***On The 75th Anniversary Year Of The Dismal Conclusion Of The Spanish Civil War- All Honor to Those Who Fought On The Republican Side- In Honor Of The Working Class Militants In The Spanish Civil War

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

I am re-posting an entry commemorating the anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War when there were many possible outcomes short of defeat and suppression by the victorious Franco regime. The dismal end to the revolution brings forth many lessons but the heroic struggles of the rank and file militants should still be recognized as such. As should the big lessons to be learned. To aid that effort there is no better source than Leon Trotsky’s Spain: The Last Warning for a general overview. That essay is part his collection of essays and writings on Spain-The Lessons of the Spanish Revolution-1931-1939 appended below.             

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

In Honor Of The Working Class Militants In The Spanish Civil War- An Anniversary, Of Sorts

I have noted in other posts that some of our working-class anniversaries like the Paris Commune, the Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917, and the establishment of the Communist International are worthy of yearly commemoration. So, let us say, the 94th anniversary of the Russian revolution while awkward as a milestone is nevertheless, because of its world-historic importance (both in its establishment and its demise), an appropriate yearly commemoration. Others, like the Russian Revolution of 1905 are worthy of the more traditional five, ten and multiples observations. I have also noted previously my dismay (although that may be too strong a word) at the rise of odd-ball year anniversaries (30th, for example) and rise in the number of mundane occasions for such celebrations although I am not immune to that fever myself. Here, as the headline notes, I am observing a traditional milestone. However, the event itself, that I am observing has far less historic importance (actually far, far less importance) than as an occasion to make some point about the Spanish Civil War. The 50th anniversary designation is to commemorate the first time that I seriously studied the “lessons” of the Spanish Civil War. And the form that that study took was as the subject my very first high school term paper in 9th grade Civics class. I can hear the air being let out of the tires now. But hear me out on this one.

I make no pretense that I can zero in on when I first became interested in the subject of the Spanish Civil War but I was driven by two things in that direction- the general hatred of fascism as transmitted by family and others, the other, and this one is less precise as to origin, was a devotion to the fighters in the American-led Abraham Lincoln battalion of the 15th Brigade of the International Brigades. I believe it may have been hearing Pete Seeger doing a version of Viva La Quince Brigada but I am just not sure. In any case by the spring of 1961 I was knee-deep in studying the subject, including time after school up at the North Adamsville branch of the town’s Thomas Crane Public Library. My first stop, I remember, was looking through the Encyclopedia Americana for the entry on the Spanish Civil War for sources and then turning to the card catalogue. For those not familiar with those ancient forms of research the Encyclopedia was like the online Wikipedia today (except no collective editing, for good or evil, at a touch) and the card catalogue was just a paper version on, well, 3X5 cards, of the computerized systems in most libraries today. But enough of this history of research back in the Dark Ages because what this entry is about is the lessons of that event.

I have noted before, although here too I cannot remember all the details of the genesis of the notion, that on the subject of the Spanish Civil War I have been “haunted” (and still am) by the fact of the lost by the Republican side when in July and August of 1936 (and for about a year later as well) victory against Franco’s brutal counter-revolutionary forces seemed assured. In a sense Spain, and the various stages of my interpretation of events there, represents kind of a foundation stone for my political perspectives as I gained more understanding of the possibilities. I have, more recently, characterized 1930s Spain as the last serious chance to create a companion to the original Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia and so we had best look at its lesson closely, very closely.

Of course as a 9th grade political neophyte I was not even close to making that kind of observation just mentioned. I distinctly recall, and it was reflected in my liberal politics at that time, that the center of my argument on that term paper was the perfidy of the Western democracies in not coming to the aid of the Spanish republicans and further in not allowing the republicans to get arms from them or other sources, other than the Soviet Union. Mainly I was incensed that the British and French did not do more except cave in to Hitler when he called a tune. Now that was pretty raw stuff, pretty raw analysis, although probably not bad coming from that perspective. But depending on outside forces to save your bacon (or revolution) is always tricky and so as I moved leftward in my own political perspective I spent more time looking at the internal political dynamics driving the revolution. For an extremely long time I was under the spell (the proto-Stalinist derived spell) as articulated by the majority of the pro-republican organizations.- it was first necessary to win the war against Franco and then the revolution, presumably socialist, would be pursued under which all manner of good things like workers control of production, land to the tiller, some justice on the various national questions (Catalonia, Basque country) could take place, co-operative and collective government established, etc.

As I moved further leftward, leftward not just politically but also organizationally away from left-liberal and social democratic operations, and began to study more closely radical and revolutionary movements for social change I began to chaff under that war-revolution dichotomy and look more closely as the policies of the various organization within the republican camp. That was rather more eye-opening than not. The gist of it was that all the major organizations were working at cross purposes but most importantly they were putting brakes on the continuation of a revolutionary thrust in Spain. An so in the final analysis, although this was hardest to finally see in the cases of the CGT-FAI and POUM organizations and some individual militants, it was the failure to seek revolutionary solutions that would have galvanized the masses (or could have, rather than after 1937 left them indifferent, mainly, to the republican cause).

What was lacking? Obviously since even opponents agree there was a revolutionary situation in that period a party willing to go right to the end to achieve its goals, a Bolshevik-style party. Such things, as we are now painfully aware of, make all the different. And it is that little pearl of wisdom that makes this anniversary entry worth thinking about for the future.

********

The Lessons Of The Spanish Civil War- From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky

 

 

BOOK REVIEW

THE SPANISH REVOLUTION, 1931-39, LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973

THE CRISIS OF REVOLUTIONARY LEADERSHIP

AS WE APPROACH THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BEGINNING OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR MILITANTS NEED TO LEARN THE LESSONS FOR THE DEFEAT OF THAT REVOLUTION.

I have been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since I was a teenager. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle.

Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class revolutions after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted that the political class consciousness of the Spanish proletariat at that time was higher than that of the Russian proletariat in 1917. Yet it failed in Spain. Trotsky's writings on this period represent a provocative and thoughtful approach to an understanding of the causes of that failure. Moreover, with all proper historical proportions considered, his analysis has continuing value as the international working class struggles against the seemingly one-sided class war being waged by the international bourgeoisie today.

The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 has been the subject of innumerable works from every possible political and military perspective possible. A fair number of such treatises, especially from those responsible for the military and political policies on the Republican side, are merely alibis for the disastrous policies that led to defeat. Trotsky's complication of articles, letters, pamphlets, etc. which make up the volume reviewed here is an exception. Trotsky was actively trying to intervene in the unfolding events in order to present a program of socialist revolution that most of the active forces on the Republican side were fighting, or believed they were fighting for. Thus, Trotsky's analysis brings a breath of fresh air to the historical debate. That in the end Trotsky could not organize the necessary cadres to carry out his program or meaningfully impact the unfolding events in Spain is one of the ultimate tragedies of that revolution. Nevertheless, Trotsky had a damn good idea of what forces were acting as a roadblock to revolution. He also had a strategic conception of the road to victory. And that most definitely was not through the Popular Front.

The central question Trotsky addresses throughout the whole period under review here was the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the proletarian forces. That premise entailed, in short, a view that the objective conditions for the success of a socialist program for society had ripened. Nevertheless, until that time, despite several revolutionary upheavals elsewhere, the international working class had not been successful anywhere except in backward Russia. Trotsky thus argued that it was necessary to focus on the question of forging the missing element of revolutionary leadership that would assure victory or at least put up a fight to the finish.

This underlying premise was the continuation of an analysis that Trotsky developed in earnest in his struggle to fight the Stalinist degeneration of the Russian Revolution in the mid-1920's. The need to learn the lessons of the Russian Revolution and to extend that revolution internationally was thus not a merely a theoretical question for Trotsky. Spain, moreover, represented a struggle where the best of the various leftist forces were in confusion about how to move forward. Those forces could have profitably heeded Trotsky's advice. I further note that the question of the crisis of revolutionary leadership still remains to be resolved by the international working class.

Trotsky's polemics in this volume are highlighted by the article ‘The Lessons of Spain-Last Warning’, his definitive assessment of the Spanish situation in the wake of the defeat of the Barcelona uprising in May 1937. Those polemics center on the failure of the Party of Marxist Unification (hereafter, POUM) to provide revolutionary leadership. That party, partially created by cadre formerly associated with Trotsky in the Spanish Left Opposition, failed on virtually every count. Those conscious mistakes included, but were not limited to, the creation of an unprincipled bloc between the former Left Oppositionists and the former Right Oppositionists (Bukharinites) of Maurin to form the POUM in 1935; political support to the Popular Front including entry into the government coalition by its leader; creation of its own small trade union federation instead of entry in the anarchist led-CNT; creation of its own militia units reflecting a hands-off attitude toward political struggle with other parties; and, fatally, an at best equivocal role in the Barcelona uprising of 1937.

Trotsky had no illusions about the roadblock to revolution of the policies carried out by the old-time Anarchist, Socialist and Communist Parties. Unfortunately the POUM did. Moreover, despite being the most honest revolutionary party in Spain it failed to keep up an intransigent struggle to push the revolution forward. The Trotsky - Andreas Nin (key leader of the POUM and former Left Oppositionist) correspondence in the Appendix makes that problem painfully clear.

The most compelling example of this failure - As a result of the failure of the Communist Party of Germany to oppose the rise of Hitler in 1933 and the subsequent decapitation and the defeat of the Austrian working class in 1934 the European workers, especially the younger workers, of the traditional Socialist Parties started to move left. Trotsky observed this situation and told his supporters to intersect that development by an entry, called the ‘French turn’, into those parties. Nin and the Spanish Left Opposition, and later the POUM failed to do that. As a result the Socialist Party youth were recruited to the Communist Party en masse. This accretion formed the basic for its expansion as a party and the key cadre of its notorious security apparatus that would, after the Barcelona uprising, suppress the more left ward organizations. For more such examples of the results of the crisis of leadership in the Spanish Revolution read this book.

Revised-June 19, 2006

President Obama, Pardon Pvt. Manning

Because the public deserves the truth and whistle-blowers deserve protection.

We are military veterans, journalists, educators, homemakers, lawyers, students, and citizens.

We ask you to consider the facts and free US Army Pvt. Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning.

As an Intelligence Analyst stationed in Iraq, Pvt. Manning had access to some of America’s dirtiest secrets—crimes such as torture, illegal surveillance, and corruption—often committed in our name.

Manning acted on conscience alone, with selfless courage and conviction, and gave these secrets to us, the public.

“I believed that if the general public had access to the information contained within the[Iraq and Afghan War Logs] this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy,”

Manning explained to the military court. “I wanted the American public to know that not everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan were targets that needed to be neutralized, but rather people who were struggling to live in the pressure cooker environment of what we call asymmetric warfare.”

Journalists used these documents to uncover many startling truths. We learned:

• Donald Rumsfeld and General Petraeus helped support torture in Iraq.

• Deliberate civilian killings by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan went unpunished.

• Thousands of civilian casualties were never acknowledged publicly.

• Most Guantanamo detainees were innocent.

For service on behalf of an informed democracy, Manning was sentenced by military judge Colonel Denise Lind to a devastating 35 years in prison.

Government secrecy has grown exponentially during the past decade, but more secrecy does not make us safer when it fosters unaccountability.

Pvt. Manning was convicted of Espionage Act charges for providing WikiLeaks with this information, but  the prosecutors noted that they would have done the same had the information been given to The New York Times. Prosecutors did not show that enemies used this information against the US, or that the releases resulted in any casualties.

Pvt. Manning has already been punished, even in violation of military law.

She has been:

• Held in confinement since May 29, 2010.

• Subjected to illegal punishment amounting to torture for nearly nine months at Quantico Marine Base, Virginia, in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), Article 13—facts confirmed by both the United Nation’s lead investigator on torture and military judge Col. Lind.

• Denied a speedy trial in violation of UCMJ, Article 10, having been imprisoned for over three years before trial.

• Denied anything resembling a fair trial when prosecutors were allowed to change the charge sheet to match evidence presented, and enter new evidence, after closing arguments.

Pvt. Manning believed you, Mr. President, when you came into office promising the most transparent administration in history, and that you would protect whistle-blowers. We urge you to start upholding those promises, beginning with this American prisoner of conscience.

We urge you to grant Pvt. Manning’s petition for a Presidential Pardon.

FIRST& LAST NAME _____________________________________________________________

STREET ADDRESS _____________________________________________________________

CITY, STATE & ZIP _____________________________________________________________

EMAIL& PHONE _____________________________________________________________

Please return to: For more information: www.privatemanning.org

Private Manning Support Network, c/o Courage to Resist, 484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610

 

Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.

From The Marxist Archives -The Revolutionary History Journal-Baruch Hirson-The Trotskyists and the Trade Unions
 

Markin comment (2010):

The International Communist League (ICL), the international organization of which Workers Vanguard is the flagship publications, in numerous articles and published conference reports has emphasized, correctly I believe, that in the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union that the political consciousness of the international working class, although unevenly, has taken big steps backward in its consciousness. The shorthand way to speak of such a condition is that on a day to day basis the bulk of the workers do not connect their defensive struggles with the struggle for socialism.

Seemingly working class history for the past 150 years or so is a blank page although those in the least bit familiar with that history know that it is rich in examples, positive and negative, of working class struggle for our communist future. Although one could see that retrograde situation developing, in some cases graphically as on the American labor scene, well before that demise something snapped in the international labor movement in reaction to the incessant “communism is dead” triumphalism of the international capitalist class and its mouthpieces. Although that situation is slowly changing under the conditions of the current capitalist onslaught, especially in Europe, that sense of the decline of political consciousness is still pervasive.

That brings us to the class consciousness that underlies the article under review in this entry on the situation in South Africa. I mentioned above (as the ICL has in its articles as well) that the decline of political consciousness was not monolithic. South Africa, due to many factors in its national framework not the least the massive struggle against apartheid, may represent the classic contrary case. In the immediate post-Soviet period when everyone, their brothers, their sisters, and their great-aunts was disclaiming anything but hardened and eternal hostility to the word communism, communist organizations, or even lukewarm socialist formations in South Africa they were making an event, a public event, out of the legalization of the Communist Party.

Of course, we know, at least those of us who claim the Trotskyist tradition, that this was the just the legalization of another old time Stalinist, class- collaborationist, two-stage revolution operation but that party represented communism down at the base, communist revolution as the “comrades” understood it. Hey, these guys and gals, these street militants, were waving red flags night and day with the expectation that not only apartheid was over with the African National Congress(ANC) taking over the reins of government but that the meek (militant meek, that is, the others get nothing in this wicked old world) shall finally inherit the earth. It gives me no satisfaction, none whatsoever, nor should it to you that their illusions have been cruelly dashed overt the past sixteen years.

If South Africa represented (and in many ways still does, witness the recent wide-spread strikes AGAINST the ANC-SACP-COSATU government) something like the vanguard of political consciousness in the international labor movement it also represents the classic Stalinist (and not Stalinist alone) stagist theory of revolution in less advanced countries. In short, first the democratic revolution then, in the future, the socialist revolution. Sixteen years on and the “comrades” are still waiting. Thus we have a pretty good idea when that second stage kicks in-never.

And that is my second point. If the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917 proved once and for all that the bourgeoisie of an emerging capitalist country is incapable, for a thousand reasons not the least its myriad intermingled links to the major imperialist powers, of leading (or maybe even tolerating) a democratic revolution then several decades later the emerging (or already existing) bourgeoisies in less advanced capitalist countries are even less likely to so. In South Africa Leon Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution retains its validity. No, not just it validity, more than that it is merely the beginning of political wisdom for those crushed “comrades” down at the base still waiting for the second promised stage. Thus the order of the day is for the black-centered workers movement to break with the ANC as a matter of elementary political hygiene.

Sometimes one can overuse analogies (although that does not prevent anyone from doing so, or it hasn’t in the past, including by this writer) from one period to the next. Obviously there are major differences (not the least the question of political leadership of the working class) between the situation in Russia 1917 and South Africa today but I keep being drawn to the Menshevik’s notion in 1917 (and before and after, as well) that the bourgeoisie should lead the democratic revolution in Russia and the role of peasant and working class socialist organizations was to “support” or “push” them forward. That candidate in 1917 was the Cadet party (Constitutional Democrats); today in South Africa (at least for now) for the Mensheviks of today, the SACP and its hangers-on, it is the ANC. So what, as is pretty well described in the linked article above, we see in South Africa is what Russia might have looked like if the Menshevik “vision” had worked out. No, thank you, then and now. Learn the lessons outlined in Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. Forward!

 

Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover” the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.

Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible.

The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
wheat from the chaff. 
******** 

Baruch Hirson-The Trotskyists and the Trade Unions

THE ONLY policy document or thesis that was accepted by both groups in Cape Town was the one entitled ‘The Trade Union Question’. It started with the claim that ‘the problems and tactics of the trade unions are determined by the conditions and intensity of the class struggle’. Then it continued: ‘As a starting point we take the irrefutable fact that capitalism is in process of decay. The economic crisis throughout the world for the past five years [1929-34], the enormous masses of unemployed, the decline in wages, the onslaught on the standards of living, the various developments of Fascism, the imminence of war, all this shows the impossibility of retaining the existing social and economic system, the deadly rule of oppression and exploitation. Against the background of this sharp economic crisis, the social struggle in all countries grows more severe. Strikes of unusual magnitude are breaking out, beginning in the United States, as the proletariat strives to maintain its standards of living under the heavy hand of capitalism.’
The document then condemned the trade unions in most capitalist countries for their betrayal of the workers. They were in the hands of reformists and bureaucrats (‘the direct servants of capitalism’), who were narrowly economist, and kept away from the political struggle. The task of the party was to oppose and ‘unmask the treachery and slackness’ of the reformist leadership, and set ‘a steady revolutionary course’.
In South Africa, said the authors, the unions reflected the backwardness of the workers. The unions were hampered by reformist leaders, stultified by the existing industrial legislation ‘which aims at settling disputes by mutual agreement instead of by direct action’. Furthermore, Africans were debarred or discouraged from entering the unions, and were left ‘completely unorganised and helpless against the continual attacks on their meagre standard of living’.
The thesis condemned the policies of the existing trade union movements and the segregationist South African Labour Party to which, they claimed incorrectly, the white workers mainly owed their allegiance. Consequently, the SALP was largely responsible for the failure of past strikes. In fact, the trade unions were largely unaffiliated, and any political influence came from the position taken by union officials. In like fashion, but for different reasons, the document accused the Communist Party of sectarianism, of splitting the unions, and removing the more militant workers. What was required was a united militant trade union movement.
The new revolutionary party had to work to oust the trade union bureaucracy, by ‘winning the confidence of the masses’. This could only be done by participating in the daily struggles, the main task lying ‘within the economic struggle’. This could be achieved by rejecting class collaboration and using direct action.
More specifically, the colour bar had to be abolished, and black and white workers were to be united in one trade union movement. Until this was achieved, workers who were debarred from the trade unions should be organised into separate trade unions. But they stressed:
‘Under no circumstances... do we regard such purely Native trade unions as opposition trade unions or as a goal in themselves. They are only a step towards the amalgamation of all the trade unions, black and white, into one central organisation of trade unions of all the workers of South Africa.’
The document concluded with a warning. The problems of the workers could not be solved under capitalism. Concessions could be gradually forced from the ruling class, but ‘only the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat can solve the social question’.
This was a document which, except for the point made about the colour bar, could have been written anywhere, by syndicalists or radical groups. There were no new ideas on the role of trade unions in society, and the problems that would be raised by the separate organisation of ethnic trade unions was not spelt out. It was almost as a concession that the authors allowed for the possibility of building African trade unions, and the burning issue of the day, the use of the government-created Wage Board was not mentioned. That is to say, the statement gave no direction to the members of the group, fudged the main problems, and did not offer anything new in the way of theory. Perhaps it did not matter. None of the persons involved in formulating policy was engaged in trade union work, and few if any attempts were made in Cape Town to participate or to engage in trade union organisation.[1]
It was different in the Transvaal. This was the industrial hub of the country, and from the beginning members of the Left Opposition were engaged in trade union work. Frank Glass, one-time organiser for the CPSA, had been a trade union secretary. Thibedi, before he was expelled from the CPSA, had been active in organising the African Trade Union Federation, the section of the Red Trade Unions (or Profintern) in South Africa. In his letter to the International Secretariat, he claimed that he had with him the nucleus of several trade unions in which African workers had been organised. This included the Laundry Workers Union. But there is no information on what he did or what he achieved.
Then came Murray Gow Purdy and Ralph Lee. Whatever their intentions, their trade union activity, centred on the Laundry Workers Union, was not successful. Precipitate strike action (praised initially in the Communist press) was poorly organised and could not succeed. It led to hasty affiliation to the Trades and Labour Council (the TLC, the South African TUC) in order to get strike money.[2] Lee criticised the strike in an internal document, claiming that the union was not prepared for action, that there was no organised party fraction in the union, and that there was bureaucratic control of the body. Lee had taken over the organisation of the union, but it came close to collapse. Gordon, who took over in April 1935, wrote to Cape Town criticising Lee’s inactivity over a six months period and the lack of organisation. Lee demanded that the letter be kept from the branch membership to save him the need to answer point by point. Unfortunately, this was acceded to, and Gordon’s letter was dismissed by the Cape Town committee—leaving Gordon under a cloud.
The appointment of Gordon as Secretary of the Laundry Workers Union and its reorganisation was the turning point in the fortunes of the trade union movement in the Transvaal.[3] After the collapse, the reconstituted committee sought a way of getting higher wages, and the one solution seemed to them to request a wage determination from the government-instituted Wage Board. According to the minutes of the committee meeting of 9 April 1935, Purdy and Lee, in accordance with the trade union thesis, were completely opposed to the Wage Board. Purdy condemned it as harmful, and Lee, saying that the Workers Party opposed the Wage Board added, in patronising terms, that children sometimes only learnt that a fire would burn by being burnt. Therefore, he said: ‘If the laundry workers burnt their fingers, they must not forget that we warned them.’ The members of the committee were not impressed. If fingers had to be burnt, they said, so be it: they were prepared to learn for themselves. Appointed that evening to take Purdy’s place, Gordon was instructed to approach the Board on behalf of the workers.
Arrangements by Gordon took time, and the workers were critical of him on that account. The whole issue became intertwined with personal feuding inside the Johannesburg branch of the WPSA. Letters were written to Cape Town with accusations and counter-accusations of inefficiency. Lee’s letters were less than truthful. He said that he had favoured going to the Wage Board, but that Gordon had bungled the issue. Gordon said that he had received no help from Lee, and the matter had taken much longer than expected. In fact, all the work was left to Gordon, and any support he received subsequently came from individuals connected with liberal organisations. He even received a small grant for trade union work from the Institute of Race Relations, a body established with the help of the Carnegie Institute. This was the only money that Gordon ever received, and it was noted that he was always hungry when invited out to dinner. It was said that on those occasions he ate voraciously.
Gordon, as described in the main essay, left the WPSA and worked with the aid of a number of young African organisers. Thereafter, the WPSA in Johannesburg did little work in organising unions. What little activity there was stemmed from individual initiatives. One episode, which is referred to in a short typed document, was the discovery by a mine manager of an attempt to reach African mineworkers through the covert circulation of the paper Umlilo Mollo in September 1935, so it appears. This was the work of Heaton Lee (no relation), a mine surveyor. Heaton was reprimanded, and his African assistant was repatriated to Mozambique.[4]
It was two years before Lee was once again involved in union work. This time he was seemingly invited to lead steel ceiling workers in an African Metal Trades Union. Scaw Works, one of the largest firms, refused to recognise the union or meet any of their workers’ grievances. Once again there was precipitate strike action, the workers were defeated and the union collapsed. In this case, Lee said later that the Johannesburg branch had opposed strike action, but, once the decision had been taken, had given the workers their full support.[5]
Gordon found that the meetings of the WPSA were less and less relevant, and, after a further set of rows and expulsions, the Johannesburg branch was temporarily disbanded by Lee to remove some dissident members in mid-August 1935. Gordon wrote to Cape Town protesting against such manoeuvres, and then withdrew completely from the WPSA.[6] Henceforth, he relied on Lynn Saffery, a member of the staff of the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) for legal assistance and secretarial support, on university students for assistance with office work, and on Fanny Klenerman (Glass) for political backing.
Gordon was further isolated when the Cape Town section demanded that he reapply for membership to the Johannesburg group. He did not, and he was cut off from the party.[7] There are no reports of his trade union work in The Spark or in the documents of the WPSA. The one Trotskyist whose work was of significance in the workers’ movement was isolated and ostracised.
In her taped memoirs, Klenerman was to say of Gordon that his ‘efforts were astonishing’. She explained:
‘Max Gordon was a born organiser. It was his character and his friendliness which gave him immediate admission to the sympathetic hearing of large numbers of Africans who had not even known what a trade union was. He spoke badly, but he spoke from the heart. What he told them was of interest to them, and he made sure that they understood what he said. Better speakers, more fluent speakers, might present their message with more picturesque or literary expression. But he spoke basically to people who think in basic terms...’
Thereafter, he organised an African Commercial Workers Union, and succeeded almost single handed in establishing an African working class movement. His success came from listening to the laundry workers who decided to use the government’s Wage Board to press for an increase in wages. He sought the help of liberals, Social Democrats and even former members of the CPSA who were still Stalinist in their orientation, whilst maintaining his political integrity. By these means he was able, in the space of less than two years, to build the nucleus of the first industrial trade union movement in the Transvaal.
Gordon was also confronted at an early stage of his trade union career by a wildcat strike in one of the laundries, and the union was only saved from extinction when a court case against the workers was defeated on a technical point. I tell the story of Gordon and his principal assistant Dan Koza in my book Yours For the Union. It was a story of patiently building up a trade union movement from scratch, of finding the means to attract workers who had been repelled by the CPSA, when, in their Red Unions, they constantly called the workers out on strike, and found that their most militant workers were victimised.
In a conversation quoted by Peter Abrahams, Gordon described his method of winning minuscule concessions in order to gain the workers’ confidence:
‘One day a vigorous and strong Native trade union movement will grow up. None of the government’s prohibitions and restrictions and arrests will count for anything then. And that movement is going to play a key part in the political emancipation of all non-whites. So, for the present, I ask for a threepenny rise [which laundry workers obtained], for a recognised and proper lunch hour, and for decent and safe conditions of work. It’s a small beginning, but it’s a beginning. That’s what was wrong with earlier efforts. They did not know how to start.’
Gordon also made it clear (in other reported discussions) that his aim was to organise the mineworkers. This was in close accord with the WPSA declaration at the end of 1935, that it was essential that the mineworkers be organised.[8] Gordon expanded: he needed a well organised trade union movement to act as a spring board before he could move into the mines. He did penetrate the workforce on the mines by gaining the confidence of the African clerical workers. They emptied the waste paper bins at night, and brought him all the discarded papers, allowing him to build up a knowledge of the mine manager’s plans. There was also a story that I heard from many sources and widely believed in Socialist circles, that he would blacken his face and gain entry to the mine compounds. Myth or otherwise, this was the kind of reputation he built around his activities.
Gordon used every legal means to gain improved wages and work conditions for his unions, and had built a movement, presided over by a Joint Committee, of over 15000 members before war was declared.[9] His methods were not problem free. The unions he built could have been absorbed into the state structures or into the liberal SAIRR. However, Gordon was alive to such dangers, and would have warded them off, but he was never called upon to save the unions. Gordon was anti-war in 1940, in line with the WPSA, and was interned in 1940-41 for approximately a year. No satisfactory reason was given, but it was suspected that during the first year of the war, when victory was far from certain, the government cracked down on whites who might act as organisers of black opposition.
Yet Gordon’s trade union activities were denigrated by the Johannesburg WPSA at the end of 1938. On 2 November 1938, in a letter to Cape Town, Max Sapire, without providing any evidence, belittled Gordon’s trade union work as bureaucratic. By way of contrast, said Sapire, the primary work in the WPSA was in the trade unions, and he claimed they had made significant progress, not only among black workers but also among whites. But no more was heard about this activity, and the white workers disappeared.
In reviewing Gordon’s achievements, it cannot be stressed often enough that he succeeded only because he was able to enrol African organisers of ability, and of these Daniel Koza was the most remarkable.[10] When Gordon was interned, it was only the work of Koza and some of his organisers that kept the unions alive, although in so doing they turned against the use of white organisers.[11] Then the unions went on the offensive, led strikes, and during the early period of the war won some significant victories.
During Gordon’s internment the only support he received was from Klenerman and Saffery of the SAIRR. But on release in 1941 he found that he had lost his effective position in the Johannesburg trade unions.[12] Gordon was invited by Socialists in Port Elizabeth (in the eastern Cape), in collaboration with the SAIRR, to assist in the formation of black trade unions. In a three month visit he set up half a dozen unions. Then, with no Trotskyist available to take the unions over, Gordon handed them over to members of the CPSA, who used the unions to advance their personal political ambitions. By this means his work was negated, but he had demonstrated the ease with which unions could be founded.
Gordon’s internment by the Smuts government in 1940 brought his activities to a premature end. However, the unions he had established continued through the war years. With considerable success they secured wage increases and better working conditions, and the trade union movement grew in size, claiming a membership of 150000 by 1945.
Gordon was not a theoretician, and he had no claims to originality. In a pamphlet on the need to organise workers, he commenced with a paraphrase of the WPSA thesis on the Native Question.[13] It is a document that makes little sense in the context of Gordon’s work. He had set out to build a trade union movement, spoke (at the TLC Conference) on the fight against capitalism and against the coming war, and yet, writing about the trade unions, he commenced mechanically with a lengthy quotation about land from the WPSA thesis on the Native Question.
When finally, in 1941, he returned to the Cape after police harassment made continued work impossible, he did not recontact his old comrades in the WPSA. For the rest of his life he remained in isolation, although he apparently said that if he could find a group with whom he could work, he would return to political activity. He never did, and he died in 1977, barely known to a new generation of workers and trade unionists.
It was only when Lee launched the WIL that the resurrected Trotskyist movement resumed trade union work. They were able to link together some of Gordon’s original organisers, and form, or rescue, ailing unions—although none of the union officials gave more than token allegiance to the WIL. What had eluded everyone except Gordon turned out to be amazingly simple. The work was done under the aegis of the Progressive Trade Union group that was formed in 1944 to support the Milling Workers Union in its strike action. This re-established contact with Koza, who was by then the most effective black trade union official, taking the Commercial and Distributive Workers Union to its peak, and securing the highest wages for its constituents.
Thereafter, WIL organisers spent a large part of their time on trade union work, providing speakers, printing facilities and transport for union officials. Working under conditions at the edge of legality, the members of WIL spoke at workers’ rallies, helped in the organisation of workers, and attended the conferences of the African trade union movement. They helped elaborate policies calling for the recognition of the unions outside the crippling Industrial Conciliation Act (which stopped strike action during a lengthy cooling off period), and urged a minimum wage policy of three pounds a week. In this they clashed with the Stalinists, who controlled some of the unions and urged their members not to strike, wanted recognition under the IC Act, and would not countenance a demand for three pounds a week, despite evidence that this was at the edge of subsistence. In all this Koza played an outstanding role. He was the spokesman of the PTU, put their case at the conference of trade unions, and maintained an anti-war position at meetings. The antagonism of FIOSA to this work,[14] the self-destruction of the WIL, and the shameful desertion of the trade unions is told in part in the essay above. The history of that endeavour is told in greater detail in Yours For the Union and in my forthcoming autobiography.
Despite the advances made through the immersion in such activity, there were no recruits from the unions. Yet this was not the immediate objective. The building of a working class movement, which could form the base of a larger Socialist movement, seemed to several members of the WIL to be central to their endeavours. If this meant that the group had to work through a leadership that was bureaucratic and even corrupt, that seemed to be only a hurdle that would have to be surmounted. And when, after a conference of the Council of Non-European Trade Unions, at which Koza and other associates of the PTU put the case for a mobilisation of the unions to organise the unorganised, the WIL participated in the meeting of thousands of workers, it seemed to be at the pinnacle of its work. It was at this stage that leading members of the WIL were persuaded by an associate of the WPSA that this was not the work that revolutionaries should be doing.
There was a bitter struggle inside the WIL to save the work that had been done. Hirson, the organising secretary of the WIL, Mfihi of the power workers’ union, and Motau, a trade union worker, and five others fought the majority over a three months period. All other work stopped whilst the issue was debated, but the eight were defeated. It was thus, just months before the African Mineworkers Union called the strike that seemed to shake South Africa, that the Trotskyists pulled out of trade union work—not because they were forced to, but because a few leading members decided that this was unnecessary work.
There were bitter recriminations from the trade unionists who had been so abandoned. This was a betrayal that could not be forgiven or forgotten. This was amongst the most shameful episodes in the history of the Trotskyist movement, but as far as can be seen, those who were in the WPSA or FIOSA in Cape Town ignored the event. The abandonment of the trade union movement by the WIL negated all the work that Gordon had done, and brought the group into contempt. It was perhaps only right that with the collapse of the WIL, the Trotskyists in the Transvaal were eclipsed and did not participate again, except peripherally, in the African trade union movement.[15]
Nonetheless, the work that Koza and others had done, despite the collapse of many of the unions after the defeat of the mineworkers’ strike, provided a base upon which future unions were built. The continuity was tenuous but should not be discounted. The great shame was that the work that had been put into their organisation should have been so wantonly thrown away.

---

Notes

1. See the letter of March 1937 from Cape Town to Lee, quoted in the main essay, saying that the WPSA in Cape Town had not yet undertaken any trade union work.

2. From the minutes of the annual conferences of the TLC. The delegates were furious at what they saw as affiliation to secure financial support.

3. Gordon’s background is obscure. It seems that he spent one year as a medical student before working in the leather department of a Cape Town store. Although he was active in organising the unemployed workers in Cape Town, he was not taken seriously by the members of the WPSA, and, seeking an opening, went to Johannesburg where he earned money by repairing radios, and working in a big department store. He had set his eyes on trade union work, and this became possible when he was invited by Lee to take over as Secretary of the Laundry Workers Union.

4. I first learnt of this event when I interviewed Heaton Lee in 1975 in Merthyr Tydfil. His account was very different from that in Ralph Lee’s letter. Ralph, who always insisted that party publications must ‘window dress’ in order to attract attention, speaks of ‘the authorities laying bare a great part of our organisation on the State Mines’. Heaton said that he and his assistant were the only two involved, and his account contradicted Ralph’s fanciful statement that the African was subjected to third degree methods, severely beaten up and forced to point out his white comrade. Heaton did not claim that his assistant was a ‘comrade’, and said that after a confrontation he had spoken up and thus prevented such a beating.

5. There is an ambiguity in accounts of the strike. Lee in his letters to the Cape Town branch on 21 and 26 February 1937 claimed that there had been months of secret preparations prior to the demands being made by himself. A letter from Max Sapire, writing one year later, said that the union was only formed on 15 January 1937. When the workers’ demands were rejected, the union members decided unanimously to strike the following morning. Sapire does say that Lee advised against strike action.

6. The Cape Town branch accepted Lee’s reports of events in Johannesburg, and refused to hear what the dissident members had to say.

7. See Tell Freedom , the autobiography of Peter Abrahams, the South African novelist, for an account of Gordon’s trade union methods. The WPSA statement appeared in the discussion of its aims in the All-African Convention (see main essay).

8. This comment, overheard by Nachum Sneh in the Vanguard bookshop, was told me in an interview in London in the mid-1970s.

9. Naboth Mokgatle, enroled by Gordon to organise unions in Pretoria, describes how impressed he was at the mass meeting when Gordon announced the pay increases obtained through his submission to the Wage Board.

10. Koza had started training as a teacher, but did not complete the course. It is not known why he withdrew, but one thing is certain, he was far too proud to accept the servile status and the miserable wage of African teachers at the time. He sympathised with the Trotskyist position and for a brief period belonged to the FIOSA, but did not stay. When the WIL was launched he was considered a friend of the movement, and he led the Progressive Trade Union group. He was also active in township protests, and in particular with the protests against the increase of bus fares in Alexandra Township.

11. This has never been satisfactorily explained. As I show in my book, Rheinallt Jones, director of the SAIRR, with the knowledge of government officials, tried to foist Saffery on the trade unions during Gordon’s internment. His highhanded manner angered Koza, and Jones was forced to leave empty handed. None of this was Gordon’s doing, and his exclusion when he returned remains a mystery.

12. Gordon had actually gathered together the nucleus of the African Mine Workers Union. Because of his internment, he had lost his contacts. When the union was relaunched, Koza and Gordon were elected to its Managing Committee, but it turned out to be a dummy body, controlled exclusively by the Stalinists. Meanwhile, Gordon had handed them all the documents of the embryo union.

13. ‘The Scope for Native Employment’, Saamwerk Papers (Work Together ), no 2, (c1937), mimeographed. There is no indication of who published these papers, and there is no date or address given.

14. For reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained, Jaffe voted at the 1945 conference of the Council of Non-European Trade Unions with the Stalinists against the Progressive Trade Union group. This was reported in Socialist Action , paper of the WIL, and drew a hurt reply from Jaffe in a FIOSA internal bulletin, because the WIL had dared to attack him publicly.

15. In the late 1950s, Hirson, then a lecturer at the university and a member of the Congress movement, was invited to join the South African Congress of Trade Union’s study group that was engaged in preparing a lecture series for trade union officials. However, his views were unacceptable to the committee, and he was excluded from the meetings.

Six Ways To Support Freedom For Chelsea Manning- President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.

The Struggle Continues …

Six Ways To Support Heroic Wikileaks Whistle-Blower Chelsea  Manning

*Sign the public petition to President Obama – Sign online http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/chelseamanning  “President Obama, Pardon Pvt. Manning,” and make copies to share with friends and family!

You  can also call (Comments”202-456-1111), write The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500, e-mail-(http://www.whitehouse.gov’contact/submitquestions-and comments) to demand that President Obama use his constitutional power under Article II, Section II to pardon Private Manning now.

*Start a stand -out, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, in your town square to publicize the pardon and clemency campaigns.  Contact the Private Manning SupportNetwork for help with materials and organizing tips http://www.bradleymanning.org/

*Contribute to the Private  Manning Defense Fund- now that the trial has finished funds are urgently needed for pardon campaign and for future military and civilian court appeals. The hard fact of the American legal system, military of civilian, is the more funds available the better the defense, especially in political prisoner cases like Private Manning’s. The government had unlimited financial and personnel resources to prosecute Private Manning at trial. And used them as it will on any future legal proceedings. So help out with whatever you can spare. For link go to http://www.bradleymanning.org/

*Write letters of solidarity to Private Manning while she is serving her sentence. She wishes to be addressed as Chelsea and have feminine pronouns used when referring to her. Private Manning’s mailing address: Bradley E. Manning, 89289, 1300 N. Warehouse Road, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 66027-2304. You must use Bradley on the address envelope.

Private Manning cannot receive stamps or money in any form. Photos must be on copy paper. Along with “contraband,” “inflammatory material” is not allowed. Six page maximum.

*Call: (913) 758-3600-Write to:Col. Sioban Ledwith, Commander U.S. Detention Barracks 1301 N Warehouse Rd
Ft. Leavenworth KS 66027-Tell them: “Transgender rights are human rights! Respect Private Manning’s identity by acknowledging the name ‘Chelsea Manning’ whenever possible, including in mail addressed to her, and by allowing her access to appropriate medical treatment for gender dysphoria, including hormone replacement therapy (HRT).” (for more details-http://markinbookreview.blogspot.com/2013/11/respecting-chelseas-identity-is-this.html#!/2013/11/respecting-chelseas-identity-is-this.html

 *******                                                

Send The Following Message (Or Write Your Own) To The President In Support Of A Pardon For Private Manning

To: President Barack Obama
White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20500

The draconian 35 years sentence handed down by a military judge, Colonel Lind, on August 21, 2013 to Private Manning (Chelsea formerly known as Bradley) has outraged many citizens including me.
Under Article II, Section II of the U.S. Constitution the President of the United States had the authority to grant pardons to those who fall under federal jurisdiction.
Some of the reasons for my request include: 

*that Private Manning  was held for nearly a year in abusive solitary confinement at the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, which the UN rapporteur in his findings has called “cruel, inhuman, and degrading”

*that the media had been continually blocked from transcripts and documents related to the trial and that it has only been through the efforts of Private Manning’s supporters that any transcripts exist.

*that under the UCMJ a soldier has the right to a speedy trial and that it was unconscionable and unconstitutional to wait 3 years before starting the court martial.

*that absolutely no one was harmed by the release of documents that exposed war crimes, unnecessary secrecy and disturbing foreign policy.

*that Private Manning is a hero who did the right thing when she revealed truth about wars that had been based on lies.

I urge you to use your authority under the Constitution to right the wrongs done to Private Manning – Enough is enough!

Signature ___________________________________________________________

Print Name __________________________________________________________

Address_____________________________________________________________

City / Town/State/Zip Code_________________________________________

Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.

The New Britain Herald (newbritainherald.com), Serving New Britain, Conn., and surrounding areas

News

Pulitzer winning journalist warns CCSU audience of abuses by government

 

Saturday, March 29, 2014 10:01 PM EDT

 

By Justin Muszynski
Staff Writer

NEW BRITAIN — Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges visited Central Connecticut State University Saturday and criticized the government for encroaching citizens’ civil liberties through its various intelligence agencies.

Hedges, a former New York Times reporter, said a small, secret surveillance committee of “goons and thugs hiding behind the mask of patriotism” was established in 1908 in Washington, DC. This group, Hedges said, eventually became known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“Throughout American history, intelligence services have primarily advanced and protected the profits of corporations and solidified state repression and further imperialist expansion,” Hedges said at the program titled “One Nation, Under Surveillance.”

These agencies, he said, use the “psychosis of permanent war” to “manufacture fear” as an “excuse to curtail basic liberties and crush popular movements.”

Hedges said the FBI can obtain a citizen’s personal information simply by issuing a national security letter to places like your bank, doctor’s office and even employer without a judicial warrant. He also said it can collect and store all of your email correspondence and phone records and even track your geographical movements everywhere.

“Our liberty has been sacrificed on the altar of national security,” said Hedges, who is also a columnist for Truthdig and an author of 12 books.

The government can assassinate a citizen if it believes this person to be a terrorist, he said. It can also order the military to arrest and hold a citizen without due process.

Heged also questioned President Barack Obama’s recent promise for new reforms concerning civil liberty issues.

“I ask you, how many times does Barack Obama have to lie to you before you get it?” Hedges asked to the room of over 100 spectators.

Hedges served as the keynote speaker for the event sponsored by the campus’ “Youth for Socialist Action” club, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Justice Party of Connecticut.

In his closing remarks, Hedges put the onus on the citizens to see that encroachments not continue. He also praised the actions of the likes of Edward Snowden. Snowden, a former employee at the Central Intelligence Agency, came into the public eye after he was found responsible for thousands of classified documents being leaked last year.

“Our only hope will come through rebellion,” Hedges said. “Through building mass movements that threaten established centers of power.”

Justin Muszynski can be reached at (860) 584-0501, ext. 7250, or jmuszynski@bristolpress.com.

URL: http://www.newbritainherald.com/articles/2014/03/30/news/doc53376f5b4ddec968221655.prt

© Copyright 2014 The New Britain Herald, a Central Connecticut Communications Property. All rights reserved

 

In Honor Of The 142^ndAnniversary Of The Paris Commune-From The American Left History Blog Archives (2007) - On American Political Discourse

 

 

 

Markin comment:

In the period 2006-2008 I, in vain, attempted to put some energy into analyzing the blossoming American presidential campaign since it was to be, as advertised at least, a watershed election, for women, blacks, old white anglos, latinos, youth, etc. In the event I had to abandon the efforts in about May of 2008 when it became obvious, in my face obvious, that the election would be a watershed only for those who really believed that it would be a watershed election. The four years of the Obama presidency, the 2012 American presidential election campaign, and world politics have only confirmed in my eyes that that abandonment was essentially the right decision at the right time. In short, let the well- paid bourgeois commentators go on and on with their twitter. I, we, had (have) better things to do like fighting against the permanent wars, the permanent war economies, the struggle for more and better jobs, and for a workers party that fights for a workers government . More than enough to do, right? Still a look back at some of the stuff I wrote then does not a bad feel to it. Read on.

************

FORD UAW AUTOWORKERS CONTRACT- VOTE NO

COMMENTARY

NO TWO- TIER WAGE RATES- EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK

The big labor news this fall has been the fight by the United Auto Workers (UAW) for new contracts with General Motors, Chrysler and now Ford. I have already discussed the GM and Chrysler settlement and now as of Friday, November 3, 2007 Ford and the UAW have reached a tentative agreement. That agreement is along the same lines as those ratified by GM and Chrysler (barely) - a new two- tier wage system for new hires who will get one half the average pay of senior autoworkers and union takeover of the health and pension funds. As I have lamented previously these contracts are a defeat for the autoworkers. Why? The historic position of labor has been to fight for equal pay for equal work. That apparently has gone by the boards here. Moreover the pension and health takeovers are an albatross around the neck of the union. No way is this an example of worker control not at least how any militant should view it. After all the givebacks its time to fight back even if this is a rearguard action in light of the previous votes. Any illusions that the give backs will by labor peace and or/avoid further layoffs, closedowns or outsourcing got a cruel comeuppance in the previous contract negotiations. No sooner had those contracts been ratified, and well before the new contracts were even printed, Chrysler announced layoffs of 8000 to 10, 000 and GM had previously announced about 1500 layoffs. FORD AUTOWORKERS VOTE NO ON THIS CONTRACT.

I HAVE REPOSTED THE NOTES ON THE GM AND CHRYSLER SETTLEMENTS TO GIVE A PERSPECTIVE OF HOW THE HOPES THAT ORGANIZED LABOR COULD FIGHT BACK AGAINST THE TIDE OF GLOBALIZATION HAVE FADED AS THE PROCESS HAS GONE ON THIS FALL.

A Short Note On the Chrysler Autoworkers Contract Settlement

Commentary

The Wal-martization of the Once Proud UAW

Yes, I know that we are in the age of ‘globalization’. That is, however, merely the transformation of the same old characters like General Motors, Ford and Chrysler in the auto industry that we have come to know and love moving away from mainly nationally defined markets to international markets. In short, these companies allegedly are being forced to fight their way to the bottom of the international labor wage market along with everyone else. As least that was the position of these august companies in the on-going labor contract negotiations with the United Auto Workers (UAW). And the labor tops bought the argument. In the General Motors settlement GM was nicely absolved from having to administer its albatross health and pension funds. Now autoworkers are held responsible for deciding what autoworkers get what benefits. This is not my idea of workers control, not by a long shot. Based on those provisions alone that GM contract should have been soundly defeated. That it was not will come back to haunt the GM autoworkers in the future.

Now comes news that, as of October 27, 2007, the Chrysler workers have narrowly (56%) ratified their contract, although some major plants voted against it and the labor skates pulled out all stops to get an affirmative vote. If anything that contract is worst than the GM contract because it also contains a provision for permitting a two-wage system where ‘new hires’ will be paid approximately one half normal rates. So much for the old labor slogan of 'equal pay for equal work'. If the GM contract will come back to haunt this one already does today. Remember also that Chrysler was bought out by a private equity company that has a history of selling off unprofitable operations, driving productivity up and then selling the profitable parts for huge profits. That, my friends, is what the global race to the bottom looks like in the American auto industry. This contract should have been voted down with both hands. Ford is up next and based on the foregoing that contract should also be voted down.

Look, every militant knows that negotiations over union contracts represent a sort of ‘truce’ in the class struggle. Until there is worker control of production under a workers government the value of any negotiations with the capitalists is determined by the terms. Sometimes, especially in hard times, just holding your own is a‘victory’. Other times, like here, there is only one word for these contracts-defeat. Moreover, this did not need to happen. Although both strike efforts at GM and Chrysler were short-lived (intentionally so on the part of the leadership) the rank and file was ready to do battle. The vote at Chrysler further bolsters that argument. So what is up?

What is up is that the leadership of the autoworkers is not worthy of the membership. These people are so mired in class collaborationist non-aggression pacts and cozy arrangements (for themselves) that they were easy pickings for the vultures leading management. The epitome of this is the ‘apache’ strategy of negotiating with one company at a time. If in the era of Walter Reuther at a time when there were upwards of a million union autoworkers that might have made some sense today with reduced numbers it makes no sense at all. Labor’s power is in solidarity and solidarity means, in this case, ‘one out, all out’. Beyond that it is clear a new class struggle leadership is needed, just to keep even, and it is needed pronto. Those rank and filers and, in some cases, local union leaders who called for a no vote at Chrysler are the starting point for such efforts.