COMMENTARY
JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO GO INTO THE WATER-
NOW, MORE THAN EVER, BUILD A WORKERS PARTY
Seemingly every year about this time just as I am about to go into hibernation from political strife for the summer some crazy thing happens to disrupt my cozy get away. This year I have been waylaid by of all things political debates. What? Political debates in June 2007? Apparently the presidential campaign process has truly gone into warp speed with all the manipulations around the primary and caucus schedules by the various states. Not only that but both Democrats and Republicans felt that it was necessary to unburden their souls before July 4th so here I am stuck in commentary land. And for what? The Democratic debate on Sunday June 3rd, running out of New Hampshire, ran head to head with a New York Yankees/Boston Red Sox game so I was probably one of about seven people watching it here. The Republican debate, also running out of New Hampshire, on Tuesday June 5th proved to me that I am not the only political junkie that needs to get to a rehab clinic very quickly. But here is my first piece of wisdom for the summer doldrums. Any party that schedules or allows itself to be scheduled for a debate in June a year and a half before the elections deserves all the problems it gets.
Oh yes, and the debates? From an advocate of a workers party one would expect an obligatory ‘there is not a dime’s worth of different between the Democrats and Republicans’. I will not disappoint you in that regard except to say with inflation there is not a quarter’s worth of difference. There is however, noticeably, a very sharp difference in styles and the audiences that the various candidates are pitching their arguments to. The Democrats, after six years of the Bush follies, are clearly in the cat bird’s seat and pitch to the centrist majority so that they need not go to extremes on immigration, Iraq, jobs, education, abortion and other social issues and, most decidedly, on religion. The Republicans on the other hand not only have to distance themselves from the Bush fiascos but must pay lip service to the prejudices of the right-wing religious fundamentalist base that provides the voting cattle in key primary and caucus states. Thus we are treated to the spectacle of presidential candidates in a secular republic in 2007, not 1927 or 1877, raising their hands in the negative when asked whether they believed in evolution. Damn, I am embarrassed to even watch such a spectacle. Save that action for the revival tents, please.
But back to that quarter’s worth of difference question. What working people and their allies desperately need now and need politicians to focus in on are the following:On Iraq and Afghanistan-Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal. On religion-Complete separation of church and state. On immigration-Full citizenship rights for all who make it here. On abortion- Free abortion on demand. On health care- Free quality healthcare for all. On education- Free quality education for all who want it. On marriage and other individual personal issues- Government out of the bedrooms. On working conditions- Organize Wal-Mart and the South. On wages- A living wage for all. This list is hardly exhaustive, merely an outline of a fighting program of pressing needs, but you get the drift. Did any candidate of either party come close to even understanding such needs? To pose the question is to give the answer. The long and short of it is this-build a workers party.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Friday, June 08, 2007
*From The Marxist Archives- The Trotskyist Opposition To World War II
Click on the title to link to a "Workers Vanguard" article, dated June 8, 2007, concerning Trotskyist revolutionary opposition to World War II.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
THE VOICE OF LABOR?
THE VOICE OF LABOR?
COMMENTARY
ORGANIZE WAL-MART, ORGANIZE THE SOUTH-THE FIGHT FOR THE UNIONS IS IN THE FACTORIES NOT IN THE CONGRESS
FORGET REPUBLICANS, DEMOCRATS AND GREENS! BUILD A WORKERS PARTY THAT FIGHTS FOR SOCIALISM!
In the normal course of current socialist propaganda tasks left-wing militants today do not find themselves spending much time commenting on particular pronouncements of the labor bureaucracy. Our task is to win militants to a fighting working class program and to a great extent the labor bureaucracy is used as a generic foil, no more. When things heat up in the class struggle that will obviously be a different story and we will be directly contesting the authority of that stratum of the labor movement. Nevertheless every once in a while it is good to see exactly what they are thinking and what ‘strategy’ they have for the labor movement. Recently John Sweeney, head of the AFL-CIO, authored an Op/Ed article in which he very clearly showed why labor is in such dire straits in America.
The basic point of his article-Freedom to Unionize- was the not very profound idea that the blood-thirsty capitalists who run today’s businesses are out to nip any union organizing efforts in the bud, through fear, intimidation and dismissal. Who would have though? Left out of that equation is the miserable record of organized labor, his bailiwick, in fighting that decline. But such is politics. What is important here is not the enumeration of the sins of the past but a solution to the problem.
Mr. Sweeny does not propose to organize Wal-Mart that would go a long way to reversing the decline in union membership. He does not advocate organizing the South that is a magnet for runaway shops that stay in this country. He does not call for an international labor campaign to unionize those 'off shore' runaways. He most certainly does not call for an end to organized labor’s long term love affair and financial support of the bourgeois parties, particularly the Democrats. No in the face of the devastation of the organized labor movement and the ravishing of real working class standards of living over the past thirty years he proposes that labor support Massachusetts Democratic Senator Kennedy’s Employee’s Free Choice Act. This proposal would create another capitalist bureaucratic agency that would ‘insure’ labor’s right to form unions and be free of employer harassment. Would that it were so simple.
Every labor militant knows, or should know, that we use every agency available, even governmental agencies, in order to pursue the class struggle against the capitalists. What we most emphatically do not do is call for more governmental labor-controlling agencies like this unlikely scheme. That is not our program for militant struggle and has not been so since back in the 1930’s in the heyday of such agencies as the National Labor Relations Board, etc. However, that is not Mr. Sweeney’s main sin. In no place, not even as a passing nod, does Mr. Sweeney even pay lip service to the idea of organized labor struggling in the factories and workplaces for its demands. In that sense Mr. Sweeney is the true modern day voice of the labor bureaucracy. What every labor militant should say is Brother Sweeney move on over. ORGANIZE WAL-MART! ORGANIZE THE SOUTH! BREAK WITH DEMOCRATS - BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
COMMENTARY
ORGANIZE WAL-MART, ORGANIZE THE SOUTH-THE FIGHT FOR THE UNIONS IS IN THE FACTORIES NOT IN THE CONGRESS
FORGET REPUBLICANS, DEMOCRATS AND GREENS! BUILD A WORKERS PARTY THAT FIGHTS FOR SOCIALISM!
In the normal course of current socialist propaganda tasks left-wing militants today do not find themselves spending much time commenting on particular pronouncements of the labor bureaucracy. Our task is to win militants to a fighting working class program and to a great extent the labor bureaucracy is used as a generic foil, no more. When things heat up in the class struggle that will obviously be a different story and we will be directly contesting the authority of that stratum of the labor movement. Nevertheless every once in a while it is good to see exactly what they are thinking and what ‘strategy’ they have for the labor movement. Recently John Sweeney, head of the AFL-CIO, authored an Op/Ed article in which he very clearly showed why labor is in such dire straits in America.
The basic point of his article-Freedom to Unionize- was the not very profound idea that the blood-thirsty capitalists who run today’s businesses are out to nip any union organizing efforts in the bud, through fear, intimidation and dismissal. Who would have though? Left out of that equation is the miserable record of organized labor, his bailiwick, in fighting that decline. But such is politics. What is important here is not the enumeration of the sins of the past but a solution to the problem.
Mr. Sweeny does not propose to organize Wal-Mart that would go a long way to reversing the decline in union membership. He does not advocate organizing the South that is a magnet for runaway shops that stay in this country. He does not call for an international labor campaign to unionize those 'off shore' runaways. He most certainly does not call for an end to organized labor’s long term love affair and financial support of the bourgeois parties, particularly the Democrats. No in the face of the devastation of the organized labor movement and the ravishing of real working class standards of living over the past thirty years he proposes that labor support Massachusetts Democratic Senator Kennedy’s Employee’s Free Choice Act. This proposal would create another capitalist bureaucratic agency that would ‘insure’ labor’s right to form unions and be free of employer harassment. Would that it were so simple.
Every labor militant knows, or should know, that we use every agency available, even governmental agencies, in order to pursue the class struggle against the capitalists. What we most emphatically do not do is call for more governmental labor-controlling agencies like this unlikely scheme. That is not our program for militant struggle and has not been so since back in the 1930’s in the heyday of such agencies as the National Labor Relations Board, etc. However, that is not Mr. Sweeney’s main sin. In no place, not even as a passing nod, does Mr. Sweeney even pay lip service to the idea of organized labor struggling in the factories and workplaces for its demands. In that sense Mr. Sweeney is the true modern day voice of the labor bureaucracy. What every labor militant should say is Brother Sweeney move on over. ORGANIZE WAL-MART! ORGANIZE THE SOUTH! BREAK WITH DEMOCRATS - BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
Monday, June 04, 2007
*VICTORY TO THE SOUTH AFRICAN PUBLIC WORKERS
Click on title to link to "Workers Vanguard" article on the aftermath of the South Africa Public Service Workers Strike.
COMMENTARY
BREAK WITH THE AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS-FOR A WORKERS PARTY THAT FIGHTS FOR SOCIALISM
In the 1990’s if there was any country in the world where the fight for socialism was placed on the immediate agenda, and had a fair chance of success, it was in South Africa. This at a time when virtually everyone in the West was gloating over the “death of communism”. The white-dominated apartheid regime was ripe for overthrow. It had been in important areas internationally isolated. The fight to free Nelson Mandela, the central figure in the black liberation struggle, had intensified. The black-centered opposition of the African National Congress (ANC), the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the well-organized and militant trade unions united in the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) had the capacity to make changes. The masses of black militants were subjectively in favor a socialist society, as they understood it. What happened? As has been the case more than a few times in history the revolutionary developments were derailed not in the least by the bourgeois program of the ANC, the class collaborationist, two stage theory of the Stalinist SACP and the capitulation of the trade union leadership. In any case, that long ago promise remains in the future. South Africa exhibited, and exhibits today, a classic case of what the Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky outlined as the theory of permanent revolution and the crisis of revolutionary leadership.
As is well known, the case of South African black (and mixed population) liberation was an international cause at least as far back as the 1960’s when the civil rights movement in the United States acted as a catalyst for extending the fight for equality on an international level. As is also well known this fight in South Africa was taken off the front burner once the democratic issues, not the class issues, were resolved in the 1990's. All of this brings us to the obvious situation today where the disappointed masses are fighting the so-called “progressive” ANC that has become in essence a ‘black front’ for the white capitalist regime that still dominates the economy. So much for past socialist rhetoric. Today the masses of South African public workers are in a struggle against that ANC government over what is seemingly a simple matter. They are looking for a 12 percent increase in their already inadequate wage package. The government is hedging at 6 percent. The masses of public workers in South Africa are grossly underpaid (as elsewhere). What this struggle means, in this the largest walkout against the government since apartheid was abolished, is that some class contradictions are now coming to the fore more clearly than in the past. More on this as the situation develops. BREAK WITH THE ANC! Victory to the South African Public Workers!
COMMENTARY
BREAK WITH THE AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS-FOR A WORKERS PARTY THAT FIGHTS FOR SOCIALISM
In the 1990’s if there was any country in the world where the fight for socialism was placed on the immediate agenda, and had a fair chance of success, it was in South Africa. This at a time when virtually everyone in the West was gloating over the “death of communism”. The white-dominated apartheid regime was ripe for overthrow. It had been in important areas internationally isolated. The fight to free Nelson Mandela, the central figure in the black liberation struggle, had intensified. The black-centered opposition of the African National Congress (ANC), the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the well-organized and militant trade unions united in the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) had the capacity to make changes. The masses of black militants were subjectively in favor a socialist society, as they understood it. What happened? As has been the case more than a few times in history the revolutionary developments were derailed not in the least by the bourgeois program of the ANC, the class collaborationist, two stage theory of the Stalinist SACP and the capitulation of the trade union leadership. In any case, that long ago promise remains in the future. South Africa exhibited, and exhibits today, a classic case of what the Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky outlined as the theory of permanent revolution and the crisis of revolutionary leadership.
As is well known, the case of South African black (and mixed population) liberation was an international cause at least as far back as the 1960’s when the civil rights movement in the United States acted as a catalyst for extending the fight for equality on an international level. As is also well known this fight in South Africa was taken off the front burner once the democratic issues, not the class issues, were resolved in the 1990's. All of this brings us to the obvious situation today where the disappointed masses are fighting the so-called “progressive” ANC that has become in essence a ‘black front’ for the white capitalist regime that still dominates the economy. So much for past socialist rhetoric. Today the masses of South African public workers are in a struggle against that ANC government over what is seemingly a simple matter. They are looking for a 12 percent increase in their already inadequate wage package. The government is hedging at 6 percent. The masses of public workers in South Africa are grossly underpaid (as elsewhere). What this struggle means, in this the largest walkout against the government since apartheid was abolished, is that some class contradictions are now coming to the fore more clearly than in the past. More on this as the situation develops. BREAK WITH THE ANC! Victory to the South African Public Workers!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)