Cockburn on the Labor Party (fwd)

[Kevin Cabral <kcabral@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[From _The Nation_, July 1,


[Copyrighted material posted for its newsworthiness; not for
 re-distribution.]




WHERE IS THE LEFT?
Alexander Cockburn




Here we are, a few weeks away from the Democratic Party convention, with
Bill Clinton using Bob Dole's speeches as campaign literature. So what is
happening on what used to be called "the left"? Start with the basis for
any serious radical movement in this country, labor. In late March the
A.F.L.-C.I.O., stepping to a brighter future under its new president, John
Sweeney, endorsed Clinton for re-election. In exchange, Clinton offered
nothing, nor was anything extracted from him.
        The man described in 1993 by the conservative political commentator
Kevin Phillips as the most antilabor President of the twentieth century
pushed through NAFTA and GATT, put up no serious fight for striker
replacement, destroyed health care reform as an issue, failed to press for
a hike in the minimum wage when the Democrats controlled both houses of
Congress in the first two years of his term and boasts of laying off
federal workers.
        The two big trade agreements alone should have doomed any labor
move to endorse Clinton in '96. Does anyone now remember the toothless
"side agreements" that were cobbled onto the main treaties to allay labor
and environmental concerns?
        Worse still, Clinton's assault on constitutional freedoms in the
counterterrorism act could have grim consequences for the type of
cross-border organizing that the trade agreements make more necessary than
ever. This is an act that  had it been in force in the 1980s  would have
rendered a felony labor's support of the African National Congress, not to
mention its supply of material aid to labor unions in the A.N.C. coalition.
        Almost the only scrap tossed to labor was an executive order
preventing federal contractors from breaking strikes by hiring permanent
replacements. (The President has no problem with short-term scabs,
regularly used to break or blunt strikes.) Labor supporters of Clinton
argue that his National Labor Relations Board has been less a creature of
employers than it was under Bush, and that unions have more room to
maneuver.
        Such defenses of Clinton look pretty flabby next to the impact of
his basic economic strategy, governed by Wall Street and the bond houses.
While the A.F.L.-C.I.O. stumps for Clinton, and a supposed labor militant
like Dennis Rivera of New York's hospital workers insists  as he did
earlier this year  that Clinton's reelection is the most important project
of labor in the past fifty years, _Foreign Affairs_ tells the stark truth.
        This journal of the Eastern elites mustered in the Council on
oreign Relations blazons an article by its research director; Ethan
Kapstein, in its May/June issue deriding Clinton's "Hoover-like" attacks on
big government. Kapstein writes that "restrictive economic
policies--reduced deficits, reduced spending, reduced taxes, and, the most
exalted deity, low inflation--have favored financial interests at the
expense of workers and have created an international rentier class." When
_Foreign Affairs_ lines up to the left of labor you know things are in poor
shape.

        Of course workers and labor leaders know how bad Clinton has been
for them, and they have been asking themselves what possible alternative
there might be. Many don't think there is one, that Clinton is preferable
to Dole but that labor has to be out on the streets militantly holding the
Democrats' feet to the fire.
        This debate is mirrored in the nation's green movement, where
leaders of the big national environmental organizations have adopted a
Clinton-at-all-costs strategy and put a benign gloss on his wretched record
while legions of their members accurately perceive the Clinton years as in
many ways worse than those of the Reagan and Bush presidencies. Full-page
newspaper advertisements put together by green militants and backed by
Hollywood names (except for the loyal Streisand) have said
straightforwardly that Bill Clinton and Al Gore are sellouts and that the
best course is to vote for Ralph Nader.
        At this stage in the game there are many grass-roots greens
prepared to tell the Democrats that they don't think it will make much
difference whether Clinton or Dole sits in the White House for the next
four years. The trouble is that the supposed alternative to One Party
government--Ralph Nader--is running a zombie candidacy, as though he's
profoundly embarrassed to be on the Green Party ticket in California and
Oregon, both vital states for Clinton where Nader could really threaten the
President. So Nader is betraying the enthusiasm of many people eagerly
working in his cause, some of whom are hoping to use his coattails to
create a third-party presence in local races.


Labor's Cleveland Conference

for many years now every left gathering of the labor movement has featured
a table advertising the literature of Labor Party Advocates, promoted by
Tony Mazzocchi--former secretary-treasurer of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic
Workers Union (O.C.A.W.)--as the embryo of a third party representing
organized workers. In Cleveland, after six years of talk, the Advocates
held their founding convention as a Labor Party on June 6-9. _The Nation_
will be carrying a report on the four-day event by David Bacon in a
forthcoming issue. My colleague JoAnn Wypijewski was in Cleveland, and the
remarks that follow are based on her observations.
        This was a big event, outstripping the most optimistic forecasts of
the organizers. There were 1,367 delegates, plus observers, guests and the
press. There was a huge turnout from the unions--delegations from the
O.C.A.W., the United Electrical Workers, the International Longshoremen's
and Warehousemen's Union, the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees,
the Carpenters, the Service Employees and many others.
        There's always been a question mark hanging over the Labor Party
Advocates, and it's a fundamental one. Do they want to form a party that
will have a clear electoral mission, or are they content to be what
Mazzocchi has termed a pressure group? In either guise, what is the line of
march, and what is the objective? It would be nice to say that the
Cleveland convention debated these issues in a democratic fashion. But,
alas, the O.C.A.W organizers (chief among them president Bob Wages, who
chaired most of the convention) seemed petrified at the prospect of serious
debate on any but the most peripheral matters. Soon many delegates were
restively asking, What are we going to tell the people back home the new
Labor Party is about? Without an answer to that question, how can we hope
to organize anything?
        A position paper developed by the organizers offered: "Our
organizing approach to politics will recognize that electoral action comes
only after recruiting and mobilizing hundreds of thousands of workers with
sufficient collective resources to take on an electoral system dominated by
corporations and the wealthy.=8A We call on the Labor Party to mobilize
working people in a bold experiment to develop effective non-candidate/
non-electoral-political actions that turn our organizing approach to
politics into reality."
        Flecked with this verbal mush, conventioneers asked each other:
"How can it be a party if it's not going to run candidates?," "How can it
be a third party if it's not going to do anything concrete to take on the
Democrats and Republicans?" "Don't the organizers understand that to
Americans, parties mean personalities and programs and elections?" Beyond
the most timid verbal drapery, the document titled "A New Organizing
Approach to Politics", had nothing substantive to say on this momentous
issue of electoral strategy. Meanwhile, some union people were recalling
that Bob Wages--so sneering in his denunciations of union "colleagues who
want to be joined at the hip with the Democratic Party"--had abstained, and
took care not even to be in the room, when the A.F.L.-C.I.O. endorsed
Clinton at its special convention in March. If the most prominent labor
exponent of a new party cannot bring himself to record a vote of protest
against endorsement of a Democrat, just how serious is the party that his
union has been the prime force in organizing?
        But if the Labor Party is a pressure group, delegates also asked,
just who is to be pressured? If the answer is business bosses, then surely
such pressure is chiefly the province of unions. If it's Democrats, what
kind of goad is being contemplated when the sanction of the ballot box has
been effectively rejected? If it's Congress, then how would the Labor
Party, with its tiny resources and no base, be an improvement on the
A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s formidable though largely ineffective lobbying machine? If,
as many say, the Labor Party is to be active in "struggles in the
community," why not work to strengthen existing organizations, such as Jobs
With Justice and local labor councils, which are meant to do this?


The Sin of Wages

There was much murmuring on the first day of the convention that Mazzocchi
was fearful of left sectarian groups trying to hijack the proceedings.
Perhaps for this reason the organizers did not supply delegates with the
draft constitution and program of the party until the end of that first
session. This meant that those delegates (union and nonunion alike) who had
not been in on the planning stages of the convention had scant time to
evolve thoughtful responses and build support for them. Amid uplifting talk
about "defining ourselves. . .together," the proceedings were thus tightly
controlled.
        By Saturday, frustration in some parts of the hall was so palpable
that Wages and Mazzocchi were forced to confront a discussion on the
precise nature of the party, with chief emphasis on the electoral issue.
Now, earlier on it had looked as though the Longshoremen and the United
Electrical Workers might combine to challenge the O.C.A.W.'s rigid
non-electoral stance. But by Saturday the U.E. had accepted a gesture of
compromise from the O.C.A.W., leaving the Longshoremen as the chief union
bloc challenging the supremacy of Wages. As tension rose on the floor,
Wages used a parliamentary maneuver to shut off all debate, even before the
Longshoremen and a delegation from S.E.I.U. had presented their alternative
proposals. Sensing the imminence of open rebellion, Wages called a recess.
        "Boy," a union delegate remarked to him off the floor, "things got
kind of out of control in there." "Oh;" Wages answered confidently, "things
are more in control than you think."
        And indeed they were. Wages returned to the podium to rule that a
Democracy Hour would ensue, with conference rules suspended. So the
Longshoremen and S.E.I.U. got a chance to make their cases, but further
procedural pirouettes by Wages prevented anything more intrusive on the
well-planned order of business than brief statements of dissent.
        Discontent at the constant hustle to "expedite" broke out once more
the next day, in a debate on abortion. Mazzocchi has always made it clear
that he regards social issues as poison to the embryo party, and the draft
language on this issue decorously avoided any mention of the dreaded
A-word. The California Nurses Association tried to clear this fog with a
simple declaration that "the Labor Party supports safe and legal abortion."
While Mazzocchi stood on the stage biting his nails, delegates debated the
wisdom of such outspoken language, fearful it might drive away potential
supporters. In the end, the Labor Party settled for obscure language on
choice, putting it to the right of the Democratic Party on this issue. At
least there was a debate on the matter, though the abortion fight left a
sour taste, with compromises made entirely to the right, all surrenders by
the left. No such opportunity for discussion was permitted on foreign
policy, or on public ownership of basic industries.
        So, bottom line, what is the Labor Party? There were plenty of
people in Cleveland very excited about what happened at the convention.
There were those who were disappointed but still committed to sticking with
the infant party and using it as a tool in their local activities.
        But, questions of the party's nature, its base and its aims were as
unresolved on Sunday as they had been four days earlier. No less than three
highly experienced labor organizers (not delegates) separately confided to
JoAnn roughly the same thought. Maybe the Labor Party is nothing much more
than a bid by Wages and the O.C.A.W. to build some backup muscle for the
union and its allies as a "progressive" pressure group inside the
A.F.L.-C.I.O.
        This may be all very well for politicking in the councils of Big
Labor, but where does it leave all those people hungry for alternatives and
a radical strategy?








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