(speaking of trade unions as a percentage of the employed workers) As Mark Rickling replied on the LBO list: "You'd call 36% 'very small' and 'trivial'?" To which I added: "Right - and it was as much a qualitative as a quantitative issue for the socialist movement. Marx and Engels and their revolutionary and reformist followers correctly adjudged the unionized workers, strategically concentrated in the key sectors of the economy, as the only social force capable of leading a struggle against capitalism and reorganizing production on the basis of need rather than profit. The centrality of the organized working class was integral to Marxism in both theory and practice. "When the anticipated proletarian revolution did not materialize in the most developed capitalist countries, Western new leftists like Carrol sought to substitute students, blacks, women, and other insurgent groups as agents of change. But none of these diffuse and transient constituencies, which were generally allied to labour, had anything remotely resembling the concentrated numbers, financial resources, economic power, political influence and more generalized social objectives of the trade union movement during the long period of it's rise. They still don't, even thought the unions are but a shadow of what they once were." _______________________________________________ Comment The above was taken from Pen-L. Marx referred to the conflict of the productive forces with the relations of production. He makes it clear that the spontaneous advance of the forces of production increasingly comes into conflict with the more than less static production relations as the basis of the revolutionary process. Marx and Engels believed that the concentration of the proletariat brought about by giant industry would set the stage for the socialist revolution. Where does Marx assign the workers in trade unions the change agent of bourgeois private property? (quote) “the unionized workers, strategically concentrated in the key sectors of the economy, as the only social force capable of leading a struggle against capitalism and reorganizing production on the basis of need rather than profit.” (end quote) The proposition above is plain old fashion syndicalism attributed to Marx. The industrial form of trade unions had not yet arisen and consolidated at the time of the Communist Manifesto (1848). In fact the decisive battles for the industrial union form would not be fought out for another 70 years. I am not aware where Marx or Engels declared the craft form of unionism as the vehicle through which the definitive battles of the proletariat against bourgeoisie would evolve. The second paragraph contradicts the American experience. The idea that blacks were allied to labor begs the question, “what is labor” and “what are the blacks” existing external to this labor requiring an alliance? Blacks have always been an intimate part of the labor movement no different than Italians, Irish or Slavic laborers. Labor movement means a group of people or class that sells its labor ability for wages. All those individuals in our society that must sell their labor ability for wages constitute the totality of the labor movement. The concept of organized labor and then labor existing external to blacks and women means that in America the labor movement was basically white. This is not true, although the CIO did in fact emerge as the fighter for organizing the unskilled white workers under the industrial union form. The Civil Rights Movement was a form of struggle of the blacks embracing all classes amongst blacks against segregation. Within the organized labor movement or current, blacks fought for equality as a mass of unskilled laborers - in the main, and this fight was not very different, in its essence than that of other laborers. The form of the fight was the color question because that was the index for segregation. The alliances between civil rights organizations and unions, say Walter Reuther marching with Dr. King, is not a black/labor alliance, but a manifestation of blacks within the UAW fighting for equality across the board including within the UAW. Actually, Reuther had stated at an early UAW Constitutional Convention that of the tens of thousands of blacks in the union not one was qualified to be on the Executive Board of the Union. What changed the direction of the UAW was the 1967 Rebellion in Detroit. The union was compelled to open up for blacks who had majorities in various departments and even entire plants. Homer Jolly Sr. led the wave of newly elected black local union presidents in 1968 at Local 51. Local 51 is my home local of which I have been member in good standing for 40 years. I m not aware of any significant Northern union activity supporting efforts in the South to desegregate and most certainly not before the Watts Rebellion 1965 and Detroit 1967 on the front lines of desegregation between say 1940 and 1965. In Detroit the plants were not truly desegregated until the late 1970s and mid 1980s. The segregation took the form of denying blacks the right to transfer to higher wage rate departments and exclusion fro the skilled trades. Throughout the 1970’ and 1980’s and even today, women and minorities, one had to go to the EEOC - the federal agency enforcing non-discrimination, for relief. The concept of a black/labor alliance is not funny at all. To a large degree blacks were outside the industrial trade union movement in the 1920’s and 1930’s, but the trade union movement is the organized section of the labor movement. II. Trade Union as equality organizations. The real question is why have not one single advanced industrialized nation gone into revolution, if in fact the craft or industrial trade unions were the vehicles - agents, of revolutionary change? My own opinion is that trade unions were never and could not ever become agents of revolutionary changed because they are equality organizations. As such their inherent role is to reform the system in favor of a group of workers. What do trade unions do and why were they established? The essence of union, be they craft or industrial, is to protect the wage rates of its members and/or establish equality of wages amongst all member performing similar or the same work. In American history this equality fight has taken shape on the basis of the closed shop and the union shop. The term closed shop is used to signify an establishment employing only members of a labor union. The union shop, a closely allied term, indicates a company where employees do not have to belong to a labor union when hired but are required to join within a specified period of time in order to keep their jobs. In the UAW one officially became a union member after 90 days, although one could be represented by the union the moment union dues were taken out of your paycheck. By definition unions are exclusionary, which is unavoidable because they are charged with representing their members. To overcome this exclusionary tendency and narrowness of purpose, enlightened people of good will long ago work on the banner of the trade union movement a mission statement: “ organized the unorganized.” III. A new form of the proletarian movement is in birth. The outline has appeared. The struggle is erupting outside of direct connection of the proletariat with the process of production. The clearest real time example of this new form is the actual life process of the automotive industry and the union. 800,000 - eight hundred thousand, retired workers are UAW members versus roughly 80,000 (eighty thousand) active workers. The union movement as it has existed has lost the ability to represent the 800,000 workers. Government employees throughout America are facing vicious cutbacks and being thrown into the streets with 27 states in bankruptcy and an estimated 40 states to be bankrupt by the end of the year. 60% of the working class makes $14 an hour or less. Perhaps as much as 50% of the American working class are temporary workers. A catastrophic pension fund crisis is imminent. City services nationwide face crisis. The emerging struggle is erupting from the newly unemployed workers and retired workers facing the loss of medical care coverage. A new proletarian movement is in formation. Old fashion racism is still around but nothing like in the past when segregation was the law of the land. A truly multinational proletariat movement is in birth that cannot be conceived in categories of the past, which were wrong in the first place. Proletarians are brothers and sisters, with all classes amongst blacks, browns and women having taken their place alongside their counterparts. We are going to witness a real labor movement. Here is the meaning of the era of Obama. .
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