WL: "The industrial-trade union form must change or die."
COMMENT: It's changing already. --- On Fri, 1/21/11, waistli...@aol.com <waistli...@aol.com> wrote: From: waistli...@aol.com <waistli...@aol.com> Subject: Re: [MLL] Reply . . . and quick note to comrade Mark Scott: Trade Unions rewrite To: marxist-leninist-list@lists.econ.utah.edu Date: Friday, January 21, 2011, 2:13 PM Rewrite and editing. None of the substance of the original was changed. WL There is a theory question involved in the "question of the trade unions" and "communist work within the trade unions." Communist work in trade unions today must be imbued with historism and disclosure of the dialectic of the leap if we are to make sense to our proletariat and a new generation of revolutionaries. 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. The material form of the trade union movement of that time was craft unionism. The new material form was industrial trade unionism. The last echoes of the guild system were liquidated from history based on a new social organization of labor. The guild system was built up under feudalism based on a complex of handicraft and manufacture as oppose to industrial production. The subjective cutting edge of the fight of these unorganized industrial workers in mass industries, most certainly in Detroit, was the Slavic workers whose material organization proceeded on the basis of the old European language press. This was so because our working class was formed from European immigrants based on the settler's state and the historic ethnic and national divisions within Europe. If that degree of change from one quantitative boundary to another - to Fordism and assembly line production., 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 qualitatively new technology regime with almost no human labor? In 1919 the industrial organization of auto moved forward with the Socialist Party. Actually I have in mind the Fisher Body strike of February 1921, rather than the unwarranted glorification of the union movement after Roosevelt passed the Wagner Act July 5, 1935. In 1919 the communists positioned themselves on the leap - the rising curve of development of means of production expressed as the industrial trade union form. How can we NOT expect the qualitative changes in the means of production we are experiencing to NOT affect us in a radical evolutionary way? This theoretical issue is not discussed as it is being experienced in real time Detroit. The issue is the evolutionary leap versus a leap between quantitative boundaries or 1919 versus 2011. Marxists keep an eye on qualitative changes in environment or in this case qualitative changes in the material form of "social organization of labor." The unions today - not in 1919, 1938 or 1959, cannot really help the workers hold on to good paying jobs. This is so because the good paying job was a product of the post WWII unprecedented expansion of American capitalism. Building a "revolutionary cadre" within the unions sound good but more is involved in charting our path forward as we travel a new path. The leap we face is greater than the leap from craft to industrial unionism. Our leap roughly corresponds to the destruction of the guild system under feudalism. Where are union organizations to be extended if what we face has more in common with the destruction of the guild system rather than transition from craft to industrial union form? III. The line of march of the social revolution is along the dialectic of the evolutionary leap, rather than the quantitative leap communist faced in the 1921 Fisher Body strike. The dialectic of the leap - any leap is the dialectic of quantity and quality, but an evolutionary leap is very different from a leap from one quantitative state to another quantitative state. The industrial trade union form - a quality expressing a quantitative state of development of the productive forces, is spent. The industrial-trade union form must change or die. _______________________________________________ Marxist-Leninist-List mailing list Marxist-Leninist-List@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxist-leninist-list _______________________________________________ Marxist-Leninist-List mailing list Marxist-Leninist-List@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxist-leninist-list
