To: All
From: Joseph Green
July 3, 1996
Detroit #113
A comment on the Staley lockout, and the struggle
for proletarian reorganization:
ON JACK HILL'S EMPTY OPTIMISM REGARDING
THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF THE STALEY STRUGGLE
Jack Hill (whose former pen name was Oleg) has written two articles
summing up the Staley workers' strike/lockout in the Chicago Workers' Voice
Theoretical Journal #10 of May 31 and has circulated them on e-mail. They give
some interesting information about the Staley struggle. But notable in these
articles is the empty optimism about the supposed accomplishments of the
Staley workers' struggle. He has to admit of course that this strike was lost.
(When Staley locked out its workers, the struggle basically turned into a
strike.) But was this loss a setback to the development of the strike
movement? If we believe Jack, not at all. According to Jack:
* The struggle "definitely shook up the labor movement" (although it
never even reached the point where its organizers would proudly proclaim it as
a strike, and it was instead a show case for "corporate campaign" tactics).
* The struggle helped push "Kirkland out and led to the election of
Sweeney as head of the AFL-CIO" (although Jack admits that this was of no use
to the workers).
* The struggle "to some extent" exposed "the mainstream AFL-CIO hacks" as
obstacles to the struggle (although Jack admits that one of the "serious
flaws" in the strike was that it avoided "directly exposing and confronting
the AFL-CIO leadership and the international union leadership").
* The struggle was particularly important in "convert(ing) a number of
the rank and file workers into experienced and dedicated worker activists"
(but Jack can't point to any new rank-and-file organization independent of the
reformists, and he won't even discuss the views of these new worker
activists).
* The struggle popularized mass tactics and "accomplished a lot in terms
of building consciousness across the country of the possibility and necessity
of workers resisting" (although Jack admits that one of the "serious flaws" in
the struggle was that it "avoid(ed) confronting continued production in the
plant").
* Jack presents the struggle as something essentially different from and
superior to the other strikes that have occurred--for example, Jack is excited
that the local union leadership welcomed the "communists and socialists" of
the Chicago Staley Workers Solidarity Committee.
The workers need the truth
Jack thinks that all this praise of the struggle must be said, or else
one is spitting at the heroism and sacrifices of the Staley workers. He thinks
that, to honor their struggle, one must sugarcoat its outcome. I think the
opposite--to honor the Staley workers and show true solidarity with them, one
must look the truth in the face:
* The struggle, despite enthusiastic support from other workers, failed:
the Staley workers voted out a reformist union local leader and voted in a
capitulationist one, and then voted to return to work with a miserable
contract, not much better than what they were offered at the start.
* The struggle did not shake up the labor movement, but followed the same
pattern as other recent major strikes of staying within the narrow limits
placed on them by the reformist trade union leaders and, for instance, not
seeking to close down the struck plants.
* The local left in Chicago--in particular the Chicago Staley Workers
Solidarity Committee--in the main followed a reformist policy and went along
with the "serious flaws" in the struggle.
* The sabotage of the Staley struggle by the top AFL-CIO leaders was not
exposed, as the local union leaders--while angry at the foot-dragging and
pressure from the AFL-CIO--kept silent until after the struggle was lost.
The only way to respect the workers is to tell them the truth. This takes
steadfastness and courage, and if the left is going to ask the workers to show
staunch courage against the capitalists, it had better set an example by
displaying some courage itself.
In the long run, it is invigorating--not demoralizing--to look the truth
in the face. After all, if the Staley struggle had accomplished all the things
that Jack thought it did, it's hard to understand why it failed. The hard
facts must be brought out--only this will really help strike activists become
"experienced and dedicated worker activists".
Jack however has a different view. He believes it demoralizes the workers
to tell them the truth. If only Jack presents the present movement as going
upward, ever upward (in the Chicago area, at least), then the workers
presumably won't notice the steady decline of the movement, a decline which
has not yet been stemmed.
Of course in some situations revolutionaries do have a more positive
assessment of events than reformists. The revolutionary communists see the
long-range pattern of development, and they judge the movement by different
standards than the reformists. The reformists tend to be horrified whenever a
struggle becomes sharp, whereas the revolutionaries laud the development of a
sharp class struggle. However, it is not a stereotyped pattern good for all
times and places that revolutionaries say that the struggle has really
accomplished a lot, while the reformists are full of gloom. In fact, in many
situations the reformists and capitulationists gloss over the difficulties and
present the situation as just fine, while it is the revolutionaries who warn
of the depth of the crisis and of the need for new and decisive measures. The
reformists for example are adjusting to the present neo-conservative
atmosphere and presenting the present-day disorganization, meekness, and the
lack of struggle as an advance over the past. This is a method they use to
smother the struggle. Thus, in one strike after another, the pro-capitalist
labor bureaucrats try to smother militancy by assuring the workers that
"corporate campaigns", legal maneuvers, and begging hat in hand are all that
is necessary. The reformist labor officials keep insisting that the strike is
going ever so well, that the capitalists are losing so much money, or that the
politicians are just about to interfere if only the workers vote for the right
candidates, right up to the moment that the strike is lost. Jack goes these
reformist union officials one better, and insists--even after it has been
lost--that the Staley struggle went ever so well.
The truth is that the Staley struggle did not break out of the pattern of
other recent strikes. There may be good reasons why the Staley workers were
not in a position to do so. And the Staley workers are not to blame for the
harsh situation confronting the workers' movement today, but rather are
victims of a situation which they fought to a certain extent and which is
oppressing them and destroying their working and living conditions. It is not
the mass of workers who are responsible for the capitulationist policy of the
trade union bureaucrats. But the workers must be told the truth: the Staley
struggle was waged on the old lines. As a result, despite the sound and fury,
it precisely did not shake up the labor movement; it did not expose the policy
of the AFL-CIO; and it did not encourage other workers to blockade struck
factories. The biggest mass actions at Staley, including the demonstration of
June 25, 1994 on the first anniversary of the lockout, did not blockade the
struck factory, and the widely-circulated video of that demonstration promoted
anything but blocking the factory. The problem was not, as Oleg has it, that
there were some flaws in the struggle, but that the struggle was run from
beginning to end along reformist lines, and the workers and the CSWSC never
broke out of this pattern.
Jack Hill's critique
Mind you, Jack has some differences from the local union leaders and even
some of his friends in the CSWSC:
* He recognizes that one of the key issues in the defeat of the strike
was the failure to attempt to close down the plant (although he also thinks
that the struggle might have been just on the verge of winning anyway).
* He thinks the workers should try to devise better "corporate campaign"
strategy than the union leaders and reformist activists--and he seems to
believe all the union gossip about the great success of these tactics with
"Pepsi". Supposedly, if only the workers hadn't settled, Pepsi was on the
point of forcing Staley to agree to better terms.
* He thinks that one can replace the "labor movement" by a "workers'
movement" if only one breaks with "the AFL-CIO leadership and the
international union leadership who are hamstringing the struggle". Thus he
looks towards various reformist union locals (which he refrains from
characterizing as "reformist") and other reformists as the base of a
supposedly "independent" workers' movement. He is excited by the action of
certain union locals in providing material and moral aid for the Staley
struggle and regards this as a sign of the development of an independent
workers' movement.
Jack's critique is partly correct and partly reformist. It is correct
that a key issue was to seek to close down the plant, and it is correct that
the top union leaders played a disgusting role. But Jack also has trouble
departing from the reformist AFL-CIO strategy for strikes. Thus Jack--having
noted that "corporate campaigns" can be "supplementary tactics"--is far too
enthusiastic about these campaigns and ends up promoting illusions about them.
He is susceptible to the reformist rumors about how wonderful they are.
Indeed, while he says that they cannot be an "effective" substitute for
"struggle at the plant gates", he also says that the "corporate campaign"
would probably have brought Staley to its knees if only the "AFL-CIO had
really applied serious resources" to it. He doesn't notice that, if the
"corporate campaign" itself would have sufficed, then this goes against his
critique that such a campaign was no substitute for shutting down Staley.
Moreover, Jack's idea of uniting everyone simply against the top union
leaders is a reformist illusion. It ignores that the capitulationist trend
doesn't just consist of the top leaders in the AFL-CIO, but is a political and
ideological trend comprising local leaders as well, even those who do wage
some type of strike struggle, as the Staley local leaders did.
Indeed, Jack's critique of the AFL-CIO top leaders hardly extends beyond
the fact that they didn't apply "serious resources" to the struggle and they
sought to squash the struggle. He has a hard time dealing with the actual type
of struggle that the AFL-CIO leadership wants to organize, and often pretends
that differences among reformist union leaders on the details of their common
strategy, and on their assessment of a particular struggle, are differences
between the trend of capitulation and the independent trend of struggle. Thus
Jack criticizes targeting the "corporate campaign" against State Farm
Insurance and Domino sugar as bad tactics, and he attributes this to Ray
Rogers and the "corporate campaign" strategy. But when he likes the "corporate
campaign" he paints it as almost opposed to the AFL-CIO, for example, writing
that it was "the Staley workers [who] did hit on a pretty good strategy of
targeting beverage companies which purchased Staley's product."
If Jack's main criticism of the AFL-CIO is that it didn't donate
resources to the Staley struggle, he praises extravagantly locals that did. As
soon as a local union donates some money and endorses a struggle, Jack has a
hard time seeing it as being part of a reformist trend.
Jack's articles present the pattern that the difference between the good
and bad trade union leaders is whether they give a struggle some material and
moral support, or whether they boycott it. He doesn't contrast reformism to
the line of class struggle, but simply capitulation to struggle. The pattern
is something like: the bad international leaders sellout the struggle, while
many good local leaders, the leftists, and the workers fight, although
sometimes there are flaws in the way they fight. This pattern seems at first
sight to fit the Staley struggle, since the top AFL-CIO leaders stabbed it in
the back. Nevertheless, a look at other struggles, and a closer look at the
Staley struggle, show that this viewpoint is mistaken.
For example, take the question of the "corporate campaign" that was used
at Staley. It's not that the top AFL-CIO leaders always sabotage "corporate
campaigns" while the locals and the left carry them out. On the contrary, the
AFL-CIO promotes "corporate campaigns". It's not that the AFL-CIO opposes all
"in-plant resistance" and the good local leaders carry them out. On the
contrary, the AFL-CIO, in seeking alternatives to strikes, has looked at "in-
plant" tactics as well as "corporate campaigns". It's not that the AFL-CIO
opposes "civil disobedience" actions, while only the "communists and
socialists" of the CSWSC carry them out, but various officials from
international unions or the AFL-CIO promote "civil disobedience" as an
alternative to workers' blockading plants. It's not that the AFL-CIO wants to
avoid strikes, while the local Staley leaders looked towards a strike, but the
local leaders were agreed with the AFL-CIO in seeking alternatives to a
strike. No doubt, the AFL-CIO is stodgy, and it's not hard for activists to
carry out "corporate campaigns" and "civil disobedience" with more flair and
daring. But a strategy that doesn't go beyond simply outdoing the AFL-CIO
leadership at its own game is doomed to failure.
What has to be built up
among the rank and file?
But let's return to the issue of the mass struggle, which Jack wants. Now
it is true that one of the key issues in the Staley lockout--as in the Detroit
newspaper strike, and other recent strikes--is whether the workers seek to
close down the struck or locked-out plant. But Jack never asks what type of
organization and what type of trend would have to be built up among the
workers to help them break out of the capitulationist tactics forced on them.
It's not enough to simply hope against hope that eventually someone will seek
to shut down a struck plant. And it's positively harmful to promote hopes that
various union locals will somehow spontaneously become militant. One has to
work to organize an oppositional trend that will serve as a core to mobilize
the mass of workers to carry out mass tactics. This is what Jack stays away
from doing.
Jack is a member of the Chicago Workers' Voice group, which regards
itself as communist. Does this mean that Jack is working to develop communist
organization in the workers' movement? Not at all. Jack doesn't see any such
role for the CWV group. Jack seems to regard it--as other members of the CWV
also do--simply as a cheering squad for the mass struggle and for the general
left. He only promotes that he participated in the Staley struggle as a member
of the Chicago Staley Workers Solidarity Committee (CSWSC). His articles on
the Staley struggle were in the Chicago Workers' Voice Theoretical Journal, as
I mentioned at the start of my comments. But even this journal itself only
promotes Jack as a general activist of the struggle, and doesn't promote the
activity of the Chicago Workers' Voice group. It seems that the CWV doesn't
seek to develop an anti-revisionist communist trend in the movement, but
insofar as the CWV connects with various movements, its members simply merge
with different left groups.
And with respect to the CSWSC, Jack doesn't say who was in it. He doesn't
say which left groups or trends were in it, and what they did. Were there
reformist trends inside the CSWSC? Were there trends which basically supported
the AFL-CIO strategy but simply wanted to carry it out in a militant way? Jack
disagrees at one point with an assessment by some activists of the CSWSC, who,
he seems to say, agreed with the views of the local union leadership against
mass action at the plant gates, but Jack doesn't discuss whether the stand of
these CSWSC activists gave rise to any dissatisfaction within the CSWSC or was
in fact the general stand of the CSWSC. Nevertheless, the CSWSC was, for him,
the organization of the "socialists and communists" in the struggle.
Indeed, Jack doesn't even discuss the agitation that the CSWSC and the
CWV carried out during the Staley struggle, what it aimed at, and whether
anyone listened to it. He is enthusiastic about "civil disobedience" actions
in "corporate campaigns", but he closes his eyes to an assessment of the
agitation of the "communists and socialists".
The CSWSC
But there's a lot to consider about the role of the CSWSC. If one puts
together bits and pieces from Jack's own account, one finds out:
* The CSWSC members most connected to the Staley workers, the ones who
Jack says "spent a lot of time in Decatur talking with Staley worker
activists", seem to have agreed with the local union leaders in opposing mass
action at the plant gates.
* The CSWSC mainly carried out support work for the local union.
* And the CSWSC was quite excited about the "corporate campaigns".
Jack may be critical of the stand of some CSWSC members in opposing
militancy, but he is generally enthusiastic about the work of the CSWSC and
presents it in a wonderful light. He has no perspective of what activists
should have done to change the CSWSC, or whether it is realistic to expect
general coalitions of the left to revitalize the workers' movement, etc. He
just goes with the flow.
He is especially enthusiastic about the CSWSC's "civil disobedience"
inside the corporate campaigns. They may perhaps have been praiseworthy, but
CD's do not take the "corporate campaign" outside the reformist strategy. The
CD's may show that the CSWSC was more active than the union leaders in this
struggle, but it doesn't show that the CSWSC had a fundamentally different
strategy than these leaders. Various reformist union leaders organize "civil
disobedience" as their chosen form of mass action. In the Detroit newspaper
strike, the union leaders have promoted CD's as an alternative to militant
mass action. At the height of the struggle, the workers took the occasion of a
mass action organized at the plant gate by the union leaders--indeed, mainly
by the international union leaders--to go beyond what the union leaders wanted
and to actually block the distribution of the Sunday issue of the paper and
bottle it up inside the production plant. The plan of the international union
at this action was to wage CD's. The union leaders have repeatedly put forward
all sorts of civil disobedience actions and minor actions as the alternative
to actually bottling up the newspapers at the production plant.
The reformist local leaders
and the left
Thus it has a strange ring when Jack boasts about the good relations
between the local union leaders and the left. Why shouldn't there have been
good relations if the CSWSC was mainly subservient to the reformist trade
union leaders? Should the goal of "communists and socialists" be to cement
good ties with the reformists or should they seek to build up an independent
workers' movement although that will mean struggle against reformism?
But Jack enthuses that "In contrast to some other struggles, such as some
of the Cat locals, the Staley local never seemed to object to leftists
distributing socialist or communist literature at their events or to
socialists and communists participating in the support committees." But did
these "socialists and communists" promote any work to develop an independent
trend? Who were they (i.e. what trend were they, not what was everyone's
name), and did they carry out consistent denunciation of the betrayal by the
international leaders? Did they argue for a different policy than that of the
local union leaders? Or did they mainly just back the reformist policy of the
trade union leaders, and carry it out more actively and militantly?
Jack apparently promotes the good relations with the left as proof of
* the supposedly special nature of the Staley local union leaders
(despite their tactical errors); and
* a sign that the local unions--if emancipated from the internationals--
can form the base of the "workers movement" with which he hopes to replace the
"labor movement".
In fact, the Staley union leaders don't appear that different from
reformist activists elsewhere. In the Detroit newspaper strike too, the union
leaders only denounced the "left" when it advocated a policy that the leaders
weren't too fond of. If there was such excellent relations between the CSWSC
and the union local in Staley, even though the union leaders harbored hopes in
the AFL-CIO to the very end and insisted on a reformist strategy, it suggests
that the CSWSC centered its attention on maintaining these relations to the
exclusion of advocating an independent stand.
And Jack's hopes about the union locals show the limit of his "socialist
and communist" stand. It extends no further than the action of various union
locals today. When the Marxist-Leninist Party was alive, Jack took part in its
work to develop a communist trend among the workers. Having given up on this
attempt to organize a truly independent trend, he now puts his hopes on union
locals in general, and on a general mixture of all the left in broad
coalitions that are unable to stand against the dominant reformist ideas of
the time.
Last year I pointed out that the CWV has replaced the idea of working to
build up a revolutionary anti-revisionist trend with simply floating in the
left. Jack Hill's articles on the Staley lockout show this in full detail.
Jack--having become demoralized with the idea of independent communist
activity in the economic struggle or in the left movement in general--now
closes his eyes to the trends. If he doesn't notice the different trends in
the CSWSC--trotskyists, reformists, etc.--then presumably the CSWSC can simply
be regarded as the "left" and as "communists and socialists". If he doesn't
characterize the stands of the union officials and refrains from telling the
reader what groupings and trends they belong to, then presumably we can ignore
this and just put our hopes in "locals" breaking away from the
"internationals".
Indeed Jack's articles are notable for their lack of characterization of
the political trends in the struggle. There are some good things and some bad
things, some things he likes and some things he doesn't. But he doesn't
present that political trends and political differences have much to do with
it. He pictures the bad international leaders, the good workers, and the good
left, and he describes the local union officials as sort of good but making
some bad mistakes. His picture is basically: there are those for action and
those against action. So, in essence, he calls for uniting everyone who is for
action against the bad leaders of the international unions and the AFL-CIO.
But this is an impotent call, which will never suffice to build an independent
workers' movement, since the reformist leaders do, in general, carry out a
certain sort of action.
Jack's refusal to deal with the issue of trends means that he doesn't
tell the working class what is really going on in the union movement, nor does
he tell it what the real situation in the left is. He simply crosses his
fingers and hopes that there will be more militancy in the future.
The "labor movement" vs.
the "workers' movement"
Jack of course regards himself as a real revolutionary. He would even do
away with the the "labor movement" of the present and replace it with the
"working class movement". Is Jack really going to agitate among the workers
"down with the labor movement"? Somehow, I doubt it. He has a bit too much
good sense for this. But he makes much of the distinction between the "labor
movement" and the "working class movement" is order to look real radical and
so that the reader will overlook the fact that he doesn't put forward tasks
needed to build up a revolutionary trend among the workers.
And what is this "labor movement" that Jack opposes. He says that "the
official so-called `labor movement' led by the soldout bureaucrats of the AFL-
CIO is a positive hindrance". But Jack clearly doesn't believe that the local
unions that gave material and moral support to the Staley workers were a
hindrance, and he praises the actions of the local Staley union leaders as a
major factor in uniting the workers for the struggle ahead. So for all his
shouting about the "labor movement", he doesn't include the local unions and
the local bureaucrats in this "labor movement". For him, this so-called "labor
movement" is just another name for the top leaders of the international unions
and the officers of the national AFL-CIO. Jack doesn't seem to have grasped
that the reformist stand of the AFL-CIO isn't just a matter of a few bad
apples at the top, but is reflected at all levels throughout the pro-
capitalist unions.
So it turns out that Jack's articles not only describe some aspects of
the Staley lockout, but they also reflect the reformist sickness afflicting
most of the left today. They show his reluctance to look straight in the face
of the present disorganization of the strike struggles and of the left
activists. And it shows his replacement of the hard work of building a
revolutionary communist trend with sighing after any bit of militancy that
shows up here or there.
Today the working class struggle faces disorganization. There is an
organizational and ideological crisis facing all organizations claiming to
speak in the name of the proletariat, from trade unions to political groups.
This has left the working class in a weak position with respect to the
economic offensive of the bourgeoisie. In the U.S., fewer and fewer workers
are in unions, and the unions are dominated by a pro-capitalist labor
bureaucracy that strives to keep any struggle within bounds. Although the
trade union leadership has sought to avoid struggle, the harsh concessions and
cutbacks being forced on the workers have resulted in a number of struggles:
at Caterpillar, at Staley, at the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press, at
Boeing, etc. Many key strikes have been lost, and there are a certain common
features that appear:
* A labor union leadership seeking alternatives to strikes, and--during
strikes--seeking to keep mass actions within narrow limits.
* Some dissident lower-level labor union officials have opposed the most
capitulationist policies of the higher officials, but have nevertheless
refused to tell the workers the truth about the labor union bureaucracy and
have themselves sought to keep the workers away from big mass confrontations.
* The left-wing organizations have in the main created illusions about
what can be expected from the present labor unions and their officialdom.
These features can be seen in the Staley lockout, in which the workers
held out courageously but lost. The strategy of the union officials--whether
international or local--was to find an alternative to going on strike. Jack
himself seems to have had some expectations about this strategy. While he says
that there should have been mass actions at the plant designed to stop
production, he also praises excessively every alternative to a strike that the
union leaders tried. And he never even raises the issue of trying to organize
an independent trend among the workers.
The only way forward is to strive to develop a new revolutionary trend
among the working class. This requires a thorough and fearless critique of the
dominant reformist ideas of the groups involved in struggle. But Jack would
center such criticism simply on the idea that one should be involved in the
struggle and be militant. Jack is so anxious to avoid criticism of any action
that he ends up, half the time, apologizing for the reformists at the head of
such actions. What is needed is to build up proletarian organization that has
a truly independent stand, but Jack closes his eyes to this. He even ignores
his own organization (the Chicago Workers' Voice) and instead hails as a new
rebirth the solidarity actions of leaders of local unions and the most
ordinary actions in the workers' movement (work-to-rules, "in-plant" actions,
etc.). What is needed is telling the truth about the present stagnation in the
movement, but Jack revels in the great accomplishments of the Staley lockout
and the CSWSC. So Jack's articles on the Staley lockout amount to glorifying
the present stagnation instead of rallying activists against it. <>
