Comment Trade union work is important. On my list of five important things for Marxists, trade union work comes in about 3 or 4. I know something of this arena, reporting from time to time to this list on the specific nature of MY trade union work; the specific problems in getting MY union into action and the nature of resistance of the union bureaucracy. Changes in the UAW since the Constitutional Convention and the health care fight have been forwarded to this list in real time. Actually, I know a lot about the question of trade unions as history and in real time. There is a theory question involved in the "question of the trade union"s and "communist work within the trade unions" basically ignored or not understood by American Marxism. When the US economy shifted from small manufacturing plants comprised of mainly skilled craft workers to gigantic factories employing tens of thousands of workers, that quantitative shift from one boundary to another threw the material form of the union movement and society into turmoil. If that degree of change could upset things so much, how much more profound can we expect the social consequences to be to society moving from industrial production to production carried out by a new technology regime with almost no human labor? In 1919, actually I have in mind the Fisher Body strike of February 1921; the communist positioned themselves on the rising curve of the industrial trade union form. How can we not expect the qualitative changes in the means of production to NOT affect us in a more radical way? I do not avoid trade union work but the issue is not discussed as it is being experienced in real time Detroit. Yes, opportunism and betrayal has existed but the salient feature is the change in environment in which the unions cannot really help the workers hold on to good paying jobs. I write about extending the union as an organization into a social movement, rather than economism. Building a revolutionary cadre within the union sounds good but a lot more is involved requiring charting our path forward as we travel a new path. The leap we face is greater than the leap from craft to industrial unionism. Every union leader worth their salt understand this process on one level of another but the Marxists do not understand it and fail to arm the fighting section of the unions with a vision and class consciousness. Discussion is more interesting to me when we leave sloganeering and speak of real events and the dialectic of process. What did Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Enver write about this leap we are experiencing? I am not an economist with anarcho syndaclist visions kow towing to "trade unionism" pure and simple. The line of march is along the dialectic of the leap no different than the communist of the 1921 Fisher Body strike. The industrial trade union form is spent. Communists stuck in the old market or past are going to be run over and left on the side. I am aware that concept like "new class" means different things to different people, but since we deploy this term at least allow one to explain that the material form of the working class changes as Engels wrote about in detail. This means the trade union form must change or die. II. Fighting for "socially necessary means of life" for those without money is urgent. Things are going to only get worse, not better. The hate spewed forth under the banner of the "Welfare Queen" is rotten white chauvinism and the stock in trade of the ideological fascist. Our proletariat is facing catastrophe. A new era of social revolution has opened. The struggle of the unemployed has ALWAYS galvanize our proletariat during acute crisis. People not interested in this work should not do it. In regard to work amongst the unemployed and trade union work the Dave Moore Interview was sent to the list. Moore was an old communist - a black guy, out of Local 600 or Ford Rouge, which was the decisive place where unity of the proletariat was won. III. I vote that "socially necessary means of life," are immediately declared a birth right, and reject the concept and political slogan, "Those that do not work shall not eat." Of this there can be no compromise. "Socially necessary means of life" as a sovereign birth right is the historic communist vision. The concept of a job, like home ownership and the work ethic is just so much bourgeois ideology. Marx never speaks of jobs. Never. If one choose to interpret "ability" to mean "ability to do a job" that is their choice. This is a theory question. And there is more than meets the eye in unraveling the meaning of social production. Waistline In a message dated 1/21/2011 10:15:17 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, _georgeg@micronetix.net_ (mailto:geor...@micronetix.net) writes: One of the main tasks of MLs in the US is to rebuild a revolutionary cadre within the unions, that can take the lead in the fight against these attacks. This is a long process but must be begun. One cannot, as Melvin does, just leave it to the objective factors of the bribery of a good section of the post WWII working class, which was certainly an objective phenomenon. The question is what is the response of the revolutionary elements.
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