AUT: Re: Unions And Revolution - Round IV

[Max Anger <squert@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Gee, My modem broke so I haven't been able to reply
to the very interesting "Unions And Revolution" thread
for more than a week. Well, at least it give me
some time think about the various position involved.
I'll try make this only long enough to outline the substantial
positions involved.

The question of the nature of unions has been
framed a couple of different ways.

One way is that the argument is ultimately about names
That is only peripherally involves questions of practice.
- Harold and others have taken the position that any mass
organization that workers use for class struggle "now " will
work about like a union and thus may as well be called a union.
- Harold framed this position in terms that if there are
>new structures maintaining horizontal links of
>some *permanence* between workers on the borderline
>between legality and illegality. And whatever the name,
>such an organization would in fact be a union:

Another way to frame this debate is in terms of tactics
- Should can we expect the working class to organize through
a single slowly building organization that makes capitalist
power system obsolete or through quickly appearing
and disappearing organizations and arena that ultimately
build up to over-throwing capitalism.
- Me and Bill Bartlett have been debating the question in the
these terms, though we are certainly on exactly opposed on
which tactics are better.

This second approach somewhat trumps the first position.

Note, that if we frame this in terms of tactic

if we can show that there is a read difference in
revolutionary tactics between the most "revolutionary"
possible unionist position and the "councils outside and
against the unions"  position then we've shown that there's
substance to being against unions rather this being
just a game of names. The question is whether we
can describe a continuing and credible practice
that is "outside and against the unions" without
making just the name "union" the object of our wrath.
I would say can and indeed many folks on the
"communist left" have already described such
a thing.

I will contrast things in terms of unions.
The classical syndicalist tactical line, as Bill Bartlett correctly
puts forward, is that workers will slowly be educated by
the process of organization until they are capable of
self-managing society, with little violence involved in
the take-over due to the massive unanimity of the
class.
This model of gradually increasing self-
organization implies an increase in self-managed
institutions, both functioning unions having contracts
to maintain labor discipline and self-managed capitalist
enterprises. Some such institutions do exist now.
In some sense, they do increase the choice that
workers have but these choices remains within the
framework of the market economy. I would argue
that rather than paving the way for people's
total control over society, these self-managed
institutions integrate workers into the market
economy and thereby strengthen it.
Note that the tactic of gradually increasing organization
has had few sucesses. When it has succeeded in
organizing the masses, for example the CNT in Spain,
it indeed did not to actually prepare the way for an
over-throw of capitalist relations but created institutions
that prevented the fundamental over-throw of capitalism
in otherwise good conditions (with anarchists in the
government being only the most glaring problem).

The modern (or "left") communist position would be
that struggle takes place sporadically on both the political
and economic level, with different kinds and levels of
struggle leading up to revolution (note, the beginning of
"The Eighteenth Brumaire Of Louise Napoleon").

When workers organize into directly democratic councils,
make demands and use wildcat strikes to enforce their
demands but *do not* constitute an institution to guarentee
production once their demands are met, then their
practice differs fairly fundamentally from an institution
devoted to selling a worker's labor at a fair price.
As various folks have noted, when the IWW was
an effective mass organization, it often engaged in
these tactics.

Indeed, as far as I understand it, the much of the
effective practice of the autonomia movement
in Italy involved this exact sort and series of practices.

For example, the Russian Revolution involved agitation of
many groups as well as much spontaneous action
on the part of the masses. (It's appropriate that Bill Bartlett
refers to all the various examples of revolutionary upsurge in
the terms
>These (and many other examples come to mind) were situations
>of revolt. But most people were were not consciously demanding
>overthrow of capitalism, let alone socialism, they were only
>demanding reform. The revolt arose because of the
>ruling class's inability or unwillingness to provide reform.
This sort of position is very much "people will not be able
to reject capitalism unless they have been intensively
tutored" - although Bill and other syndicalist's school
will be self-managed rather than controlled by leaders.
Still, they shudder at the thought of people taking to the
streets and taking power now).
Much of the content of the autonomia movement in Italy
also followed these tactical lines - fighting against the
unions as well as reconstituting itself social and political
lines at points when factory struggles waned (not that I'd
necesarrily express agreement with the ideologies that
influenced this struggle - including "autonomia operia").



ASAN
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