Re: AUT: Unions (was Anarchism & Conflicts)

[Harald Beyer-Arnesen <haraldba@xxxxxxxxx>]

Guy writes among other things:
  unions exist because working people continue to be
  tricked into fighting for them.

I find the critique of unions as such by council communists
and others (whether marxist or anarchists) - though needed -
still on one level, quite superficial.
        To quote myself from the article, "Anarcho-Syndicalism:
A Historical Closed Door...or Not?" printed in issue #22,
Winter, 1997-1998 of the Libertarian Labor Review, now Anarcho-
Syndicalist Review. (For the whole thing, go to:
http://flag.blackened.net/llr/ashcdon.html )


  Workers will always organize themselves whenever they see
  the need, and they have the sufficient cohesion and collective
  strength to do so. Unions are simply not something we can
  avoid, even if we so wished: they are something capitalism
  imposes upon us, or to be more precise, capitalism imposes
  the situation which produces the need for them, and from
  this need we cannot escape before we take the world in our
  own hands. The more disorganized we are as workers -
  membership in corporative unions being often just a
  particular kind of disorganization, functioning largely as
  the organization of passivity and division - the more we
  will become a flexible material in the hands of others, and
  ruled by the logic of capital.
     The labor contract, whether collective or individual, is
  by its very nature a disciplinary mechanism at the very
  foundation of capitalism. Entering into such contracts
  involves a conditional acceptance of the class relations.
  This is simply the prerequisite of survival of any worker,
  and not something one can withdraw from on the basis of
  ones political convictions. As wage slaves - temporarily
  employed or unemployed, in the process of being formed as
  one, or already discarded - we are linked to the
  functioning of capitalism. But this linkage is not total;
  we are not the mere appendages of capital. Our accepetance
  is always conditional: In wildcat strikes, and in an
  endless numbers of minor acts of sabotage and obstruction
  daily taking place at most every work place, we temporarily
  withdraw it. There exists a cleavage in the link that can
  be widened or tightened, which also implies that the process
  described above is reversable. The contrary would also be
  sensational, implying that the structure of unions could
  somehow remain entirely unaffected by the general ebb and
  tide of the class struggle.  The anarcho-syndicalist
  project [give the child another name if you so wish; for
  instance the union of anti-unionist workers of the world]
  is to make the forced accepetance of the class relation more
  and more conditional, until the final explosion of energy,
  dreams, thoughts and desires, where the linkage is broken,
  classes abolished, and our free individual and collective
  creative powers are put in use to non-hierarchically rule
  the present and future, without the bondage imposed by
  the siamese twins of state and capital.

Earlier in the same piece, I had written:

  Some social revolutionaries forswear any permanent large-
  scale working class organization within the framework of
  capitalism. As capitalism is the very *raison d'être* of
  such organizations, these organizations, in trying to
  maintain their seperate existence when the class stuggle
  has reached a stage where this framework may be
  transcended, become institutionalised obstacles blocking
  the way for the full unfolding of the revolution. The
  revolution must create its own organizational forms; those
  which may endure and grow within the framework of
  capitalism will be inadequate to the needs of the social
  revolution. The unions in their function as brokers of
  labor power cannot escape the logic of capital, regardless
  of the political convictions of its delegates and the
  efforts to develop democratic union structures. It thus
  becomes critical to uncover the illusions of unionism and
  diffuse knowledge of working class struggles directed
  simultaneously against the employers and the union.
      But following this logic, these anti-union struggles
  will be compelled to either transform themselves into
  alternative structures taking up in themselves the function
  of a union, or fall back to a situation of atomisation
  within or without the corporative union structure.
  Consequently one is seemingly left with the illusionist
  trick of making atomisation the springboard of the social
  revolution. More likely, the tacit assumption underlying
  this strategical thought is that a revolutionary ferment
  will arise from *within* the corporative union structure,
  *thus making itself entirely dependent on the continued
  existence of this framework.*
     The critique of unionism contained within the above
  position is however not alien to anarcho-syndicalism. The
  awareness of its inevitable contradictory nature is at
  very core of anarcho-syndicalism and the source of its
  vitality. In this it captures the fundamental reality of
  the working class within capitalism and inserts itself
  into the very terrain where social revolutions are born,
  and where they also repeatedly have been lost. Anarcho-
  syndicalisms contradictory nature at the same time
  constitutes its driving revolutionary force *and* puts it
  in jeopardy of being co-opted by the logic of capitalism.
  Therefore the great emphasis on *institutionalised*
  precautions to prevent the latter development and the
  re-occurring conflicts within anarcho-syndicalism.

  The only guarantee against co-option is death, so it
  becomes self-evident that any permanent organizational
  structure within capitalism will perpetually run the
  risk of being co-opted, and as such become an obstacle
  in a revolutionary situation. But to counter the
  argument, would an organizational structure emerging
  in the heat of a revolutionary situation, composed of
  workers with most of their concrete experiences from
  within a bureaucratized, corporative union structure,
  or disorganized altogether, be less likely to be co-
  opted into either an old or new class relation? I
  think not. The opposite seems a far more rational
  judgement. The tendency to reformism and co-option
  which always will exist within revolutionary unionism
  (the "heroes" growing tired) constitutes one of its
  greatest assets. It forces these questions to be
  answered concretely on a day to day basis, and not
  just in an abstract future. I refuse to accept the
  logic that being accustomed to a greater degree of
  servilty and passivity is a great asset in a
  revolutionary situation. Neither do I see any
  historical evidence supporting this view, but on
  the contrary an endless trail of blood and a line
  of tyrants giving witness to the opposite.
     It may even be asked if the rejection by genuine
  revolutionaries of all permanent mass organizations
  is not the ultimate triumph of capitalist co-option.

And then I cannot help the temptation including the
following passage:

  The rejection of anarcho-syndicalism [or whatever
  name you prefer for the child] out of fear of
  co-option has a slight similarity to the sailor who
  shrinks from learning to swim as he is concerned it
  might put his life in jeopardy.


Harald

  in solidarity,
  Harald Beyer-Arnesen
  haraldba@xxxxxxxxx



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