Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece

[Marvin Gandall <marvgandall@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Yoshie wrote:

> Unions as organized entities (as opposed to factions of
> activists in them) will be *the last* to join any third-party
> movement on the left that has an actual potential to grow powerful
> (that is, if they will ever join any such thing en masse at all --
> very improbable), for most union leaders have so many things to lose
> and a precious few things to gain from such a movement's challenge to
> the Democratic Party.
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I think mass disastifaction with the Democrats and interest in the Greens or
another third party, if it were to occur, would be a more uneven and
unpredictable process than you suggest. Political divisions would
concurrently appear in all organizations, and it is impossible to predict
which sectors would move faster than others, or that "the unions" are fated
to be "last".

The political differences at the "activist" level which you identity would
also be reflected at the top, as was the case when Marxists were battling
social democrats for leadership of the industrial unions in the 30's and 40'
s, and you and your colleagues would, I'm sure, be concentrated on wooing
Green-minded local and national union leaders. Your frustration with the
unions is characteristic of the US left, and is a product of the AFL-CIO's
conservative cast and political immobility relative to the history of  other
labour organizations around the world. However, I think you'd agree that
this in turn is related to the relative stability of US capitalism, and that
if that changed, so too would the American labour movement from bottom to
top.

Finally, it seems Carrol has gone anarchist on us:

> I think Yoshie has gotten a bit too wrapped up in the Greens (in the
> 2004 election). We cannot know the form that socialist activity will
> take in the future, but we can be fairly certain that it will not be
> electoral and will involve mass resistance to imperialist policies.
> Arguments against the Greens are equally arguments against paying any
> attention at all to elections at any level.

Marv Gandall