AUT: Unions and revolution

[neil <74742.1651@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear  bill Bartlett,

The heyday of working class struggle /anti capitalist
unions  was over by the early 20th Cent as the  modern
bourg. state machinery incorporated the unions into the
legality of its structure. Craft unions are the most preferred by
capital when they have to accept  union organizing  but industrial
ones still are needed to keep the labor peace  for capital in key heavy
industry.

Unions are no longer workers reform/social  organizations as
in the 19th cent  as the developement of world economy
has changed the whole character of our epoch toward
the  labor skinning to  workers on an INTERNATIONAL
basis by capital of all nationalities..

Today the unions exist mainly as business operations
to control and police the workers.  Also they  are inherently
nationalist and thus spew out the worst anti-worker gutter
nationalist venom . In the big capitalist  powers like th USA,
UK, France, etc. they even work hand
in glove with their  CIA type espionage and intelligence services
to be partner of labor force controls for multinationals, etc.

Your  examples  in dealing with  Max Angers critique . are
weak unionite  beer.
Why don't  you look and the Russian Soviets/councils/
mass committees/ of the Russian revolution of 1905?
How about there again in 1917? What about the Red Turin
in Italy in 1920? What about German  and Hungarian
soviets/councils of Workers and soldiers deputies of
1918-21?  What about France in '68 or Portugal in '74?

NO permanent organizations of legal reform can be
made into instruments for revolutionary socialism.
You don't build PT boats  with the the intention of
sinking battleships.

Bill, your DeLeonist  thinking is based on 19th cent epoch
of capitalism, reforms and the developement
of unions . Today the modern bourg, state allows
NO  industrial organization that has as its aim
the overthrow f bourgeois  property relations any
breathing room.  That is also why the Revolutionary
Party (political internationalist programme) of revolution
 needs to be built not to bogart the class  struggle but to
give it revolutonary impetus .

Some of the worst nationalist and derisive comments
about other workers  in the union i am in have
come not just from right wing yahoos but from the
local lib-lab  union reps themselves. I think it goes with the
the bourgeois  territory (collectecting dues--controlling workers, etc)
that the unions are duty/ideologically bound  to protect.

Workers for workers rule should of course work in
unions but in the main to encourage the ranks to take up  building
of re-newed workers combativity and mass actions.
Eventually in a combative  wave this might give impetus to NEW
political and industrial groups based  inside the struggles based
on replacing the system of wages slavery with workers rule..

Neil



     --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---