From The Marxist Archives- In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners And The Partisan Defense Committee’s Holiday Appeal- “Who Can Save the Unions?”-By James P. Cannon

James P.Cannon (center)-Founding leader of The International Labor Defense- a model for labor defense work in the 1920s and 1930s.

Click below to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website for details about the Annual Holiday Appeal.

http://www.partisandefense.org/

Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010.

Markin comment:

I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the working class and, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program. Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).

That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers, as represented here by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.

That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.

And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeois decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly.

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Workers Vanguard No. 1032	18 October 2013

From the Archives of Marxism

“Who Can Save the Unions?”-By James P. Cannon

At its convention in Los Angeles last month, the AFL-CIO voted to bolster its numbers through affiliating unorganized “worker centers” and individual workers, creating “a student membership” and joining with “community partners” such as religious and environmental groups in its lobbying efforts. Purporting to address the massive decline in union membership after decades of anti-labor attacks by the bosses and their government, this policy is counterposed to any perspective of labor using its own weapons—from militant organizing drives to strikes—to beat back the capitalist offensive.

The following article by James P. Cannon—a founding leader of the Communist movement in the U.S. and later of American Trotskyism whose early political education was in the Industrial Workers of the World—addressed a similar situation faced by the labor movement nine decades ago, when it was dominated by conservative craft unions. A period of labor radicalism inspired by the 1917 Russian Revolution had crested in the U.S. in 1919, receding in the face of a wave of anti-black pogroms as well as the Palmer Raids in which thousands of Communists and other militants were arrested or deported. Membership in the American Federation of Labor would decline from over 5 million in 1920 to less than 3.5 million in 1929, as the bourgeoisie wielded “anti-trust” injunctions against unions and “yellow dog” contracts giving employment only to those who pledged not to join a union. Cannon’s call to revive the labor movement through class-struggle means would find powerful expression in the mass strikes of the 1930s, out of which this country’s industrial unions were forged.

Cannon’s article was published in the 7 May 1921 issue of The Toiler, newspaper of the United Communist Party (later the Communist Party). It is reprinted in James P. Cannon and the Early Years of American Communism: Selected Writings and Speeches, 1920-1928 (Prometheus Research Library, 1992).

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The Central Trades and Labor Council of Greater New York has just adopted three recommendations of a special committee of 25 appointed to devise ways and means to combat the “open shop” campaign of the bosses. The unions cannot fight the open shop by the measures proposed; in that respect they have no value. But as striking examples of what not to do they may serve a useful purpose and, from that viewpoint, should be considered and analyzed. This is what the special committee recommended:

1. To organize a speakers bureau which will present the case for unionism to civic bodies, church forums and similar organizations.

2. To amend the constitution of the central body, permitting the seating of fraternal delegates from non-labor organizations interested in unionism.

3. To seek greater cooperation with such bodies as the Interchurch World Movement, and other organizations felt to be working for union labor.

All three of these undertakings are based on a misconception of the nature of the struggle. The impression seems to be that labor’s troubles in the present crisis are mainly due to a “misunderstanding” as to the aims of the labor movement on the part of some pious people who don’t work for a living, but who are “felt to be working for union labor.” But the real misunderstanding is in the minds of the delegates who adopted this program. Civic bodies, church forums, “non-labor organizations”—the elements who go to make up such groupings are poor props for the unions to seek to lean upon. They may “feel” for organized labor, but the organized workers never feel it in the shape of substantial support in their fight.

The “open shop” campaign is one of the manifestations of a state of war that exists in society between two opposing classes: the producers and the parasites. This war cuts through the whole population like a great dividing sword; it creates two hostile camps and puts every man in his place in one or the other. Those to whom the New York unions would turn for aid are beneficiaries of the present system of labor exploitation. Their interests lie with the system and, as a general rule, people do not allow their sympathies to interfere seriously with their interests. They live in the camp of the enemy. Their material welfare is bound up with those who aim to destroy the unions.

No, the labor unions can get no help in their struggle outside of the working class. More than that, they need no other support. The working class has the power not only to defeat the effort to destroy the unions, but to end the system of exploitation altogether. The principal thing lacking for the quick development of this power is the mistaken point of view illustrated by the program of the New York central body.

Let the labor unions put aside their illusions; let them face the issue squarely and fight it out on the basis of the class struggle. Instead of seeking peace when there is no peace, and “understanding” with those who do not want to understand, let them declare war on the whole capitalist regime. That is the way to save the unions and to make them grow in the face of adversity and become powerful war engines for the destruction of capitalism and reorganization of society on the foundation of working class control in industry and government.