

clauses, the labor-management harmony crap, and the no-strike

agreements; and that, in practice, will make them objectively

revolutionary.

It is important to realize the significance of calling such

organizations “objectively” revolutionary. It means that communists will

be involved in a constant struggle inside such organizations with a

whole gamut of non-revolutionary ideas and approaches, trying to prevent

the revolutionary characteristics of the movement from being submerged.

Beyond this there will be a constant struggle with various non-Marxist

revolutionary as well as quasi-revolutionary positions.

Let me use the Flint sit-down strike to clarify my point. On one level

the strike was a major reform struggle aimed at improving the wages and

conditions of the General Motors workers and forcing GM to recognize the

United Auto Workers as the representative of the workers. Most of the

workers who participated in the strike did not see themselves as

revolutionaries. Their goals were certain basic improvements of their

immediate conditions. Even the strike leadership, many of whom were

communists, did not see the struggle as a revolutionary one. In fact, GM

was saying more about the revolutionary implications of the sit-down

than the workers were.

But on another level, the Flint strike was a revolutionary struggle. The

workers took possession of the means of production — not, it is true, to

operate them for the common good, but in order to get some power over

the work process. This was a challenge to the institution of capitalist

private property that was clearly recognized as such by the capitalists.

It was “illegal”; it went far beyond the permissible bounds and limits

of labor organizing at a time when even picketing was of dubious

legality. Beyond this, the way the strikers organized themselves —

particularly their refusal to accept any external authority, even that

of the local UAW leadership — foreshadowed the possibility of workers’

self-government.

What happened was that the revolutionary potential of the struggle was

lost in the wake of the attainment of some of its reform demands. As

time passed, the UAW leadership presented the struggle only as a

dramatic tactic to win a reform victory, and no communist leadership

tried to teach the workers the various ways that the struggle had

demonstrated their revolutionary potential. The mass-participation

characteristics that were developed during the struggle were gradually

replaced by typical inner-union parliamentarism. But this happened not

just because of the strength and resilience of capitalism, but also as a

result of the choices, mistakes, decisions, policies of the workers and

union leaders involved. There was no clear struggle between a reformist

and a revolutionary approach to the activity and organization that was

developed during the strike — and there certainly could have been. Of

course, that possibility was much harder to see at a time when the right

to organize unions hadn’t been won in basic industry, and thus the

limitations of trade unionism weren’t such a clear part of the workers’

collective experience. But now it is clear that such struggles create

conditions to build mass organizations which move increasingly out of

the orbit of capitalist hegemony.

This clarifies the notion of “revolutionary” organization, but we must

also spell out what is meant by “mass” organization. Lenin argued that

workers’ organizations should be trade unions and that these should be

open to all workers who understand the need to struggle against the

management and the government, and that they should function as publicly

as possible. That in a nutshell is what is meant by the concept of

“mass” organization.

But isn’t this a foolish idea, considering that any attempt to set up

such an organization will immediately lead to repression by management

and the existing union? Doesn’t this situation require that the

organization be much more secret and conspiratorial, and that membership

be closely restricted? It is true that the labor contract for practical

purposes makes this type of mass workers’ organization illegal, if and

when the management decides to take action against it. This is a fact

that must be taken into account, but it shouldn’t dominate the

perspective.

The general characteristics of trade-union organization mentioned above

were developed by Lenin at a time when trade unions were totally illegal

in Tsarist Russia. Even so he argued for organization as open and public

as possible, saying that the problem of maintaining security should be

met by keeping the movement “so free and amorphous that the need for

secret methods becomes almost negligible so far as the bulk of the

members is concerned.” That should be the response now also. As the

movement gains strength, it will be able to win some de-facto legality

and can use this to develop a more explicit organized form. But even

while conditions prevent us from functioning in a completely public

manner, the aim must be to utilize the possibilities that exist to the

maximum in order to involve masses of workers and not just a small

conspiratorial cadre. The reason this emphasis on the mass character is

vital is that there is a major tendency to let the difficulties in

functioning openly, the de-facto illegality of organizations of the type

we aim to build, turn the work away from the masses of workers toward

the development of a cadre group through internal education and so on.

Though the difficulties in functioning openly are certainly real, there

is no alternative to using whatever possibilities exist and working to

expand these possibilities as rapidly as possible. This follows from the

absolutely essential role of direct action spelled out in a previous

section of the paper. There is no way that direct action can be

developed if a conspiratorial cadre grouping becomes a substitute for,

rather than a means to, a mass organization.

It is true that generally a relatively small group of workers will

initially accept the perspective and begin to try to implement it. These

will be those workers with sufficient commitment and understanding to

spend the time and effort needed to test out political programs and

approaches in periods when the overall struggle is at a low level. In

effect they will constitute a cadre group, and at times this cadre group

will be the extent of the organization — perhaps even of the movement.

As the struggle develops these workers will form the leadership and the

backbone, the core, of a mass trade-union form of workers’ organization.

It is a political mistake to organize this cadre group as rigorously and

conspiratorially as the party organization of “professional

revolutionists.” That would damage both the leadership role of the party

and the autonomy of the workers’ organization — not to mention

undermining all of the work to establish more open organization. It is

the cadre groupings that serve as the social basis for developing a

factory organizing perspective and as a primary source of recruits for

the party of revolution.

Review of “Reflections on organizing”

INTRODUCTION

This article is worth commenting on in depth for a number of reasons.

Sojourner Truth are an American group intervening in factory situations

in Chicago. The growth in Europe of revolutionary interventionist

organisations with a working class orientation, but outside traditional

Leninist and Trotskyist currents, is a factor related to the explosion

of working class autonomy, especially in France and Italy in recent

years. Such groups as Lotta Continua and Potere Operaio have provided a

rich source for us in terms of ideas and practice. But equally important

are the groups with similar political orientation working in countries

yet to have such explosions — like West Germany, USA and Britain. These

groups are in a sense trying to create through their intervention some

of the pre-conditions for the development of class autonomy.

There can be no mechanical parallels drawn between the experience of

Sojourner Truth and Big Flame on the evidence of this document alone.

But there are similarities, and the lessons they draw in many cases seem

like ours. A critical evaluation of their document may help us to write

our own “Reflections on Organising.”

INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE ACTION

The first section of the document deals with the relevance of various

types of individual action against capital, such as sabotage. The author

seems to feel that the tendency towards the glorification of such acts

is strong in some sections of the U.S. left. The document goes to great

pains to point out that there can be

no mechanical transfer of such individual forms of resistance to

oppression into a base for coherent struggle.

It’s pointed out that such tendencies lead to uncritical worship of

spontaneity and “leadership models” based on individual militancy.

This seems quite straightforward to us, but then there develops a

one-sided and partial view of individual action, and over-counterposes

it to collective struggle. For instance, sabotage against the final

product is criticised because it hurts the class as consumer and is a

numerically insignificant part of commodity production as a whole. But

surely this misses the point. Individual action against the product

whether finished or in completion can be an expression of collective

discontent, and is related dialectically to collective action. There is

often a conscious combination of collective struggle or even collective

“sabotage” with independent/individual actions that reinforce to

collective level and are understood in that way by other workers. The

degree to which individual actions are actually related to a collective

process is dependent on the consciousness of the participants.

In this sphere the document is again one-sided, not taking into account

the complexity of the issues involved. It is put forward that individual

resistance to management is nearly always based purely on the particular

needs of that worker — “one worker’s particular area of competence and

responsibility.” This seems to say that the average worker doesn’t even

partially generalise his or her grievance or experience, but challenges

the management only when their job situation is threatened. But in our

experience, the best shops learn precisely how to utilise individual

grievances to generalise the struggle against management. And individual

workers are well aware that if they fight or even conceive of their

fight as a singular one, they are on a loser. The degree to which a

general consciousness of collective responsibility will vary from shop

to shop as the process of organisation and struggle is dependent on the

history of the shop, and the number of more advanced workers. But in

general, individual and collective action shouldn’t be so polarised.

Some individual actions do “show the possibility of collective action,”

not only manifesting the fact of oppression, which the document seems

reluctant to believe.

INTERVENTION AND COLLECTIVE STRUGGLE

This section deals with many different points, the common theme being on

the methods of intervention, how to operate inside the plant, etc. Like

Big Flame, Sojourner Truth insist on the necessity of NOT accepting the

natural and accepted contours and patterns of the work situation. Most

groups, reflecting their Leninist models of class and class

consciousness, have a priori methods of intervention, accepting in

advance limits on their type of intervention and on the type of

struggles and limitations of consciousness that can be achieved. They

aptly describe the typical way of working:

Learn the job and the grievances, single out the natural leaders and

most advanced workers, make friends, but keep low on the job for some

time until some people will listen to what you have to say. Then try to

get the most advanced workers together, perhaps in a discussion group,

so more general issues can be raised. Maybe at this time it will be

possible to begin pushing a definite programme, circulating leaflets,

etc. Usually this advice is put within the framework of a union caucus

perspective, but this isn’t essential. Then there are variations

according to the left wing group involved. In the Communist Party the

emphasis will be put on learning the contract, attending union meetings,

getting on committees, etc. Other groups will stress developing cadres

through communist education as a precondition for mass work or involving

the advanced workers in the “movement.”

Also like Big Flame, Sojourner Truth seem to reject the distinction

between political (led by the party, against the state, offensive) and

economic (defensive, the sphere of the Trade Unions, for the betterment

of wages and conditions). If the proletariat is to develop political and

organisational autonomy (that is, a sense of its separation from the

needs and development of capital, and a sense of its historical task in

overthrowing capital) — then it has to reject the contours of the

existence that capital gives it. As Marx said, it cannot free itself

without abolishing the conditions of its own life. This doesn’t mean

just “during the revolution” but continually in the struggle against

capital in all its forms, in production and out.

That means that those who see the struggle within production as economic

by nature (the proletariat left to itself in Lenin’s terms) naturally

fit their political strategies around the ground capital gives us to

fight. On a political level this means the whole “right to work”

orientation at the present time, which is precisely within the

ideological framework the ruling class is able to deal with and

recuperate, making it impossible to raise revolutionary ideas and

programmes.

Organisationally this means union structures of politics, the problem

being seen in terms of the leadership of the unions and in the need to

democratise the form. But as the document says, it is not a question of

the leadership or democratisation of the unions but the actual role that

unions play under capitalism, as mediators of the class struggle, which

is not something which is temporary or dependent on the politics of

specific people or groups but is

deeply rooted in their (i.e., the unions’) historically developed

structures and functions.

They say that in the U.S. they must be supplanted by mass revolutionary

organisations that

reject the bounds and limits placed on the class struggle by capitalist

legality ... that sets its goals and determines its tactics according to

what the workers think is necessary, not what capitalism says is

possible.

There is a danger here in terms of mass organisation. It is wrong to

pose the need for mass organisations that are in fact only revolutionary

trade unions. The form of the mass organisations that reflect developing

autonomy of the class can not be a fixed thing. Already in Italy and

France they have taken different forms according to the specificity of

the situation. We are talking neither about revolutionary alternative

unions nor workers’ councils nor Soviets in situations of dual power,

but differing organisational forms that will express the need of the

class to control and determine its own struggles against the control and

power of capital.

As it is impossible to talk of such mass organisations at the moment in

Britain, the small groups that we have active in the factories must in

some way prefigure the future development. Sojourner Truth are clear, as

we are, that these groups cannot be based on the obsolete model of cells

of “professional revolutionists” defined according to their ideological

separation from other similar groups. They say:

A grouping whose individual members all regard themselves as

revolutionaries is not necessarily a revolutionary group ... not so much

because the individuals may be mistaken or hypocritical about their own

politics but because the test of whether a group of workers is

revolutionary or not is whether it is able to find a programmatic link

between the immediate needs of workers and the struggle for

socialism.... Members of any sort of cadre group must be constantly

tested, not by seeing if they can re-state the “correct position” on all

major questions, but by seeing if they develop a revolutionary practice

and provide leadership for the mass of workers.

To develop such perspectives such groups need to break down the false

distinctions between economic and political struggle, agitation and

propaganda, minimum and maximum programmes, etc. We must seek to act as

reference points for the struggle, drawing out and developing its

revolutionary potential, providing organisational means of bringing

together militants, who are genuine initiators of the struggles and who

seek to push them in an autonomous direction. Big Flame has only begun

this process, which is still in a very experimental stage for us, with

its idea of base groups which link together internal and external

militants and try to create a unity between the differing layers of

workers that can be potentially involved on the basis of specific

factory strategies, rather than trying to create unity on the basis of

agreement on the already-given world view of the political group. This

strategy precludes the potential constant re-creation of the politics of

these units, which for us are autonomous parts of the group as a whole.

Our task at the moment is to develop this programmatic link between the

immediate demands of the workers and the struggle for socialism, a

programme of self-abolition of the class that sees the need for the

class to struggle against itself — its conditions of existence, for us

at the moment primarily expressed in the struggle against work, that is,

its domination, ideology, conditions, etc. The traditional groups’

strategies are based around and subordinated to the concept of work

within the factories. Outside of production, in the claimants’ unions,

the women’s movement, the community struggles, etc., they are simply

incapable of ideologically grasping the developments taking place. The

need is for concrete strategy for the “right to live” which links up the

various sectors of the movement.

STRATA IN THE FACTORY

The document is at its most useful when dealing with the importance of

the various strata in the factory, attacking the mistakes of the

traditional groups’ orientation to union oppositions, etc. — but also

“leftist mistakes” of a priori identification of younger (and in the

U.S. case, Black) workers as the ones with the most revolutionary

potential in terms of getting together an initial group of people. They

say that younger workers are more open to some aspects of revolutionary

ideas and struggle. Some already have been influenced by radical ideas

outside of production, in the area of youth culture, etc. Also, they are

more combative inside in most cases; they have fewer responsibilities

and are more willing to take action. But they are not necessarily open

to specific forms of organisation and action. That is (and this has been

Big Flame’s experience to some extent), most fail to see the need for

revolutionary organisation at best, but more seriously fail to see the

need for their own involvement in struggles, except within their own

existing patterns of combativity. They are also often sceptical of the

possibility of mass participation of other workers, characterising them

sometimes as “sheep.” It may be that our approach to young workers is

wrong, and even where we try to reach and organise with them. But the

problems described by Sojourner Truth remain if, as we do, they want to

organise in the factories.

They then deal with the union opposition (in the case of Britain, it is

more likely to be the opposition within the shop stewards) — saying that

it is wrong to discount this strata. Many of these workers have rich

experience of the struggle, and often their political understanding is

high, and in that sense they can be reference points for other workers.

But this is also their weakness, as the document says:

A lot of militant talk has got to be discounted as rhetoric and a lot of

their activity has got to be examined for various opportunistic and

careerist motives.

This doesn’t come from their personalities; they haven’t betrayed the

struggle or anything like that. It is something that follows their

function in the factory. Shop stewards in Britain developed as piecework

negotiators; there is a tradition of them fighting for their sections.

Most politically advanced workers become stewards, as it gives them

influence and a “piece of the action.” But their objective role as

mediators of the struggle and appropriaters of the initiative of their

sections gradually push them away from any attempt to develop

involvement and base initiatives. And this is the political stewards,

who are not quite as riddled with the ideology of labourism. The rest

are a direct and continuous blockage to any revolutionary or even

“militant” action. Nevertheless, some workers from the “oppositions” can

and should be encouraged to break with the worst parts of their role. As

the document says, political workers will continue for some time to seek

steward-type positions. And they can be a help, if a great attempt to

change the normal pattern of relationships and attitudes to the struggle

is made. But if these positions are not combined with other independent

forms of activity,

No basis will be laid to explain the break with the union structure that

must occur relatively early in work.

This break cannot be made if, as the document suggests, the fight

against the management is subordinate to the fight within the unions and

their organising and involving other workers continues to be orientated

towards building blocs for the union branch or within the stewards’

committee.

A good analysis is also given of what they call the departmental

leaders. To us the militants who take the initiatives on the sections

and are most hostile to management, without necessarily being the most

advanced in terms of political understanding, have a good sense of

collective power and unity, but

...often lack a clear perspective which could take job action out of the

framework of defensive reaction ... towards an offensive strategy: ...

job action fails to take a continuing momentum that can place constant

pressure on the capitalist control of the production process.

But in a sense this is the most important strata in a factory, for

groups who are not simply out to recruit cadres to “ideologise” them and

send them back in to influence others. They are the most important

because of their understanding of the needs of the struggle, and that is

political too! It is easier in most cases to widen in the struggle the

political scope of this strata, than it is to break the union-orientated

workers from a lifetime of accepting the passivity of those around them,

with the inevitable and understandable feelings of cynicism and

isolation that brings. So, in conclusion the document says that the

initial group of workers should

... be open [though not necessarily committed — B.F.] to a real critique

of capitalism, aware of the importance of organisation and be able to

provide leadership for struggles on the job.

PITFALLS INSIDE THE FACTORY

The rest of this section in the document deals with some important

points about everyday activity inside the factory. They criticise those

who make a fetish of “putting your politics up front.” Often, people

unused to factory situations challenge every remark made, and make

political interventions in every situation, trying to situate themselves

as “sources of political wisdom.” Apart from the fact that this makes

you appear pretty boring, it could

... polarise the workers over abstract or peripheral issues in a way

that inhibits direct action.

There is of course a hidden danger in this: it could be a cop-out from

challenging racist or male chauvinist tendencies. But anyone who has

worked in a factory knows what the document means. Challenging these

tendencies and others is a long, patient process which involves

understanding the positive and negative of the way your workmates think.

Ideological arrogance sounds to most workers like lecturing and also

misleads you into thinking ideas are changed by argument instead of by

social practice.

Another pitfall is cultivating a reputation for “not taking any shit.”

Individual combativity on the job has to be a careful part of your

overall political work, otherwise, as the document points out, “there is

a danger that you make the political mistake of putting too much stress

on the foreman or lower management figures.”

There is some good advice given on the relationship of propaganda in

leaflets, etc. to the rest of your political work. It is easy to let

analysis outstrip the program or the program outstrip the actual base of

support in the factory. For those groups that are trying to involve

themselves in, and shape events inside, propaganda must avoid threats,

and agitation must avoid pledges that can’t be kept, calls to action

that can’t be backed up with real strength and are unrealistic. Mistakes

like these we’ve found can only be eradicated through learning from

experience: they can be costly, but there is no other way around it.

CONSCIOUSNESS AND DIRECT ACTION

We would start to disagree with the document in its view of

consciousness: they draw directly from Gramsci’s more sophisticated

Leninist model. But the model is still far too simplistic and leads to a

distorted political practice as the over-emphasis on direct action will

show. A long quote from the document on the question of consciousness

illustrates the position:

The working class as it exists under capitalism has two conceptions of

the world. One is essentially capitalist — accepts private property as

necessary, sees competitiveness, acquisitiveness and selfishness as

basic characteristics of human nature; and does not challenge the

notions of right, justice, freedom, etc. — which serve to maintain the

dominance of the capitalist class. As Gramsci says, this capitalist

conception of the world is not just an intellectual fact, it is a

pattern of conduct. The working class “in normal times when its conduct

is not independent and autonomous, but precisely subordinate and

submissive ...” acts as if capitalism would be here forever. But not all

times are “normal” times. There are instances when sections of the class

move as “an organic unity,” as part of a potential ruling class; and in

the process demonstrate in action that class’s “own conception of the

world, even though embryonic.”

This Gramscian formulation of the possibility of anticapitalist ideas

developing when the parts of the class move in fusion at the height of

their power, avoids the cruder Leninist model: where the proletariat is

completely dependent on the party for its subjectivity, its

consciousness of its real existence and historical tasks. Sojourner

Truth utilise their model to place a healthy if over-stress on direct

action as the most likely way of the class developing its consciousness

as “fused groups.” But the model is still too mechanical as a theory of

class consciousness. There is still too much of the picture of the

working class living its life completely dominated by bourgeois ideas

(e.g., private property, selfishness, etc.) and only breaking from them

and becoming open to revolutionary ideas under certain situations. For

Lenin this was when the class is exposed to the opposite ideological

pole to bourgeois ideology; when the “naturally limited” struggles of

the class are politicised, by theory necessarily “brought from the

outside” — for Gramsci and Sojourner Truth, when revolutionary ideas

interact with the class moving in action and organic unity.

It is impossible to go into all the aspects of a theory of consciousness

in a review article, but we will try to outline the main components. We

start from Marx’s concept that “social being determines consciousness.”

Social being is what we mean when we talk about the many factors that

shape the patterns and contours of working class life: cultural, work,

home and community, etc. It also crucially is a dynamic concept in the

sense that social being refers to living as action, as constant movement

and struggle; so consciousness should never be conceived of in a static

way. It seems strange to us that revolutionaries can talk of the working

class living its life — a life dominated for most by varying kinds of

struggle against the ruling class — by using bourgeois ideas to relate

and integrate thought and action in living: to make their lives

meaningful, as all strata must do. Such bourgeois notions of “freedom,”

individualism, etc., for the most part in their pure form (i.e., as the

ruling class would use them), directly contradict the experience of

working class life. This does not mean that the working class in

rejecting them chooses a revolutionary alternative to explain the world

but that bourgeois ideas are mediated through the life situation of the

working class. So it becomes foolish to talk of two ideologies,

bourgeois and socialist, with nothing in between.

The working class has a structural antagonism with the bourgeoisie in

capitalist society. It is forced with varying levels of intensity,

according to the elements at work in the historical situation, to

struggle against them, not just industrially but at all levels. Thus

most parts of the class exist as and have a consciousness of a class

against capital — a class in itself rather than a class for itself,

lacking political autonomy, aware of class society and its conflicts but

not aware/unconvinced of the need/possibilities of changing it.

We cannot call this consciousness of the class, in itself, bourgeois. It

has contradictory aspects, some of which depending on the strata and

struggles of the class will be more bourgeois; other aspects will not.

We only have to look at attitudes to, say, parliamentary politics or law

and order to illustrate this contra-dictoriness. There has always been a

cynicism in the class about “politics” and politicians. This has been

re-inforced by their ability to win substantial gains in the factories

and communities through their own working class struggle, since the war.

This distrust and cynicism is at one level a healthy thing; it

illustrates the estrangement of the class from representative democracy.

“You can’t trust politicians; they’re only in it for themselves”; “the

working man never gets a thing from either party.” These are the common

sentiments of a class in itself. What is missing of course is a

consciousness of the possibility of direct democracy, an understanding

of what it can achieve —that capitalist-type institutions are not

“natural and inevitable.” Or take law and order. Anyone who has lived in

a working class community knows what most people think of the police or

even law. People in these communities are constantly breaking the law

and modes of accepted conduct, so they need their own way of

understanding that process. Most at the moment don’t take a

revolutionary view of law, but then neither do they utilise the same

views as Heath or Wilson, etc. The working class view of law and order

is structured around their own experience of it. So to many, student

demonstrations or the struggle in Ireland is outside that experience and

understanding. Thus they may agree with or be acquiescent about the use

of law and order in these situations, whilst still conceiving the police

and courts as hostile.

So class consciousness is made up of mediated bourgeois ideas in some

cases, in others mediated ideas of other social forces, hopefully the

section of the working class and other allied strata that consciously

uses a revolutionary critique of society, or possibly the petty

bourgeoisie, etc. In other words, working class consciousness contains

within it ideas which have been generated in common with other classes,

e.g., the notions of “freedom” and “democracy” that shaped themselves in

the struggle of both classes against the then-ruling class, the

aristocracy/ feudal landowners, etc. These ideas are posed as universal

and part of a general ideology/culture by governments and the ruling

class. Their applicability to working class life, as we said before, in

pure form, is doubtful so they exist in a changed sense, from the

“national ideology” — but no longer merely a mirror of it. So as

ideologies crystallise around the struggles and institutions of major

social forces, the working class from these various sources shapes its

own ideas and consequent social relations. It is from this perspective

that we can talk about a specific, if ever variable, working class

consciousness. The interpenetration of these various levels of ideas is

so complex, set in the light of the developing social relations between

the classes, that to talk of even a dual consciousness as Gramsci et al.

do is ridiculous.

So working class consciousness is in a constant state of flux. Its use

of bourgeois or revolutionary poles will depend on the intensity of the

structural antagonism between the classes, not the vulgar concept of

consciousness reflecting the economic crisis, but from the being of the

class: a comprehensive synthesis of all factors at work in society, that

make the levels of crisis at its deepest. Any break in the unity of

Marx’s set of concepts, a break in our under- standing of the constant

interpenetration of the inherent antagonisms in class society and the

consciousness the classes have of them, inevitably leads to false

polarisation, a situation where theory is thought of as something

outside the consciousness of the class, to be brought in by the party

and tested in action by the proletariat, in political terms, the

formulation of programmes for others, abstract to the real needs of the

class.

CONSCIOUSNESS AND REVOLUTIONARY ORGANISATION

The working class does not develop “naturally” towards a socialist

consciousness in the way we would like. The task of the revolutionary

organisations is to identify the positive aspects in working class

consciousness, to push them in a revolutionary direction and to fuse

them in a political process from a position embedded in class struggle.

The working class is not a passive object to be “politicised.” Only if

we realise this can we avoid the situation where the class is in a

passive and dependent relationship with the party.

Even as a class in itself it is capable of developing a real critique of

capitalism and taking highly combative action against it. It often

surpasses the limitations even revolutionaries put on it, like the

absurdly a-historical and mechanical idea that left to itself within

production it can only reach trade union consciousness. France and

especially Italy have shown in the past few years how wrong this idea

is. In Italy large sections of the class (without reference to the old

groups who said it couldn’t happen without them) broke far beyond the

political and organisational bounds of the unions; to demand equal pay

rises for all, the abolition of the categories and grades of labour, the

refusal of union or line delegates to mediate their struggle and the

creation of mass assemblies instead of traditional union structures,

etc. The revolutionary groups who did understand the new developments

and attempted to live with and develop the new autonomy, were

comparatively small (although far bigger than the old currents) — and

this weakness in the situation contributed to its partial decline. But

the lessons of the possibilities of class action and consciousness

remain.

The working class doesn’t jump spontaneously to socialist consciousness;

but when the antagonisms are so great that the existing levels of ideas

cannot explain the social being, the lives and struggles of the class:

then they will begin to break from the limitations of the class in

itself and the corresponding patterns of thought and turn towards more

revolutionary ways of thinking and acting. But just as the working class

is not a passive component of the situation, neither are the

revolutionary organisations. We have the vital role, in systematising

the developments in consciousness, in giving direction to the struggles:

in being inside the situations to develop the necessary strategies to

overthrow the rule of capital. We are not spontaneists — there is a need

for revolutionary organisation to help make the revolution! The very

complexity of the varying levels of consciousness, the different

categories and strata in the class, the differing historical experiences

give us our role.

The class is not an abstract ideal type that can magically fuse together

its objective role with the necessary subjectivity. The class is only

specific groups of proletarians with different developments and needs,

not just industrial workers but women, youth, etc. The working class

moving together in unison, the identical subject-object of history

dominated by one goal is unfortunately a Utopian dream. Only the

revolutionary organisations can break through and structure this

complexity to break the power of capital.

DIRECT ACTION

This seems to have brought us a long way from the Sojourner Truth

article. The previous section was not an attack on the document. They

see the need for selfmanaged struggles and class autonomy and the right

role for revolutionary organisation. It’s just that in the document the

conception is too narrow-based as it is, around direct action (because

of the narrow conception of consciousness).

But what about direct action? As a means of raising consciousness in

struggle, they correctly counterpose it to

strikes where the union and management co-operate in the orderly choice

of operations, where picketing is just a dull and tiring public

relations chore ... where the bulk of workers just disappear until the

new contract is signed.

Direct action is

struggles of the workers themselves to gain some control over the large

part of their lives.

But direct action is only the structural component, i.e., the social

relations of the revolutionary process we try to initiate (although

social relations implies ways of thinking as well as acting).

Revolutionary consciousness does not necessarily flow out of direct

action, even when these “spontaneous” struggles are given conscious

direction by revolutionaries in the factory. Overemphasis on the form of

the struggle is dangerous; the content is the crucial component. The

reason for stressing this is that traditionally Leninist groups have

ignored the problem of how the struggle is organised, posing the

ideological component as everything — good structures were a nice

luxury. In reaction to this, non-Leninist groups went overboard on the

form of the struggle (drawing on an old syndicalist tradition) whilst

underplaying conscious strategy and political line. In our early

broadsheets such examples can be found; now the contradictions in that

position for an interventionist organisation have forced us long ago to

move to a more dialectical understanding of the process, something that

is missing from the Sojourner Truth document.

Black Worker, White Worker

Noel Ignatin, 1972

In one department of a giant steel mill in northwest Indiana a foreman

assigned a white worker to the job of operating a crane. The Black

workers in the department felt that on the basis of seniority and job

experience, one of them should have been given the job, which

represented a promotion from the labor gang. They spent a few hours in

the morning talking among themselves and agreed that they had a

legitimate beef. Then they went and talked to the white workers in the

department and got their support. After lunch the other crane operators

mounted their cranes and proceeded to block in the crane of the newly

promoted worker — one crane on each side of his — and run at the slowest

possible speed, thus stopping work in the department. By the end of the

day the foreman had gotten the message. He took the white worker off the

crane and replaced him with a Black worker, and the cranes began to move

again.

A few weeks after the above incident, several of the white workers who

had joined the Black operators in the slowdown took part in meetings in

Glen Park, a virtually all-white section of Gary, with the aim of

seceding from the city in order to escape from the administration of the

Black mayor, Richard Hatcher. While the secessionists demanded, in their

words, “the power to make the decisions which affect their lives,” it

was clear that the effort was racially inspired.

At a large farm equipment manufacturing plant in Chicago, a Black worker

was being tried out for a repair job on an assembly line. The foreman

had been harassing the man, trying to disqualify him during his

three-day trial period. After two days of this, the majority of the

workers on the line, Black and white, walked off their jobs demanding

that the man be accepted for the job. The company backed down and work

resumed.

Later on, some of the same white workers took part in racist

demonstrations at a Chicago high school. The demonstrations were called

against “overcrowding” in an attempt to keep out several hundred Black

students who had been transferred to the school as a result of

redistricting.

CIVIL WAR

The foregoing anecdotes indicate some of the complexities and

contradictions operating within the lives and within the minds of the

white workers in this country: on the one hand, displays of democratic

co-operation and fraternal relations with Black workers, and, on the

other hand, examples of backwardness and selfishness which are

unbecoming to members of a social class which hopes to reconstruct

society in its image. What is taking place is a “civil war” in the mind

of the white worker. In the community, on the job, in every sphere of

life, he is being faced with a choice between two ways of looking at the

world, two ways of leading his life. One way represents solidarity with

the Black worker and the progressive forces of society. The other way

represents alliance with the forces of exploitation and repression.

I’d like to speak a bit about this “civil war” and examine some of what

it means for the development of revolutionary strategy.

In order to understand the contradictory, often bewildering behavior of

people, especially white people, in this country, we must take up two

questions. The first question is — on what does capitalist rule depend?

There are groups, radical groups, which seem to operate on the premise

that capitalist rule depends on the monopoly of guns and tanks held by

the employing class and its ability to use them whenever it pleases

against the exploited majority. This view explains why some groups put

such great efforts into building alliances with all sorts of liberals to

preserve constitutional forms of government. They hope, through these

alliances, to limit the ability of the ruling class to use force against

the people.

I do not share this view of the secret of capitalist rule. I do not

agree that capitalist power rests, at present, primarily on guns and

tanks. It rests on the support of the majority of people. This support

is usually passive, sometimes active, but nevertheless effective.

COMPETITION AMONG THE WAGE EARNERS

I contend that the key element in the popular acceptance of capitalist

rule is the ideology and institution of white supremacy, which provides

the illusion of common interests between the exploited white masses and

the white ruling class.

Karl Marx wrote that wage slavery rests exclusively on competition among

the wage earners. He meant that the existence of competition among the

working class is responsible for the continued rule of the employing

class and the inability of the working people to overthrow it and

establish their rule.

Why do people compete? They compete in order to get ahead. The fact must

be admitted that, from a certain point of view, it is possible to “get

ahead” in this society. Years and years of unquestioning loyalty and

devotion to the company will, in a certain percentage of cases, result

in advancement for the employee — advancement to a position of lead man,

foreman, soft job, high bonus job, etc. Working people have various

uncomplimentary terms to describe this sort of behavior. Yet large

numbers of them live their lives in this way, and for a certain portion

of these, it “pays off.”

Because of the peculiar development of America and the nature of

capitalist policy in this country, there is a special element added to

the general competition which exists among all workers. That special

element is color, which throws the competition on a special basis, that

raises color to a special place in the competition among workers.

All workers compete; that is a law of capitalism. But Black and white

workers compete with a special advantage on the side of the white. That

is a result of the peculiar development of America, and is not inherent

in the objective social laws of the capitalist system.

In the same way that some individual workers gain advancement on the job

by currying favor with the employer, white workers as a group have won a

favored position for themselves by siding with the employing class

against the non-white people. This favored status takes various forms,

including the monopoly of skilled jobs and higher education, better

housing at lower cost than that available to nonwhites, less police

harassment, a cushion against the most severe effects of unemployment,

better health conditions, as well as certain social advantages.

We’re trying to explain why people act as they do, and particularly why

white workers act as they do. White working people aren’t stupid. They

don’t act in a racist fashion simply out of blind prejudice. There are

much more substantial causes — the system of white-skin privileges —

which lead them to behave in a selfish, exclusionary manner.

A Black steel worker told me that once, when he was working as a helper

on the unloading docks, he decided to bid on an operator’s job that was

open. All the operators were white. He had worked with them before in

his capacity as helper. They had been friends, had eaten together and

chatted about all the things that workers talk about. When he bid on the

operator’s job, it became the task of the other operators to break him

in. He was assigned to the job, and sent to work with them on the

equipment, and given thirty days to learn the job. It quickly became

clear to him that the other workers had no intention of permitting him

to get that job. They operated the equipment in such a way as to prevent

him from learning how. Workers are very skilled at that sort of thing.

After two weeks, one of the white workers came to him and said, “Listen,

I know what’s going on here. You work with me on Monday and I’ll break

you in.” The person who told me this story agreed — at least there was

one decent white worker in the bunch. Friday afternoon came around, and

the white worker approached him. With some embarrassment, he admitted

that he had to back down from his offer. “It’s bad enough when all the

guys call me a n— lover, but when my own wife quits talking to me, well

I just can’t go through with it.”

The man who told me that story never succeeded in getting that job.

What made those white workers act in the way they did? They were willing

to be “friends” at the workplace, but only on the condition that the

Black worker stay in “his place.” They didn’t want him to “presume” to a

position of social equality if and when they met on “the outside.” And

they didn’t want him to presume to share in the better jobs at the

workplace. Those white workers understood that keeping themselves in

“their place” in the company scheme of things depended upon helping to

keep the Black worker in “his place.”

They had observed that whenever the Black people force the ruling class,

in whole or in part, to make concessions to racial equality, the ruling

class strikes back to make it an equality on a worse level of conditions

than those enjoyed by the whites before the concessions. The white

workers are thus conditioned to believe that every step toward racial

equality necessarily means a worsening of their own conditions. Their

bonus is cut. Production rates go up. Their insurance is harder to get

and more expensive. Their garbage is collected less often. Their

children’s schools deteriorate.

This is how the white-skin privilege system works. If a small number of

white workers do manage to see through the smoke screen and join in the

fight together with the Black workers, the ruling class responds with

bribes, cajolery, threats, violence and pressure multiplied a thousand

fold to drive the thinking whites back into the “club” of white

supremacists. And the purpose of all this is to prevent the white

workers from learning the Black example, to prevent them from learning

that if Blacks can force concessions from the boss through struggle, how

much more could be accomplished if the white workers would get into the

struggle against the boss instead of against the Black workers.

A common approach to the problem posed above is that of the white

radical who goes into a shop which has a typical pattern of

discrimination against Black workers. Instead of directly taking up that

issue and attempting to build a struggle for equality, he looks for some

issue, like speedup, which affects all workers to one degree or another.

He aims to develop a struggle around this issue, to involve all the

workers in the struggle. He hopes that in the course of the struggle the

white workers, through contact with Blacks, will lose their attitudes of

racial superiority. This is the approach to the problem of unifying the

working class which prevails within the radical movement today.

I don’t think it works. History shows it doesn’t work. The result of

this sort of false unity always leaves the Black worker still on the

bottom. It always seems to be the demand for racial equality, the last

one on the list, that is sacrificed in order to reach a settlement and

celebrate the “great victory” of the struggle.

Present-day unions are, to a considerable extent, the end product of

this sort of approach. It is Black and white together on the picket

line, and after the strike is over the white workers return to the

skilled trades, the machining departments and the cleaner assembly

areas, and the Black workers return to the labor gang and the open

hearth. Every “victory” of this kind feeds the poison of racism and

pushes further off the real unity of the working class which must be

established if significant progress is to be made.

There is no way to overcome the national and racial divisions within the

working class except by directly confronting them. The problem of white

supremacy must be fought out openly within the working class.

HUG THE CHAINS OF AN ACTUAL WRETCHEDNESS

Over eighty years ago, Tom Watson, the Georgia agrarian protest leader,

wrote the following words, full of profound meaning:

You might beseech a Southern white tenant to listen to you upon

questions of finance, taxation and transportation; you might demonstrate

with mathematical precision that herein lay his way out of poverty into

comfort; you might have him “almost persuaded” to the truth, but if the

merchant who furnished his farm supplies (at tremendous usury) or the

town politician (who never spoke to him except at election times) came

along and cried “Negro rule,” the entire fabric of reason and common

sense which you had patiently constructed would fall, and the poor

tenant would joyously hug the chains of an actual wretchedness rather

than do any experimenting on a question of mere sentiment ... the

argument against the independent movement in the South may be boiled

down into one word — nigger.

These words are as true today as when they were first written. They

apply with equal force to workers as well as to farmers, and the truth

of them is not limited to the South. Ted Allen has put it that white

supremacy is the keystone of ruling class power, and the white-skin

privilege is the mortar that holds it in place.

There are two points in what I have been saying so far that are

distinctive and that I wish to emphasize.

The first point is that, for revolutionary strategists, the key problem

is not the racism of the employing class, but the racism of the white

worker. (After all, the boss’s racism is natural to him because it

serves his class interests.) It is the support by white workers for the

employers’ racial policies which represents the chief obstacle to all

social progress in this country, including revolution.

The second point is that this support has its basis in real conditions

of life. It is not simply a matter of ignorance and prejudice, to be

overcome by exhortation and appeals to reason.

The second question I wish to take up is: where does socialism come

from?

TO IMPOSE ORDER ON CHAOS

In their daily activities, working people express the drive to

reorganize society so that they become the masters of production instead

of the servants of production — the essential meaning of Socialism. I

would like to cite a few examples of this striving of workers.

One of the characteristics of steel production is that it must be

continuous: to stop the furnaces is a costly and time-consuming

operation. (I heard a story that once in Colorado around 1912 the IWW

pulled a strike at a steel mill and, instead of banking the furnaces,

simply walked off the job. According to the story, that furnace stands

today, over sixty years later, with a solid block of iron inside of it,

unusable.)

Steel is a continuous operation and has to be maintained that way. What

the steel companies do is operate a system of three shifts, and a system

of relief on the job: a worker can’t leave the job until his relief

shows up. The workers take advantage of this in various ways. There is

one mill I know of in which the workers have organized a rotation system

among themselves, in which they take turns calling off, allowing the

person they are scheduled to relieve eight hours overtime in their

place. There are a couple of dozen people involved in this, they have it

organized in turns and it would probably take a professional

mathematician several weeks of studying attendance records to figure out

their system. It allows each worker to get an extra day off every few

weeks, and then receive, in his turn, an enlarged paycheck — without

working a single hour more than normal. You see, the company posts its

schedule of work, and then the workers proceed to violate it and impose

their own.

Of course they don’t have everything their own way. When the absenteeism

gets too severe the company cracks down and threatens reprisals, and the

workers are forced to slack off for a while. Then, when the heat is off,

they go back to their own schedule.

Another example. One of the characteristics of the capitalist scheme of

production is the division between maintenance and production workers.

This is universal under capitalism. There is one category of workers who

perform the same operation minute after minute for their entire lives,

and another category of workers who go around fixing machines when they

break down. In the United States this division has been adapted to serve

the system of white-skin privileges. White workers are generally given

preference for the jobs in maintenance, which are usually easier,

cleaner, more interesting and higher paying than production jobs.

The workers respond to this division in ways that at first sight seem

bewildering. When they get angry at the company, production workers will

not perform the simplest and most routine maintenance task. They will

stop an entire operation waiting for a maintenance worker to change a

fuse.

A Black worker in maintenance, one of the few, told this story. He was

called to repair a piece of equipment that had failed. Unable to locate

the trouble, he called his foreman to help. The foreman was also unable

to find the trouble, and so he called a higher-up. They stood around for

a while scratching their heads and then decided to go back to the office

and study the schematic drawings of the equipment to see if they would

reveal the trouble. After the foremen had left, the Black maintenance

worker asked the production worker, who was also Black, what was wrong

with the machine. He replied that he had thrown the wrong switch by

mistake and blown some obscure control device. He pointed it out, after

swearing the maintenance worker to secrecy, and it was fixed in three

minutes. His attitude was — no one had asked him what was wrong, and if

they treated him like a dope he would act like a dope.

This is one side of the workers’ response to the arbitrary

maintenance-production split. On the other hand, they make efforts to

overcome the barriers in their way, to master the entire process of

production in order to express their full human capacities. Production

workers do everything they can to learn about their equipment. On some

occasions they go to great lengths to make repairs themselves without

calling the maintenance department.

Maintenance workers also show this striving to break down artificial

barriers. Many times they voluntarily grab a shovel or perform other

tasks which are outside of their job requirements. But if the foreman

orders them to do it, they will curse him and refuse.

These efforts by both production and maintenance workers to break down

the barriers erected between them represent the striving of working

people to master the equipment which makes the things they need, to gain

control over the work process so that labor itself becomes a source of

satisfaction to them.

There are many other examples that indicate the efforts of workers to

impose their order on the chaos of capitalist production. If we want to

know what socialism in the United States will look like, we should

carefully study the activities of the working people today, because the

ingredients of the socialist society appear right now in embryonic,

subordinated ways.

THE ULTIMATE EXPLOITED

Now I must tie together the two lines of argument I have been pursuing

so far, and pose the question — where does the Black struggle fit into

all this? Please note: by Black struggle I mean the autonomous Black

movement. I do not mean any particular organization, although a number

of organizations are part of it. I am referring to the tendency on the

part of large numbers of Black people, especially workers, to find ways

of acting together independent of white control and white approval, and

to decide their course of action based simply on what they feel is good

for Black people, not what serves some so-called larger movement.

The elements of such an autonomous Black movement exist. They are

repressed and subordinated, just as the autonomous efforts of workers

generally are repressed. The conscious and determined efforts of the

white ruling class to flood the Black community with drugs are one

indication of the serious threat the Black movement poses to official

society.

In spite of all the efforts of the ruling class to suppress it, the

Black movement exists. How does it fit into the general movement of all

the oppressed to revolutionize society? I wish to make three points.

First of all, the Black workers are the ultimate exploited in this

country. They have no possibility of rising as a group to oppress anyone

else. In spite of what many whites think about such subjects as welfare,

Black people receive no favors as a group from the capitalist class.

In the second place, the daily activities of the Black people,

especially the Black workers, are the best existing model for the

aspirations of the workers generally as a distinct class of people.

Other groups in society, when they act collectively on their own,

usually represent partial and occasionally even reactionary interests.

The activities of the Black workers are the most advanced outpost of the

new society we seek to establish.

THE CHALLENGE TO WHITE WORKERS

In the third place, the autonomous movement of Black people poses a

constant challenge to white workers to, in the words of C. L. R. James,

“take the steps which will enable the working people to fulfill their

historic destiny of building a society free of the domination of one

class or one race over another.”

The Black movement poses a challenge, not merely to white workers in

general, but to those white intellectuals, workers or not, who regard

themselves as in some sense radical or revolutionary. This is a

challenge which, in the past, they have generally not lived up to. This

challenge is not something limited to history either; it continually

comes up, in new ways as well as old ones. Let me offer a few examples.

The system of seniority was originally fought for by the unions as a

defense against individual favoritism and arbitrary discipline by the

boss. Through a fairly involved process, seniority has been adapted to

serve the needs of white supremacy. The boss decided whom to hire first,

and the seniority system placed the union label on the practice of

relegating Blacks to the status of “last hired, first fired.” As Black

workers press forward with their demands for full equality in all

spheres of life, they increasingly come into conflict with the seniority

system and other devices which uphold white supremacy, such as certain

types of tests, and so forth. The white workers often react defensively.

In many cases they insist that their resistance is not due to any

prejudice against Black people, but is merely an objection to bypassing

what has become the regular procedure for advancement. On more than one

occasion, Black workers have forced the employer to open a new job area

to them, only to run up against the rigid opposition of white workers.

White revolutionaries must understand, and help the masses of white

workers to understand, that the interests of the entire working class

can only be served by standing firmly with the Black workers in such

cases.

Or consider the dispute over jobs in the construction trades, which

reached a peak several years ago in a number of cities, and is still

going on in some places. In Chicago it took the form of, on one side, a

community coalition led by Rev. C. T. Vivian, a number of elements

around SCLC and Operation PUSH, and various diverse forces from among

the Black community and youth, along with, apparently, some financial

backing from the Ford Foundation and the Chicago Northwestern Railway.

The aim of the struggle was to gain entrance for Blacks into the

construction trades. The means used was to surround various ongoing

construction sites with mass picketing in order to stop work on them

until Black workers were admitted in proportion to their numbers in the

city. On the other side was a united front of the construction unions

and contractors. Of course their defense was that they do not practice

racial discrimination; that Black workers simply had not applied for or

passed the tests for admittance.

What is the position of radicals to be in a case like this? There have

been arguments that the Ford Foundation and other such forces are using

the Black movement to weaken the construction unions and drive down the

cost of labor. That argument is not without validity; it is difficult to

believe that the Ford Foundation and the Chicago Northwestern Railway

are unselfishly interested in the cause of Black workers.

Some radical groups, from a lofty position of supposed objectivity, took

it upon themselves to advise the Black coalition that instead of

directing their struggle against the admittedly unfair assignment of

jobs, they should recognize the fact that there was s shortage of jobs

in construction and should join with the unions to expand the number of

jobs, which would benefit Black as well as white and avoid the danger of

“dividing the working class” as the present struggle was allegedly

doing. This, of course, was merely a radical-sounding version of the

argument given by the construction unions and contractors themselves,

who would welcome any support from any quarter which offered to expand

the industry.

The response of the Black masses to this argument was to press forward

the struggle to open those jobs up or shut them down. Their actions

showed their confidence that it was they who were using the Ford

Foundation and not the other way around, and that as for the problems of

the construction industry, these could not be of concern to them until

they became part of it.

Some listeners may sense the justice in what I have been arguing, and at

the same time question its practicability. Wherein lies the basis for

establishing solidarity among the working class? Is it possible to

expect white workers to repudiate privileges which are real in the

interests of something so abstract as justice?

POISON BAIT

The answer is that the system of white-skin privileges, while it is

undeniably real, is not in the interests of white workers as part of a

class which aims at transforming society to its roots. The acceptance of

a favored status by white workers binds them to wage slavery, makes them

subordinate to the capitalist class. The repudiation, that is, the

active rejection, through struggle, of this favored status is the

precondition for the participation by white workers in the struggle of

workers as a distinct social class. A metaphor which has been used in

the past, and which I still find appropriate, is that white-skin

privileges are poison bait, a worm with a hook in it. To be willing to

leap from the water to exert the most determined and violent efforts to

throw off the hook and the worm is the only way to avoid landing on the

dinner table.

Let me offer a historical parallel. Back in the 1930’s when people were

organizing the CIO, one of the problems they had to face was that many

workers in the plants had worked out a means of survival which consisted

of gaining advancement for themselves in return for favors for the boss.

Old timers still talk about how, back in the days before the union, if

you wanted a promotion or even wanted to keep your job in the event of a

layoff, you had to mow the boss’s lawn or wash his car or give him a

bottle of whiskey at Christmas. In order to bring a union into those

plants, that sort of activity had to be defeated. It was undeniably true

that those who washed the foreman’s car were the last workers laid off.

On what basis was it possible to appeal to the workers to renounce this

sort of behavior which they felt was necessary to their survival? The

basis of the appeal was that it was precisely that sort of behavior

which bound them and subordinated them to the company, and that the

interests of solidarity of the entire work force demanded the

repudiation of such individual arrangements.

The appeal fell on deaf ears until it began to seem that there was a

real possibility of making some basic changes in those plants. Until the

CIO was present as a real force, until the momentum built up, until

people began to feel that there was another way to live besides mowing

the boss’s lawn, they were not willing to repudiate the old way.

Today, as a result of the CIO, in vast areas of American industry, any

worker who was suspected of doing the sorts of favors for the foreman

that were once taken for granted would be ostracized and treated with

cold contempt by his fellow workers. (Some people may argue that the

previous statement is an exaggeration, and that the spirit of

togetherness and combativity has deteriorated over the years. To the

extent that they are right, it should be noted that this deterioration

is in large part due to the habit of subservience encouraged by the

general acceptance by white workers of racial privileges.)

The time will come when the masses of white workers in our country will

regard with disdain those among them who seek or defend racial

privileges, in the same way they now have only contempt for someone who

would wash the foreman’s car in return for preferential treatment.

A POWERFUL MAGNET

Today the Black movement represents an alternative to the dominant mode

of life in our country, in the same way the CIO represented an

alternative to the old way of life in the factory. The relations which

Black people, especially Black workers, have established among

themselves, and the culture which has arisen out of their struggle,

represent a model for a new society. The Black movement exercises a

powerful attraction on all those who come into contact with it.

Consider the matter of the position of women and relations between the

sexes. Black women, as a result of their struggle for freedom as Black

people, have achieved a great sense of their independence, not merely

from one man but from men in general. This has forced Black men to

accept a degree of independence for women that is rare in the rest of

the population. Anyone who has observed the changes undergone by white,

Latin or Asian women once they go to work and come into contact with

Black women can see the extent to which the old way of women’s

unquestioned subservience to man has been undermined. The men may resent

this process, but it is irreversible.

The rise in general working-class militancy, observed by everyone in the

last few years, is directly traceable to the influence of Black workers,

who are generally recognized by all, including white workers, as the

most militant and combative group of workers when it comes to taking on

the company. The Black workers are drawing on the experience they have

gained in their struggle for national freedom, and are beginning to

transmit the lessons of that struggle to the white workers with whom

they come in contact.

The same thing is true also for the insurgent movement within the

military, where the GI resistance, led by Black GIs, reached such

proportions that it forced major changes in official government policy.

This is true also for the insurgent movement within the prisons, where

the resistance and courage of Black prisoners has pulled whites into the

struggle for decent conditions and human dignity.

For decades, politics, to white workers, has been a dirty word. It has

meant nothing more than the right to choose every four years which gang

of thieves is going to loot the public treasury for the next four.

Beginning in 1955 with the Montgomery bus boycott, when an entire city

organized its own system of transportation as well as of public

discussion and decision-making through the direct participation of

thousands of people, the Black movement has created a new concept of

citizenship and community. Continuing through the sitins, freedom rides,

mass marches and urban rebellions, the Black movement has given new

meaning to politics, and helped the American people in general to

rediscover their tradition of self-organization and revolt.

Many examples of this phenomenon could be cited from the only community

in this country whose members greet each other as brother and sister.

But the point is made: in spite of all the obstacles placed in its way,

the Black movement, expressed in the patterns of life arising from

struggle, represents a powerful magnetic pole to vast numbers of workers

looking for a way out of the mess which is modern life.

Recall, if you will, the anecdote with which I opened this talk: the

case of the white workers acting in solidarity with the Black crane

operators. Consider the position of the white workers in that case. They

are under conflicting pressures. On the one hand, they see a group of

workers preparing to strike a blow at the company and, like all workers

everywhere, they want to deal themselves in, to hit back at the enemy

which is oppressing them. On the other hand, to join with the Black

workers in such a situation means turning against habit, against

tradition, against their own status as racially privileged workers.

They are faced with a choice, between their identity and interests as

whites and their identity and interests as workers. What was it that

made that particular group of workers in that situation decide, in the

words of one activist, to be “more worker than white”?

Their actions can only be explained by the fact that, whether or not

they express it in words, the Black movement represented for them an

alternative way of life, a way that was better and more attractive than

the usual passive, subordinated life they were accustomed to. Anyone who

has ever taken part in collective struggle knows that, regardless of how

they may have acted afterwards, the experience left a lasting impression

on them.

What about the tasks of revolutionaries, and in particular white

revolutionaries, in regard to this vital task of unifying the working

class around its class interests?

Things have changed in the last twenty years. It is no longer possible

for any group which claims to be revolutionary to openly oppose the

Black movement. Not if it hopes to have any following. There are one or

two groups in the country that do, but nobody pays any attention to

them. The point today is to define the relation between the Black

movement and the general class struggle. And that is where the

differences come out.

Everybody in the movement is opposed to racism, everybody chants the

litany that racism is the greatest barrier to class unity. Every group

puts out propaganda against racism and sincerely strives to win the

workers to the struggle against it.

But what about those cases where the struggle of Black workers and Black

people against racial discrimination appears to conflict with the desire

to unify the largest possible number of workers behind what are called

“general class demands”? For example, as sometimes happens, when the

aggressiveness of Black workers in pursuing their fight for equality

tends to alienate white workers who might be willing to join with them

in common efforts to achieve some reform of immediate and direct benefit

to both groups? Then the trouble begins. And we must admit that some

left-wing groups, especially those dominated by whites, are all too

willing to set aside the special demands of the Black struggle.

A BAD CHOICE

A recent example of this might serve to clarify the difference between

the two approaches. At a large electrical appliance manufacturing plant

in Chicago, one of the radical groups, the Revolutionary Union, sent a

few people in. The radicals began putting out a plant newsletter which

raised the issues of speedup, safety, low wages — all the various

grievances of the workers — and also carried on a fairly aggressive

campaign against racial discrimination, against the exclusion of Black

workers from the better departments, etc.

The group managed to build up considerable support, most of it among

Black workers, which wasn’t surprising since Black workers made up

almost half the work force and were most victimized by the oppressive

conditions the group was agitating against.

After some time had passed, the strategists in the group who, it is safe

to surmise, were the white radicals who had initiated it along with one

or two newly radicalized workers from the plant, decided that, as a

tactic, they ought to try and throw out the present union, the

International Association of Machinists, which is one of the worst

unions in the Chicago area, and bring in the United Electrical Workers

union. That is the UE, the old left-led union expelled in 1949 from the

CIO and still under what is called progressive leadership.

Anyhow, they took a group of workers down to the UE hall and met with

the organizers there. The staff people were delighted that they were

interested in bringing in the UE, but they observed that there weren’t

enough white workers in the committee. If they ever hoped to win the

plant for the UE, they would have to involve more white workers in the

organizing effort.

That was certainly a logical effort. And so, what did the group do? They

went back into the plant and began campaigning for the UE, using the

newsletter as their chief vehicle. But now there was a change. The main

aim became to reach the white workers, and so the line of the newsletter

now became: all workers unite, the boss makes no distinction between

Black and white, do not let race feeling divide us, bringing in the UE

will benefit us all, our interests are all the same, etc. As for the

exposures of racial discrimination and the campaign to abolish it in the

plant, which had occupied so much of the group’s attention prior to the

decision to bring in the UE, that was laid aside in the interests of

appealing to the broadest number of workers who could be won to the

immediate goal, getting a better union.

What is there to say about a story like this? What is there to do

besides shake your head? Doesn’t this represent, in capsule form, the

whole history of labor movement in this country — the radicalization of

the workers followed by the capitulation, on the part of the leadership,

to the backward prejudices of the white workers? How many times does

this experience have to be repeated? Apparently an infinite number until

we learn the lesson.

By the way, the upshot of the organizing campaign was that the group

didn’t succeed in. fooling any white workers; they still considered it a

Black power group and kept it at arm’s length. But it did succeed in

cooling the enthusiasm of the Black workers who were its initial base.

Was there an alternative course that could have been followed in the

particular situation? I think there was.

NOTHING LESS THAN A TOTAL CHANGE

The alternative would have been to encourage the group along its

original lines, determined to fight consistently against white Supremacy

regardless of what came up or came down — to develop the group as the

core of a fighting movement in the plant that carried out struggles on

the shop floor around all issues of concern to its members, including

the issue of racial discrimination.

It’s probably true that such a group could not have been a majority

movement at the beginning, or perhaps even for a considerable length of

time. Most likely, as the group pushed firmly against racial

discrimination it would alienate some white workers who could have been

won to it otherwise. That’s a choice that has to be made. The group in

the plant made the wrong choice.

I think that a group such as I describe, made up perhaps in the

beginning almost entirely of Black workers, could have developed as a

center of struggle in the plant, and a center of opposition to the

company and the rotten union. As time went on, it could have attracted

to itself white workers who were so fed up with their situation that

they were looking for radical solutions — and would even identify with a

“Black radical” outfit, so long as it seemed to offer a way out of the

mess they were in. The very things which would make such a group

repulsive to some workers would make it attractive to that increasing

number of workers, Black as well as white, who are coming to sense that

nothing less than a total change is worth fighting for.

The course I advocate offers great difficulties — no doubt about it. It

is likely that the repression directed against a radical group that

relentlessly fought racial discrimination would be greater than against

a more moderate group. It is possible that a group such as I describe

could never have gained admittance into the UE. I freely concede all the

difficulties. But then, who ever said that making a revolution was easy?

As for the alternative, the course that was actually followed, we know

all too well where that leads.

THE STEWARD’S POSITION

by Sojourner Truth Organization

Workplace Papers

1973

In recent weeks a number of people at work have suggested that I run for

shop steward and replace the one we presently have, whom most of the

workers find inadequate. This is not the first time the question has

come up, but now it calls for a decision on my part. My tentative

decision was no. I told people this but also said I would think about

it. I have been thinking about it and talking to other members of the

organization. I have come to the conclusion that it would be counter to

our goal of building independent workers organizations and the best

revolutionary strategy for me to take the steward’s position. In this

paper I will argue that this is the correct decision, not only for my

situation, but for any communist doing workplace organizing anywhere in

the U.S., regardless of company, industry or union.

THE MOST OBVIOUS THING TO DO ...

For the revolutionary who is doing production work it may at first seem

obvious that if the majority of people in the department want him/her to

be the shop steward he/she should do so. The call itself is the

recognition that he/she is a militant fighter and respected by his/her

fellow workers. To refuse would seem to be withdrawing from the fight.

If the reasons why are not adequately explained, the workers will not

understand and the revolutionary might lose creditability.

And as shop steward the revolutionary would have a number of advantages.

It would be easier to organize job actions, newsletters, committees,

etc. because he/she would be the recognized leadership in the shop. The

steward has more mobility and access to information about the company

and the union. And through union functions he/she will have contact with

other stewards who are likely to be militants.

But these are just tactical advantages. None of them are absolutely

necessary for good work. None of them are things that can’t be gotten

around or accomplished in other ways, with difficulty perhaps, but done

nonetheless. And it is best that they be done in other ways because the

steward’s position has such strategic limitations that it is much more

of a hindrance than a help in building revolutionary class

consciousness.

Before we can discuss the validity of the above statement, we need a

strategic perspective by which we can analyze and discuss the various

pros and cons of the communist as shop steward. Below is my

understanding of the theory upon which we base our strategy of working

mainly outside of the trade union structure and building independent

workers organizations based on the shop floor.

ANOTHER SIDE TO THIS LIFE ...

The consciousness of working people is made up of many competing and

complimentary forces, each of which finds its material base in bourgeois

society. Some of these, like individualism or white supremacy, are a

product of a particular culture or privileges to a part of the class.

Many are even more transitory, rooted in a particular area or era. But

there are two forces within the consciousness of working people which

are so general and important that they deserve to be called class

consciousness. They both find their roots in the capitalist mode of

production, and are a result of the roles workers play as wage earners

on one hand and as producers on the other.

Trade union consciousness is based in the role workers play in

capitalism as wage earners. Its practical manifestation in workers’

activity is the struggle for better terms in the sale of labor to the

capitalist. While it does struggle to better the conditions of the lives

of workers, it accepts the permanence and legitimacy of capitalism.

Trade union consciousness does not go further than that to call for a

change in the system because it is based in transitory fact, the present

relationships of production.

Revolutionary consciousness is not a higher form of trade union

consciousness. It’s not trade union consciousness taken one step

further. It is the consciousness of workers as producers. It finds its

motivating forces precisely because, as Marx put it, the forces of

production (workers) find the present relationships of production to be

a fetter. Since it is based in permanent fact — workers are producers —

it drives toward the understanding that production, and society, can be

better organized by the autonomous power of the producers without the

capitalist class.

In normal times the revolutionary aspects of workers’ consciousness

remain submerged. The sale of labor is fact, while the possibilities of

society organized by producers is just that, a possibility. But often in

instances of mass activity and class struggle the revolutionary aspects

of workers’ consciousness come to the fore. And even in more normal

times their manifestations can be seen in the daily activity of workers.

WHERE DO WE FIT IN?

The primary tasks of communists are to separate out those autonomous

aspects of class consciousness from those features which accept class

rule, to bring to the fore those aspects of revolutionary class

consciousness and crystallize them into a world view that seeks to

change capitalist property relationships and organize production in the

interest of the producers, and to build organizations that embody the

working class’s ability to function as a potential ruling class.

BETTER JOB, BIGGER MONEY TOO ...

Trade unions are the organizational manifestation of trade union

consciousness, and even at their best they do not go beyond it. Even

when trade union demands go beyond the pure economics of wages and hours

to issues of health and safety, speed up and seniority, they are demands

for better conditions in the sale of labor and nothing more. The

struggles for these demands, even when they reach mass proportions,

remain well within the capitalist framework. This is not to deny the

importance of these struggles for a better price; within them, divisions

within the working class can be combatted, the self-confidence of the

workers will increase, and a solid and united class can be forged. But

left to itself, trade union consciousness or its organizational

manifestations do not go far enough.

It is from this theory that we see the need to build independent

organizations in the workplace — organizations which not only attempt to

defend the day-to-day interest of workers under capitalism, but see as

their main focus (or at least the primary focus of the revolutionaries

involved) the preparation that is needed to seize state power.

It is from this perspective of building independent workers

organizations and the theory behind them that we should look at the

question of the steward’s position. I will argue that it is counter to a

strategy of building independent workers organizations and a hindrance

to building revolutionary class consciousness.

A SECOND LOOK AT THE STEWARD’S POSITION

Every shop steward I have ever known has performed two separate

functions to a greater or lesser degree. First, he/she has defended

workers in their day-to-day struggle with management. Usually he/she is

just enforcing the contract, but occasionally trying to expand its

meaning or even going beyond it. He/ she derives his/her power to do so

from the contract, union, and the legal structure behind them, and in

rare cases from his/her ability to mobilize support on the shop floor.

He/she also derives a great deal of his/ her ability to win grievances

because of the second function he/she performs — enforcing labor

discipline for the boss.

In the microcosm of the department, the shop steward is subject to the

same dynamics of the trade union compromise that the union is. Except to

the extent that he/she is able to win grievances on a strictly legal

basis, his/her ability to win victories on the shop floor is closely

tied to his/her ability and willingness to keep his/her people in line.

Perhaps the dynamics of this can be better understood by examining some

not-so-hypothetical situations.

A foreman sends a worker home early for not wearing safety shoes. The

steward wins back pay for the man because the contract does not specify

safety shoes. But he tells the man in the grievance meeting that he

should know better next time and won’t have any defense.

Some people on a particular job complain about safety hazards. The

steward argues with them that the job is not really that dangerous and

is only of a short duration anyway. On another job the men have stopped

work because of safety conditions. Before the foreman does anything

himself, he goes and gets the steward, who convinces the men to go back

to work. In a third case the same steward is able to get an unsafe

condition corrected merely by making it clear he is going to fight it.

Someone asks the steward if he can get out of working overtime since the

company has posted it incorrectly and instead of an answer receives a

lecture about why he should help the company out by working it anyway.

The steward is then able to get someone else relief from overtime even

though there is no contract violation by pleading hardship.

The steward informs a worker, who is bragging to his co-workers about a

victory in a particularly important grievance, that he shouldn’t say

anything because it will make it harder for him to win again if

management knows people will make a big thing out of it.

A person has come in late, drunk, has missed too many days, has turned

out bad work, etc., and is about to be disciplined for it. The steward

gets the man off by saying he will talk to the man and it won’t happen

again.

Management is willing to allow the steward to win some victories because

he is performing the important function of keeping his people in line.

Management understands that the steward will be unable to maintain

discipline unless he is able to deliver some victories to his people,

and the steward will win victories only so long as he delivers something

of value to the bosses.

ALTERNATIVES

I have been talking here about how stewards usually operate. It is a

product of forces on the shop floor to which any who accepts the

legitimacy of capitalism is likely to fall prey. It is by no means the

only method of operations which the steward is limited to. In fact I

find the acceptance of the trade union compromise by communists so

unthinkable that I won’t deal with it further as a real alternative.

Instead I will look at two other ways in which the steward can attempt

to defend the day-to-day interest of the workers he was elected to

serve. As stewards, we would probably be using some combination of the

two.

The first is the legal defense of workers, by which I mean the use of

the contract, grievance procedure, arbitration, and NLRB to defend

workers. This method limits itself to defending gains already won in the

contract. Since it is dependent on bourgeois legality, it is inadequate

for raising demands that go beyond bourgeois legality. Its narrow

dependence on expertise and skill run counter to the needs of building

workers’ self-confidence. And in the practical sense, it is almost

wholly dependent on the support of the union to be effective, a factor

which the revolutionary can not count on.

The second and more obviously revolutionary method of defending workers

is to depend on the mass activity of the workers involved. Direct action

on the shop floor, or the threat of it, in the day-today defense of

workers is a large part of the best revolutionary strategy whether one

is a steward or not. But for the communist steward there is a rub.

THE REVOLUTIONARY STEWARD

The workers elected the communist to the steward’s position because they

believe that he/she would be better able to defend their interest on the

shop floor. The communist has shown him/herself to be a militant and

consistent fighter in the defense of the workers. He/she has some good

ideas about how to go about things and is knowledgeable about workings

of the company and the union.

There are also some more backward motivations that must be considered as

having more or less weight in the specific situation. The call to become

steward may not be a push for militant leadership so much as it is a

call for someone who can better take care of business for them. This

particular aspect of backwardness is part of the push for all

inter-union work, and since the union, with its dependence on expertise,

only serves to reinforce those feelings, it is a particularly bad arena

in which to combat them. To the extent that the push is for someone to

“take care of business,” the communist steward is immediately faced with

the task of turning the steward’s position into something it is not — a

leadership position. Another reason why workers would want many of us to

be the steward is because of our superior ability to verbalize ourselves

and deal with things like contract legality — a product of our

educational and class background, and the over-emphasis workers place on

those qualities.

In any case, if it is not the popularity contest it often is, workers

elect the person they think can best defend their immediate interests.

Now if the communist could consistently defend their interest by relying

on the mass activity of the workers, there would be no problem. But if

the workers are able to consistently defend their interest through mass

activity, and have the level of consciousness and organization that that

implies, the question of shop steward becomes a moot one.

In anything short of a revolutionary period, mass activity is likely to

be sporadic at best; here today, gone tomorrow; coalescing around some

issues and not around others. So that the shop steward will be unable to

provide a consistent defense of the workers based on mass activity, and

if he/she tends to rely more and more on legal defenses, he/she teaches

bad political lessons. Also, since the tactics of a revolutionary

steward will come more and more into conflict with the collaborationist

role of the union, it is unlikely that, over time, he/she will receive

the support of the union necessary for even a minimal defense of the

contract through the grievance procedure.

No matter where he/she turns, the communist steward is likely to find

that he/she can not consistently defend the workers and still provide

the best revolutionary leadership in the shop — a fact that both the

company and the union will make full use of in teaching the lessons they

want the workers to learn.

Of course if the revolutionary is not a shop steward, he/she will still

face the same objective limitations, but in this case he/she can pick

his/her own turf. He/she can fight around some issues and not around

others, and he/she does not bear the burden of winning or losing every

grievance that comes up in the shop. He/she can fight around issues that

have mass support but not be expected to win every grievance.

There is also something of a safety in having someone else be steward.

When the revolutionary rises to the leadership in any mass struggle, or

his strategy is adopted, it is because the workers support a new way of

doing things — not because as steward he has foreclosed on the old way.

To be sure, the revolutionary who runs for shop steward should make

his/her politics clear. He/she should try to make it clear that he/she

does not accept the compromise and intends to do things in a new way.

But I submit that no matter how much we prattle about socialism,

workers’ control, direct action and the limitations of trade unionism,

these ideas and especially their immediate implications will not be

clear to workers who have not fully thought them out and experienced

their own self-organization. When they elect us as stewards, they think

they are electing militant trade-unionist leadership, not revolutionary

leadership. They don’t think they are throwing the industrial compromise

out the window.

And it is unlikely that they will throw the compromise “out the window.”

In a shop where there is dual leadership — the trade-unionist steward on

the one hand, and the revolutionary cadre on the other — it is more

likely that for a long time they will vacillate between the two —

choosing now to fight the boss with direct action, choosing then to make

the compromise; choosing the leadership of the communist when they

decide that, in this case, they want a new way to do things, and not

when they feel the old way will suffice. It is inconceivable that the

communist as steward can do things either way according to the

inclination of the workers and still represent a clear alternative to

the old way.

ONE STEP BACKWARDS, TWO STEPS BACKWARDS ...

Even with all these limitations, taking the steward’s position might be

seen as an interesting experiment if it did not carry with it certain

long-term liabilities.

Taking the union position, no matter what is said about its limitations,

will make the union a more important area of his/her work and teach

people that he/she thinks changes can be made through the union

structure. People learn as much, or more, from what you do than from

what you say. It is likely that a lot more people in the shop will hear

that a revolutionary took a union position than will ever hear him/her

talk about the limitations of work within trade unions. I don’t argue

that communists must abstain from work within the unions, but that we

shouldn’t consciously push the work in that direction. The relatively

low level of consciousness and self-confidence of the working class

assures that more than enough work will be done in the trade unions. The

task that falls to communists is to consistently point out the

limitations of that work and devise alternatives to it.

If the revolutionary steward is seen as a good fighter who is failing

because the union won’t back him/her, then the problem will be seen not

so much as a result of the inherent contradictions of the trade union

compromise as it will be seen as bad leadership higher up. What is

likely to develop then is a demand for a strategy of taking over the

union.

In any case, it is likely that the revolutionary steward who doesn’t

compromise will do an even worse job of consistently defending the

workers than the steward who did. In this case he will either have to

step down or be removed, and the workers will learn, not that the

steward was a bad person, not the limitations of the trade union, but

that the steward’s revolutionary strategy was at fault.

ANOTHER APPROACH ...

The call to stewardship will probably be heard by any communist who is

doing good mass work. It should be accepted for what it is, a

recognition that the communist is a fighter and a call to take a greater

role of leadership. It is framed in the steward’s position because it is

the only type of leadership position currently in existence.

To the extent that it is a call to leadership, the communist should

respond not by taking the steward’s position but by creating an

alternative to it.

If the demand that I become steward is raised again in a mass way around

election time, I will propose instead, making my position on the union

clear, that if a sufficient number of people desire it, I will act as a

representative of the workers in the department and intervene in

struggles on the shop floor by consciously trying to organize the

workers for their own defense. By making such a proposal I will deal

with the question in such a way that I won’t appear to be withdrawing

from the fight and lose creditability. And if such a proposal is

accepted, I can be a clear alternative to the leadership of the steward

and bring people closer to developing their autonomous power.

Trade Unions/Independent Organizations

by Don Hamerquist

Workplace Papers

1973

PRODUCTION WORK

Our ideas and our practice of workplace organizing have undergone a good

deal of changing since we originally laid out some assumptions and

directions in the Call to Organize (1970). On some points the change has

occurred through a continuing consensus. For example, we have abandoned

our original stress on cross-plant workers organizations as unworkable

and unnecessary, and although this change has never been formally

recognized, it is generally understood and accepted. However, there are

many much more important questions where we now recognize that our

initial positions were inadequate, misleading, and even wrong, and where

we have not developed adequate and accurate alternatives. More

specifically, these questions concern the assessment of trade unions and

the strategic conception of independent workers organizations that are

both mass and revolutionary. On these questions we haven’t drifted in

one common direction, leaving only the minor task of stating formally

where we are and how we have gotten there. Instead, we are spreading out

all over the political landscape and developing numbers of divergent and

possibly incompatible tendencies.

A CRITICAL CONTEXT

A review of some of the basic points in our production work perspective

helps to clarify both its strengths and some of the sources of its

weaknesses. We began from an emphasis on the strategic significance of

divisions within the working class, pre-eminently the division between

white and non-white workers. On the one hand this division was presented

as an obstacle to the development of revolutionary class consciousness

and organization which had to be directly confronted on a programmatic

level by communists ... at the expense of the relative advantages of

white male workers. On the other hand, the special oppression which was

the source of these divisions also provided grievances and issues for

mass movements and struggles which could add — and had added —

tremendous strength and new political dimensions to the class struggle

in the workplace.

Our perspective stressed the need for mass organizations able to provide

a struggle framework for the direct actions of workers against

capitalists on their immediate needs and grievances. It opposed spending

energy on parliamentary maneuvering within the existing trade unions

with the argument that there was no connection between such work and the

development of an organizational framework for class struggle that some

seventy years of work by radicals within trade unions had uncovered.

Our perspective projected a conception of the revolutionary role of

communist organization which avoided the twin pitfalls of being the

“best” reformists, or of injecting consciousness from outside by

“educating” the workers about state, revolution, dictatorship, etc.

In opposition to all variations of these half-truths, we argued that

communists must discover and develop into a base for continuing struggle

the elements of workers’ collective experience which foreshadow

socialism, and that this required a direct challenge to the dominance of

bourgeois ideology, culture, and organization, within the working class.

The role of communists was not only to help workers comprehend the

systematic nature of their oppression and exploitation, but also to

clarify to them their collective potential to build a new society

without oppression and exploitation.

These positions were developed in a political context that has changed

dramatically since that time. Now, all left groups at least talk about

the importance of workplace organizing and some are even more guilty

than we are of seeing it as the end-all and beall of revolutionary

organizing. In the late sixties, however, all kinds of new left notions

about the docility and complacency of the working class still had

currency. Even more widespread were the ideas that working class people

could best be “organized” outside of the workplace ... in the streets,

or the schools, or the community, or the army. With all the mistakes and

exaggeration on that side of the debate, our mistaken romanticization of

the amount and the character of the spontaneous struggle within the

workplace is certainly understandable.

Furthermore, at that time the inner-union reform perspective which we

were attacking was pretty much the property of the Communist Party. This

C.P. variant was so vulnerable and easy to defeat (in left circles) that

it put little strain on us to examine our own assumptions rigorously.

Flabby arguments work against an unworthy opponent, and we were misled

into thinking that disproving the line of the C.P. was equivalent to

demonstrating the validity of our own position. Unfortunately, that is

not the case.

Finally, though, the members of STO had some individual experience in

production work, and some general knowledge of the experience of other

organizations — the C.P. and the POC — and we had no collective

experience of our own. Without such a base of collective experience, any

attempt to be more precise about the conditions, problems and potentials

of workplace organizing would probably have degenerated into exercises

in academic futility. Now, however, we both can and must elaborate our

perspective with a great deal more precision and comprehensiveness.

The point of this background review is to avoid the danger of

overlooking the basic points on which we were, and, I think, are still,

correct, and on which the great majority of the left is mistaken. This

can easily happen in the sort of thorough-going re-examination of a line

which is in order for our production perspective, if the context in

which it was developed is forgotten.

Trade Unions and TRADE UNIONS

The guts of our workplace organizing perspective is the analysis of

trade unions contained in the Call to Organize, Mass Organization at the

Workplace, and Reflections on Organizing. On the descriptive level,

these documents accurately depict current U.S. trade union reality, in

particular the weaknesses and limitations of attempts at union reform.

It is true that U.S. unions are so integrated into the capitalist

production process and political structure that their ability to defend

the immediate interests of their members has been seriously compromised.

In many instances the union structure and officialdom appears as a more

implacable and more effective enemy of the organization and struggle of

workers than does capital.

But such a description does not explain what caused the current state of

the trade unions in the U.S. It does not really deal with the question

of whether the process of degeneration was a necessary one or not, and

whether and how it can be reversed.

The question which we must ask is this: to what extent are the unions a

cause of the present backwardness of working class consciousness and

organization, and to what extent are they an effect — or, more

accurately, an index — of this backwardness?

The production papers imply a set of answers to this question, but these

implications of answers are vague and misleading at best. At worst, they

are just wrong.

The production papers picture unions as an immediate barrier to class

struggle, as a straitjacket on the workers’ tendency towards collective

activity and organization. Then, it is asserted that this role played by

the unions has led to such an alienation among the workers that

organizations which are independent of, and more or less hostile to,

trade unions should be able to gain a mass following quite easily. These

premises provide the foundation for the argument for the necessity of

mass organizations independent of the trade unions, as well as for the

assessment that such organizations will be viable.

The problems with such a position lie in a combination of an

overestimation of the current role of trade unions in this country with

an underestimation of the role that changed conditions would enable them

to play. From the beginning of our work, we have had practical evidence

that we were wrong in the assessment that the unions would be an

important initial obstacle to organizing workers along our perspective.

On the contrary, the reality of low levels of struggle, of primitive

forms of struggle, and of a sporadic and episodic character to struggle,

have been much more striking than has the ability of trade unions to

suppress struggle. Frankly, there isn’t all that much to suppress.

Generally our major problem has been to isolate and attack the factors

which inhibit the workers from initiating sustained collective struggle,

and the union is seldom an important one of these factors. This is

evident because these problems tend to be the greatest in situations

where the union is either non-existent (Motorola, B. & H., etc.) or

where the union is little more than an adjunct of management and most

workers scarcely realize that it exists until after they initiate a

struggle (S.W., Western Electric). In steel and auto, where the union

plays a much more important role in the worker’s life, there is

substantially more shop floor activity.

It is once struggles begin that the union is able to play a significant

role in diverting and containing them. In this way they provide a

barrier against sustained collective activity, and, generally speaking,

the “better” the union, the more significant the barrier. Nevertheless,

to repeat, this has not been much of a consideration in terms of the

major problems we have faced of initiating struggle. Beyond this, there

are obvious circumstances which make it possible for the unions to

absorb and dissipate struggles. So long as the class struggle is

manifested mainly in isolated and sporadic activities which are a break

in the routine of the job for the workers who participate, and so long

as reformism, individualism and, pre-eminently, white supremacy,

dominate working class consciousness without effective challenge, the

unions will be capable of continuing the class struggle. It is not at

all selfevident that unions would — or could — play the same role if

these negative factors were changed in the course of class struggle.

Finally, it is an analytic mistake of the first order to regard the

union structures and policies as a major cause of the social conditions

which allow them to suppress class struggle. They are a support, but

they are not the cause.

I want to argue for a different and, I think, more accurate conception

of trade unions. The following four points summarize my position on the

issues pertinent to this discussion:

1. Trade unions are a historically necessary instrument of the working

class to gain better terms in the sale of its labor power ... that is,

to enable groups of workers to enter the capitalist market with some

bargaining power. The viability of individual unions depends on two

factors. They must be able to win some concessions from capital to

maintain credibility with their membership. They must be able to enforce

their agreements with capital on their membership or management will

have no reason to recognize their legality. Both of these functions must

be fulfilled. If a union fails to perform either one for any substantial

time, it will lose its ability to fulfill the other and will eventually

lose its solvency. The inability to handle this dual function was at the

roots of the problems of such diverse union formations as the IWW and

the AFL in the late 20s and early 30s.

2. Trade unions vary tremendously between different capitalist states,

and to a lesser degree, between different sections and industries in a

given country. There are two general political conditions which explain

most of this variation. Where the ruling class has seen the necessity

and the utility of granting industrial legality to trade unions, the

pressure towards collaboration is maximized irrespective (pretty much)

of the political coloration of the union leadership. In most Western

European countries, the incorporation of the trade unions within the

political and economic structure — even when their leadership is

nominally communist — is the political policy of the decisive sections

of capital. In the U.S. only peripheral sections of capital have not

accommodated themselves to the existence of trade unions, but in those

areas which have not (the South, agriculture, etc.), trade union

struggles tend to go well beyond the routine of collective bargaining in

basic industry.

The role of the trade unions also varies in accordance with the

sharpness of contradictions and the resulting level of mass activity and

consciousness within a given country. More flexibility and

responsiveness is apparent in situations where there is a definite

revolutionary potential in the situation (consider Quebec). When this is

not the case, the unions tend to withdraw into their bureaucratic

structure and to smother any insurgent potential with all sorts of

barriers to mass participation and mass pressure.

These two points are rather obvious, but we have not always drawn the

necessary conclusion from them. That is, there is no inherent tendency

towards class collaboration either in the structure of unions or in the

necessities of their relationship with capital that is strong enough to

significantly counter-balance these, and other, considerations of the

relationship of class forces. If it happens that a specific trade union

is too rigid to respond to changing political conditions, as, for

example, the AFL of the early 30s was too rigid, then new trade union

forms will emerge — sometimes as a result of extensive conflict — which

are eventually incorporated within the overall trade union institution.

Neither the elasticity, nor the efficacy of any given trade union

structure, and more importantly, of trade unionism in general, can be

predicted independently of a concrete treatment of the political forces

and levels of consciousness. Unfortunately, we tended to characterize

unions and unionism in isolation from this political context, treating

characteristics which could well be accidental and temporary as

necessary and defining features of unionism.

3. Trade union reform is not a viable focus of revolutionary work. If

the conditions which make it possible for class collaborationist unions

and union leaders to exist are changed — first among which are the

general lack of collective struggle and the general hegemony of

bourgeois consciousness — then union reform will be a byproduct of this

change. However, the process will not work in reverse. Changes in union

leadership, structure, and policy have no inherent strategic

significance ... what appear to be reforms and reformers will turn into

new obstacles and new misleaders. More important, a political program

aimed at union reform is almost always a diversion from work aimed

directly at changing the terms and conditions of the class struggle.

4. No matter how responsive, progressive, militant, and even

revolutionary, trade unions are too limited a mass form in which to

accomplish the political work at the point of production essential in

the development of a revolutionary working class. Struggles may begin

within the trade union framework, but, for their full potential to be

realized, a framework must exist in which workers can begin to develop

an understanding of themselves, not just as underpaid and overworked

wage earners, but as a potential ruling class ... as producers without

whom there is no production.

(The balance of this section of the paper will be concerned with the

first two of these four points. Points three and four have been argued

for in a number of other documents and I think those arguments are

adequate. Therefore, the second major section of this paper —

independent organization — will not attempt to justify them at length

but, instead, will deal with how they should be implemented, given a

changed conception of trade unions and of the relationship between

independent organizations and trade unions.)

These four points rely heavily on the early Gramscian conceptions of

trade unions, workers councils, and the party. Gramsci’s conception of

the development of trade unions is relevant here.

Objectively, the trade union is the form that labour as a commodity

necessarily assumes in a capitalist regime when it organizes to dominate

the market ... to establish an advantageous balance between the working

class and the power of capital. The development of trade union

organization is characterized by two facts: 1. the union embraces an

ever larger number of workers; 2. the union concentrates and generalizes

its scope so that the power and discipline of the movement are focused

in a central office. This office detaches itself from the masses it

regiments, removing itself from the fickle eddy of moods and currents

that are typical of the great tumultuous masses. The union thus acquires

the ability to sign agreements and take on responsibilities, obliging

the entrepreneur to accept a certain legality in his relations with the

workers. This legality is conditional on the trust the entrepreneur has

in the solvency of the union, and in its ability to ensure that the

working masses respect their contractual obligations. The emergence of

industrial legality is a great victory for the working class, but it is

not the ultimate and definitive victory. Industrial legality has

improved the working class’s material living conditions, but it is no

more than a compromise — a compromise which had to be made and which

must be supported until the balance of forces favours the working class.

(Gramsci, Soviets In Italy, STO pamphlet, pp. 14–15.)

This is a very different conception of trade unions than the one

presented in our production papers. Specifically note the description of

industrial legality as a compromise which “had to be made” and which

“must be supported until the balance of forces favors the working

class.” Our attitude towards industrial legality (which we treated in

terms of its U.S. form, contract unionism) was always ambiguous. While

we implied that it once had been a positive gain for the working class,

our approach to current questions stressed only its negative aspects —

the acceptance of capitalist control of the production process totally

obscured the fact of a minimum floor under wages and conditions. More

important, when we cross over from the estimate of trade unions to our

projections concerning mass independent workers organizations, we

abandon any conception of the historic necessity of this compromise, or

of the necessity for revolutionaries to support it “until the balance of

forces favors the working class.” The assumption is that there would be

necessity for an independent organization to bind itself to a certain

“legality��� in its dealings with capital ... not even if the independent

organization succeeded in supplanting a union. But this could only be

the case if the balance of forces had swung permanently and decisively

towards the working class — which is clearly not the case. This lapse in

logic is the reason why our assertions that independent organizations

would not “sign contracts,” enter into “pension plans, etc.” have such

an arbitrary and Utopian character. It is mysticism, not Marxism, to

assert that through the simple substitution of a “good” organizational

form for a “bad” one, political problems which are rooted in the current

consciousness and behavior of the working class can be resolved. Of

course, our position did not argue this baldly, but, clearly, it was the

tendency.

Gramsci mentions that in Italy it was common for trade union officials

to regard industrial legality as a “permanent state of affairs,” not as

a temporary compromise, and to defend it ... “from the same viewpoint as

the proprietor ... seeing only chaos and wilfullness in everything which

emerges from the working masses.” This conservative character is evident

in this country in a particularly corrupted form, but it is a reality in

every capitalist state where the struggle for industrial legality is no

longer really in doubt, and the memory of that struggle fades in the

working class. This conservatism has deeper roots than the inherent

logic of the labor sale compromise which unions must enforce and

administer. Basically it rests in the proletarianization of the petty

bourgeoisie and the rural population, and the consequent erosion of the

mass political base for private property which had existed among these

strata.

As a consequence of these changes, it is hardly conceivable that the

mass pro-capitalist mobilization against the major labor struggles of

the late 19^(th) and early 20^(th) century — or even the Flint Alliance

of the Sit-Down Strike period — could be developed under present

conditions in the industrialized sections of the country. This makes the

ruling class much more dependent on its hegemony over the working class,

or, in other words, on developing political support for capital out of

working class false consciousness.

The growing necessity for this support is easy to see. At the same time,

as more and more social strata come into conflict with monopoly capital,

the growing concentration of capital is robbing all plausibility from

any ideas of the possibility of rising into the ruling class. As the

Manifesto pointed out, but as took a long time to become obvious in this

country, the important process under capitalism is not for workers to

“make it” out of the working class, but for rural people, small

proprietors, and professionals to be forced to sell their labor power in

order to survive. The dilemma for the ruling class is how to maintain

popular allegiance to a set of property relations in which the

overwhelming majority of the people have no conceivable vested interest.

This dilemma is particularly acute with respect to the working class

which, for a variety of reasons in this country, is not too beguiled by

any of the options available within the capitalist parliamentary

framework. So ways are needed to convince workers that their interests

are being represented, that they will get what they merit through the

system. It is here where the basic political role of the trade unions is

determined.

In all developed capitalist countries, the unions function to channel

every rebellious tendency into legalistic and quasi-parliamentary arenas

where the power and hegemony of capital is most difficult to isolate and

attack and where the workers have the most difficulty gaining a sense of

their own collective potential. In this country an even more important,

though related, function of unions is to freeze the divisions within the

working class which obstruct any real steps towards class unity by

institutionalizing the privileges of white male workers through job

category definitions and the seniority system, if not outright

exclusionism.

Though our position has always recognized the co-opting role played by

trade unions and the roots of this role in the necessities of capitalist

rule under current conditions, we have failed to clarify some

distinctions in the way this role is acted out. The general function of

trade unions is not the suppression of class struggle, it is the

containment of it within the framework of capital. The conservative role

of unions is not typically manifested through their becoming an

immediate barrier to the initiation of struggle, but through their

mediation of the struggle to prevent it from developing in revolutionary

directions. To repeat, this role is played by unions with relatively

“good” leadership as well as by those with overtly class

collaborationist and gangster leadership. In other countries, a similar

role is played by unions with leadership which proclaims itself to be

Marxist and revolutionary.

The production papers imply that unions are basically just a police arm

of the employer that is given some legitimacy by workers’ illusions.

This is an example of a conclusion drawn from the current practices and

characteristics of U.S. unions (circa 1969–1970) which assumes that

these practices and characteristics are necessary and defining ones. My

argument, which I will develop in the course of this paper, is that we

have mistaken temporary and accidental features of the current U.S.

unions for essential features of trade unions in general.

Certainly no union which its members will tolerate is too “backwards”

for the ruling class. However, when the patience of the rank and file of

a given union wears thin, the union structure will find itself faced not

only with pressure from its membership, but also with pressure towards

reform from decisive sections of the ruling class which are concerned

that an important political tool not lose its usefulness. An immediate

example of this was the .recent election in the UMW. After the victory

of Miller and the reform slate, it was widely reported in the press that

the larger mine owners were happy with the defeat of Boyle. Miller, they

calculated, would be sufficiently responsive to his membership and

militant in pursuing their demands so as to be able to prevent the

widespread wildcats and abandonment of the grievance procedure. And

Miller, of course, announced that this was just his intention. (He has

not been all that successful.)

In short, the role of unions does become increasingly conservative and

pro-capitalist, but not in such a blatant way that workers will flock to

any plausible alternative.

This leads into the question of the flexibility of the union structure

in this country. When we base our arguments, as I think that we do, on

an estimate of trade unions which confuses accidental and quite possibly

temporary features with basic and defining characteristics, we are bound

to have a distorted view on this issue. Our production papers imply that

the U.S. trade unions cannot absorb a major insurgency because they are

so corrupt that they cannot and will not even handle the routine defense

of their members’ interests.

The evidence does not support this assumption. Though the AFL in the

early thirties was as bankrupt as the current unions, the upsurge of the

thirties was contained within the general trade union framework without

any great strain. However, since the CIO organizing was largely

concentrated within an unorganized sector of the working class, perhaps

it is not the most relevant parallel to our situation. So let’s consider

two others:

The British shop stewards movement has existed for decades as a more or

less autonomous section of the English trade union structure. Stewards

Councils have almost total jurisdiction over issues of working

conditions, piece rates, etc. and are based soundly on the concept of

direct action which they employ regularly. Their relationship with the

official unions is often minimal and characterized by a good deal of

hostility (see ENV pamphlet for an example of this relationship). In

fact, the shop stewards movement in the most advanced plants has many

features similar to what we project for our independent workers

organizations, though they are certainly not a model for what we hope to

achieve.

Nevertheless, the British unions have been able to tolerate the stewards

organization, and, over time, have developed an informal division of

responsibilities and powers. Now, with the level of class struggle in

Britain having increased dramatically during the past months, the

programs and demands of the stewards groups are more and more being

adopted by the trade unions. More important, so are their tactics of

mass political strikes and slowdowns.

Before considering the implications of the British situation, let me

introduce another example. During the “hot autumn” of 1969 in Italy, the

institutions of mass assemblies developed as alternatives to the unions

in the large Fiat and Alfa Romeo auto plants. These assemblies were in

the tradition of the Italian factory councils of fifty years before and

had a definite revolutionary cast. At the height of the struggle, the

assemblies almost totally supplanted the unions as the locus of workers’

organization and activity. What has occurred subsequently is

instructive. Both the unions and the factory management have taken steps

to incorporate the assemblies, not in their initial mass uncontrollable

form, but as “responsible” delegated assemblies with elected leadership.

Now, the delegate assembly is recognized by the management and

incorporated within the union’s bargaining structure where its mass

participatory character, not to mention its revolutionary potential, is

under constant assault.

More examples are not really necessary. Without substantial evidence to

the contrary, we must assume that the U.S. trade union structure, when

and if it is put to a test similar to the ones undergone in Great

Britain and Italy, will prove to be similarly elastic. Furthermore, the

defined and influential reformist strategy for socialism which is

provided by the C.P.s in France and Italy is a factor acting against

union flexibility, not in favor of it, since the unions are expected to

confine themselves to a definite limited role within the anti-monopoly

front. The political amorphousness and immaturity of the U.S. unions

will increase their susceptibility to pressure from major insurgencies

even though it increases their resistance to minor demands for internal

reforms.

These examples demonstrate that we must argue very carefully for any

notion that mass independent organizations can be a viable general

alternative to the established trade unions for any substantial period

of time. This the production papers do not do. I want to make it clear

that my intention is to place our stress on building mass independent

organizations at the workplace on a sounder footing, and not to argue

for a different priority. Nothing that has been said supports an

inner-union reform perspective. Just the opposite. While changes in

popular consciousness, in the relative strength of class forces, and

consequently, in the level of class struggle, can force major changes in

the trade unions — including personal transformations of the sort

undergone by John L. Lewis — no amount of pressuring and maneuvering

within the union to replace one set of officials and policies with a

different set can force such a change. The factors integrating the

unions within capitalist hegemony far outweigh any counterpressures

which can be developed within the trade union framework alone. (The next

section will go into more detail concerning the essential limitations of

inner-union work.)

In conclusion, if we ask ourselves the cause of the current backwardness

of activity and consciousness among U.S. workers (perhaps some in the

organization will dispute this backwardness), it should be obvious that

a number of factors going far beyond and, indeed, determining the role

of the trade unions must be taken into account. Among these are the

relative “good times” since the beginning of World War II (since this

was originally written the good times have gotten quite dubious), the

mass acceptance of bourgeois hegemony on the crucial issue of workers’

collective potential, new production patterns and the disorienting

impact of new technology, and changes in the composition of the

workforce. The most important of these factors, of course, has always

been and still remains the acceptance of white supremacy on the part of

the overwhelming majority of white workers. Though it is always a danger

to consider cause and effect in abstraction from their reciprocal

mutually determining inter-relationship, I still think that it is

correct to say that these factors I have enumerated above have a lot

more to do with the state of the unions than the state of the unions has

to do with them. Unfortunately, we have given the opposite impression by

the way we have formulated our perspective on workplace organizing.

TRADE UNION CONSCIOUSNESS

Before discussing the issue of independent organization, I want to deal

with a part of the trade union question that goes beyond debates over

trade unions as institutions — trade union consciousness.

Lenin argued that the material conditions of workers lead them to

combine to struggle against the capitalists for better conditions in the

sale of their labor power. The ideological reflection of this process is

trade union consciousness. Trade union consciousness is embodied in the

formation of trade unions, but beyond this, it is expressed in all kinds

of actions and attitudes which never take on an organized, much less an

institutionalized, character. Trade union consciousness is that level of

awareness of workers in which they realize that they are oppressed and

exploited in common with some, but not all, other workers, but do not

realize their collective membership in a class with the capacity to make

a revolution. It is the ideological underpinning for militant reformism

... for fighting for the interests of workers within the framework of

capitalism.

Since What Is To Be Done was written, this concept of trade union

consciousness has played an important, but not always a helpful, role in

Marxist theory. Many people on the left have a lot of trouble

understanding our workplace organizing perspective because we do not

make it clear that we disagree fundamentally with all those hopeful

Leninists who think that all one must know about the way the working

class thinks and acts is whether it should be labeled “trade union

consciousness” or “revolutionary class consciousness.” Jf we were to

accept this way of looking at the working class, then we would be

clearly bound to say that the U.S. working class has trade union

consciousness (often treated as a form of mental illness which can be

cured with a dose of M.L. agitprop). Aha, our critics would say, your

talk of independent workers organizations which are both “mass” and

“revolutionary” is so much nonsense. If mass organizations are

developed, they cannot be revolutionary, since the masses of workers

have trade — union consciousness. Indeed, such mass organizations could

be nothing other than trade unions themselves, subject to the same

objective inherent limitations as existing unions. On the other hand, if

revolutionary .groups are formed, they cannot be mass organizations, but

must be party formations since mass consciousness is trade unionist ...

etc. Finally, such critics reduce our position to an argument to use

dual unionist tactics to develop a more militant trade union movement,

and counter this with the aphorism from Left Wing Communism and all of

the silly old chestnuts from W. Z. Foster.

The weaknesses and one-sidedness of our production papers contribute to

this doctrinaire foolishness among their antagonists, some of these

issues will come up later, but here I want to clarify where we disagree

with this approach to the problem of consciousness that masquerades as

Leninism.

Lenin’s polemic was directed against a political tendency in Russia

which argued that the working class would arrive at socialist

consciousness, and at socialism, as the logical development of its

experience of direct struggle with capital over the terms and conditions

of work. He argued that the highest understanding which could develop

from this direct experience fell qualitatively short of what was

necessary to make a revolution. To go beyond this point, the

intervention of disciplined communists organized into a party was

essential. However, in arguing that the workers’ “spontaneous” struggles

would not develop into a struggle for power through their internal

momentum, Lenin was certainly not denying that these struggles exhibited

the revolutionary aspects and potentials of the working class. On the

contrary, his basic fear was that the organizational and theoretical

backwardness of the revolutionaries would prevent them from building on

these features of the class struggle.

At the present time, no serious Marxist doubts that the organized

intervention of communists is needed to prevent the class struggle from

being contained within the framework of capitalist property relations.

It is the political content of this intervention which is in dispute.

Our production papers are a part of our strategic approach to this

different issue.

When we ask the question, “What is the consciousness of the U.S. working

class?” not only is it a very different problem from the one facing

Lenin in Russia in 1902, it is a very complex and contradictory problem

with no simple and unitary “correct” answer. Consciousness is not just

ideology, most particularly the consciousness of an oppressed and

disorganized social group. Working class consciousness is not coherent

and consistent, but fragmentary and internally confused and

contradictory. It is not so much articulated as it is implied in

attitudes and patterns of behavior.

Trade union consciousness is an aspect of the general consciousness of

the workers, not its totality. For example, there is widespread

acceptance within the working class of elements of capitalist ideology

which could not be called trade union consciousness without making the

concept so broad it becomes meaningless ... consider white and male

supremacy or bourgeois individualism, or various interest group

conceptions which cut across class lines. Clearly these are not only

distinct from trade union consciousness, they are often more backwards

than it is.

More important, in all of the production papers we have made it clear

that at moments of sharp struggle (trade unionist struggle, if you

will), elements of organization and consciousness emerge which

foreshadow the potential of workers to rule. These elements may even,

for a time, be the defining features of a struggle. The task for

revolutionaries is to help develop these aspects of working class

experience and consciousness — for that is what they are — as the base

for and alternative to the bourgeois aspects of working class experience

and consciousness which always grow stronger as the struggle subsides.

Thus in our conception, working class consciousness is not trade

unionist or revolutionary. It is both and therefore neither. We focus on

the contradictory and dynamic internal essence of working class

consciousness because it is where our political problems and potentials

are clarified. It is certainly important that we remedy any weaknesses

of our public position on workplace organizing that create

misunderstanding of this approach.

One final comment. If reading Lenin becomes a substitute for thinking,

as has been known to happen, it is possible to get all worked up over

passages in What Is To Be Done which define trade unions so broadly that

any anti-capitalist workers organization that is not a party (Leninist)

is a trade union. We do not find this definition helpful. This is hardly

anti-Leninist heresy, since Lenin, himself, abandoned it after the 1905

Revolution produced distinct forms of working class organization that

were mass — the Soviets. Gramsci, of course, goes into great detail to

examine the distinctions and the relationships between these two

different forms of mass working class organizations.

INDEPENDENT ORGANIZATION

For as long as we have existed, the central feature of our production

perspective has been the attempt to develop mass organizations at the

workplace — organizations independent of the union structure, although

they may choose periodically to work within it; organizations which we

have characterized as both mass and revolutionary. I believe that this

conclusion about the basic direction of our work is correct.

Unfortunately, it is a correct conclusion that rests on an inadequate

and erroneous basis of argument. And it is the argument and the

analysis, not the conclusion, which is decisive in dealing with the

political issues and dilemmas involved in putting this general approach

into concrete practice. I think that we have discovered that this

general conclusion neither provides nor even implies adequate and

realistic criteria by which to gauge our work.

In the previous section, two points were made about work within the

trade union framework: inner- union reform via the formation of caucuses

is not a viable political program; the trade union is too limited an

arena for the work necessary to develop a revolutionary working class.

Though the production papers made both of these points, they were

jumbled together as if they were merely different ways of making the

same point.

Nevertheless, the overwhelming weight of the argument focuses on the

first point, a point which is fairly easily supported by a factual

description of the existing unions (but only at the price of the

methodological errors involved in this form of argument), and a summary

of attempts to reform them. The second point, which is the most

important of the two by far, receives very skimpy treatment.

To put these two points in another context, the priority on independent

organization can be justified both tactically and strategically. The

former argument emphasizes that even if one’s aims are just union

reform, the reform of the present unions would require a base of

independent power. Participation in unions — if more is meant by

participation than merely paying dues and voting occasionally — is so

minimal and tentative, so corrupted by careerism and cynicism, that any

ideas of centering work here should be rejected as entailing isolation

from the masses of workers. In fact, Lenin’s famous injunction against

such self-imposed isolation of revolutionaries applies more to those who

advocate work within the existing unions than it does to us. Even the

old dual unionists had a more defensible position than their present-day

critics in this regard. If their attempt to create “pure” revolutionary

unions was Utopian, how should we regard those who urge that work be

centered within corrupt and reactionary organizations which are just as

“pure” in their isolation from the masses of workers?

The type of tactical argument just made is the substance of the

production papers. The problem is not so much that these arguments are

wrong, but that they are sadly inadequate ... for two different reasons.

First, as I have said repeatedly, they rest too heavily on

characteristics of the present U.S. unions, implying that this

necessarily was the trade union reality which we would have to deal

with. On the contrary, it is much more likely the changing political

situation will result in trade unions periodically developing a mass

representative character. In fact, such “periods” will also be those in

which our approach gains the most support, and one indirect result of

any successes which we will enjoy will be to increase the objective

pressures towards trade union reform. Second, and far more important,

this type of tactical argument clarified only the most general

guidelines concerning the nature and role of the mass independent

organizations and their relationships to specific union formations.

So long as our approach is mainly based on these tactical arguments, it

is quite possible to fit what we call “independent organizations” into a

number of different frameworks. They can be seen as the nuclei of

revolutionary dual unions, with the IWW and the TUUL providing two

relevant antecedents in this country. However, they can also be seen as

the groundwork for a mass, but non-revolutionary, dual unionism such as

occurred in the CIO period in this country and at many times in other

capitalist countries. Then, independent organizations can be seen, not

as union forms at all, but as Soviets, with the models of the early

factory councils or the recent mass assemblies in Italy. Perhaps the

Shop Stewards movement in Great Britain, which is quite different from

all of these alternatives, might be our mode. Finally, of course, we

need not limit ourselves to these alternatives, or any combination of

them.

At this stage of our work, the best remedy for such lack of precision is

to put our stress on independent organization in clear theoretical and

strategic terms ... and the fundamental argument for our approach, in my

opinion, is a strategic argument that doesn’t depend on any specific

features of U.S. unions, including their potential — or lack of

potential — to be “reformed.” The essential argument on this point is

clearly stated in the Gramsci pamphlet Soviets In Italy:

The proletarian dictatorship can only be embodied in a type of

organization that is specific to the activity of producers, not

wage-earners, the slaves of capital. The Factory Council is the nuclear

cell of this organization. For all branches of labor are represented in

the Council in proportion to the contribution each craft and each branch

of labor makes to the manufacture of the object the factory produces; it

is a class institution and a social institution. Its raison d’etre is in

labor, in industrial production, i.e., in a permanent fact, and no

longer in wages, in class divisions, i.e., in a transitory fact — and

precisely the one that we wish to supercede. (page 11)

In the famous passage in the Introduction to the Critique of Political

Economy, Marx states that the period of social revolution begins when

the relations of production become a fetter on the further development

of the forces of production. In this context, the distinction which

Gramsci draws between the role of workers as “wage-earners” and their

role as “producers” becomes a critical one. The working class is the

most important capitalist force of production, a force which is both

developed and thwarted in its development by capitalist property

relationships. However, workers also are one side of the defining

production relationship of capitalism — the relationship between wage

labor and capital. The wage labor-capital relationship is not only the

main framework in which the class struggle is “spontaneously” pursued,

it is also the main framework confining that struggle within capitalist

property relations. This confinement will continue until the objective

development of the working class as a force of production is manifested

subjectively in a revolutionary consciousness of its potential to

totally re-order society ... it will continue until trade unionist

struggle is superceded by genuine class struggle between workers and

capitalists as representatives and embodiments of mutually exclusive

modes of production. Trade union organization, and trade unionist

struggle, is not an adequate base for the development of this mass

consciousness, just as certainly as it is not the necessary and

sufficient condition for the articulation of a revolutionary proletarian

worldview. This does not mean that trade union struggle cannot create a

basic understanding of collectivity of interest. It can do this, and,

although this understanding is typically limited to the common interests

of only a section of the class, it can and has developed into a general

appreciation of the exploitation of wage labor. However, such an

understanding is not revolutionary class consciousness until it includes

a realization of workers’ collective potential to organize production

independently of the capitalists — the understanding that “in the

factory you either have everything or you have nothing,” a proposition

whose truth is only evident when the wage worker-capitalist frame of

reference is transcended.

There is a prevalent assumption among left groups in the U.S. that these

necessary ingredients of revolutionary consciousness will be developed

through the agitational and propagandistic intervention of the party

within trade unionist struggles. Thus they instruct communists to “never

forget the final goal” in their involvement in mass reform struggles.

While there must be no denial or denigration of the importance of clear

socialist agitation and propaganda, there must also be an understanding

of the fundamental limits of such activity. The most that the party can

hope to “teach” the working class through such efforts is the

desirability of socialism as an abstract and ideal goal. This is not

sufficient to bring socialism from the realm of Utopias to a goal which

masses see as workable and attainable. Only through struggles which

foreshadow the possibility of socialism can workers gain the assurance

that it is a tangible goal within their reach. Clearly the “experience”

of being the object of communist agitation and propaganda is not this

sort of a mass learning experience. The point is that there must be a

base of social practice within which a revolutionary party can lay bare

those working class characteristics which Gramsci calls “producer,”

separated from those characteristics which flow from workers’ role as

“wage earner.”

It is inconceivable that the process of separating the autonomous

aspects of mass struggle from the aspects in which class rule is

accepted implicitly or explicitly can occur without specific

organizational frameworks designed to facilitate it. Independent

organizations can be part of such a framework, trade unions cannot. This

is the fundamental justification for our stress on building independent

organizations, as well as for our emphasis on the inherent limitations

of trade union work. It provides the approach in which we see communists

able to develop a counterhegemonic working class culture of struggle

based on the liberating potential of the elimination of both capital and

wage labor.

This indicates why we place such importance on the development of

independent workers organizations, what we mean by terming them

“revolutionary,” and why we argue that the goal must be to develop them

into mass popular organizations, not cadre formations. However, there is

a whole range of questions and problems which remain. I want to single

out three of these for more detailed treatment. First, what reason is

there to believe that such an approach is viable? Second, what is the

relationship between mass independent organizations and unions? Third,

what is the role of the communists within the mass independent

organizations?

From this point forward I will substitute the word “council” for the

awkward phrase “mass revolutionary independent organization.” This

substitution might easily be misunderstood, so some initial

clarification is in order. It is not our intention to set out to build

little Soviets. As the context will make clear, the real organizational

formations to which we relate will not have any such “pure” character,

but will be composites of different tendencies and different

conceptions, operating under varying sets of objective limitations. We

use the term “council” to clarify what we see as the responsibilities

and the potentialities of communist work within such independent

formations. It is selfevident that independent organizations, if they

are to have any mass character, must, under present conditions, be

heavily influenced by the reservoir of essentially trade unionist

militance which currently finds little outlet within the union

framework. Further, there is nothing inherently revolutionary (or even

nontrade unionist) in the mere fact of organizational independence from

the existing trade unions. What there is is a revolutionary potential

for communist work which does not exist for inner-union work.

ISSUE OF VIABILITY

The general line of attack on our position by much of the rest of the

left holds that since the working class has only reached trade union

consciousness, it isn’t possible to develop organizations which in any

real sense are both mass and revolutionary. Either they will not be mass

organizations, or they will not be revolutionary organizations. In fact,

as the criticism goes, real mass revolutionary organizations will only

be possible in a revolutionary situation ... which the present situation

clearly is not. Consequently, our independent mass organizations can be

nothing beyond a tactic to revitalize the trade union movement from

outside of the trade union structures, and it is logical to accuse us of

tactical fetishism for our “dogmatic” exclusion of other tactics —

specifically, inner-union caucuses — aimed at the same goal of union

reform and revitalization.

The failure of the production papers to deal directly with the political

consciousness of the working class did leave the impression that if only

the trade unions could be supplanted by independent workers

organizations, the backwardness of the workers would evaporate and they

would conduct themselves as a potential ruling class. Our critics

realize that the process is not going to be this simple. But this

weakness in our arguments does not support the position they advocate.

In fact, such criticisms rely on factually mistaken estimates of working

class reality and nondialectical methodology. As was said in an earlier

section, any accurate estimate of working class consciousness must

center on its varied and contradictory aspects. Broad generalizations

about what working class consciousness is — or what it is not — obscure

these different elements and their relationships with each other.

(This would seem elementary for any Marxist position, but we have

“Marxist” estimates of the working class which are blind to all existing

elements of revolutionary potential; and we have other “Marxist”

positions which cannot see that such elements are both linked with and

subordinated to, capitalist ideology and capitalist culture. The

pseudo-problems created by such one-sided analyses lead to grotesque

conceptions of the role of communists. Either the “teaching” function of

the party is grossly exaggerated, or the role of party is reduced to

nothing.)

Nevertheless, we should deal directly with the charge that our approach

is inherently unworkable ... that mass revolutionary workers

organizations will only exist in a revolutionary situation. I want to

deal with the issue of viability in two parts. The first is the general

argument for it, and the second sets certain limits on this viability.

As soon as it is seen that the development of the working class as a

material of production entails elements of consciousness and behavior

which foreshadow socialism long before the masses of workers become

self-consciously revolutionary, the objection to the viability of our

perspective is refuted in principle. The dialectical axiom of uneven

development implies that the political development of the working class

will not be a uniform process. Instead, the process will involve events

like a Flint sitdown strike, the “hot autumn” in Italy, the French 1968

strike, or, closer to home, the Farah strike. These situations develop

capacities and potentials among their immediate participants, moving

them far ahead of the rest of the class. Such areas of sharp struggle do

have a positive effect on the class as a whole, of course, an effect

that takes the form of an increased combativity and openness to

revolutionary ideas. However, it isn’t possible to draw the same

revolutionary lessons for workers generally that can be drawn for the

workers who are immediate participants in the struggle, because it is

the reality of active participation — not just support — that allows

these lessons to take root.

Long before anything approaching a revolutionary situation exists in

this country as a whole, revolutionary lessons can be learned by masses

of workers involved in specific struggle situations. In fact, this

process is integral to the creation of the subjective preconditions for

the revolutionary situation — a situation in which the “masses are

unwilling to continue in the old way.” Such conditions will never

develop until a substantial portion of the working class knows that a

“new way” is possible. The party’s role largely consists of its

responsibility to synthesize such subjective conditions for revolution

by welding the working class potentials which are manifested in sporadic

struggles within the framework of capitalism into a mass movement for,

and of, socialism.

It would be possible to write at length about tactical considerations

involved in this approach. However, the issue here is only whether our

perspective is theoretically and strategically consistent and viable,

and this is easily indicated with an example. There are many we could

choose from, but the Seattle General Strike of 1919 provides an

exceptionally instructive example.

According to the testimony of participants in the Seattle struggle, the

Seattle workers shared a general sentiment that the workers should run

the society. The strike, then, provided them with a period of a week in

which they could, and did, run “their” society. This situation in

Seattle was not paralleled anywhere in the rest of the country. There

may have been some communities with a comparable degree of working class

consciousness, but nowhere, besides Seattle, was there such an immediate

potential to embody this consciousness in social practice. (The same

point might be made about the Sit-Down strikers in Flint some two

decades later.) Now, were the conscious revolutionaries in Seattle, and

there were numbers of them, to tie the development of mass revolutionary

organizations in Seattle to the existence or non-existence of a general

revolutionary situation in the country as a whole, they would be in a

terrible dilemma. No general assessment of the U.S. in 1919 could

support the conclusion that socialist revolution was on the immediate

agenda. Therefore, to make this a governing consideration would prevent

the revolutionaries from working in Seattle to keep the potentials

generated locally from quickly dissipating after the height of the

struggle. To put it another way, it would lead to the Seattle

revolutionaries behaving in the same manner as did the French C.P. in

1968.

It is clear that the responsibility of the Seattle revolutionaries was

to develop the forms and tactics of struggle which would maximize the

revolutionary development of the Seattle workers, and not to link this

mechanically to the possibility for the seizure of state power in the

country as a whole. Stated this way, probably no left group would

disagree with the conclusion. However, as usual, it is not so simple.

The end can only be fully achieved if the means have been developed. In

Seattle, and elsewhere, it is not possible to effectively capitalize on

possibilities which may rapidly achieve mass dimensions if there has

been no preparation — if the conscious revolutionaries haven’t somehow

anticipated this development in their practical work. Part of such

preparation involves the development of organizational forms which can

stimulate and articulate the revolutionary features of the workers’

struggles prior to a mass explosion, in this way helping to create that

explosion and shaping its concrete modalities. Failure to do such

preparatory work is nothing but reliance on spontaneity, no matter how

“Leninist” its justification.

It is easy to exaggerate the points I have been making about the

possibility and, indeed, the necessity of councils until we lose contact

with the other side of working class reality. The revolutionary aspects

of the working class’s experience and outlook are normally subordinated

to capitalist ideology and culture. But more important than this

subordination is the fact that they are all tangled together with

nonrevolutionary aspects — and even counter-revolutionary aspects — of

working class behavior and consciousness. This is particularly evident

in the common connection between the militance of white workers and

their commitment to the institution of white supremacy. While this

particular interconnection poses the major practical problem facing the

work of revolutionaries, it does not pose any great theoretical

difficulties. The right course is difficult to pursue, but not so

difficult to perceive. However, there are interconnections which are

more subtle and complex. In specific, the revolutionary elements within

working class experience in this country are very closely tied to ideas

and tendencies which could be more accurately called trade union

militance — ideas and tendencies which, as I have said, currently find

difficulty being expressed in any real way through the existing trade

unions. These considerations make it Utopian to expect that council

forms can be stable organizations under present conditions. This would

only be possible if it were also possible to define them by the workers’

collective role in the production process. To attempt to force such a

self-conception on independent organizations would be sectarian

silliness.

This has two implications, one of which the production papers have

considered and one which, I think, they failed to consider. As the

production papers argue, in “normal” circumstances the councils will be

organizational points of reference whose main role is to provide an

interpretation and explanation of workers’ experiences which is an

alternative to trade unionism, and is a part of the process towards a

counterhegemonic self-consciousness. During sharp mass struggles —

circumstances which are obviously not normal at the present time — the

councils may temporarily provide the form in which the class organizes

and expresses itself. But even at the abnormal moments, so long as the

struggles are isolated and sporadic, the council will be narrower than

the active participants in the struggle, and much narrower than the

total constituency of the struggle. We will have to go further along the

road to revolution before councils will or can become the legitimate and

organic mode of self-organization of the class even in the most

developed instances.

COUNCILS AND TRADE UNIONS

The implication not spelled out in the production papers is that

independent organizations are going to be constantly torn between the

role of council and the role of trade union or alternate union. This

leads into the issues involved in the relationships between unions and

councils. As has been implied, it will not generally be possible or

desirable for the party to build independent organizations on a clear

counter-hegemonic basis. Instead, they will be composed of workers who

share only one basic thing: they see the independent organization as a

workable alternative to their present situation. Their immediate motives

for participation may be only to build a militant union or to reform a

corrupt one, or they may be much more developed, but in any case, in

practice we will not be building councils (mass revolutionary

independent organizations) in the strict sense, but will be building or

relating to independent organizations while struggling to develop their

council potential.

This raises issues which are more “practical” than those with which we

have been dealing and it may be helpful to proceed in terms of a

hypothetical situation which is not really so far removed from work

situations we have experienced and is even closer to situations which

could easily develop in our work. This will give more reality to a whole

number of political issues and make it easier both to criticize what our

present production papers have to offer in the way of guidance, and to

present a more adequate alternative.

Whenever we begin, our initial activity is directed toward either

building a group or finding an existing one to work in that is

independent of the union structure and willing to fight the company.

Since we want the group to be much more than a device to recruit

individual workers to our political position and, eventually, a

communist organization, it is always important that it be sufficiently

broadly based that its character is not in our exclusive control. That

is, we want a situation where our opinions and perspectives will be only

a part of the factors determining the stance of the group.

Other Marxist positions do not share this perspective. They see the

union as the arena of mass activity and organization. Left groupings are

seen as a lever to influence the union in the direction which the

communists want it to go and as a recruiting form. Such an approach is

concerned with gaining or holding left groupings as power factors in

their particular perspective, not with encouraging its autonomous

character. There is nothing particularly reprehensible in this position,

indeed it makes perfect sense in view of the general “Marxist”

conception of the relationship between mass struggle and revolutionary

struggle in a non-revolutionary period.

Central to our differences with these perspectives is the fact that our

aim is to develop independent organizations which attempt to provide a

framework for the activity of the entire workforce. Of course, they will

almost always begin on a much more modest scale. Even when the

independent workers group is not a central factor in the life of the

plant — when its role is mainly agitational and propagandistic since the

bulk of the workers, though they may sympathize and empathize with it,

do not see it as an alternative to the existing relationships in the

plant — our stress on autonomy will create a certain set of difficulties

for us. For the most part, these will concern the tactics of fighting

for our positions and programs within the group without imposing them by

virtue of our superior organization and other resources. The goal of

such ideological struggle is to help the workers and ourselves think

clearly and critically, not to strike poses or make cheap victories.

Though these difficulties are not small, I think that with more time and

experience we will learn how to handle them.

The most important issues come to the surface when we assume that the

activity of the independent organization leads the workers in a

particular workplace to see it as a real alternative. Look at the

situation this way. The organization will be confronted with workers

with a range of immediate needs and grievances. For the workers, these

are an initial; test of the independent organization. If workers believe

that it can be an instrumentality in these, the independent organization

will get support. Of course, the groups and the communists within them

will inevitably tend to put their best face forward, emphasizing the

possibilities not the limitations. After all, our aim is to demonstrate

their viability in struggle whose outcomes depend in large part on the

consciousness of the workers. In such a situation, it would be absurd to

predict defeat, or even to present a “balanced” picture. This would

undermine the development of collective morale and could mean the

difference between relative success and absolute failure.

Before workers opt for independent struggle, they will consider two

types of factors. First, the independent organization, particularly if

it has strong communist leadership, will certainly advance demands and

forms of straggle which more closely fit with the workers’ sense of

oppression and anger than anything, which any present union; could

conceivably offer. Second, such a program and such an emphasis on open

confrontation and protracted struggle will certainly meet much, more

serious management opposition than normal union activity — opposition

which quite likely will be augmented by the antagonism of the already

existing union apparatus and the intervention of the state.

Given the pervasiveness of collaborationism and cynicism and the law

level of mass struggle in most cases, when workers consider these

factors, they opt for the status quo or for work within the safer

framework of an established union. Still it is possible that in some

situations such an assessment could lead the mass of workers to the

decision that their interests were best served by participation in and

support of the independent organization!. Under current conditions this

is most likely in situations where there either is no union or where the

union is totally unresponsive. Clearly we have been and still are in

such situations.

Let me spell out such a hypothetical situation in more detail. An

independent organization with communist leadership gains mass support

primarily, though not totally, because workers see it as the best

available instrument to advance the terms and conditions under which

they sell their labor power. One probable effect of an extended struggle

with an intransigent employer would be to undermine this basis of mass

support — would be to convince the workers that they had been mistaken

about the potential of the independent organization. Therefore, pursuit

of maximum, demands for a long time would erode the mass support and

thus reduce the possibility of gaining and consolidating more minimal

advances — but advances which the workers would regard as significant

improvements.

Clearly, in such a situation, the independent organization and the

communists would have to consider some sort of a temporary settlement —

of a compromise. And in fact, that compromise would necessarily include

many of those institutional characteristics of the present trade unions

of which we are the most critical — and rightfully critical. Capital

makes no concessions without extracting a price. It is likely that only

a small minority of the workers would understand the negative side of

the situation. The majority would regard winning exclusive bargaining

rights, a pension plan, a seniority system, a grievance procedure, as

victories, as a partial resolution of their grievances. But for our

perspective, a real dilemma would arise. How can the capacity of the

independent organization to crystallize the revolutionary aspects of the

workers’ struggles be maintained when it has been forced to become a

party to a compromise with management which accepts the permanence and

legitimacy of capital?

Here we must decide if this is a dilemma which can be avoided or one

which must be confronted. Suppose we steered dear of this box by

developing groups which did not attempt to provide a real and immediate

alternative to workers, but only an ideological center around which the

most advanced workers could be organized and educated. Obviously this

approach would contradict our basic strategy. It is one thing if the

masses of workers are not ready to accept cm alternative; it is quite

another if the alternative is intended to be unacceptable to all but a

few. It is one thing if workers refuse to accept our leadership on

immediate issues; it is another entirely if, hoping to steer dear of

becoming over-extended, we refuse to provide such leadership when it is

within our capabilities.

One focus of our conception of the role of communists is to demonstrate

to workers their collective capacities and potentials. On the most basic

level, this is the demonstration that workers can stick together — an

ability about which most workers are profoundly cynical. How would

communists draw such lessons through an organizational form which

abstains from the struggle and comments from the outside on its

limitations? Just as important, such an abstentionist role could only be

enforced on a genuinely mass organization if the communists played an

absolutely destructive and manipulative role. The organization’s worker

membership would necessarily try to lead the struggle for immediate

demands. Thus the independent group would take on a mass character under

circumstances which created difficulties for its “revolutionary”

character. But if we are serious about developing mass organizations

which would not just be “better” representatives of the workers, but a

method for them to represent themselves, such difficulties cannot be

mechanically resolved by preventing the full participation of the

workers in determining goals and tactics — in deciding when and how to

advance, when and how to retreat, when and how to compromise.

The only other possible route for avoiding the dilemma is even more

easily rejected. If the independent organization became a union with

“revolutionary” leadership, all that was previously said about the

objective determinants of unions would apply to it as well. Insofar as

the revolutionary aspect of the organization extended beyond general

rhetoric of its leadership, the reform gains that had been achieved

would be jeopardized. Management is hardly likely to make or respect

agreements with a union leadership which threatens to unleash struggle

at any time with no defined goal short of the elimination of capital. In

the absence of revolutionary consciousness throughout the class, such

gains can only be maintained through the industrial legality compromise,

which, as has been said, is premised on the acceptance of the legitimacy

of the private ownership of capital. But if revolutionaries allow their

work to be essentially contained within such a framework, there is no

effective way for them to develop the counter-hegemonic social bloc

necessary for a meaningful challenge to this legitimacy.

This example is applicable to a situation where for all practical

purposes there is no union. However, the same dilemma will occur where

there is .an active and more or less responsive union. In such a case,

it will be manifested in pressures on the independent group to become a

caucus with the aim of the eventual capture of the local. Of course, in

such a situation there are likely to be organizational forms other than

the independent organization which will attract this sort of trade union

militance, and thus the alternatives will not be posed in such a stark

fashion. Nevertheless, they will be there.

This dilemma is an unavoidable feature of our work. Our organizing

perspective must give us the tools with which to deal with it, but the

production papers do not do this. Instead, they imply two different, but

equally mistaken, attitudes toward the issue. On the one hand, they

imply that such problems are not likely to come up until the general

political situation is drastically changed in our favor. On the other

hand, they imply that it is possible for an independent organization to

supplant an existing union without being subject to the limitations

affecting all unions. This utopianism, for that is what it is, has its

roots in the inadequacy of our strategic conception of independent

organization.

This leads directly into the relationship between independent

organizations and the existing unions, as well as that between

independent organizations and union formations which are likely to

emerge with the sharpening of class contradictions. It is in this area

that our strategic confusion is responsible for the most immediate

practical problems. The production papers present a major and a minor

theme on these relationships. First, the independent organization should

aim to eventually supplant the existing union, both as the instrument of

the defense of immediate class interests, and as the struggle framework

in which the development of revolutionary consciousness can take place.

Second, until it is actually possible to supplant the union, work within

it is permissible insofar as it helps develop the base for independent

organizations.

My first observation is that these two general guidelines don’t combine

well at all. One aspect of the political reality within which councils

must be developed is the currency of illusions about the potential of

trade unionism, if it were rid of the present corruption. A major task

of communists is to struggle against such notions insofar as they are

illusions. In practice, this takes the form of struggling against

pressures to participate within the union on trade unionist terms. It is

difficult to reconcile such a struggle with any notion that work within

a union can help build the base for councils. Of course, if the

assumptions about the inflexibility of the trade unions made in the

production papers were correct, then we could rely on the failure of all

attempts to work within this framework to demonstrate the general

worthlessness of the unions. However, the assumptions were mistaken. No

such cooperative response of the union structure can be predicted. What

is more likely is that participation inside the union, instead of

exposing the limitations of such activity, will open up a range of

possibilities, some illusory, but others not, for further inner-union

struggle. Such possibilities will take forever to exhaust.

To put it bluntly, our perspective could only advocate struggle inside

the union when the probability was that it would be unsuccessful ...

better yet, sold out. However, on any issue which workers see as a point

of struggle, the outcome cannot be predicted so easily. More important,

if communists attempt to maneuver workers into situations where they can

“learn” the right lessons by being defeated, not only will they be sadly

disappointed communists, but they will have acted in contradiction to

the autonomous working class movement, which is the essential

revolutionary vehicle in this country. No support for independent

organizations will be built by communists attempting to minimize what

has been, and can be, done through the unions; or, more specifically, by

communists acting to limit what can be done in this arena.

The treatment of this point in the production papers is not integral to

their basic argument. It is tacked on as a defense against some of our

left critics who charge us with dual unionism and syndicalism, and

breaks with the entire frame of reference of the papers. Instead of

talking about how an independent organization might work within a union,

the production papers shift to a discussion about the attitudes and

approaches of communists and communist organizations. For communists,

the advice to work within the unions is superfluous. Communists should

use all chances to gain support for their politics, and it would be

silly to deny that such opportunities can be found in work within

unions. But it is not true that a perfectly correct approach for a

communist organization is applicable to a mass independent organization

of workers.

In fact, when we talk about the independent organization working within

the union, we are talking about it assuming the role of a caucus. This

should be understood precisely. Work within the union might be meant to

refer to certain isolated occasions — strike and contract ratification

discussions and votes, picket line tactics, situations where it is

possible to confront and expose reactionary leaders and policies.

Independent organizations must participate in these situations, if they

intend to be relevant to workers. However, these situations are mass

events in which the union structure is only one factor. When

.difficulties develop is when an independent organization becomes a part

of the structure, becomes an opposition caucus and develops a more or

less systematic plan for gaining union leadership. In the strict sense,

this is what innerunion mass work for an independent organization must

be.

Whenever the independent organization functions as a caucus, it will

buttress the trade unionist illusions which virtually all of its members

share to some extent. The pressure for the independent organization to

assume this caucus role is an index of the lack of revolutionary

consciousness among its membership. It is an index of the illusions that

changing the union leadership would make a tremendous difference and

that it would not be so difficult — that possession of the union

apparatus would provide extra power not matched by new liabilities. All

of these ideas are examples of the tendency shared by workers and

leftists alike to look for some short-cut answers to the problems

involved in developing mass revolutionary working class consciousness

and organization. Though this is not an absolute argument against an

independent organization becoming a caucus, it stands as a warning that

such a role always entails a political price. This price is nothing but

a weakening of the unique potentials of independent organizations to

provide a base for the development of councils.

If we were considering the role of communists, not of mass workers’

organizations, this argument would be mistaken. Communists may be

working on a correct or an incorrect strategic line, but presumably they

can evaluate their work in terms of this line, no matter what the nature

of the work. A mass organization, however, will not have explicit

agreement on political line, and the process of gaining more substantial

agreement on such questions, as well as the nature of the agreement

which is gained, will be greatly influenced by the arena in which the

struggle is pursued.

Of course, the communists cannot unilaterally dictate the arena of

struggle. In some cases, perhaps most of them, under present conditions

the pressure towards becoming an inner-union caucus will be too great to

be resisted without the communists playing an essentially disruptive and

destructive role in the independent organization. I want to postpone

consideration of that problem until a later section. Here, the important

point is that the production papers are wrong in saying that work within

the union is permissible for the independent organizations on a tactical

basis. There are no circumstances when innerunion caucus work — as

defined above — will build a base for councils. Independent

organizations may assume such a role but it should be only when

communists are unable to convince its mass membership of the importance

that it remain an alternative to trade unionism generally. Of course,

this is not to say that a part of the initial base for independent

organizations will not be found in and around the union, the proportion

varying from union to union.

As I have said, this point was the minor theme in the production papers’

treatment of the relationship between independent organizations and

trade unions. A far more important point was that the independent

organizations should attempt to supplant the existing unions. This point

was the political heart of the papers.

This notion underwent some changes in the course of the revision of the

production papers. In the first version it was presented as the

immediate goal of the work. The primary definition of the independent

organization was as a hostile alternative to the union. In the later

versions we tended more to predict that independent organizations would

supplant unions, but only “eventually,” almost simultaneously with the

emergence of a general revolutionary crisis in capitalism. But to say

that councils will eventually supplant the unions is no more meaningful

or helpful than to say that socialism will eventually supplant

capitalism. It tells us nothing about how to relate independent

organizations to unions now. Our early position had the virtue of

telling us something definite about how to work. But in spite of the

vagueness of these versions, their overwhelming impact, accepted by both

adherents and opponents, is to “supplant” unions.

From the outset, we must recognize that the notion of “supplanting the

union” in any literal sense is a hindrance in dealing with the practical

problems which we are facing now or will likely be facing in the near

future. This is true whether or not the goal of supplanting the union is

publicly proclaimed and becomes the agitational focus of the independent

organization, that is, whether or not it defines itself as a dual union.

I began this section with a hypothetical example which was not all that

hypothetical. It posed a situation where the independent organization,

and not any existing union, either one already recognized in the plant

or one willing to be brought in, appears to the workers as the vehicle

most likely to advance their immediate interests. This sentiment, then,

forces the independent organization to either assume the role of a

militant class struggle-oriented union or to refuse to fight for the

workers’ immediate interests.

It is an illusion to think that the communists within the independent

organization could steer it away from situations where a choice must be

made between assuming mass leadership under important limitations and

refusing to accept this role. The condition for independent

organizations developing autonomous working class potentials is that

they be genuinely representative. They cannot be held aloof from such

tactical dilemmas because their constituency will demand that they make

a choice. In fact, in most conceivable situations this constituency will

demand they assume the role of an insurgent union.

So it will sometimes happen that an independent organization can and

will supplant an existing union. But as has been pointed out earlier,

this does not mean that a council has supplanted an existing union. In

fact, short of a revolutionary situation, this cannot happen since the

industrial legality compromise and thus unions are essential for the

workers to advance and defend their position as wage workers. Until

there is a revolutionary situation, workers will not move beyond this to

a coherent conception of themselves as producers. This means that under

present conditions, it is the pressure of trade unionist sentiment

within the independent organizations that is the impetus towards

supplanting the existing unions. When this pressure is successful, one

of the consequences will be to provide a material and institutional base

which further strengthens, at least in the short run, the general

influence of trade unionism. The production papers have a totally

inadequate treatment of this entire range of issues, and in fact develop

a conceptual framework in which they appear insoluble, though they are

far from that.

The source of this difficulty, too, is the production papers’ inability

to clearly distinguish between their institutional critique of the

existing U.S. unions and their concept of the political categories —

trade union and trade union consciousness. In no way is the former the

only possible crystallization of the latter that is viable in this

country. In fact, if the existing unions, or some of them at least, are

considered, the probability is that they can and will be supplanted by

independent organizations. But when we are dealing with unionism as a

set of general organizational and ideological categories, the process of

supplanting will not seem so easy and purely “organizational,” and the

scenario mentioned above will be seen as a change in the form of

unionism, rather than its transcendence.

Though the independent organizations should consistently criticize the

class collaborationist character of the existing unions, the communists

within them should take care that this criticism doesn’t create unreal

expectations about what the independent organizations can accomplish.

Exposing, isolating and replacing the union in a given situation will

not necessarily transform the balance of class forces in that situation.

Presumably such a development will leave the workers in better shape but

it will not usually make it possible to transcend the labor sale

compromise for even a short time. More specifically, it is unlikely that

such an independent union will be able to move beyond the particularly

rotten features of U.S. unionism. It is apparent, therefore, that

centering our work within organizations which are independent of the

union structure will not guarantee our ability to avoid the very

pitfalls which face the inner-union caucus perspective. In our chosen

arena, as well as in the union arena, it is easy to exaggerate the

potentials which would be opened up by an organizational victory against

the existing union.

It is wrong to see the relationship between independent organizations

and unions as the attempt by the former to organizationally supplant the

latter with a “revolutionary union” or some type of soviet structure. It

is also wrong to see the relationship as one where the independent

organization functions as an inner-union caucus with an independent base

of activity and support and with revolutionary leadership. So what,

then, is the correct view of the relationship? The point of beginning

must be that unions do, and will continue to, provide the framework for

the day-to-day struggle for better terms in the sale of labor power.

Independent organizations can only fulfill this role by becoming unions.

This does not mean that independent organizations cannot struggle for

reform demands without becoming unions. It means that they cannot become

the institutional framework in which the workers pursue these goals

without becoming unions. The reform struggle has two sides: the

increased combativity and openness of the workers who participate in it,

and the limitations of their conceptions of what is needed, what can be

won, and how to struggle. In specific instances, independent

organizations can fight for better terms by building on the positive

side, but if they become the framework for this struggle — responsible

for retreating as well as attacking, consolidating as well as achieving

— they will be bound up by the negative side.

The production papers concentrate exclusively on the antagonism between

independent organizations and the unions. I want to concentrate more on

the complementary side of the relationship. First a word of warning. The

trade union attracts reformists, both the overt and the

“revolutionary-realism, one-step-at-a-time” variety. And currently, the

institution is in the hands of forces which would be complimented by

being called reformist — largely in those hands. Independent

organizations will naturally attract the revolutionaries, those workers

who want to struggle as much for the sake of fighting as for any

specific immediate grievance or demand. Thus when I speak of a

complementary relationship, there is no denying that there will

inevitably be great hostility, antagonism, and competition. There will

be no smooth cooperative process of working together. The trade union

leadership and those leftists with an inner-union line will be blind to

the complementary side of the relationship. Nevertheless, we should not

be.

The objective conditions, which allow independent organizations to

develop and allow this activity to have some success, will stimulate the

entire class into greater militance and struggle. This will constitute a

pressure against the collaborationism of the existing union structures

and leadership. Any successes gained by the independent organization

will further increase this pressure. So, as workers engage more widely

in struggle, and as radical ideas develop a larger and more appreciative

audience, one consequence must be the development of struggles inside

the union framework and against the current leadership. In many cases

these will meet with some success.

In no sense should communists with our perspective be hostile to these

developments within the trade union framework even though every success

in sloughing off the most collaborationist features of the U.S. unions

will make inner-union activity much more attractive to a large portion

of the membership and constituency of independent organizations.

Developments within the unions that make them into organizations more

capable and willing to fight for the reform interests of the workers,

including fighting for these demands which have been initially raised by

independent organizations, are in the interests of the class and all of

its organizations, even if we are deprived of an opportunity to teach

cheap “revolutionary” lessons.

Let me tie up some conclusions about the relationship between

independent organizations and unions. The preparation of the workers to

rule and the defense of their immediate interests are distinct tasks

despite all of the interconnections between them. It is wrong — short of

a revolutionary situation — for communists to pose them against each

other, and it is a syndicalist illusion to think they can both be

accomplished in a single organizational structure.

The independent organizations will define themselves by direct

collective action as the cutting edge of a critique of class

collaborationism. This provides a framework in which communists can

begin the work of supplanting trade union consciousness and other

aspects of bourgeois culture with revolutionary class consciousness and

culture based on the changed social reality provided by the process of

supplanting parliamentary-legal forms of pressure on the union with

direct collective action against the company. One outcome of this

process, and of the general heightening of class conflict, will be more

militant trade unions.

Under such conditions — where the unions are being revitalized and the

work of the communists to develop the council character of the

independent organizations is only one tendency at work within these

organizations — it is not likely that independent organizations and

trade unions will exist as clear dual structures. Specifically, there

will be a tendency for independent organizations to become unions in

situations where the existing unions are not responsive, and for an

overlap in constituency, program, and perhaps even in membership,

between independent organizations and inner-union caucuses in situations

where the unions are more viable.

INDEPENDENT ORGANIZATIONS AND THE PARTY

(This area contains a number of crucial questions. Because of

limitations of time and space, I am only going to touch on a couple of

points, and in a very general way. Some of the most important problems

will not be dealt with at all, because they are not particularly

relevant to the main concerns of this paper.)

Communists have a dual political responsibility in their work in all

areas. First, they must expose, isolate, and defeat the main forms of

capitalist ideological and cultural hegemony within the working class.

In this country, this entails a frontal assault on the institution of

white supremacy. Second, they must build a mass revolutionary

alternative to capitalism, based on the elements of mass struggle which

foreshadow and prefigure socialism. These are not separate tasks, but

form one integral program of struggle.

This dual responsibility is particularly crucial in production work.

Without in any way compromising a relentless attack on capitalist ideas

and institutions, particularly as they are expressed and supported by

workers, communists must build on the forms of struggle and organization

which manifest and embody the potentials of workers as producers.

Without communist intervention, if they develop at all, such council

forms will certainly not be stable. This strategic priority on the

development of councils entails a tactical priority on mass independent

workers organizations and some general guidelines and priorities for

communist work within them.

It is wrong to think that such mass organizations can only be developed

under communist leadership. The role of the communists is not only to

help develop such groups, but to prevent those that they have helped

develop and those which have emerged more or less spontaneously from

collapsing or being absorbed into the trade unions after the peak period

of mass mobilization. Either of these alternatives means the loss of any

revolutionary potential. This responsibility opens up two questions:

given the present low level of our work, how should we see the process

of developing revolutionary potentials; what should be our attitude

towards the interpenetration of council and trade union which will exist

in the independent organizations?

We have constantly and correctly stressed the importance of direct

collective action to supplant the individualistic and legalistic

machinery with which U.S. unions handle workers’ grievances — if they

handle them at all. This is the only way to bring home the fact that the

relationship between workers and capitalists is based on power, not on

some set of reciprocal rights and duties. And, of course, currently, it

is also the only way to get anything done on most grievances. However,

direct collective action has a more general importance. Some base of

collective struggle is the necessary foundation for a mass understanding

among workers that their interdependent role in production is not only a

source of further dehumanization of the individual worker, but is also a

potential source of collective power and thus, individual worth and

dignity.

But how should we advocate direct action ... against what sorts of

obstacles? We have tended to see only the most obvious obstacles. First,

the tendency to choose “safer” methods of struggle, and second, the

tendency to wait to take direct action until a sufficient base of

strength has been built up so that the successful outcome of a struggle

can be predicted. Neither of these tendencies pose any real theoretical

difficulty, however big a problem they may be in practice. Far more

important, I think, is the tendency among both communists and more

advanced workers to advocate direct action in a form which severely

restricts its potential out of a fear of the “backwardness” of the

majority of the workers.

When direct action becomes merely a “technique,” that is, when the

questions of what sort of direct action, when it is to be applied, and

for what ends it is intended, are presented to the participants in the

struggles as facts which they can only accept or reject, most of its

revolutionizing potential is lost. We must remember that only in this

country and a few others is direct action not a common characteristic of

trade unionism. In most of the rest of the world, trade unions still

rely heavily on this form of struggle, but they do it by as much as

possible limiting it to a technique in order to minimize the problems

which genuine mass participation would pose.

There is a real dilemma here because the “backwardness” of the workers

is not a fiction but a reality. Most workers have yet to be convinced

that any form of collective struggle is really possible, and the best

way to begin to convince them they are mistaken is by demonstration.

However, unless the demonstration involves genuine participation —

unless it is actually an example of self-organization — it will not go

to the heart of the backwardness, which is cynicism about, and

individualistic and chauvinistic hostility to, collective

self-organization.

This role could be carried to such lengths that the communists would be

paralyzed and the leading role of the party liquidated. However, I think

that there are some immediate practical implications that make sense. An

emphasis on direct action can be an argument for restricted

participation in the independent organization just as well as opposition

to direct action can be. Nevertheless, the temptation to keep the

independent organization closed, both organizationally and

ideologically, so that it will not stray from the right path must be

resisted. Otherwise it can only develop to where most workers see it as

the “better” alternative, when our goal is to have them see it as their

“own” alternative.

One final point about direct action. This form of struggle can and often

is a mode of expression of reformist positions and illusions which fails

to confront the general sources of class disunity. Reformism is not

expressed solely through overt collaboration by any means. This also is

made apparent by looking beyond this country or by looking at other

arenas of struggle within this country. Advocacy of direct collective

action doesn’t take care of the communist’s responsibility to confront

white supremacy and male supremacy. Tactical unity on a given struggle,

no matter how militant the form it takes, only provides a broader base

from which to attack the roots of the disunity of the class in the

relative privileges of sectors of it. In itself, it is never such an

attack.

Beyond their advocacy of direct action, communists can develop the

council potential within the independent organizations by making their

implicit challenge to bourgeois hegemony concrete and explicit. In a

sense this amounts to “supplanting” the union, in that we try to clarify

a “we-they” separation between workers and capital as a fundamental fact

— an antagonism extending to every aspect of social existence, while, at

best, trade unionism involves a ���wethey” antagonism limited to a

particular plant and often included within a larger “us.” But

supplanting unionism in this sense has little relationship to the

organizational substitution of independent organizations for unions.

Rather it involves the workers transcending unionism insofar as it

constitutes a limitation on their conception of what is and what can be.

Generally speaking, such counter-hegemonic activity must be done through

an independent organization. It cannot take place within the union in

any effective way without undermining the union’s ability to defend the

immediate interests of its membership. No matter who is in leadership,

it is foolish for the union to challenge capitalist control over

production agitationally, if it lacks the power to back it up

programmatically. The only results would be increased intransigence on

the part of capital and anger by the workers whose main concern was

still tangible reforms, or, even worse, those sorts of “self-management”

concessions which further tie the union into capitalist production. Nor

does it make sense for the union to minimize the strength of the company

or to ridicule its policies. All of these, however, are important forms

of counter-hegemonic struggle which can be implemented through

independent organizations.

A similar argument follows about raising general class issues through

the union. Clearly, raising such issues is a fundamental responsibility

for communists which is not at all met by resolution-passing in an

organization whose capacities and concerns are dictated by the

industrial legality compromise and by a necessary preoccupation with the

problems of “its” workers as wage earners in a particular plant. None of

these limitations hold for independent organizations. They are only

restricted by the level of understanding and involvement of their

membership and constituency.

From everything which I have said, it follows that mass independent

organizations are not going to be pure and simple expressions of what we

think is best for the workers. Even in groups which we directly

initiate, we will only be one political tendency as soon as they achieve

any genuine mass character. Thus we must be prepared to lose leadership

and fight to regain it. There will be no gentle tranquil process towards

unanimity around our position, and it would undermine our whole

conception if we attempted to enforce it.

The most important issue in this internal struggle within the

independent organizations will be the union question. Here, our position

will be in opposition to both the spontaneous trade union sentiment of

the independent organization’s mass constituency and to the perspectives

of other left tendencies which will inevitably be present. This means

that our efforts to maintain a maximum revolutionary potential through

keeping the organization independent will not be successful, and that in

many cases the independent groups will either supplant or take over the

trade union, or, if none exists, become a trade union.

A number of things follow. First, since there is a valid role for trade

unions short of a revolutionary situation, and since the potential for

revitalizing U.S. unions cannot be written off, it would be absolutely

wrong for communists to regard the trade unionist sentiment within the

independent organization as reactionary, with all that that would

signify for the methods which we would use to oppose it. In no way

should we put ourselves in a position of opposition to union reform.

What we can do is try to explain why that is not our priority.

Therefore, we must avoid becoming so wedded to a particular organization

that when we lose hegemony within it and the possibilities for

developing it into a council become increasingly restricted, we either

drift along into unionism, forgetting our strategic priorities, or

become a disruptive minority. Our strategic priority cannot be tied to a

particular organization. We must work so that in cases where independent

organizations lose their potential, it isn’t a sharp break in our

activity to decide to begin the development of a new mass formation

without such limitations. Finally, and possibly most relevant, we cannot

be so fearful of the possibility that unionism will take over the

independent organization that we don’t do everything we can to see that

it develops as a mass force — a programmatic alternative for the masses

of workers and not merely a center for left agitation and propaganda.

A Golden Bridge: A New Look at William Z. Foster, the Great Steel

Strike, and the “Boring-From-Within” Controversy

Noel Ignatin, 1975

I — WHY A NEW LOOK IS NECESSARY

“It sounded silly to hear grown-up ‘militants’ still talking about

‘boring from within.’” So writes Ralph Chaplin in his autobiography,

Wobbly. Chaplin, best remembered as the writer of “Solidarity Forever,”

was describing his reaction in about 1920 to the efforts of William Z.

Foster, Jack Johnstone and Joe Manley to build the newly formed Trade

Union Educational League as a center for militants seeking to expand

their influence in the American Federation of Labor.

Over half a century has passed since Foster launched his T.U.E.L.; and

that was by no means his first attempt along those lines. One would

expect events since that time to have settled the argument between those

who went with Foster in his attempt to “bore from within” the AFL and

those who stuck with the policy of the Industrial Workers of the World

of striving to organize the unorganized into new, revolutionary

industrial unions.

Not so. The argument is still pursued on the left. And it is not merely

a matter of interpreting a dead past. A vital question facing the left

today is whether it is more rewarding, from the standpoint of

revolutionary gains, to put effort into penetrating and influencing the

existing unions or, alternatively, in concentrating on the creation of

new forms of mass organizations at the workplace outside of the existing

unions. Naturally, the partisans of the former position look to Foster

for inspiration; those who hold the latter view regard the IWW as an

important model for their own work.

At the present time, the “Foster-ites” are clearly in the majority. It

is axiomatic in nearly all left circles that the main task in mass work

is to transform the character of the existing unions. Those who question

this principle, on grounds both of achievability and decisiveness, are

considered hopeless sectarians.

One of the sharpest arrows in the “Foster-ite” quiver has been the

experience of the Great Steel Strike of 1919, organized and led by

Foster himself. That strike has been offered as the outstanding example

of what could be accomplished by a skilled and determined militant group

operating as a faction within a reactionary union. As a vindication of

Foster’s approach and a refutation of IWW objections, it is all the more

convincing since the most spectacular results were achieved by Foster

operating almost singlehandedly, the majority of leftists being then

under the poisonous influence of IWW “dual unionist” policy.

So runs the argument. Those who stubbornly insist on the essential

soundness of the IWW position on this question — a number which

definitely includes this writer — have no choice but to take up the

challenge of the 1919 steel strike: to discover, first, whether all that

is claimed for it by the “Foster-ites” is true; and, second, whether it

actually proves what they suppose it to.

That is the first reason why a new look is necessary.

There is a second reason. As is well known, Foster, shortly after the

steel strike, joined the Communist Party and assumed a position of

prominence in it which he held until his death. In the last few years he

has been adopted as something of a model by many of those who identify

themselves as the “new communist forces.” They hark back to a time when,

so they think, the C.P. in this country was generally sound and

progressive; and they associate this “golden age” with the name of

Foster.

This is pathetic. An object less worthy of such high esteem would be

hard to find. One result of the practice of glorifying Foster’s role in

history is that people are led to glean, not the best, but the worst

from C.P. history and tradition.

The desire to counter such a harmful effect provides the second reason

why this new look is necessary. Of course it will not be possible in a

work as short as this to set the record completely straight regarding

the career of anyone whose public life was as long and active as that of

William Z. Foster. But we shall make a beginning, and perhaps in the

course of this effort suggest a few potentially rewarding directions for

future investigation.

II — THE DEBATE IN THE IWW

Almost from the day of its birth, the IWW was the target of criticism

from some on the left, mainly from within the Socialist Party, for what

they called its “dual unionism.” While paying tribute to its militant

spirit, these critics contended that its policy of withdrawing from the

AFL meant abandoning that organization to its conservative leaders and

sacrificing the revolutionary aspirations of labor to a futile,

stubborn, self-isolating “purity,”

The general response of the IWW to these criticisms was scornful. The

AFL “is not a labor organization,” wrote one IWW, and even if its

leadership “is succeeded by ‘Socialists’ of the S.P. type the A.F. of L.

would be almost as yellow as it is today. The S.P. proves this itself,

as it is becoming more reactionary every year.”

In 1911 the question was again raised, this time from within the ranks

of the IWW itself. The initiator was Foster, a former S.P. member who

had joined the IWW two years earlier fallowing the Spokane free speech

fight. Foster says he had been won to the policy of “boring from within”

while on an extended overseas visit, made for the purpose of studying

the European labor movements. (During the visit, he had acted as IWW

delegate to an international labor conference in Zurich.) In lengthy

discussions with Leon Jouhaux, the leader of French syndicalism, he had

been introduced to the concept of the “militant minority,” which

supposedly determines the course of the labor movement. He was also

favorably impressed by the example of Tom Mann, the British syndicalist

who had gained considerable influence within the reactionary British

trade unions by pursuing the policy known in Britain as “permeationism.”

On his return to this country, Foster set himself the task of winning

over the IWW to his newly acquired views. Following the IWW convention

in September 1911, where he managed to convert a handful of delegates,

he opened his campaign in the organization’s press. He had been

nominated for editor of the Industrial Worker, and chose to run on a

platform of a “boring from within” policy. In a letter to the Industrial

Worker and Solidarity he wrote the following:

The question: “Why don’t the I.W.W. grow?” is being asked on every hand

as well within our ranks as without. And justly, too, as only the

blindest enthusiast is satisfied with the progress, or rather lack of

progress, of the organization up to date. In spite of truly heroic

efforts of our organizers and members in general and “that the working —

class is rotten ripe for industrial unionism,” the I.W.W. remains small

in membership and weak in influence.

The reason for this failure, Foster argued, was the insistence on the

necessity of building a new labor organization because the existing

craft unions were incapable of developing into revolutionary unions. He,

too, had accepted this “dogma” until he visited Europe. In contrast with

the failure of “dual unionism,” he pointed to the tactics of the French

C.G.T., which “literally made a raid on the labor movement, captured it

and revolutionized it and in so doing developed the new working-class

theory of Syndicalism.... By propagating their doctrine in the old

unions and forcing them to become revolutionary, they have made their

labor movement the most feared in the world.”

Foster cited even greater triumphs in Britain using the tactics of

“boring from within” and concluded: “I am satisfied from my observation

that the only way for the I.W.W. to have the workers adopt and practice

the principles of revolutionary unionism — which I take is its mission —

is to give up its attempt to create a new labor movement, turn itself

into a propaganda league, get into the organized labor movement, and by

building up better fighting machines within the old unions than those

possessed by our reactionary enemies, revolutionize these unions.”

The Industrial Worker and Solidarity opened their columns to the debate.

Most of the letters published rejected Foster’s suggestion. Their

arguments broke down into the following basic ones:

• The AFL was not a labor organization, but “a job trust and nothing

else.” Why waste time trying to capture a corpse?

• The IWW was not building a dual union; it was building the only

organization open to the “unorganized and hitherto despised millions of

workers.” The writer cited its policy of “low initiation fees, low dues,

universal transfer card system, no age, sex or color limitations, no

apprenticeship laws and no closed books....”

• The majority of workers were unskilled and were thus ineligible for

membership in the AFL. Even the majority of the IWW could not join the

craft unions. How were they to pursue a policy of “boring from within”?

Instead of boring into the ten percent of the working class in the AFL,

“let us bore into the 90 percent unorganized....”

• Active IWW members had had sufficient experience in the AFL, with the

main result being that they had been expelled. What guarantee did they

have that things would be different now?

• The best way to influence the AFL in a progressive direction was by

pressure from without. Already .there were many AFL members who carried

IWW cards; it was their job to struggle in the AFL.

• The growth and influence of the IWW was greater than Foster claimed,

but most important it was sound. It was better to “grow slowly with the

right tactics than to create a fake industrial union by using the wrong

methods.”

After two months, Solidarity announced the discussion closed when it

became apparent that there was little support for Foster’s position. The

summary of the debate expressed the hope “that Fellow Worker Foster

himself will abandon the idea when he becomes better acquainted with the

American situation.”

Needless to say, “Fellow Worker Foster” did nothing of the sort. After

some additional efforts to gain adherents within the IWW, Foster

withdrew from the organization and formed the Syndicalist League of

North America, to which we shall return.

Two things should be clarified concerning the context of the debate.

First, Foster’s ideas made hardly a ripple in the IWW. He won over

almost nobody, the question didn’t come up again, and the organization

went on to achieve its greatest successes in the years immediately

following his withdrawal from membership.

Second, while Foster was certainly in a minority in the IWW, such was by

no means the case in the socialist movement in general. Of course, the

“socialist” credentials of some of these “borers from within” might be

open to question: for example, Max Hayes, who ran as a Socialist for

president of the AFL against Samuel Gompers, and whose Machinists’ Union

was lily white.

One historian, sympathetic to Foster, claims that he was displeased with

the rightist character of many of those who shared his “bore from

within” strategy. Some of Foster’s later statements and actions,

however, provide considerable reason to doubt this, as we shall see.

III — PREVIOUS ATTEMPTS TO FORM UNIONS IN STEEL

The decade following the 1892 defeat of the Homestead strike was marked

by two changes in the labor force: one, the elimination of the old type

of skilled labor and the substitution of a system of task divisions

suitable to modern technology; and, two, the gradual replacement of the

native Americans and older immigrants from the British Isles by Slavs,

Hungarians, Italians and Greeks who were assigned to the unskilled and

semi-skilled jobs now prevailing.

In 1901, the board of the newly organized U.S. Steel Corporation passed

a resolution which read in part: “We are unalterably opposed to any

extension of union labor and advise subsidiary companies to take a firm

position when these questions come up.”

The Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers, which had

had considerable strength among the skilled workers prior to Homestead,

feared that the steel trust intended its total extinction. Deciding to

act before the Corporation became stronger, the Amalgamated demanded

that three Corporation subsidiaries sign contracts for all their mills.

This demand precipitated the strike of 1901, which failed and led to one

of the most humiliating settlements in labor history, in which the

Amalgamated pledged itself not to accept members from the non-union

mills or to try to change their status.

In 1909 American Sheet & Tin Plate, in a fourteenmonth struggle, wiped

the union out of the last of the Corporation’s mills, leaving it almost

defunct, with perhaps 8,000 members, exclusively skilled, scattered

around minor plants.

Then in July 1909 a strike broke out at the Pressed Steel Car Company, a

U.S. Steel subsidiary at McKees Rocks, Pa. The strike was important for

at least two reasons: it was a model of IWW methods which were to become

more widely known at Lawrence, Mass.; and it was the first victory

against the steel trust (in fact the only victory prior to the CIO).

Space does not permit an adequate recounting of the events of this

remarkable strike. It began as a spontaneous revolt against a chain of

abuses which led the Pittsburgh Leader to denounce the “Pressed Steel

Car Works as the most outrageous of all the industrial plants in the

United States.” It ended six weeks later with 5,000 workers organized in

the Car Builders’ Industrial Union, IWW.

The strike involved mass meetings with speakers in sixteen languages,

battles with mounted police at which strikers’ wives told their

husbands, “Kill the Cossacks! If you are afraid, go home to the children

and leave the work to us,” gun battles which prevented a steamship from

landing with strikebreakers, 24-hour picketing, a funeral procession of

5,000 for a striker killed by police, 13 dead and hundreds wounded,

wagon loads of food from workers in Pittsburgh for strike relief, active

support from European labor movements which temporarily halted

immigration from some areas, the intervention of the Austro-Hungarian

vice-consul, solidarity from trainmen and street car operators who

refused to haul scabs into McKees Rocks, a mass meeting at which Eugene

Debs called the strike “the greatest labor fight in all my history in

the labor movement” and, at the end of it all, the triumphant singing of

the “Marseillaise.”

The tremendous victory at McKees Rocks — hailed by the IWW as “the event

of prime significance in the industrial history of America during the

past year” — greatly enhanced the prestige of the organization. Within a

few months the Wobblies carried “the spirit of McKees Rocks” to East

Hammond, Indiana, where they succeeded in establishing Car Builders’

Union No. 301 among the workers at the Standard Steel Car Co., another

subsidiary of U.S. Steel. The strike there featured the basic elements

of mass picketing, active and militant participation of women,

unification of American and foreign-born workers which had proven

successful at McKees Rock.

At about the same time, in New Castle, Pa., the IWW got involved in

supporting a strike initiated by AFL unions against the American Sheet &

Tin Plate Co. Although the IWW entered the fray too late to salvage a

victory from the mass of craft union narrowness (this was the strike

that wiped the Amalgamated Association out of the Corporation’s mills),

its efforts there aroused widespread interest in industrial unionism and

considerable concern among AFL reactionaries.

By late spring of 1910 the IWW was the only functioning labor

organization in the steel industry. Recognizing that its locals at

McKees Rocks and East Hammond would not be able to hold out alone, the

IWW set forth to organize a national industrial union of the slaves of

steel. The campaign made little headway. The organization was very

limited in resources, and besides was concentrating its main efforts on

the free speech fights and the battles out west.

The steel trust focused its attacks on McKees Rocks and East Hammond.

Within a year after its great victories there, the IWW was little more

than a paper organization in the two places. How did this happen? The

answer is known to every worker who has seen the fruits of valiant

struggle eaten away by company persistence, and watched powerful

organizations destroyed by intrigue, dissension and favoritism.

And so, a heavenly peace descended on the steel industry, and the

Monongahela and the Ohio once again meandered uneventfully through their

green valleys, and the waves of Lake Erie and Lake Michigan lapped

quietly at placid shores, and the Pennsylvania Coal & Iron police

ministered the divine order. And if, on occasion, mangled or scorched

bodies were dragged from the infernos, and if in the milltowns women, in

order to keep their men-folk working, were again forced to submit to the

foremen, none raised their voices except a few “women and meddlesome

preachers.”

IV — FIRST EFFORTS TO BORE FROM WITHIN

Foster’s efforts to win the IWW to his policies met with little success,

partly owing to the impact of the Lawrence textile strike, which was

brought to a triumphant conclusion just when he was arguing against

“dual unionism.” So he and a few followers in the Syndicalist League of

North America withdrew from the IWW and began to enter the AFL.

The principles of the S.L.N.A. were set forth in two documents: a brief

outline of principles adopted by the Chicago chapter, which, in the

absence of a convention, was empowered to act as the national

leadership; and a pamphlet, Syndicalism, about which we shall hear more

later, written by Foster and Earl C. Ford. The League was strongly

anti-parliamentary, and advocated the general strike both to force

concessions and to overthrow capitalism. According to Foster, it

“advocated industrial unionism, but laid less stress upon this

organization form than did the I.W.W...” and proposed to achieve it

through the amalgamation of related craft unions.

During its two years of existence, the League published a number of

weekly or monthly papers in several cities, took part in some strikes

and organizing campaigns, and gained considerable influence within AFL

ranks, winning control of the Central Labor Council in Kansas City and a

few other places.

It waged a defense campaign on behalf of the McNamara brothers, accused

of dynamiting the Los Angeles Times building during a strike, and helped

build a national tour for the British trade unionist, Tom Mann.

Its numbers never exceeded 2,000, and since membership was limited to

those who belonged to “conservative mass trade unions,” it may be safely

inferred that the 2,000 were virtually all native-born, white, male

skilled workers and union officials.

In 1914 the League went into decline. That same year its national center

was liquidated, leaving behind isolated groups in different places

working within the AFL.

“So, hardly had the S.L. of N.A. collapsed than we began to move to

organize a new national organization.” The International Trade Union

Educational League was formed at a conference of a dozen delegates, held

in St. Louis in January 1915. Chicago was chosen as national

headquarters; Foster was elected Secretary.

The structure and policies followed the general lines of the S.L.N.A.;

the one important change was a step to the right, away from some of the

revolutionary positions which still clung to Foster from his IWW days.

Here is how Foster himself describes I.T.U.E.L. policies:

The most significant of these new conceptions was the far less stress

the I.T.U. E.L. laid upon the importance of class consciousness among

the workers. We took the position that the trade union movement, whether

animated by a revolutionary theory or not, is by its very nature driven

on to the revolutionary goal. We held that in all trade union movements,

conservative as well as radical, there is going on a double-phased

process of strengthening their forces and increasing their demands

accordingly, and that this process of building constantly greater power

and making bigger demands inevitably pushes the unions on, willy nilly,

to the overthrow of capitalism....

All this constituted a theory of the spontaneously revolutionary

character of trade unionism as such, regardless of its expressed

conservative ideology. Consequently, we discounted such conservative

A.F. of L. slogans as “A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work” and “The

interests of Capital and Labor are identical,” as being only so much

protective camouflage designed to obscure the basically revolutionary

tendencies of the movement....

Logically, from this argumentation, I concluded that the main

revolutionary task was the building of mass trade unions. All else was

subordinate to that.

The above passage, along with the other information about the S.L.N.A.

and the I.T.U.E.L., is taken from Foster’s book, From Bryan to Stalin,

written twenty years later, after he had established himself as a

Communist leader. In that same book, he admits that the I.T.U.E.L. “had

in it, likewise, traces of Bernsteinism” — referring to the German

Social- Democrat Bernstein who, at the turn of the century, propagated

an evolutionary socialism, and summed up his views in the famous dictum,

“The movement is everything, the final aim is nothing.”

To describe the I.T.U.E.L. as containing “traces of Bernsteinism” is a

bit like characterizing the pope as “influenced by Catholicism” or hell

as a “warm place.”

Like its predecessor, the I.T.U.E.L. never amounted to much and fell

apart after two years. Undoubtedly its greatest achievement, one that

would prove significant for the topic of this study, was its leading to

a working relationship between Foster and a group of leaders in the

Chicago Federation of Labor, headed by John Fitzpatrick.

V — MEAT PACKING

On July 11, 1917, the Chicago District Council of the Railway Carmen,

Foster’s own union, endorsed his proposal for a joint organizing

campaign of all trades in the meat packing industry, and two days later

the Chicago local of the Butcher Workmen also approved it. The Chicago

Federation of Labor unanimously adopted a similar resolution and on July

23, less than two weeks after the idea came to Foster, the Stockyards

Labor Council, consisting of a dozen local unions with jurisdiction over

packinghouse workers, was formed with Foster as Secretary.

He proposed calling a national conference of packinghouse workers to

formulate demands. The AFL unions agreed, and the story was carried with

predictions of a strike in the industry. The effect of this publicity on

the mass of workers was electric; they began pouring by the thousands

into the AFL unions, not only in Chicago but in Sioux City, Omaha and

other centers.

This mass response terrified the AFL officials, who, according to

Foster, were quite unprepared for anything like a major confrontation

with Swift, Armour and the other giants of the industry. They therefore

proceeded to invite the government in to arbitrate the dispute.

“Yielding to superior force ... against our will,” Foster and the other

organizers went along with government mediation. After six months of

consideration, Federal Judge Altschuler handed down his award: in a

war-time situation, with the demand for meat at an alltime high and with

a powerful strike mood pervading the workers, he granted about 85

percent of the unions’ demands. Thus, 125,000 workers of the five big

packers won improvements without a strike, although small actions were

needed to force the lesser companies to accept the terms of the

Altschuler award.

Foster hails the result as a great victory, terming it “a glowing

justification of our boring-from-within policy.... “ Over the next three

years, reactionary gangster officials of the Butcher Workmen’s Union, in

collaboration with Gompers, managed to restore open shop conditions to

the industry by expelling some 40,000 workers from the unions they

controlled and murdering two organizers. This experience did not shake

Foster’s confidence in his “boring from within” methods, although he

does refer to the packinghouse episode as “one of the most shameful

stories of betrayals in American labor history.”

There is another aspect to the meat packing campaign which is

significant because it reveals something of Foster’s political views at

that time, as well as something of his personal character. The

organizing campaign was conducted, of course, after the U.S. entry into

the World War. One of the slogans current at the time was “Food Will Win

the War.” This was a period when the government was jailing and

persecuting IWW’s and other opponents of the War by the hundreds, so it

may be imagined how seriously it took developments in the packing

industry. Several years later, in Senate hearings on the steel strike,

Foster was asked about his attitude toward the recently terminated War.

He replied that he had supported the War, had bought bonds, had made

dozens of speeches supporting it as part of the organizing campaign, and

that he identified himself with the “patriotic” elements in the

international labor movement.

Now that was no small question for a professed socialist; in fact it was

the central question which split the Second International into

revolutionary and opportunist wings and gave rise to the Communist

Parties. To have taken a pro-War stance was often enough in itself to

bar one from subsequent membership in the Third International and was,

at the very least, a definite handicap to someone aspiring to leadership

in it.

Foster was very much aware of this and makes strenuous efforts to excuse

himself, especially in his previously quoted work, From Bryan to Stalin.

After explaining that the Senate hearings were held during a time of

anti-red hysteria — the Palmer raids — and that their aim was to

substantiate the charges of subversive influence behind the steel

strike, he cites his determination to avoid giving a pretext for this by

revealing his true views; thus he claims to have testified falsely

before the Senate. He admits, however, that his position was “highly

opportunistic,” and explains that, “The error of my war-time position

originated in my false syndicalistic conception that the decisive

revolutionary task was the building of the trade unions and that to this

end all other activities should be subordinated or eliminated, including

even direct agitation against the war.”

“Qui s’excuse, s’accuse.” Foster’s policy had come full circle since he

split with the IWW in 1912; then the difference supposedly had been over

tactics, how best “to have the workers adopt and practice the principles

of revolutionary unionism”; now the main task was to get the unorganized

workers into the reactionary, class-collaborationist, chauvinistic,

pro-imperialist, corrupt and gangster-ridden American Federation of

Labor. The lengths to which this policy would lead him will become

clearer as we investigate the Great Steel Strike.

(By the way, Foster’s attributing this opportunism on the War to his

“false syndicalistic conception” is more dust thrown in our eyes; many

syndicalists, both in Europe and the U.S., in spite of their erroneous

conceptions of the state, distinguished themselves for their courageous

opposition to the War.)

VI — THE STEEL CAMPAIGN

If the War had created a favorable situation for unionization in the

meat packing industry, this was doubly so in steel. For one thing, the

furnaces were on full blast to meet the increased demand for steel. For

another, the War, with its attendant demand for national unity, elicited

various measures from the federal government aimed at solidifying the

support of “organized labor.” The general effect of such gestures —

which included several decisions from the War Labor Board protecting

unions’ rights to organize and also establishing minimum wage scales —

was to enhance the prestige and respectability of the conservative

unions. Lastly, the propaganda about the War being fought to “make the

world safe for democracy” was bound to influence the steel workers, who

could not help but observe the contradiction between fighting autocracy

and tyranny in Europe while submitting to it at home.

“Labor unrest” had broken out as early as 1916 in Youngstown and

Pittsburgh, where for several days the threat of general strike hung

over the city. Even the moribund AFL unions gained membership with no

effort on their part. As the old Amalgamated Association expressed it in

1917, “In the history of the American trades union movement, there was

never a better opportunity to organize the skilled and unskilled

workers....”

On April 7, 1918, one week after Judge Altschuler’s decision regarding

the meat packing industry, Foster presented a resolution to the Chicago

Federation of Labor calling for a national campaign to organize the

steel industry. The resolution was adopted unanimously and forwarded to

the AFL. There it was discussed with the Amalgamated Association

officials and then submitted to the St. Paul convention of the AFL, held

in June.

In his previously cited 1936 book, Foster tells a tale of the most

incredible wheeling and dealing, which he says was necessary to gain

official AFL sanction for his organizing plans, summing up his

experience by saying, “After this maneuver I felt as though I had been

swimming in a sewer and future prospects for the work seemed most

unpromising.”

The episode is entirely missing from his book The Great Steel Strike and

Its Lessons, which he wrote immediately after the strike was over. In

that book it merely states “a number of conferences were held during the

convention, at which the proposed campaign was discussed and endorsed,”

and there is no mention of the foot-dragging and outright sabotage on

the part of Gompers and other officials he makes so much of later. It is

a curious omission, until one realizes that in 1920, when the earlier

book was written, he still had hopes of maintaining his position with

the AFL hierarchy.

In any case the St. Paul Convention led to a Conference on steel, which

was held in Chicago on August 1 and 2. Representatives of 15

international unions (later expanded to 24) set up the National

Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers. Gompers agreed to

accept the post of chairman (later withdrawing in favor of Fitzpatrick

from the CFL); Foster was chosen for his customary post of

secretarytreasurer. In his 1920 book, Foster praises the “progressive

spirit” of those at the Conference, declaring that they met “many

difficult issues squarely with the proper solutions,” and “realized

fully the need of co-operation along industrial lines....”

Needless to say, he writes quite differently in 1936.

At the Conference Foster outlined his plan for a whirlwind campaign,

conducted simultaneously in all the major steel centers. Since a new,

industrial union was out of the question, the campaign would take place

along federative lines, workers being organized by the National

Committee and then assigned to whichever of the 24 participating unions

had jurisdiction over their particular task. Each of the constituent

unions was to assign organizers to the work and to contribute

proportionately to a fund that would total $250,000.

The aim was to “catch the workers’ imagination and sweep them into the

unions en masse despite all opposition, and thus to put Mr. Gary and his

associates into such a predicament that they would have to grant the

just demands of their men.” The success of the plan would depend on

taking advantage of the favorable situation which then prevailed: “The

war was on; the continued operation of the steel industry was

imperative; a strike was therefore out of the question; the steel

manufacturers would have been compelled to yield to their workers,

either directly or through the instrumentality of the Government. The

trade unions would have been re-established in the steel industry, and

along with them fair dealings and the beginnings of industrial

democracy.”

Can anyone discover even a trace of revolutionary thought in the above,

cited from pages 21 and 22 of Foster’s 1920 book? Is there anything

there that could not be supported by a clever AFL business agent with a

nose for larger dues income? Is there anything left in these lines of

the man who once carried a membership card in an organization, the

Preamble to whose Constitution stated, in part: “The working class and

the employing class have nothing in common.... Between these two classes

a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a

class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and

abolish the wage system”?

In recent years C.P. publishing houses have been bringing out

attractive, popularly priced editions of some of Foster’s books which

had been out of print. This writer is willing to bet that there are at

least two of his books which will not be making their reappearance under

those auspices: his 1920 book on the steel strike, because it was so

right-wing as to be embarrassing; and his 1936 From Bryan to Stalin,

because it is so full of tortuous apology and self-serving distortions

that it must turn the stomach of any careful and knowledgeable reader.

The Conference approved the general outlines of Foster’s plan, until it

came time to assign organizers and provide funds, at which point, as he

put it, “it failed dismally. The internationals assessed themselves only

$100 apiece; they furnished only a corporal’s guard of organizers....

The slender resources in hand at once made necessary a complete change

of strategy. To undertake a national movement was out of the question.”

And so, the organizers trimmed their sails and began work in one

district only, the Chicago area. The response of the workers was

tumultuous. At the first mass meeting in Gary, 15,000 attended, and

similar turnouts occurred in South Chicago, Joliet and Indiana Harbor.

Workers joined by the thousands, and Foster estimates that at the end of

a month’s time the Committee could have, if it wished, struck all the

Chicago district mills.

Encouraged by their initial success, the organizers moved eastward to

Cleveland and the Pittsburgh area. In the latter, at the time the heart

of the industry, they faced especially stiff resistance.

For one thing, the War ended and recession set in, just at the time

national headquarters were moved to Pittsburgh. For another, the

Corporation ruled the steel towns of western Pennsylvania more directly

than it did elsewhere. City officials frequently were company employees,

and the right of assembly was simply denied. Organizers were shadowed

and harassed, and one, a woman, was murdered. The situation was aptly

described by one steel town mayor: “Jesus Christ himself could not speak

in Duquesne for the A.F. of L.” In addition, the companies granted four

successive wage increases, formed company unions, fostered Ku Klux Klan

movements, set in motion an elaborate spy network, and carried out mass

discharges of union members.

Foster writes, in 1936, “But, of our multiplying difficulties, the most

serious was the steady sabotage we suffered from within our own ranks,

from the affiliated union leaders. They systematically and shamelessly

betrayed the steel workers into the hands of the steel trust.”

On reading Foster’s oft-repeated howls of “betrayal” by the AFL

officials, one can’t help but recall the story of the man who was

engaged to a woman for fifteen years, during which period she had three

times married other men; after the third wedding her “fiance” commented,

“If she does that once more, I’m going to break off the engagement.”

In spite of all obstacles placed in its way, the National Committee

continued to enroll members in the unions. By the spring of 1919, over

100,000 had joined.

What did the union mean to those who joined? Jeremy Brecher, in his book

Strike!, cites several observers to the effect that the issue was

broader than simple economic demands. He quotes Mary Heaton Vorse’s

remark, made after numerous talks with strikers, that “What they

believed was not formulated into a dogma. It was not narrowed down to

trade union bargaining,” and also a remark made by a steelworker in

Youngstown: “If my boy could give his life fighting for free democracy

in Europe, I guess I can stand it to fight this battle to the end. I am

going to help my fellow workmen show Judge Gary that he can’t act as if

he was a king or a kaiser....”

It is always difficult to isolate and articulate the motives of the

participants in a great mass movement. Yet it does seem likely in this

case, when so many of the workers came from countries embroiled in

revolution and had, in addition, the recent example of the Seattle

General Strike, that one journal was fairly close to the truth when it

wrote that, “The real question is, Who shall control our steel

industry?”

IWW leader Bill Haywood once remarked that, “Industrial unionism is

socialism with its work clothes on,” and while that naked comment has

since proved to be an exaggeration, it is true that the conservative

union officials labored diligently to maintain the craft union form of

organization. Brecher cites the Interchurch World Movement report on the

strike to the effect that “in many plants the instinct of the immigrant

recruit was to associate with his shopmates of different ‘crafts’ rather

than with his ‘craft’ mates from other shops,” but that Foster and the

other organizers “combatted the natural tendency of sections of the rank

and file toward industrial unionism” by conscientiously parcelling out

new recruits among the twenty-four international unions.

The National Committee was trying to avoid a strike, but pressure built

up as more workers joined the unions. It was decided to call a

conference with no decision-making power, in order to “give the men who

have waited so long something tangible to look forward to. It would

operate to hold the men in line.”

On May 25, 1919, 583 delegates, mostly rank and file steel workers

representing all the important centers, gathered in Pittsburgh. In spite

of the conference’s lack of power, it pushed forward the impulse toward

a strike. This impulse was encouraged further by the arrogant action of

Judge Gary, who spurned an offer by the officials of the Amalgamated

Association to come to a separate agreement with the steel trust.

“All over the entire steel district the men are in a state of great

unrest,” reported Foster on July 13. “Great strikes are threatening

unless some means are found to prevent them.” The next week he read a

telegram from Johnstown threatening to go on strike alone unless a

national action were called. Resentment flared against the National

Committee, and dues payment dropped off sharply.

In order to hold the men together, the National Committee authorized the

taking of a strike vote. Since each union polled its own membership, the

balloting consumed an entire month. On August 20 the vote was tabulated:

an estimated 98% favored strike action should the companies refuse to

accede to the union demands. The main demands were: right of collective

bargaining, reinstatement of all those fired for union activities, the

eight-hour day, one day’s rest in seven, seniority, a wage increase,

dues check-off, and abolition of company unions.

The National Committee made additional efforts to avoid a strike,

including a visit to Judge Gary, who refused to see the delegates, and

an appeal to President Wilson to arrange a meeting with management.

Finally, a strike date was set for September 22.

And then, a bolt from the blue: Wilson requested a postponement of

strike action and was joined in this request by Gompers. When word of

the possible postponement got out, it unleashed a flood of protests.

Telegrams poured into the National Committee demanding that the strike

go ahead as scheduled. In his 1936 book Foster cites several of the

barrage of angry messages from the field and claims responsibility for

their being sent. His 1920 book, however, makes no mention of them.

Unable any longer to resist the pressure for a strike, the Committee

sent a letter to President Wilson, in which it expressed its “regret”

and declared that, “This strike is not at the call of the leaders, but

that of the men involved.”

In testimony before the Senate, Gompers explained why he changed his

mind and went along with the strike: “Notwithstanding what any of the

officials of the trade unions would have done, regardless of what the

Committee would have done, the strike would have occurred anyway, a

haphazard, loose, disjointed, unorganized strike, without leadership,

without consultation, without advice. It was simply a choice whether the

strike would take place under the guidance and leadership of men who

have proven their worth, or under the leadership of some one who might

spring up for the moment.”

The reader may find it difficult to believe, but Foster, the

“revolutionary,” the “syndicalist,” quotes the above testimony

approvingly, on page 93 of his book, The Great Steel Strike. For his

part, Gompers made it clear in later speeches that the “some one” he had

in mind was none other than the “I.W.W., the Bolshevists of America.”

And so, on September 22, 1919, the strike began.

VII — THE STRIKE: SOME NOTES

There is no need here to recount the story of the strike; that has been

done widely and well. Twenty-two dead, hundreds beaten and shot,

thousands arrested and over a million and a half made hungry are

eloquent testimony to the heroism and steadfastness of the steel workers

and their families, and the heartless cruelty of the steel companies.

Finally, on January 8, 1920, with over 100,000 still on strike of the

estimated 300,000-plus who responded to the call, the National Committee

declared the strike over and authorized those still out to return to

work.

Here we wish to consider another item, the manner in which the National

Committee, including Foster, dealt with the problem of red-baiting. Part

of this subject involves the question of the relations between Foster

and the top AFL officials, especially Gompers.

Predictably, the steel companies responded to the strike with cries of a

“foreign plot” to “sovietize the steel industry.” Amid the lurid tales

of gun battles in western Pennsylvania between IWW’s and state police,

it was only natural that Foster, because of his radical past, should

come under suspicion. More than that, he quickly became the principal

focus of industry efforts to pin the “red” label on the strike

leadership.

Foster’s radical past was well-known in top AFL circles. The general

attitude was that he had “reformed.” When he was attacked by a

right-wing labor paper in the spring of 1919, the National Committee

gave him a vote of confidence.

Then a reporter for Iron Age came across a copy of his old pamphlet,

Syndicalism, referred to earlier. When he was confronted with the

pamphlet, Foster downplayed its importance, stating that it had been

written eight years earlier, and said, “The important point is, not

whether I have done this or that, in the past, but have I today the

absolute confidence of Samuel Gompers? ... He trusts me and that is

enough.”

As the walkout began, headlines appeared across the country: “Steel

Strike Leader is Called Advocate of Anarchist Ideas.” Newspapers printed

excerpts from the long out-of-print pamphlet. Congressmen cited various

inflammatory passages from it as evidence of “Bolshevik influence” in

the strike.

While Foster kept silent, other labor officials responded to the

attacks, point out that Foster had long since dropped his youthful

radicalism and defying anyone to produce a single remark made during his

tenure with the National Committee that would indicate he still held his

earlier views. Moreover, he was only a paid functionary working under

the direction of the National Committee composed of 24 AFL unions, of

whose respectability there could be no doubt.

The denunciations, however, continued to rise in pitch and at the

beginning of October several labor officials made their way to

Washington to testify before the Senate committee investigating the

steel strike. The stenographic record of those hearings was published

under the title: “Investigation of Strike in Steel Industries; Hearings

before the Committee on Education and Labor, United States Senate —

Sixtysixth Congress, first session. Pursuant to S. Res. 202 on the

Resolution of the Senate to investigate the Strike in the Steel

Industries.” Excerpts follow:

Fitzpatrick: He [Foster — ed.] is not preaching and is absolutely

confining himself to the activities and scope of the American Federation

of Labor, and has done so for the years that I have known him.

The Chairman: Have you ever discussed this book [Syndicalism — ed.] with

him at all?

Fitzpatrick: Oh, he joked about the views he had in his younger days,

when he associated with men who were actuated with radical thoughts, and

he was imbued by it, but when he got both his feet on the ground and

knew how to weigh matters with better discretion and more conscience, he

had forgot all of those things.... (pages 75 and 76)

Gompers: About a year after that meeting at Zurich — no, about two years

after the Zurich meeting [where Foster had represented the IWW — ed.],

and about a year after that pamphlet had been printed, I was at a

meeting of the Chicago Federation of Labor, conducted under the

presidency of Mr. John Fitzpatrick. I was called upon to make and did

make an address. One of the delegates arose after I had concluded and

expressed himself that it would be wise for the men in the labor

movement of Chicago and of the entire country to follow the thought and

philosophy and so forth which President Gompers had enunciated in his

address. I did not know who was the delegate. He was a new personality

to me. I might say that I was rather flattered and pleased at the fact

that there was general comment of approval of not only my utterances but

of the delegate who had first spoken after I had concluded.

Much to my amazement, after the meeting was over I was informed that the

delegate was W.Z. Foster, the man who had appeared in Zurich and the man

who had written that pamphlet. I think I addressed a letter to him

expressing my appreciation of his change of attitude, his change of

mind, and pointing out to him that pursuing a constructive policy he

could be of real service to the cause of labor. He was a man of ability,

a man of good presence, gentle in expression, a commander of good

English, and I encouraged him. I was willing to help build a golden

bridge for mine enemy to pass over. I was willing to welcome an erring

brother into the ranks of constructive labor, (pages 111–112)

The Chairman (to Foster): But at that time, when you were advocating the

doctrines of the I.W.W. through the country and abroad, you were running

counter to the policies of the American Federation of Labor?

Foster: Yes, sir.

Chairman: Mr. Gompers, however, has not changed his views concerning the

I.W.W., but your views have changed?

Foster: I don’t think Mr. Gompers’ views have changed — only to become

more pronounced possibly.

Chairman: And you say now to the Committee that your views have so

changed that you are in harmony with the views of Mr. Gompers?

Foster: Yes, sir. I don’t know that it is 100 percent, but in the main

they are. (page 423)

Not a whole lot needs to be said about this performance. James P.

Cannon, who quotes from the testimony at length in his book, The First

Ten Years of American Communism, sums up Foster’s role as follows: “The

facts are that the Foster group did not amount to a tinker’s dam as a

revolutionary factor in the AFL. They actually followed a policy of

ingratiating adaptation to the Gompers bureaucracy, not of principled

struggle against it.”

Foster explains his behavior by the now-familiar reasoning cited earlier

in regard to his support for the War (which was expressed during these

same hearings): namely, that everything had been justified, in his mind,

by the over-riding need to expand the trade unions. He also asserts that

his “whole work was aimed at smashing the Gompers regime ... “ but

offers not a shred of hard evidence that the target of his “flank

attack,” whom he characterizes as “a keen old fox,” was even aware of

the threat. The whole nauseating apologia pro vita sua can be found in

the section entitled “Regarding Some Criticisms,” which makes up pages

126 to 131 in From Bryan to Stalin. This section was omitted from the

collection of his writings published as American Trade Unionism.

(Over two decades later, after Earl Browder fell from favor in the C.P.,

Foster claimed to have opposed him all along, but did not produce a

single document in the public record to support his claim. It was a

trick he had learned in the school of trade union politics.)

There is a myth abroad, begun by Foster, cultivated by the C.P. and

swallowed by most of those in the “new communist movement” who consider

themselves opponents of the C.P. The myth is that Foster was an early

American revolutionary, who waged a lonely battle against IWW dual

unionism until he was at last vindicated by the Russian Bolsheviks,

whose teachings matured him as a revolutionary and enabled him to take

the final step along the path he had been traveling — toward communism.

The truth is that as of 1920, insofar as anyone could possibly discern

from his public statements and actions, Foster was not a revolutionary,

not an internationalist, not even a right-wing socialist (for they, at

least, talked about something they called “socialism”). On every major

question dividing the left from the right in the labor movement — the

War, industrial unionism, attitude toward the Gompers machine — Foster

lined up with the right wing. He was, at best, a conscientious,

energetic, skillful pure-and-simple trade unionist.

The fact that within two years after the end of the steel strike Foster

was fighting for leadership in the Communist Party should not, of

itself, cause one to question his sincerity. Dramatic conversions have

been known to take place before — remember what happened to Saul on the

road to Damascus. But one must be clear that it was a conversion, not an

evolution.

There is one remaining aspect to the steel campaign that is so crucial

in determining its outcome, so representative of the general policies of

the AFL and so revealing of Foster personally that it was thought best

to leave it entirely to the end, where it could be treated in isolation.

That aspect was the role of the Black workers in relation to the strike.

VIII — “THE ESSENCE OF PRINCIPLED POLITICS”

Black workers first entered the northern steel industry in large numbers

during the First World War. They were by no means wanted: “It would be

better,” said the President of Inland Steel after the War, “... if the

mills could continue to recruit their forces from (Europe). The Negroes

should remain in the South.” Nevertheless, the increased demand for

labor combined with the drying up of European immigration forced the

industry to open its doors to them, although they were rigidly confined

to the lowest categories of unskilled labor.

By the time the National Committee began its work, the Black worker was

no longer regarded as a mere makeshift. Figures vary somewhat, but Black

workers seem to have made up between 10 and 15 percent of the work force

in Illinois, Indiana and Pittsburgh. In the South, of course, they

formed a much larger share, perhaps as much as half.

For forty years these southern workers had experienced jim crow

exclusion on the part of their fellow white workers and the various

unions in the industry. At its first annual convention in 1877, the

newly formed Amalgamated Association had refused to definitely declare

Black workers eligible for membership. This was a continuation of the

policy of earlier unions such as the Sons of Vulcan.

The effect of this exclusionary policy was to hasten the Black worker’s

entrance into the northern mills. The first Black workers to enter the

steel industry in the North, so far as is known, were a group of

puddlers who were brought from Richmond to Pittsburgh in 1875 to take

the place of white strikers. Almost every labor disturbance between 1878

and the middle eighties saw Blacks used as strikebreakers. In every

instance the men who were brought in had been trained in mills in the

South.

These hard lessons soon taught the union that the Black worker could not

be ignored. In 1881, the Amalgamated changed its policy and declared

Black workers eligible for membership. However, the real attitude of the

union was shown in its efforts, whenever possible, to organize the Black

men in separate lodges. One can imagine the cynicism thus generated

among the Black workers, who could see clearly that they were regarded,

not as workers, but as potential scabs.

In 1918 an attempt was made to organize the steel industry in Alabama,

when the machinists, blacksmiths, sheet metal workers and other metal

trades unions launched a campaign in Birmingham. While the metal trades

unions were all white, the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter

Workers entered the field and attempted to organize the miscellaneous

employees, white and Black, in the ore mines, blast furnaces and steel

mills. The Black workers at first showed themselves willing to join the

movement, but after one Black organizer was carried out to the woods and

beaten and another’s home was dynamited — with no action taken by local

authorities — they dropped away. It is probably a reasonable surmise

that the character of the metal trades unions, in whose interests the

strike was being chiefly waged, did not encourage Black support. In any

case, Birmingham and the South generally was hardly affected at all by

the bigger strike the following year.

To entrust the task of organizing Black workers in Pittsburgh and

Chicago to the 24 AFL unions was truly a case of assigning the goat to

guard the cabbage patch. The Amalgamated, well-known among southern

Black workers for its jim crow policies, was more liberal than some of

the others, such as the machinists and electrical workers, which barred

Blacks entirely.

The effect of this sort of “union” on the Black worker was predictable.

Foster writes, “In the entire steel industry, the negroes [sic], beyond

compare, gave the movement less co-operation than any other element,

skilled or unskilled, foreign or native.” (By the way, Foster’s refusal

to capitalize the initial letter of the term “Negro” — consistent

throughout his 1920 book — was an insult to Black people and a defiance

of Dr. DuBois and others of their most distinguished leaders. Is it

possible that Foster, after his experience with Black civic and church

organizations in the meat packing and steel campaigns, was unaware of

this?)

“... in most places,” writes Foster, “and exactly those where their

support was needed the worst, they made a wretched showing.” This was

the case throughout the Pittsburgh district, and in Pittsburgh itself,

“a dozen would cover those ... who walked out with the 25,000

whites....”

At the South Works in Chicago at least 85 percent of the Black workers

walked out initially, but they soon returned to work. This was due

partly to the fact that they lived far from the mills, did not attend

union meetings and little effort was made to reach them.

The attitude of the National Committee was that no special appeal to the

Black worker was necessary or desirable; in some cases it was worse than

that, with active measures taken to discourage union membership on the

part of Blacks. For example, in Youngstown, one Black machinist walked

out and stayed out for the entire duration of the strike but was never

permitted to join the machinists’ union.

Aside from the failure of those Black workers already employed in the

industry to support the strike, Black workers made up a large share of

those brought in to take the place of strikers. According to the

Interchurch World Report, imported strikebreakers were “principally

Negroes.” While this may have been an exaggeration, it is certainly true

that Blacks played a prominent part in the defeat of the strike. The

National Committee reported that something like 30,000 Black workers

were used to replace strikers, and Foster puts the figure somewhat

higher.

One interesting exception to the general picture was Cleveland, where

Black workers organized and struck almost 100 percent, and where,

furthermore, the steel companies were unable to recruit strikebreakers

from among the Black unemployed. The writer has been unable to discover

anything in the Cleveland situation that distinguished it from the

national picture, but research in that direction might prove rewarding.

In spite of this exception, it was generally acknowledged that the

failure to win the support of the Black worker was one of the key

reasons for the defeat of the strike, and widely bandied around in the

Black community that it was Blacks that had “broke the great steel

strike.”

Foster in his 1920 book admits that, “For the tense situation existing

the unions are themselves in no small part to blame.” He criticizes them

for drawing the color line, and calls upon them to “open their ranks to

negroes, make an earnest effort to organize them, and then give them a

square deal when they do join.”

But then comes the kicker: “They know little of the race problem in

industry who declare that it can be settled merely by the unions opening

their doors to the negroes. It is much more complex than that, and will

require the best thought the conscientious whites and blacks can give

it. The negro has the more difficult part to solve, in resisting the

efforts of unscrupulous white employers and misguided intellectuals of

his own race to make a professional strikebreaker of him.”

There you have the basic argument of every white labor chauvinist:

namely, that the burden is on the oppressed Black worker to “take his

place where he belongs in the industrial fight, side by side with the

white worker.”

Foster observes that the employers “are deliberately attempting to turn

the negroes into a race of strike-breakers, with whom to hold the white

workers in check; on much the same principle as the Czars used the

Cossacks to keep in subjection the balance of the Russian people.”

What a comparison — the Black people of North America, victim of

thousands of lynchings and mob attacks, subjected everywhere to the most

humiliating forms of segregation, denied the bare minimum of legal

protection ... and the Cossacks, the favored of the czar’s minority

nationalities, used as his shock troops against the workers’ movement.

This great crusader for labor solidarity goes on to predict that,

“Should they succeed to any degree it would make our industrial disputes

take on more and more the character of race wars, a consummation that

would be highly injurious to the white workers and eventually ruinous to

the blacks.”

In case the implied threat is not clear to every reader, let it be

recalled that Foster’s observations were written on the heels of the

Chicago race riot and on the eve of the Ku Klux Klan sweep of the North

in the 1920’s, both of which are traceable, at least in part, to

tensions between white and Black labor similar to those manifested in

the steel strike.

Naturally, Foster’s later writings omit any reference to his blatant

racist attitudes of 1920. Those leftist historians sympathetic to him,

for example, Bimba, or Boyer and Morais, simply avoid all mention of the

special role of the Black workers during the 1919 strike, perhaps

thinking that by concealing traces of what they undoubtedly consider

“backwardness” on the part of the Black workers they are performing a

service for labor solidarity.

For our part, we take our cue from something written by C. L. R. James

in a 1956 article entitled, “Negroes and American Democracy.” In that

article, James wrote: “This is the essence of principled politics, to

let the class of which you are a member and the country in which you

live go down to defeat before an alien class and an alien nation rather

than allow it to demoralize and destroy itself by adopting means in

irreconcilable conflict with the ends for which it stands.”

Those Black workers who, through their actions in the 1919 steel strike,

showed their determination to join the union as complete equals or not

join at all were every bit as heroic and acted every bit as much in the

interests of the working class as those workers who struck. They were

not “backward”; they were posing a challenge to white labor, a challenge

which, unfortunately, it did not meet. They were practicing “the essence

of principled politics,” while Foster and the rest of the leadership of

the National Committee were practicing the essence of un-principled

politics.

Just so every nail is in place: let no one come forward to defend

Foster’s record with the argument that his views on the race question,

while obviously inadequate for today, were advanced or progressive for

their time. There were active, at that time, numerous genuine champions

of labor solidarity whose writings offer an instructive contrast to

Foster’s. Many of these were Black; a few were white. Listen to one of

the latter, from an article by Vern Smith published in the April 1924

issue of the IWW paper, Industrial Pioneer:

The radical portion of the White proletariat must at once sharply define

its break with the White bourgeoisie, and the ideology of ‘Superior

Race.’ The only way we can do this at all is to emphasize and

over-emphasize the fact that we have absolutely no part in the

discrimination against the Black skin. We will have to go considerably

out of our way to make this clear. We will have to sit with the Negro in

the street car by choice, and not by necessity ... we must [carry on] a

vigorous, public, defiant defense of all Negro workers in whatever

trouble they find themselves, and never tire of protesting against,

striking against, and struggling in every way possible against jim-crow

laws, lynchings, and every other form of vicious attack on the Negro as

a race. This is the only way we can make the Negro masses see that there

are two sorts of white men, proletarians (friendly) and capitalists

(hostile).

It is not enough to merely admit him to the IWW, most of the Negroes

won’t hear of this. We must go farther, and make a demonstration of

solidarity for him.

IX — A FEW MORE WORDS

And so we are back to our starting point: the IWW. Would their way have

worked any better in the steel industry than Foster’s way? We can’t

know; it was never tried on a sufficiently large scale to provide a fair

test. One thing we do know: that when unionism finally did come to the

steel industry, it came not through a federated campaign of the craft

organizations but through a brand new industrial union that pushed them

aside like deadwood.

And one thing more we know: that regarding the consideration that

matters above all others to revolutionaries, “the ever-growing union of

the workers,” Foster’s way was bound to fail, for it was built on the

elements of dis-union and surrender that were responsible in the first

place for the subjection of the steel workers.

X — A NOTE ON SOURCES

The writer of this article has primarily aimed not at the discovery of

new facts but at the laying bare of hidden relationships among facts

already known. No new research has been done, and the only primary

source utilized in the writing has been the work of Foster. For this

reason the writer felt it unnecessary to clutter the text with

footnotes. Important citations are identified in the text itself, and

this note should supply any missing information on sources used.

Section II is based entirely on a chapter in Volume IV of Philip S.

Foner’s History of the Labor Movement in the United States (New York,

1965). The “historian” referred to at the end of the section is Foner.

Section III is drawn from Steel — Dictator by Harvey O’Connor (New York,

1935) and from Foner’s book.

Section IV is taken entirely from Foster’s own description of the work

of the S.L.N.A. and the I.T.U.E.L. contained in From Bryan to Stalin

(New York, 1937).

Section V comes from the same place. Foster’s remarks before the Senate

on the War were summarized by me from the testimony cited by James P.

Cannon in The First Ten’Years of American Communism (New York, 1962).

Section VI is drawn from several sources: Labor in Crisis by David Brody

(Philadelphia and New York, 1965); Jeremy Brecher’s Strike! (Greenwich,

Conn., 1972); and Foster’s two books, The Great Steel Strike and Its

Lessons (New York, 1920) and the previously cited From Bryan to Stalin.

Section VII is drawn from Brody, Cannon and Foster.

Section VIII is taken from The Black Worker by Sterling D. Spero and

Abram L. Harris (Atheneum edition, New York, 1969) and Foster’s 1920

work. The quote from the Vern Smith article was furnished by Ken

Lawrence.

Since much of the information in this article was drawn from Foner’s

volume on the IWW, some additional remarks are necessary lest anyone

carry away the impression that this writer considers it a good book.

Foner’s commitment to defend the C.P. version of history leads him into

a number of stupidities. I cite one here, by way of example.

In his chapter, “America’s Entrance into World War I,” Foner declares

that, “Many anti-war groups were now intensifying their activities to

halt America’s entrance into the conflict. But the I.W.W. was not among

them.” To substantiate this charge, he quotes an article by the editor

of the Industrial Worker, as follows: “I attended a peace meeting the

other day at which one of the strongest advocates of antimilitarism was

a pudgy parasite given to waving a hand, carrying the two-year wages for

a worker in diamonds. I said to myself, ‘I am an anti-militarist because

I am an internationalist, but you, damn you, peace or no peace, I am

against you.’”

Every class-conscious worker will applaud this bold statement. Foner

cites it as an example of the IWW “relegating the struggle against the

war to the background.” Thus the very heart of a Leninist position on

war, namely that imperialist war can only be halted by the waging of

class war, is dismissed as one more evidence of “serious flaws in its

ideology.”

Foner’s supporters claim that he stands in the tradition of Leninism. If

this claim is true, then one could well argue that, in his efforts to

build a worldwide revolutionary organization, Lenin’s greatest mistake

was his attempt to enroll the IWW in the Communist International rather

than the other way around.

The American Labor Movement in 1974: Problems and Perspectives for

the Left

Ken Lawrence, 1974

FOREWORD

The following article was written, originally, as a speech, which I had

intended to deliver at the National Lawyers Guild labor conference in

Atlanta on March 22, 1974. But that didn’t happen, because members of

the agenda committee felt that it was “too much of a political line, and

not enough practical information.” (They were later criticized for this

decision.)

Some of my friends, feeling that the information contained in the paper

was important for the conference participants, labored the better part

of the night to stencil and run off copies of the article for everyone.

Under those circumstances, it was inevitable that small errors crept

into the text, which also appeared in the April 1974 issue of the

Guild’s Labor Newsletter. I have taken this opportunity to correct them.

• This also is my excuse for some, but not all, of the article’s

shortcomings. Obviously the notes for a twenty-minute speech differ

considerably from what I would have written, had I intended originally

to publish the article. For one thing, I would not have had to keep each

discussion so short; for another, I would have achieved emphasis

differently. But now that the article has developed something of a life

and following of its own, I have not tampered with it except to correct

typos and factual errors, none of which were very significant.

• Mao Tse-tung says, “No investigation, no right to speak.” All of the

hostile criticism I have received not only fails to investigate the

aspects of the labor movement that I discuss here; they imply that it is

incorrect to undertake such an investigation. This type of criticism

isn’t worth answering — certainly not until it is published, at least.

• Other criticism has been offered in a more serious vein. The biggest

shortcoming that people seem to feel is that I failed to break down the

financial statistics, union by union. People want to know if the United

Mine Workers, for example, is as heavily involved in capitalist finance

as, say, the United Steel Workers. Specifically, they want to know if

there is a measurable correlation between the financial condition of a

particular union and its militancy. So do I.

Finding answers to questions like these requires a great deal more

investigation, which can only be undertaken in the Washington, DC, area.

But anyone who can do it should be encouraged to do so; it is a very

important task.

• Another criticism that has merit is that I failed to commit myself —

to make my prediction of what all this means. But I have challenged

others to do so. Generally speaking, I would say that the period we are

in now is similar in many ways to the situation that prevailed in the

late twenties. At that time the official labor movement (the AFL) was

bankrupt (to use William Z. Foster’s term), though some important

struggles were carried on by workers in AFL unions. In most cases,

however, the really exemplary struggles were conducted by independent

revolutionary unions: commonly the TUUL unions, but also the IWW and

Musteite unions.

But that didn’t mean that those organizations were “the answer,” around

which a perspective could evolve. The usual situation in which the red

unions functioned was extremely repressive and/or isolated, which

necessarily limited their effectiveness. But at the same time their very

existence provided vital experience for the movement that really did

represent the next stage of advance — the CIO.

Similarly, it would be a mistake to generate an overall organizational

perspective from the peaks of the class struggle that we have seen in

the past few years. These experiences all contain important lessons,

which we must learn to the best of our abilities. But it would be a

mistake to try to make the next stage of struggle correspond

organizationally to any of the particular recent examples of working

class insurgency.

Though the existing unions will inevitably be the battlegrounds for many

of the struggles to come, it is safe to say that the next stage of

struggle will lead either to their complete transformation, or else,

more likely, to their replacement. They will not be “captured” by the

rank and file.

• Finally, in my discussion of the special features of the South, which

was inexcusably brief, I failed to indicate one of the most important

facts of all: the labor that capitalists are seeking is Black, and they

are locating in the South to get it, but they are willing to set up shop

only in white-majority counties.

The meaning of this should be fully examined, as soon as possible —

particularly from the historic standpoint and especially the lessons of

Slavery, the Freedom War, and Reconstruction.

December 1, 1974

INTRODUCTION

This paper is an attempt to analyze some aspects of modern capitalism,

and particularly of the modern labor movement, which are new — which

have never been faced before. I have stressed these aspects at the

expense of others which have undergone less change, in order to unearth

the areas in which I believe the left must unload some of its old

baggage if it is to be relevant to the coming American revolution.

Some will pay no attention, and will answer by reciting their favorite

lines from Left Wing Communism. Those I answer as follows: The

bourgeoisie has learned a great deal since 1920. Were Lenin alive today,

he would have learned a great deal too. I see no good reason why today’s

communists and progressives cannot engage in a serious discussion of

revolutionary perspectives based on today’s realities.

I

The last AFL-CIO convention was held October 18–23, 1973 in Bal Harbour,

Florida. Despite the call for Nixon’s resignation or impeachment, the

AFL-CIO’s reactionary reality wasn’t even slightly concealed. As one

indication, the convention upheld George Meany’s suspension of the

Colorado Labor Council for having endorsed George McGovern for president

in opposition to George Meany’s pro-Nixon “neutrality.”

Its traditional support for imperialism was underscored by the favorable

response given to Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger, the only

Administration official to address the convention. Delegates

enthusiastically adopted a pro-Israel resolution calling on the U.S.

government to provide an airlift of military supplies and equipment.

Even Cesar Chavez joined in the anti-Arab jingoism. The president of the

International Longshoremen’s Association, Thomas Gleason, unwittingly

told the truth when he spoke of the “AFL-CIA.”

Charles Hayes of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters pointed out that fewer

than 2% of the 868 delegates were Black, despite the AFL-CIO’s

approximately 10- 12% Black membership. (In spite of the traditional

policies of exclusion and discrimination by most unions, employed Black

workers are more unionized than white: Black men 29.0%, white men 27.6%;

Black women 13.8%, white women 9.8%.)

While the convention passed a resolution supporting the Equal Rights

Amendment, fewer than twenty of the delegates to the convention were

women (approximately 2%), though nearly one quarter of all AFL-CIO

members are women. The membership of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers is

75% female, yet all of its delegates were men (as are all of its top

officials).

But racist, sexist, and imperialist policies and practices, and the lack

of representative or democratic structures, are not the only failings of

the AFL-CIO. The 1973 convention refused to deal with the fact that the

labor movement is being smashed.

Jerry Wurf, president of the American Federation of State, County, and

Municipal Employees, offered a very mild resolution calling for a

commission to consider restructuring the AFL-CIO in order to facilitate

organizing the unorganized. The resolutions committee recommended

against adoption of Wurf’s resolution, calling it “unnecessary and

unwise,” and the proposal was rejected.

A resolution that did pass called for an “experimental program of

expedited arbitration in appropriate industrial centers” patterned after

the no-strike agreement between the basic steel companies and the United

Steel Workers’ I. W. Abel — another step in the direction of giving up

the right to strike.

II

The labor movement has been in a constant state of decline since the

mid-fifties. In 1954, more than one third of the U.S. working class was

unionized (34.7% of employees in non-agricultural establishments). In

1972 the figure was 26.7%. If the present trend continues, unions will

represent less than one fourth of the working class by the end of the

decade.

The decline has been greatest among workers in the manufacturing

industries, the “most proletarian” sector of the working class, where

the unions have experienced an actual decrease in membership as well as

a proportional decline. One large union, the United Steel Workers,

registered a gain in 1972, but only because it absorbed the

International Union of District 50, Allied and Technical Workers, which

had been expelled from the United Mine Workers a few years before.

The only important growth of unions in recent years has taken place

among service and government employees. Though there have been and

continue to be outstanding struggles waged by recently organized workers

— farm workers, Farah workers, and Oneita workers are some AFL-CIO

examples — none of the organizing drives have kept pace with the

increase in the total workforce.

III

In 1922, describing a similar situation which he called The Bankruptcy

of the American Labor Movement, William Z. Foster wrote that Samuel

Gompers, the head of the American Federation of Labor,

is the undisputed world’s prize labor reactionary.... In many respects

he is more reactionary than the very capitalists themselves.

The same words could be truthfully applied to the AFL-CIO’s George Meany

today. Foster attributed the situation to

the fatal policy of dual unionism which has been practiced religiously

for a generation by American radicals and progressives generally.

Because of this policy, thousands of the very best worker militants have

been led to desert the mass labor organizations and to waste their

efforts in vain efforts to construct ideally conceived unions to replace

old ones. In consequence the mass labor movement has been, for years,

drained of its life-giving elements.... Dual unionism has poisoned the

very springs of progress in the American labor movement and is primarily

responsible for its present sorry plight.

Many leftists have attempted to draw parallels between the situation

described by Foster in the 1920’s and the problems they face today. Let

us examine the similarities.

Of approximately 19.4 million trade union members, only 16.4 million are

members of AFL-CIO affiliates. The rest, for the sake of discussion, can

be considered “dual.” Where are they?

The two largest unions, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and

the United Auto Workers, are outside the AFL-CIO. The International

Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, the United Mine Workers, the

Distributive Workers of America, and the United Electrical union (UE)

are other important unions outside the AFL-CIO. There are also new

unions like the Gulfcoast Pulpwood Association and the Mississippi

Poultry Workers Union, which have chosen to remain independent.

Why are these unions outside the AFL-CIO? The Teamsters were expelled

for “corruption.”

The UAW left ostensibly because of Meany’s refusal to organize the

unorganized, and because of the clash between Meany’s conservatism and

Reuther’s liberalism. More realistically, Reuther split because Meany

wouldn’t retire as AFL-CIO president to make way for him.

The UMW has been independent ever since the CIO endorsed Roosevelt while

John L. Lewis was campaigning for Willkie. The CIO expelled the ILWU and

UE for being “Communist-dominated,” and DWA was too militant for its

parent, the AFL-CIO’s Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union.

AFL-CIO unions refused to organize pulpwood cutters and haulers and many

workers in chicken plants. But after they were organized, established

union representatives graciously volunteered to sign them up and collect

their dues, while giving them little or no control over even their own

locals. Under those circumstances, the workers’ lack of interest isn’t

hard to understand.

But realistically, none of these unions could be described as making

“efforts to construct ideally conceived unions designed to replace the

old ones.” The Teamsters are infamous for their attempt to destroy the

United Farm Workers union, as well as their leadership’s increasingly

fascistic line politically.

It is the “liberal and democratic” UAW that recently mobilized a

thousand goons to smash a militant strike of its own members after

criticizing the Chrysler Corporation for being too lenient on UAW

members in an earlier wildcat. And the racist privileges in the skilled

trades rival those of the most backward building trades union.

The ILWU’s militant and democratic traditions are found today only in

history books. Until last fall, the same could be said for the UMW, the

only difference being that you would have had to look further back in

history.

That leaves us the UE, DWA, GPA, and MPWU. Wildly exaggerating, you

might convince a careless listener that all together they have 350,000

members, hardly a serious contender to replace the AFL-CIO. Nor has

anyone I know suggested that they try. The only shred of truth in the

suggestion that any of these unions are “dual,” in the way Foster meant,

regards UE, which refused to be destroyed when the Communist Party

wanted UE members to surrender to the red-baiting attacks during the

fifties.

IV

In fact, the last genuine dual union movement was the CIO, which not

only sought to replace the AFL, but for all practical purposes

succeeded. That was a generation ago. It is certainly unfortunate that

so many leftists, particularly members of the Communist Party, opposed

the formation of the CIO and dragged their feet about affiliating with

it. No doubt this “tailism,” the failure to anticipate that the CIO

would become the industrial union movement in the United States, had a

great deal to do with the inability of the left to survive the post-war

purge within the CIO. Thus, “labor unity” was only consummated in 1955,

after the isolation and destruction of the left had been completed.

And the last revolutionary dual union in the U.S. was the Trade Union

Unity League (TUUL), which existed from 1929 to 1935. It played an

important part in laying the groundwork for the rise of the mass

industrial unions of the CIO. The TUUL was headed by none other than

Wiiliam Z. Foster, who in other periods was the leading opponent of dual

unionism in the United States.

V

Actually, I think the hue and cry about dual unionism is misplaced

today. As I have shown, there are indeed some parallels with the

situation described by Foster in 1922. But the differences far outweigh

the historic similarities.

Back then there was a direct correlation between trade union strength

and working class militancy. Not only was the trade union movement in a

state of decline at that time, “bankrupt” to use Foster’s word, but

class struggle itself was at a low ebb. There were fewer strikes in 1922

than in any year of the previous quarter century.

The exact opposite is true today. While the unions have undergone an

uninterrupted decline, the last five years have averaged more strikes

per year than any previous period of history. The number of strikes in

1970 and 1973 were exceeded only once since 1880 — in 1919, the year of

nearrevolutionary struggle when 20% of all U.S. workers participated in

strikes. Today, while unions decay, the class struggle reaches an

all-time high.

VI

How can we account for this contradiction? Some writers have shown that

“labor relations” today have transformed unions from organizations of

struggle into organizations whose primary duty, once a contract has been

signed, is to discipline workers to enforce contractual obligations.

Uninterrupted work is what unions give in exchange for a particular

package of wages and fringe benefits.

When a worker complains about conditions in the plant, his committeeman

can be counted on to say, “Sorry, Buddy, you’ve got a gripe but not a

grievance.” (Meaning, “We didn’t write that into the contract, so forget

it and get back to work.”)

Victories, such as the dues checkoff (which served to remove company

pressure from weaker workers) or full time for union representatives (to

protect stewards from company pressure and discrimination), have been

transformed. Today they serve to shield unions and union officials from

pressure from rank-and-file members.

So workers, who can’t withhold dues from unresponsive unions, or who

have “gripes” instead of “grievances” but who feel just as offended, are

increasingly resorting to strikes rather than grievance procedures.

Often strikes are precipitated by racial discrimination. Or the issues

will be “specific local grievances,” such as production rates and

standards, scheduling, more or less overtime, health and safety, etc.

VII

All of the above factors are important, and help to explain the

contradiction. But there is another factor which has received

practically no attention, one which signals the onset of a new stage in

the history of American trade unionism. It developed gradually and

quietly, but has finally matured.

In the past, no matter how strong the conservative pressures became, the

simple equations of dollars-and-cents business unionism forced unions,

albeit reluctantly, to act like unions. In other words, no members

equals no dues. No dues, no power. And so on. That explains why the CIO,

even as it entered a period of decline, made a feeble attempt to

organize the South, and why certain unions still do.

In 1970, the assets of the American labor movement totaled more than

$2V6 billion. Only a small handful of the world’s largest corporations

are that wealthy. (And control of that wealth is distributed about as

equitably among trade unionists as the control of General Motors’ wealth

is distributed among stockholders.) Furthermore, liabilities total only

10% of assets.

(I have thought about this often, particularly when members of the

United Steel Workers tell me how their union is trying to persuade them

to end a strike and get back to work, in order to end the “drain” on the

treasury — the $10 weekly strike benefit.)

But something else happened in 1970, a new plateau for the labor

movement. For the first time ever, a majority of the income received by

national and international unions came from profits on investments —

stock and bond dividends, interest on loans and bank deposits, rent on

real estate holdings, etc. (The total was approximately $713 million,

while income from dues or per capita tax, fees, fines, and assessments

came to $667 million.) [See table.]

So unions don’t have to have members to make money any more, and

investing the union’s assets in securities actually brings in more

profit than investing in organizing, for the first time in history.

Actually, members are more expensive to have than it seems, since about

half of the money they pay in (approximately $333 million in 1970) gets

returned in the form of benefits from the national and international

unions, whereas none of the other does.

VIII

What does all this add up to?

First of all it means stop blaming backward workers and/or ultra-left

dual-unionist conspirators for the sorry state of the unions. They

aren’t responsible.

Instead, look at the change in capitalism, and pay particular attention

to the change in the unions themselves. (It would be strange indeed if

the unions had not changed in fifty years, or twenty-five years, or

whatever.) As in every dialectical process, a quantitative change, which

has taken place gradually, turns suddenly into a qualitative change.

Unions, once labor, have become their opposite, capital.

For those who are ready to jump up with examples to prove that I’m

wrong, hold your breath a while longer. Certainly the process is uneven

and incomplete. That is an essential element of dialectics. Another

aspect is the apparent return to the old stage — the negation of the

negation.

What I am striving for here is not a theory that can explain every

eventuality, but one which will help us to unlock the door to the next

stage of development in the class struggle. If we can succeed in this,

we won’t repeat the error of so many leftists when the CIO appeared —

first to oppose it, and later to tail behind it.

While we have not seen the full flowering of the new working class

movement, a lot of indications concerning its content and direction have

already appeared, particularly since the emergence of the Dodge

Revolutionary Union Movement and the League of Revolutionary Black

Workers.

In the overwhelming majority of workers’ struggles in the last few years

(as in every other period of proletarian upsurge in the U.S.), Black

workers have been in the vanguard of the entire class. In many cases

they have fought and won major advances entirely by themselves.

In the sharpest clashes, the unions have sided with capital, for all the

reasons discussed earlier. While workers have often struggled to

transform their unions into instruments of struggle, and will probably

continue to do so, they have not hesitated to bypass the unions whenever

it became necessary, and to develop new forms in the process. The most

recent example of this was the wildcat of 27,000 West Virginia miners

who struck to protest gasoline restrictions despite Arnold Miller’s

campaign against wildcats.

Battles are more and more being fought over control over production

itself, and these are the struggles in which the meaning of socialism

most clearly emerges.

IX

The special features of the South are particularly important to us

today. The rural masses of the southern United States have been forced

into the proletariat more rapidly than any other in history. (For

example, the proportion of Mississippi’s work force engaged in

agriculture has plummeted as follows: 1950, 43%; 1960, 22%; 1970, 7%.)

The majority of the Black population in the U.S. — 51% — lives in the

South. Thus the vanguard layer of the working class is most prominent

here.

The industrialization has special features not seen before. In 1970, for

the first time in history, manufacturing jobs outnumbered farm

employment in southern rural areas (i.e., more than 50 miles from

metropolitan centers). Industry did not locate in cities, but

increasingly moved to the rural areas.

The type of industry locating in these areas of the South is no longer

primarily the traditional labor-intensive variety. A much larger

proportion is the advanced, capital-intensive variety, especially

electrical machinery, transportation equipment, and non-electric

machinery.

X

Obviously these new realities will require careful consideration in

order to develop strategies suitable to the new period of class

struggle.

As one example, it will be important to consider the meaning of the

first proletariat in history which did not have to suffer the massive

trauma of urbanization. What strengths will this arm the workers with?

What will be the weaknesses? These are the kinds of questions we have to

find answers for.

About the only sure thing is that the old tried and true formulas won’t

be adequate. The biggest question of all is whether the left will take

up the challenge in time.