> On Jan 26, 2026, at 17:21, David Walters via groups.io > <[email protected]> wrote: > > They were both wrong
Lenin's polemic against economism is fundamental to What is to Be Done; its preface noted that the original title was "A Talk With the Defenders of Economism." > if they stated this as some universalist idea, IMHO. Germany, "everyone's > model" back in this period, was "odd" in that the working class there > organized its party, the Social Democracy, then organized their union > movement. I'm not entirely clear which previous note you are responding to. But my note was about labor unions not the working class. > Something similar happened in Austria. But in the U.S. the social democracy > of the day, I wasn't referring to social democracy but labor unions. > organized in the SLP and then the SPA developed class consciousness hand in > hand with various union struggles. The British working class organized their > unions before the Labour Party. I think each national situation gives forth > its own adaptation toward class consciousness and how it develops. I believe that. But in the US, labor unions have largely limited their struggle to wages, benefits and working conditions while outsourcing working-class politics to a Democratic Party, which failed to rescind Taft Hartley and denied unions our right to struggle using the proven tactics. The IBEW and other unions opposed public ownership of Portland General Electric in the early 2000s; plumbers are currently opposed to drawing down fuel flow through Portland's Critical Energy Infrastructure hub through which 90% of Oregon's fuels flow (geologists have shown that a major earthquake will cause the land beneath hundreds of storage tanks to liquify and dump 360 million gallons of fuel into the Willamette and Columbia Rivers); during the development of Obamacare health-care legislation, US unions did not lobby for single-payer, most lobbied for employer-funded healthcare. The first concern of the unions was not covering the US population with affordable and good health care but only their contracts. That's trade union consciousness. Mark > > David > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#40398): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/40398 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/117460647/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
