Rebuilding the Unions - the biggest task for the working class and the left?
- Thread starter cockneyrebel
- Start date
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Right - excellent. We leaving it there? 
fanciful said:
What in reality do you do? You work in a couple of campaigns and you do some trade union work. You actually do no more than I do.
The rest - the newspaper, the theoretical journal, the endless meetings, the international congresses etc. etc. - you do for yourselves. All this time, effort and expense affects nothing and nobody. But it makes you feel virtuous and terribly important.
As I observed last year you could discard all the delusory revolutionary trappings and do your campaign work more effectively because you'd have more time and energy.
The facts speak against you fanciful (an appropriate name) which is why you can only reply with assertions of your timeless correctness and feeble sarcasm.
cockneyrebel
New Member
Rauscher why have you got such an issue with this? So you think WP and are irrelevant and achieve nothing. I should think you've got a similar opinion about the rest of the revolutionary left in the UK as well. So why keep going on about it? Are you on a mission to save members of far left groups and convert them to community work 
If so you've made your point, so move on.
It just all gets a bit petty and derails debate.
If so you've made your point, so move on.It just all gets a bit petty and derails debate.
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
brasicattack said:
Is this the best you can do? Pitiful.
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
tbaldwin said:
Nah, you're the one who has "lost the plot", Pol Pot.
I get the feeling that you have never done any reading...probably because it feels too much like "Higher Education"...the sort of thing that only "privileged people" do.
poster342002
PROPER leftwing socialist
... along with their mottly collection of benefit officers, housing officers, social workers and the like.treelover said:
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
MC5 said:
Ok MC5 - just so we're clear I don't appreciate abuse being thrown around on message boards and that includes on this thread; which is why I don't do it. So to all who are doing it...just leave it out. It's distracting and unnecessary.
I would also extend this request to the use 'guilt by association' innuendo; which is what you have just employed above and what Nino did on another thread when I was trying to get him to explain his description of RA as trots. While I do post occasionally on MATB I probably post as often here (and I've been here a lot longer); more to the point I am not under instructions, I am not playing to some sort of team plan, and I am most definitely not part of some sort of collective MATB effort to cause trouble on these boards...why would I be, they mine as much as they are yours.
I really resent the way you (and Nino) have sought to sidestep/dismiss/rubbish contributions based on what you see as my allegiances and motivations.
Louis MacNeice
cockneyrebel said:Rauscher why have you got such an issue with this? So you think WP and are irrelevant and achieve nothing. I should think you've got a similar opinion about the rest of the revolutionary left in the UK as well. So why keep going on about it? Are you on a mission to save members of far left groups and convert them to community work
It just all gets a bit petty and derails debate.
Originally I made a posting about the nature of TU consciousness and its limitations. I don't see how this is derailing the debate when you are saying the most important matter for the left is to reconstruct the trade unions. Fanciful's response was silly because it's not enough to defend your position by claiming that the working class is self-evidently revolutionary and dismissing anybody who doesn't agree with this - this is symptomatic of why you are so isolated.
The reality is that the strategy you put forward has a history and has been tried and tested in more favourable circumstances.
The composition of the workforce has shifted dramatically in the last 30 years. Many of the newer technical "trades" and many important sectors of white collar workers are not unionised at all and probably never will be. The working class, what it is exactly, is much harder to define now than it was in 1970. It's very difficult to see how a partial reunionisation of sectors of the working class (because that is about as good as it's likely to get) would change very much of anything.
As I pointed out to you some time ago the difficulty in debating with so-called revolutionaries is that you have a number of axiomatic positions that are deemed self-evidently true and not open to question. Consequently no matter how much evidence history piles up against you, you continue repeating the same words and deeds.
I'm not interested in converting you to anything. That's already been done.
You can sneer if you like at what (you imagine) I do but I think helping immigrants learn a language, find work and get citizenship rights is a damn sight more constructive than trying to sell copies of an obscure theoretical journal.
cockneyrebel
New Member
But the left is far more than WP and PR as I think you'll agree.
But you keep doing this kinda thing, which is putting words into people mouths. I haven't dismissed everyone who doesn't agree with me.
And there you go again. Just make assumptions so then it must be so.
And again, where have I sneered at anything, it seems to be you who is doing the sneering to be honest.
If you don't think revolutionary change is possible, fair enough, but you can still work with people in united fronts involving some of things you mention above. As it goes a lot of people in PR do do a lot of local campaigning work, including asylum/immigration campaigns. If you want to sneer at people also producing a journal/paper/leaflets or whatever else go ahead, but I don't think it gets anyone anywhere.
The point of saying that unions need to be reclaimed through rank and file movements is that ultimately the power of the working class lies in the work place. If you don't think workers can ever get anywhere in terms of trying to assert their power in the workplace then I guess you might as well resign yourself to capitalism, which is what it seems you've done.
poster342002
PROPER leftwing socialist
Take a look in the depressing Education & Employment forum on this site and see just how far you're pissing in the wind with regards to reigniting any sort of Trade Union conciousness or solidarity.
Obviously, but you are a member of PR and I was replying to some of your points.
I was referring to fanciful who I think it's safe to say was dismissing what I said.
The idea that small far left groups have fixed axiomatic positions that are not open to question is hardly an assumption.
Would you ever seriously question that the working class is a revolutionary class? Will PR ever seriously reconsider the history of the last 35 years with the possibility open that it's entire strategy has been seriously flawed? Of course not.
It is hardly an assumption that much of what PR says today is identical to what it said 10 or 20 or 30 years ago.
This is another example of a fixed, unchangeable position - the rank and file movement. You inherited it from Tony Cliff. You've been arguing for this tactic for 35 years - where has it been successful? Please give me an example.
Of course there is nothing wrong with wanting to rebuild or strengthen a union in a place where you work. Is this really a viable tactic across the whole of industry?
Take a stroll through any multi-national manufacturing company and you'll see that the traditional production line/warehouse workers are in a very tiny minority. There are a lot of secretaries and low grade admin/clerical people. This is not like a 1970's car factory. The environment in which people are divided into small graded teams (ie there will be a supervisor for every 6 or 7 people) is not conducive to unionisation. Work is sectionalised, compartmentalised - a member of one team will have very little working contact with a member of a different team (and very little knowledge of what the others do).
Then there are the technical people - mainly computers - who are better paid and again work in small teams responsible for different areas of the business.
Then we come to the low-level managers who are looking to advance their careers.
Oh yes, and then there's the multi-national aspect that confuses things even more. Some people will work in a team with people in London, brussels, berlin and leverkusen or maybe buenos aires.
I could go on but this is not exactly fertile ground for traditional trade union values or organisation. This is a massively complex environment. Looked at from the perspective of a local government office or a school 'rebuild the unions' may seem a viable perspective. But in the wider world I don't think so.
Yes I have resigned myself to capitalism. I don't see any possibility of it being overthrown anytime soon. Do you? Leaving aside the rhetoric, the so-called programme and articles of faith can you tell me concretely what evidence exists to suggest that the working class is likely to overthrow capitalism in a western capitalist country some time in the next 30 years.
Yes Rauscher I think that is a fair summary of what I was saying.
In my opinion you're a guilty cynic, who is seeking to justify themselves by trying to persuade us the socialists to abandon the faith. The tories have been trying that for years. So has Blair and co. I don't see why we should give you any more credence.
And if you want to say that's idealistic, then fine, better than being a washed up failure, with lifeless eyes no doubt and a shrivelled soul to boot.
So go ahead enjoy your charity work. But I thought the whole point of that virtuous kind of thing was that it was its own reward? Do you really need us to congratulate you as well?
Sorry no congrats forthcoming.
In my opinion you're a guilty cynic, who is seeking to justify themselves by trying to persuade us the socialists to abandon the faith. The tories have been trying that for years. So has Blair and co. I don't see why we should give you any more credence.
And if you want to say that's idealistic, then fine, better than being a washed up failure, with lifeless eyes no doubt and a shrivelled soul to boot.
So go ahead enjoy your charity work. But I thought the whole point of that virtuous kind of thing was that it was its own reward? Do you really need us to congratulate you as well?
Sorry no congrats forthcoming.
I do think that rebuilding the unions is the biggest task facing the left. That requires rebuilding a network of politically astute militant stewards, breaking down the sectional barriers between unions.
This Government has faced, and still faces, a major political crises arising from foreign policy decisions - Iraq, suport for Israel's invasion of Lebanon. If the Government were to face a political crisis on domestic issues as well it would finish them off and would significantly set back their neo-liberal/neo-con agenda. It is the unions that could precipitate this.
New Labour are attacking the bedrock of public services - privatising schools, hospitals, closing job centres and post offices. Strike action by one union over the attacks on the public sector = an industrial dispute. But once more than one public sector unions take action together it becomes a serious confrontation over the issue of public services. Any such action by several unions say teachers, nurses and Civil Servants, would precipitate a political crisis imo.
I do believe the mood is there at the grass roots, and that union activists in the public sector need to maximise the pressure on the execs to call united action. Brown's pay curbs provide the unifying issue.
This Government has faced, and still faces, a major political crises arising from foreign policy decisions - Iraq, suport for Israel's invasion of Lebanon. If the Government were to face a political crisis on domestic issues as well it would finish them off and would significantly set back their neo-liberal/neo-con agenda. It is the unions that could precipitate this.
New Labour are attacking the bedrock of public services - privatising schools, hospitals, closing job centres and post offices. Strike action by one union over the attacks on the public sector = an industrial dispute. But once more than one public sector unions take action together it becomes a serious confrontation over the issue of public services. Any such action by several unions say teachers, nurses and Civil Servants, would precipitate a political crisis imo.
I do believe the mood is there at the grass roots, and that union activists in the public sector need to maximise the pressure on the execs to call united action. Brown's pay curbs provide the unifying issue.
poster342002
PROPER leftwing socialist
Yes, all very fine words - but the problem is that it just goes on not actually happening - for the reasons that rauscher, myself and others have set out ad-infinitum. How do you propose to overcome that?Groucho said:
biff curtains
Fred West or Fred Housego
poster342002 said:
TBH this board is hardly representative of working class or left leaning Britain.
But yeah basic solidarity is getting thinner on the ground every year.
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
I think we need to define exactly what the term "working class" means these days. Are we referring to only those who work in heavy industry and rent their homes or are we including people who are on a low incomes but own their own homes? What about w/c people who are self-employed but command 6 figure incomes and who own their own homes? Many w/c and m/c people work side by side in call centres...who is really w/c here?
poster342002
PROPER leftwing socialist
That's the thing: the Education & Employment baord on this forjm is generally more representative of workplace (or should that be workhouse?) Britain than the politics forum. And a truly deprersssing state of affairs it reveals about the levels of solidarity and trade-union conciousness in the UK today. In fact even that section of the boards is probably a bit more left-leaning than the wider workplaces at large in the UK.biff curtains said:TBH this board is hardly representative of working class or left leaning Britain.
But yeah basic solidarity is getting thinner on the ground every year.
I wish some of the P&P stalwarts could take a look at that forum and see what they're up against out there in the real world.
But surely most of us already work in the real world? Well, in IT anyway...
I don't need an internet forum to tell me about crap levels of solidarity in the workplace, or the fragmented and precarious work situations that capitalism now employs to keep people in line.
I don't need an internet forum to tell me about crap levels of solidarity in the workplace, or the fragmented and precarious work situations that capitalism now employs to keep people in line.
poster342002
PROPER leftwing socialist
Most of the trots seem to work in a parralel universe where each workplace is bursting with "massive" and "fantastic" levels of solidarity, where strikes are "solidly" observed instead of only comprising of the local reps whilst everyone else scabs their way in. They attend bizarre delusional activist conferences where they all tell each other that an upturn is occuring and workers are on the rise.Fruitloop said:
poster342002
PROPER leftwing socialist
No - it backs up my (and just about everyone else I know) experiences. Little or nothing of the hyperbole gushing from the trots, however, does.belboid said:
KeyboardJockey
Clowns to the Left of me
poster342002 said:
Sounds like a very good description of the trot mindset to me. If 80% scabbing is a 'solidly observed strike' then I'd hate to see their definition of a failure.
Bizarre and delusional really does sum up what they are like.
KeyboardJockey said:
I've dealt with these lies before.
Why are you saying that the Cabinet Office lying about the numbers on strike? If 80% scabbed why does even this Government body accept that a clear majority of PCS members were out?
Why do you spread such lies anyway Mr Scab? Oh yes, of course....
Similar threads
