Re: AUT: unions & revolution

[obu@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

In response to Neil:

>The Ascendence- decadence positions of the
>communist-left groupings  is distorted by your
>reply to mine.

I am not attempting to consciously distort any party line. I am going on
memory from my Left-Communist activity 15 years ago. I know that political
discussion grows and develops.

>I was merely  pointing out (helter-skelter) the aspect of capitalism's
>being able to develop the productive forces
>in the period before the 20th century without
>its periodic  crises and rebounds then  leading to
>massive WORLD WIDE slaughters as has
>come to pass in the 20th cent. I.E. that is this
>century that the decadence ahs led to the
>scenarios of capitals world wide Crisis--war-reconstruction
>folowed by Crisis-war--etc cycles. Of course capitalism
>"came into this world dripping with blood" (Marx)
>(and now the drippings have become oceans!)

I think aboriginal peoples would point out that economic crisis during the
1500-1800 century sent europeans scattering through-out the world
conducting mass slaughter. The only difference is that the intensification
of exploitation and methods of war can condense/excellerate the slaughter.
In other words, if Andrew Jackson had the weapons available to the
imperialists during WW2, he would have conducted a "holocost" against the
Native Americans to provide liebenstraum for all those starving Irish and
English people. To only count world-wide slaughter as world-wide slaughter
if it takes place in the course of a couple of years is unhistoric. Read
Galeano's history of Latin America.

>It is absurd to think that communists  would think that the actions of capital
>in its historcial  accumulation cycles /plunder based on  chattel slavery,
>>massacres/invasions  of native peoples ,  or a passive working class
>accepting this >should be considered  'progressive", even in having taken
>place in the "ascendent' >phase.

>At that time (18- 19th cent) of course real  communists still  advocated
>buliding up >the workers forces for revolution  against capital and in
>this period that even  some
>National struggles could still be defended  and supportable (as did
>Marx-Engels on >Ireland, Poland etc.) ,  also 1st international , etc
>worked actively  to  oppose US  >Confederacy in US civil war, backed up
>Paris Commune , etc  even though  sucessful  >workers revolutions could
>not be victorious then owing to the numerical and >organizational
>-political/economic weakness in the workers movements then. But >the mass
>struggles were also part of  workers maturation at  this period.

I disagree with the Bordighist theory of decadence. To me it seems as if
its a telescope looking backwards in time making everything 20/20. Like
Mormons' marrying for their ancestors, decadence theories are an attempt to
legitamize one's parents for acts that aren't part of one's religion today.

Just like many Communists argued that Third World nations were too
"backwards" to have real revolution, suddenly, there isn't a possibility
for mass movements in the 1800s because of capitalism had room to grow.
It's just not true. To denegrate the Great Strike of 1877 to the level of
impossible revolt, denegrates all revolts and insurections.

And so the mass movements of the 1880s had no meaning because they were
doomed to fail. How about the Workers' militas form through-out the US? And
all of a sudden now we are able to conduct revolution because historically
the revolutionary movement's time is at hand? It's absurd!

>But you need to look at the other
>apsect of the IWWs own outmoded syndicalism,
>which in light of the successes of  early bolshevism,
>which actually won the MAJORITY of the  Russian soviets/councils
>to accept its programme (however somewhat flawed)
>and led  the sucessful  but all to brief rule of workers
>in Russia , 1917-20, and this growing world movement
> caused the best IWW fighters to join the bolshevik trends
>en-masse  sprouting up in the USA in these years.

OH, I see- you're talking about the OTHER IWW, the International Workers of
the World that gets written up in so many bad labor histories. i don't know
about them, but I'll talk about  the wobblies.

>From my reading of the Industrial Workers of the World history, most of
those who left the IWW were the second tier of IWW organizers, many ones
who wanted a "pie-card", ie a party job to pay the bills.  Like the former
Czarist bureaucrats who flooded the Bolshevik party, the Communist Labor
Party was filled with wanna-bes. Read "All the right enemies" and there are
several stories of people like William Z. Foster joining the CP, even when
he was denouncing it weeks before, simply because they had the money to buy
him. Elis. Gurly Flynn too, a truely pathetic case.

>But he IWW has since the 20s, though it still had honest worker
>fighters in it, been passed over by its own economism,
>its local-yokelism, and  hostility to workers fighting with two
> hands --political and economic, instead supports the  one hand fighting
>method (economic) of the IWW, etc. going up  against a ruling class that
>punches
>workers lights out with any blow it can mount , above or below the
>belt.

For the most part, this is true. But like the isolation of the
Communist-Left, it needs to be placed in historical context.  In regards to
the IWW's economism, I would like to point out that the IWW did fight
"political" battles, only where the working class has power, in the work
place. The CP written history books never talk about the dozens of
political-strikes conducted by the IWW up until the 30s. When the CPUSA
that you glamorize was doing petition drives to free Sacco and Venzetti,
the IWW conducted a General Strike in the Colorado Coal regions to free the
two anarchists. There's political action for you. Now which is more of a
revolutionary action? Petioning and demonstrations or General Strike?

Yes the IWW went down, but at least it went fighting. I must point out that
the Bordighist just kind of packed up and went away into the libraries.
Bordiga wasn't even enough of a threat to Mussilini to be molested.

>Lately however, The IWW press (Industrial Worker-IW) has
> awkwardly tried to correct  its absurd rejection of political struggle--
>but since it has no political/ecomonic analysis of the  the present epoch
>to aid >workers -it itself has floundered around  today recently debasing
>itself by  printing >recent articles sowing  the worst illusions in the
>AFL/CIO controlled, and left-swamp
>state capper promoted US Labor Party!. I' know you will say that this
>recent  IWW article was the work of a Labor Party supporter . I would say
>to you then you
>should have polemicized honestly and frankly with the author ! But that
>would >have meant getting ones hands  dirty with politics-even dare I say
>( un-developed >IWW) pro-worker politics!

Yep, you're right. We let that one go, we fucked up, we missed an
opportunity. But you don't know what was happening then in the life of this
writer and the local group. I'm sorry working class, I was sick for sevral
months and out of action.

>But your own experience here shows your method/programme
>of syndicalism  cannot handle the problem of dealing with
>the filthy capitalist lib-lab politics that hamstrings workers-
>and even leads to real  IWW capitulation to them..
>And that is a  fatal contradiction  that  has helped lead your trend
>in its awful quandry for the last 75+ years.

That's not my point. What I've been saying is that both the IWW and
left-comms have limitations. I know, as I've been involved with both. What
I thought this list was for was to try and move beyond this impass. I've
been defending the IWW because I think its history has been distorted and
hidden by 60 years of Stalinist academia. I revive this, not to defend the
present IWW (which I do participate in for numerous reasons), but to push
our knowledge further in the hopes it leads our activities in new
directions.

for the one big union,

CA
Portland,  Oregon IWW




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