[Marxism] Re: French Elections

[Greg McDonald <sabocat59@xxxxxxx>]

"If there is going to be a real socialist movement in France the near  
future- and I am not convinced that France is qualitatively closer to  
this today than the United States - it will be centered in the  
banlieues.  Simply a base in the trade unions will not cut it for an  
orientation toward the oppressed and exploited in France today."
Fred Feldman

 True enough, Fred. But there are trade unions, and then there are  
trade unions.

Greg McD.

Meet the « Comité Syndicaliste Révolutionaire (CSR) »
Source URL: http://www.iww.org/en/node/3176
Created Jan 21 2007 - 9:16am
Introduction

The CSR and the IWW have been corresponding by email for several  
years now. In January 2007 the ISC sent three FWs from BIROC  and  
GLAMROC to France to meet the CSR in person. For that occasion, this  
CSR document was translated into English.

If, by reading this translation, you come to understand how little  
you really know about Europe and its workers, that is good. If you  
become curious; better.

Goals of the Revolutionary Union Committee (RUC)[1]

 Coordination among revolutionary unionists during strikes and  
social conflicts (anti-fascism, anti-sexism, defence of the  
homeless, ... ).
That was lacking in December 1995. We need to construct an inter- 
union structure capable of achieving this.

We are no spontaneists. That is to say we think that the proletariat  
needs the intervention of a revolutionary union organization that can  
help it define its strategic goals and it needs class-combat  
experience before it can overthrow capitalism. Revolutionary  
situations are rare. It is essential to prepare a strategic analysis  
before hand in order to react quickly. Therefore, a revolutionary  
tendency must be present, not only to block the reformists. The  
revolutionaries need detailed writings, propaganda material ..... .  
The CSR must also serve as a network to promote "Workers’  
Councils“[2]  or fighting inter union committees that will help to  
transform society. We need to coordinate fighting collectives in  
order to block the kind of co-optation that established political and  
union apparatuses imposed on the movement in 68.  Capitalism recovers  
quickly from its moments of weakness, unless revolutionaries exploit  
them promptly. We must use the current social crisis in order to take  
the initiative and destroy capitalism.

The revolutionary organisation must train as many members as  
possible. This will keep individuals from becoming indispensable for  
the organization, a phenomenon that quickly leads to a crust of  
bureaucrats forming.

These tasks could be carried out by one or several mass unions. But  
such unions do not exist at present, leaving this work to the  
organizations of revolutionary unionists.

 Coordination of revolutionaries within one established union.
We need our own structure, independently of how other unions may be  
organized, because one of our roles is to make proposals to them.

Presently, there are very few unions or locals that one might  
describe as „revolutionary“. The term means more to us than the  
demand for the abolition of wage-slavery, hidden away somewhere in  
the union’s constitution. A union is revolutionary when it thinks  
about the overthrow of capitalism regularly, especially when deciding  
on its demands, tactics and internal organisation.

Differently from many other political organizations, we think that a  
mass union can be revolutionary. Its orientation depends on two  
factors; the level of the class struggle, and the revolutionaries’  
ability to organize and influence the rest of the workers.

It is a goal of the CSR to work on both of these levels in order to  
maximize a union’s revolutionary potential. The level of demands has  
been driven down by twenty years of reversals for the worker’s  
movement. This makes the coordination of revolutionary unionists more  
urgent yet.

 Training unionists.
What makes the CSR interesting is that it has a union pedigree, that  
comes from a class-organisation, something that puts the breaks on  
petite-bourgeoisie syndromes like sectarianism, leftism.  
Intellectualism[3] .... .   We think that class consciousness and a  
revolutionary perspective are forged in the daily class struggle.

Nature of the Revolutionary Union Committees
The RUC is an inter union movement. As such it has nothing to do with  
any "political organisation“ or "philosophy” for the following reasons;

      Only active unionists who are already involved in the class  
struggle can join the CSR. This is different from those political  
organisations that ask their members to join unions with a view to  
influencing their orientation and to creating political factions.

1)   Only radical unionists who understand the need to coordinate the  
revolutionary unionists join the CSR. Differently from a political  
organisation we do not demand acceptance of a rigid program, which is  
nothing more than a summary of the reflections of a given group of  
militants at a given time. Therefore, nothing is more subjective than  
a program.


When cooperating with anarcho-syndicalists or communists, we think of  
them as fellow unionists first, remaining on our guard against any  
attempts at manipulation.
We see no need for political splits so long as there is a minimum of  
common ideological ground;
I.  defence of proletarian interests,
II. union independence and internal democracy
III. the goal of a worker’s revolution to replace capitalism with a  
communist system. The rest is debatable, open to doubt and  
discussion. It is theory which should serve the practice of class  
war, not the inverse. Class war should not be a test bench for  
revolutionary intellectuals’ thought-experiments.

 2)   This is an important difference between the CSR and political  
parties; for us, theory does not trump practice. To place the party  
line above the practice is to lapse from "materialism“ into  
"idealism“. Unfortunately, Leninism shares a great deal of the blame  
for the growth of sectarian tendencies among revolutionaries during  
the last few decades. By placing the party’s political line above all  
else, Leninism pushed the revolutionary movement into  
intellectualism, into theory for its own sake. This is why the CSR  
reflects another class ideology, that of revolutionary unionism, born  
of the practice of the militant working class.

 Membership in the CSR requires acceptance of the three principles  
invoked above, but not of every last detail developed in this  
platform. It depends primarily on the member’s practice in his/her  
union.

The CSR does not want to be a clandestine organisation, but rather to  
defend its principles openly. It does not intend to seize control of  
unions but rather to raise the level of revolutionary consciousness  
and unionists’ commitment, and to propose practices and orientations  
leading to self-management[4].

The CSR wants to be the organisational structure of the revolutionary  
unionists, their focal point for regrouping and reorganizing.

Our mistrust of political organisations is based on more than just  
criticism. We also see better alternatives for the practice of the  
class struggle.

Decades of Leninist/anarchist domination of the revolutionary  
movement have led to a schematic view of unionism. It will take a  
real cultural revolution to eliminate the stereotypical caricatures  
of unions as recruiting agencies for political organisations taking  
themselves to be the incarnation of the proletariat’s interests.

We are often told that unions cannot be more than reformist because  
the must encompass a maximum number of workers. But history shows  
that mass unions are perfectly capable of developing anti-capitalist  
strategies (the Spanish CNT, the French CGT before 1914, the IWW, the  
Mexican CGT, the French CGTU .... ) Unions will tend to follow the  
consciousness of the working class because they are combat  
organisations, especially of the most militant parts of the working  
class. During periods of „social peace“ reformist tendencies will  
naturally come to the fore. In pre-revolutionary times unions are  
perfectly capable of developing a revolutionary program. A political  
party will come under the same pressure of class struggle, even when  
it is a so-called mass-party with a, rare, working-class leadership.

The CSR opposes simplistic schemas, and was created to do so. We do  
not expect a union member to become a revolutionary automatically,  
even in revolutionary times. That is why revolutionary unionists must  
organize to defend their demands publicly against the reformists and  
against union bureaucrats, if they happen to exist. Our tendency is a  
relative guarantee against  three errors common among revolutionaries;


·       Dogmatism; the habit of writing programs within one’s own  
political tendency, without reference to the class struggle.
·       Reformism; the habit of certain anti-capitalist militants,  
who are isolated within their union, to give in to pressure of a well- 
organized reformist majority.
·       Manipulations by certain radicals who avoid raising the level  
of debate about social issues within unions because they feel that  
such discussions belong properly within the remit of their political  
tendency


The CSR also stands for real union independence. Their are plenty of  
unionists who affirm this while denying the task of transforming  
society to unions. This position is at best ambiguous, more often  
incoherent and sometimes hypocritical. If a union does not take care  
of social questions it necessary leaves that task to philosophers.  
The need for this supplementation is logical. So this position will  
sooner or later lead a union to bind itself to a political movement.  
Union independence is best served by making the union the centre of  
all social reflection and action, independent of political movements.


[1] « Comité Syndicaliste Révolutionaire (CSR) » in th French original.
[2]  « conseils de travailleurs » in the French original, like the  
German « Arbeiterräte ».
[3] « sectarisme, gauchisme, intellectualisme » in the French  
original. These are the kinds of words that are used to mean  
different things by different writers.
[4]  « autogestionnaires » in the French original. Self management  
was, perhaps, the key demand in 68.
Source URL: http://www.iww.org/en/node/3176


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