Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece/union democracy and revolutionary impulse

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 7/22/2004 4:36:59 AM Central Standard Time, sartesian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

 

>Thanks for that Brother Melvin.  Damned if I didn't think that Fraser tried to fight his way into Jefferson Avenue.  But I was out of Detroit in 1973, and heard about it, and the other battles, from friends.  1970-73 were the years, though, weren't they.  Funny how it coincides with a peak in the rate of profit, a big dip, and then a recovery in the rate.<

 

Reply

 

Yea man . . . many folks on the left called this the period of the "Black Workers insurgency" but this description is inaccurate. One day after the Forge Strike was settled and Fraser backed down from this threat to fight the militant leaders . . . Mack Stamping plant exploded. William Gilbreth . . . a white member of Progressive Labor and member of the Workers Action Movement touched off the strike when he was fired for agitating over working conditions. He returned to work the next day on his regularly scheduled shift and sat down on the conveyor belt and the shift hit the fan.

 

Gilbreth was what we called an open communist and the list of demand drawn up on the spot contained some party demands including a 30 hour work week. No one in their right mind opposed 30 for 40 . . . even those who did not know what it meant or how it was to be implemented. 30 for 40 sound good and meant more for less. All the local militants from every plant in the Detroit area showed up at Mack and lend support.

 

All the subtle difference concerning the meaning of Marx in Chapter 25 of volume 48 in respect to an obscure footnote means nothing during a strike wave. Yet . . . the workers were eating up copies of the Communist Manifesto and walking around with "State and Revolution" in their coveralls. Most did not read the book but like the way "State and Revolution" sounded and would ask the seller of literature what the book was about. The standard reply was overthrowing the state and revolution and the reply would always be "give me a copy of that."

 

Any way Fraser had learned his lesson from John Taylor and the Forge strike and this time he vowed to open the plant with union members. Interestingly during this period the company never considered calling on the police. The riot of 67 and 1968 had not been that long ago and the Southern white workers relocated to Detroit did most of the shooting and sniping at police and army guys . . . true story. To my memory and knowledge not one black person was shot by these white southern workers.

 

Fraser cut a deal with the police Commissioner John Nicholas . . . who had declared that he would run for Mayor of Detroit. Detroit was a political inferno. All the scattered groups producing thousands of leaflets and distributing hundred of thousands copies of newspapers could not keep pace with the masses in motion.

 

Now the police were in a state of panic because three guys had formed themselves into a unit and were kicking in the doors of dope houses and robbing them and leafleting neighborhoods talking about "off the dope pusher." One evening they were stopped by the police during a traffic check and this lead to gun play with them escaping and a couple officers dead. Any way this story played itself out a couple years later with one of them being slain in Atlanta Georgia. When his body was returned to Detroit for a funeral a little over 5,000 people showed up to paid honor and the local media went berserk . . . basically calling the masses ignorant lawless mutherfuckers.

 

The men that made up this unit were known to all of us and named "Brown, Boyd and Bethune" . . . or the three "B's" or the blade, boot and the bullet.  Our lead attorney's had gotten Brown exonerated before a jury of his peers and the political polarization was thicker than New York cheese cake.

 

Back to Fraser.

 

After the workers shut down Mack Fraser cut his deal with the Police Commissioner and showed up at the plant gate with 2,000 union members . . . many retired to open the plant. Some fighting took place but the size of the goon squad was overwhelming and caught everyone by surprise. It was a sad day for the union and forever spilt the union because workers who did not like communist propaganda could not comprehend why the top Union leaders would organized against its own members.

 

For the rest of the year local union went in receivership for ousting the Woodcock slate and condemning Fraser in resolution after resolution . . . starting at the old Griggs Local . . . and they where the first to go under receivership. (Receivership means the International Union suspends all the local representatives and take over the day to day running of the Local Union).

 

That was the fight for union democracy.

 

Marxism is going to hit the streets in a big way and the semi-illiterate mass is going to learn how to read in groups reading communist leaflets and books . . . really . . . and nothing on earth is going to forever halt this social process. The folks on the street do not have union type organizations and are going to run into the state and dislodge it as the content of an era of social revolution. You cannot jail 30 million people and people are slowing drifting into motion.

 

The workers on their own do not magically leap outside the bond that is labor and capital or convert their economic struggle into a political struggle. It will never happen because it can't. Something else happens when the state intervenes in the social process and Bush is driving this process with Kerry his "left flank."

 

The mass that is more than less outside the direct labor-capital connection . . . as the proletarian core . . . galvanize the social process . . . during an era of social revolution. A Doug Fraser or Jesse Jackson Sr. for than matter has no standing with this mass in motion.

 

In this context one can understand the impact of Moore's "911" . . . and folks are going to fight about this movie. Wait until it is released on DVD and video.

 

Yea . . . Fraser was a piece of work and split the union forever. Emily Mazy the Financial Secretary of the International Union would later called the women secretaries on staff at Solidary House . . . the headquarters of the union . . . "greedy little bitches" . . . when they went on strike over working conditions, benefits and wages paid them by the damn union! Earlier, Mazy had labeled us "a bunch of black fascists."  Militants would show up to help them picket the damn union. This was industrial democracy at its finest hour . . . as it intersected with the striving of the lowest paid section and most poverty stricken mass.

 

Melvin P.