Re:Question on Unions

[malecki@xxxxxxxxxx (Robert Malecki)]

>Bob,
>
>Check out the archives; you said Hoffa was an enemy of capitalism. I
>don't believe that saying the government was forced to act is the
>equivalent of calling on the state to intervene, as you claim in your
>post of April 4. You make an insupportable assertion when you state
>*the membership of the Teamsters union loved Hoffa.* I wonder if that
>also holds true for the r&f Teamsters who were beaten with battery
>cables, among other things, for opposing official slates in local,
>regional and international elections.
>
>Your statement that *the government will use any excuse to break the
>trade unions* indicates to me that you do not understand the role of
>the trade unions under the current aflcio leadership. Why would the
>government want to break the trade unions, when the leadership of the
>unions have made them one of the pillars of support for capitalism.
>
>Hoffa was doing the work of the bourgeiosie in the trade union
>movement; he was a pro-capitalist, anti-democratic autocrat. The r&f
>teamster had little, if any, say in how the union was run, from the
>local level to the international. If Lenin was prepared to make a
>pact with the devil himself, then, depending on the circumstances, I
>might support government intervention in a specific situation. It is
>done all the time. It is virtually impossible to organize a union
>under capitalism without government intervention. Communists
>frequently demand that the government enforce its own laws to ensure
>the rights of a particular group of people, be they workers, people
>of color, immigrants, etc. Why shouldn't we demand that the
>government act in accordance with its own rule, if only to expose the
>fact of its utter hypocrisy. What is the demand for a livable minimum
>wage if not a demand for government to intervene by passing such a
>law?
>
>Robert

True that Hoffa was a pro-capitalist leader of the teamsters. True he was a
ganster.
Well in the case of Hoffa, i think it had to do with the central position of
this particular union, which with its militancy could stop America. Hoffa
made the teamsters one of the most powerful unions in the country. So there
is a contradiction in that Hoffa when imprisoned by the government could
have gone futher then he wanted to. We gave him a choice and he made the
deal with Nixon. And despite the pro-capitalist tops the unions are
anti-capitalists. Why do you think the capitalists have been union smashing
in America all these years if they control them? I think there position is
either buy them of or smash the latter naturally being better for their
interests. The state is an instrument of violence with the pistol pointed at
workers organisations. In principle commmunists must be for non-intervention
in the unions by the state despite their pro-capitalist leadership..

The point is that revolutionaries do not block with the bourgeois state in
order to get the union bureaucrats and gansters. Our duty is to expose them
and take over the leadership while at the same time keeping these
organisations independent from the state and bourgeoisie. Any other line is
a betrayal to working class independence.

Warm regards
bob






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