[A-List] Rethinking Mutual Aid

["Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx>]

At the origins of the modern Left, mutual aid organizations were very
common, probably the predominant form of proletarian organizations.
Marxists, however, have tended to think that such mutual aid
organizations are primitive workers' organizations inferior to trade
unions and political parties specializing in protesting government and
corporations and extracting higher wages and benefits from them (when
they are not in a position to run the government themselves).

Of course, such protests must be still held, in defense of wages,
benefits, and things like that, but both the growth of the informal
sector and the growth of service jobs in competitive (rather than
monopolistic) industries in the formal sector -- both are worldwide
phenomena -- means that the types of organizations dominant in the age
when industrial workers in monopolistic sectors were well organized,
on the political offensive, and set the standards that pulled the rest
up can no longer be easily sustained -- many of the industrial unions
in the USA are in their twilight years.  Since capital has reorganized
workplaces and social geography, we, too, need to change what we do
and how we do it.
--
Yoshie