On Fri, 15 Nov 1996, Max B. Sawicky wrote: > > This is the trap of "class not race" anti-corporate messages. The same > > thing happened in the NAFTA debate where anti-immigrant messages easily > > penetrated the movement for fair trade. (Significantly, Nader refused to > > condemn Prop 187 as well.) > > A class appeal is the best (only?) way to overcome backward views > on race. Otherwise you are reduced to moral preachments. You can > try saying that race divides people to their disadvantage, but that > presumes some larger concept that subsumes race: class. This is an impoverished definition of class that equates it simply with economic inequality between groups. But what is crucial about class is its specific relation to exploitation around the axis of the means of production between owners of capital and workers. Racism is economic exploitation organized around racial differentiation WITHIN the working class where white workers collaborate with capital to assure their privileged caste position. There is no inconsistency between a class appeal to white workers that fights for a larger slice of the wage/profit split while also supporting a racial caste system that reserves the best high-paying jobs to while male workers. In fact, if achieved, such a class appeal combined with racism promises the best result for such white male workers. In fact, this is exactly how white male workers have traditionally organized in the United States, often successfully. The American Federation of Labor was formed by nearly all-white craft unions who withdrew from the declining Knights of Labor to institutionalize the privileged position of their members. In the West, anti-Chinese organizing was a key factor in supporting the growth of unions in the West. George Frederickson argues in his book WHITE SUPREMACY that through this anti-asian struggle, "unionism and working-class politics achieved more legitimacy and influence in some of the industrial regions of the Far West than in most other sections of the country." Which brings us to Buchanan: > > One, an anti-corporate message is not enough, since that easily harbors a > > "Buchanan" racist vote. Progressives have to link a clear anti-racism > > message to its anti-corporate message. > > Bull. That presumes that Buchanan was really anti-corporate in any > substantive way. He wasn't/isn't. Ignoring the honesty of his convictions (and given his families honest worship of Mussolini I'll give him the benefit of the doubt), Buchanan's words are as anti-corporate and class-based as a large chunk of union rhetoric over the years in the US. Listen to a Buchanan speech denouncing meatpacking companies who use immigrants to drive down wages in order to increase profits. Listen to Buchanan denounce affirmative action as a plot by elites to lower the living standards of white male workers. In all those speeches, you hear the echoes of over a century of Jim Crow union organizing in the United States. He may side with corporations against many other workers, but then there is little difference there since many of the AFL craft unions collaborated with employers in breaking alternative industrial unions (notably the IWW) that tried to organize all workers. The problem with class appeals is that it can easily swell on free-floating resentments against the rich that are easily redirected against other, less powerful scapegoats. Just witness the career of Father Coughlin or other racist, anti-semitic "class appeals." Or the shifting of Communist votes in France to Le Pen's movement. The alternative tradition of progressive organizing in the US is not one that tried to remain silent on the issue of race--that was the failed strategy of the Knights of Labor and the Debsian Socialist Party--but that confronted racism directly as a strategic and moral imperative in building a class-based movement. It was the strategy of CIO unions encouraged in this strategy by the Communist Party, A. Phillip Randolph, and a range of other forces making anti-racism a key component of the fight for justice It was a movement that actively promoted equality of opportunity in the workforces they organized and made sure that workers understood the moral and strategic reasons why short-term advantages of white supremacy should be sacrificed. It actively opened the doors of opportunity to all workers and as World War II made the US a key employer and contracts, parts of the labor movement made affirmative action employment a key demand. A. Phillip Randolf threatened a march on Washington unless Roosevelt implemented such an affirmative action policy and left-led unions forced such policies on employers. Union leaders like Harry Bridges of the ILWU were so dedicated to affirmative action that when the war ended and some workers needed to be laid off, he advocated abandoning seniority rules in order to preserve racial diversity in the workplace. In the post-McCarthy period, we had a period of union consolidation where preserving the privileges of the unionized class took precedence over the broadest definitions of class, race and gender equality. This had the short-term advantage of significantly raising wages for this privileged class of workers but it also reinforced racial and gender exclusions in a whole range of unions. As women entered the workplace in greater numbers, they saw unions often not as an ally but more of a hindrance in gaining equality. The same was true for many minority workers as well. The result was the divergence of energy by those parts of the working class away from unions and class organizing towards more particularistic survival strategies (much as Booker T. Washington advocated against unions and as blacks became strike breakers at the turn of the century in the age of white craft unions). However, we are seeing the emergence of a new unionism and class movement that sees anti-racism as a key component of building a stronger progressive movement. The goal is not to "overcome" racism by masking it with an overwhelming class appeal but to make anti-racism a key part of building a class movement. In California, where white supremacy was the backbone of unionism in the 19th century, the unions lined up to publicly oppose the anti-immigrant Prop 187 in 1994 and opposed Prop 209 in 1996. The result of this new direct anti-racism stance is a wave of unionization among low-wage, usually minority janitors, hotel workers, dry wall workers and tortilla drivers. People of color, especially young people of color, are more and more supporting unions and identifying with class politics. Some white workers may resent the sacrifice of their special privileges in the workplace but that just makes it incumbent on progressives to forthrightly make the moral and strategic arguments for why all forms of oppression need to be abolished in order for class organizing to be most effective. This has to go beyond making a class-only appeal (since that will lose the support of workers of color who lose out in our present caste system of racism) to directly reaching white workers with the arguments for affirmative action (and better yet, the tougher measures needed to eradicate workplace discrimination) and the arguments against anti-immigrant attitudes. That is a tall order of organizing but it the only one that can be effective. Class-only organizing failed in the later 19th century and it would fail today. Buchanism is going to find its ideological niche among white workers who see their economic caste advantages slipping away under pressure of multinational corporate restructuring. Shutting the door to minority and female workers and shutting down immigration is going to appeal to those workers. We need a full-throated education campaign to confront those attitudes, not silence, to deal with the appeal of those racist strategies. Some white male workers will just have to be written off if such education campaigns fail but others can be brought around if forthrightly make the case for racial equality as the key to achieving class solidarity and a successful anti-corporate movement. It was the failure of Nader to make those education efforts that I and others condemn. Otherwise, the sowing of class resentment becomes a freefloating anger that can, extremely easily as history shows, be aimed at minorities and other scapegoats. --Nathan Newman
