Rebuilding the Unions - the biggest task for the working class and the left?
- Thread starter cockneyrebel
- Start date
KeyboardJockey
Clowns to the Left of me
Groucho said:
'fraid it is. I've been told that TUS and HR are VERY close.
poster342002
PROPER leftwing socialist
Groucho, even your post is far too soft on the management. Many of them try to get people sacked because they ENJOY doing so rather than out of stress.Groucho said:
I would also question the desirability of "robust performance management systems" of any sort - as their whole function and existance is, by definition, to shore up the employer against their staff.
poster342002 said:
That's wrong. If the procedures are not robust the room for manouvre can often benefit bullying managers. And such procedures are a bit like laws - they can work both ways. The law is to shore up capitalism against the workers. That doesn't mean we are opposed to Health and Safety laws, rights at work laws, trade union rights, equal payt legislation etc. So unions should press for firm procedures that include all the safeguards against unfairness that we would like to see. Short of occupation and workers control, where we take out management bullies and dump them in the Thames, that is a necessary compromise.
fanciful said:
Firstly I am far from cynical. Secondly your key phrase is "abandon the faith," because that is what your politics is based on, "faith," not an analysis of reality.
Of course it's great to fight for something you believe in. But belief has to be tempered by a willingness to stare reality in the face. And by the way I do donate to charities but I also help individual immigrants integrate themselves into society by finding work and learning the language. This is actually very fulfilling and probably prevents my soul from shrivelling (interesting choice of words).
Of course you can put out the call to "rebuild the unions." But who is actually going to do it? You, a few contacts, and almost nobody else. When this doesn't happen you can congratulate yourselves on having made the call everybody else was too stupid to take up.
Of course, another interpretation is that your permanent isolation is due to your inability to relate to the concerns of the real world that lie outside of your perception.
Also, if you have time, I asked for an example of when the "rank and file movement" tactic had been successfully applied. Maybe you could supply this because I believe your "rebuild the unions" stuff is based on this. Of course your naievity can be excused by the fact that none of you have real world experience outside of education and local government.
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
KeyboardJockey said:
That shouldn't happen. Thought when I was teaching at (name withheld) College, the local branch of my union (at that time NATFHE) enjoyed a cosy relationship with management. It was so cosy that my complaints of bullying fell on deaf ears.
But I still remained a member of the union and I remained active. I went on strike while others went into to work. I eventually left the job.
cockneyrebel
New Member
You've given up any hope of getting rid of capitalism, fair enough, but I don't understand why you seem so keen on telling everyone else that they have to "see the light" and do the same thing. Also I'd argue marxism isn't based on faith but an analysis of the world and that you're just being petty picking fanciful up in that way.
What has stupidity got to do with anything? Change in consciousness comes through struggle not because some bright spark stands there telling everyone how great socialism is. But the task of re-building the unions is certainly not something that just PR is saying. Check out the thread about the national stewards conference that was initiated by the RMT, but I'm sure you'll just write that off as well. Obviously to re-build the unions will be a long and hard task, and unless we do then we'll be left with the kinda charity gestures you're talking about.
As it goes the RMT is an example of where rank and files are being built up. The PCS another. And the CWU as well.
As for real world experience, while I bow to you in what I'm sure is a wealth of proletarian grit, I've actually worked in a lot of sectors and local government actually lags behind many other unions such as the RMT and CWU in terms of rebuilding a rank and file. Or are the RMT and CWU naive and not able to face reality? But I'm sure they could do with a bit of your pompous and patronising sermons from the mount.
Far from cynical? Stop lying.
Cynicism is your faith. Charity your solution.
How fullfilling the look of grateful appreciation, the benificant recipitants or your grace reward you with.
How fulfilling.
Faith? An interesting choice of words? Not really. I think it does require faith, meaning belief that history hasn't suddenly stopped. That the lessons of yesteryear still apply.
Yes faith is entirely apt.
As for relating to the real world, if the only people you mingle with are the victims of your charity - no wonder you end up the sad, crushed individual you are.
Cynicism is your faith. Charity your solution.
How fullfilling the look of grateful appreciation, the benificant recipitants or your grace reward you with.
How fulfilling.
Faith? An interesting choice of words? Not really. I think it does require faith, meaning belief that history hasn't suddenly stopped. That the lessons of yesteryear still apply.
Yes faith is entirely apt.
As for relating to the real world, if the only people you mingle with are the victims of your charity - no wonder you end up the sad, crushed individual you are.
CR, this is not a matter of hope but of looking at reality. Not just the reality of the last 35 years but of the last 200 years. It's very well documented. Nobody would be more delighted than me to see capitalism disappear but I have to say the facts do not indicate this will happen any time soon. If you want to look at the world in a scientific way the evidence has to override your desire.
I'm not trying to get anyone to see the light I'm just trying to participate in a discussion for my own clarification. Maybe you'll say something that will make me think differently. My mind is not closed.
As for rebuild the unions, it seems to me the world has moved on. It may be possible in some areas. The RMT is actually tiny - 75,000 members according to the official website - but it could grow. The CWU is bigger, maybe 130,000 members. The PCS about 250,000. All these unions put together are minute when compared to the industrial unions of the 1960's/1970's which had more than a million members each (TGWU, AUEW) and the NUM that had several hundred thousand.
You present these unions as examples of the application of the rank and file movement tactic. This is a tactic specific to PR and means building an organisation based on the program of PR (the action program), not just that the rank and file somehow get involved in rebuilding the union. Have you done this?
Manufacturing industry has changed dramatically over the last 20 years - both in terms of location and structure. For example, the retail clothing industry - manufacturing is carried out in asian sweatshops, marketing is done in the west. You will never unionise a retail clothing company because they are full of career-minded people who want to belong to the middle classes.
In the pharmaceutical industry the white collar workers (many of whom have the possibilty of a career) or lab technicians (ditto) are in the vast majority. I don't see how these companies can be unionised. And they are very powerful and rich.
The banks, financial companies, also very powerful - how will you rebuild the unions here?
I could continue with this list but my feelings about the (at best partial) possibilities for this slogan are not based on my "shrivelled soul" but my experience in the real world. I cannot deny what I have seen.
I don't doubt your sincerity or commitment but I think PR would like to go back to the mid-1970's when everything looked so much clearer. Marxism is a form of faith because there's so much empirical evidence speaking against it. It's a choice, either you can carry on in the hope Marx's orginal predictions will come good or accept that history has unfolded contrary to your hopes and expectations.
As for fanciful, well, his posts have been clumsily poetic and quite bizarre. I don't mingle with the victims of my charity (in fact I never meet most of them) and, yes, as a legal EU citizen I do have certain priviliges that allow me to help others. This doesn't make me better than anyone else but it does allow me to to affect the world positively in a small way.
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
I think Marx would recoil at the very idea that his ideas had become the focus of a fetish. However, it is true that there are many cults of Marx, many of which spend their time locked in philosophical arguments that would rival those of the early Xtian church regarding the filioque.
cockneyrebel
New Member
I don't think that capitalism will disappear in the short term, and where have I said otherwise. Yet again this is a straw man argument set up by what you think I'm saying, not what I'm actually saying. But what I do think is that the inherent contradictions that marx described in capitalism still exist. Because of the collapse of the stalinist states it opened up massive new markets for capitalism (over a third of the worlds population). This meant that capitalism pulled itself out of the problems in the 1980s and into the upward long wave that we see now, with capitalism booming in the last five years or so. But eventually that will change and indeed China could well explode in social crisis once those contradictions really hit home (but I don't think that will happen in the next few years). If that happened the ramifications on the world economy would be huge.
Fair enough, you just seem a bit damning and dismissive. You think marxist politics aren't the way forward and think that we're stuck with capitalism, personally I don't think you can be so certain about this given how short a time capitalism has been about and given that the contradictions in global capitalism still exist and, in my view, always will exist.
So what is your answer? Resign ourselves to hoping the bosses will be nice to us? You're right that the bigger unions are currently extremely bureaucratic and to be honest worse than useless in a lot of situations. But I think that successes, even in the smaller unions, could act as a spring board. I'd rather try and support initiatives like the RMT and give that a go rather than resign myself to charity work and despair.
I don't understand this, I think this is your misinterpretation of what the tactic is. Fair enough the RMT, CWU and PCS still have a long way to go in terms of building real rank and file movements, but there are signs of progress. Building rank and file movements means having unions run by the membership (through meetings, stewards networks, democratic conference etc), it doesn't mean having unions that have PRs politics.
As it goes the shop workers union is probably the worst out of the lot and verges on being a yellow union. I agree that this will probably be one of the last unions that could be changed and made more militant.
Again this is a very weak area.
And again. But my point isn't that every sector will burst up in militancy in the next year. But I do think there are encouraging signs in unions like the RMT, PCS and CWU and that if the CWU win their dispute it could be a small break through, just like would have happended if the FBU had won their dispute, which I think would have been possible had it not been for the terrible leadership of Gilchrist. There are other sectors which are unionised by UNISON, the GMB, AMICUS etc which while not in the same bracket as the above unions still have the potential to shift to the left.
Again this is your pre-conceived ideas. In PRs latest journal there is an article on "The state of the British Working Class" which criticises a lot of the left for not recognising and facing up to the reality of structural changes in the working class. But we don't draw the same defeatist and charity inspired/middle class conclusions that you seem to.
While we have to face this reality I think that you're looking at things in the very short term as regards the global economy. While PR rejects the catastrophist or false analyis of the IST/LFI/CWI in terms of the world economy (see various articles on the web) and we recognise that capitalism is a long upward wave, this will not last forever and with the next five to ten years we will see the cracks starting to appear.
Clumsily poetic?
How fulfilling.
Funnily enough, you claim that PR have been saying the same thing for the last 20 years (or however long), clearly that is both a compliment, it recognises we are fundamentally true to ourselves, and at the same time rubbish.
We have very far from been saying the same thing over the last year, as we have for the previous ten. That is after all why we split.
Just to re-capitulate (not of course for your benefit - you have charity to keep you happy), but in case anyone else who has glanced at this thread is taking an interest, we are materialists. And therefore we believe that the most honest and accurate assessment of material reality is the key to an intervention for socialists. Hence, we have recognised, unlike the entire rest of the left, that capitalism is not in a period of immanent crisis and collapse and the corrollary of that is that opportunities for socialists are very limited. That is both a benefit and a problem. Given how terribly the left has departed from scientific socialism, it gives us time to rebuild a real left but it is a problem because there are by definition limited opportunites to demonstrate the superiority of science over supersitition in the current circumstances.
Does the experience of the last 200 years support your cynical rejection of socialism and fervid avowel of charity?
Get to church and they'll give you the answer you want, (by the way don't forget the collection plate - all donations welcome - I gather they do great work - particularly amongst the poor in Africa)
How fulfilling.
Funnily enough, you claim that PR have been saying the same thing for the last 20 years (or however long), clearly that is both a compliment, it recognises we are fundamentally true to ourselves, and at the same time rubbish.
We have very far from been saying the same thing over the last year, as we have for the previous ten. That is after all why we split.
Just to re-capitulate (not of course for your benefit - you have charity to keep you happy), but in case anyone else who has glanced at this thread is taking an interest, we are materialists. And therefore we believe that the most honest and accurate assessment of material reality is the key to an intervention for socialists. Hence, we have recognised, unlike the entire rest of the left, that capitalism is not in a period of immanent crisis and collapse and the corrollary of that is that opportunities for socialists are very limited. That is both a benefit and a problem. Given how terribly the left has departed from scientific socialism, it gives us time to rebuild a real left but it is a problem because there are by definition limited opportunites to demonstrate the superiority of science over supersitition in the current circumstances.
Does the experience of the last 200 years support your cynical rejection of socialism and fervid avowel of charity?
Get to church and they'll give you the answer you want, (by the way don't forget the collection plate - all donations welcome - I gather they do great work - particularly amongst the poor in Africa)
I don't think the issue here is straw man arguments. I just think in any exchange it takes a while to get to the real substance because we tend to talk in short hand and make assumptions and misunderstand.
Parenthetically let me deal briefly with the rank and file movement - The old WP certainly had a position of building rank and file movements based around aspects of its program applicable to a particular industry and situation. This was projected as a loose organisation possibly with its own publication. Check with Mark H who can certainly direct you to the relevant articles.
The real issue here is the revolutionary nature of the working class. For Marx there were two basic premises for his prediction of the proletarian revolution. Firstly the crisis ridden nature of capitalism (falling rate of profit and consequences) and its tendency to polarization between two contending classes, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The petty bourgeoisie would be eliminated and driven down into the proletariat and the proletariat itself would be concentrated in increasing larger units of production - thus giving rise to a collectivist class consciousness. At a certain point the scale of the capitalist crisis would hurl the contending classes into a life and death struggle from which a society reflecting the objective needs of the proletariat would emerge (ie socialism, state of the Paris Commune type etc.)
My problem with Marx is not the idea that capitalism is deeply crisis-ridden. I just don't see much evidence that the working class can become sufficiently conscious of itself as a class in sufficent numbers to overthrow capitalism.
Even accepting that capitalism will decline into major crisis at some point in the future what reason do we have to believe that socialism will be the result? In the first half of the 20th century there were major social convulsions - two world wars, the great depression, the russian revolution etc. - but capitalism not only survived but went on to expand massively.
Furthermore during this period the mass parties of the working class (with the single exception of the Bolshevik party) were always reformist - even when they appeared to be revolutionary like the German Social democracy.
Apart from in Russia the working class did not mount a serious challenge for state power and for me this is the key point. We're talking about a situation in which many workers lived in dire poverty and were slaughtered in two world wars. Trotsky of course put this down to a crisis of leadership but I think that if Marx were right sometime between 1900 and 1945 those misleaders would have been brushed aside.
The same situation was reenacted on a much smaller scale during the miners strike of the 1980's. Thatcher was there for the taking. At a certain point in the strike had another powerful section of workers (eg the dockers) moved decisively Thatcher would have fallen. There were a lot of militants in key unions who wanted to fight but they could not gain sufficient support to defeat the bureacrats.
And therein lies our difference. You believe that when the crisis hits the workers will fight for state power. I believe that if the crisis hits the workers will fight for their own sectional, economic interests and nothing more.
So I think rebuilding the unions will have a certain limited impact and assist some sections of workers to defend their economic interests. As mentioned previously I think there are now whole areas of industry that will probably never be unionised in the real sense of the word.
This by the way is not despair. It's simply a sober assesment of the situation. Of course I may be wrong but in the scheme of things I don't think rebuilding the unions will achieve more than giving money to an aid project in Sri Lanka or helping individual immigrants.
Simply a sober assessment of the situation... when the crisis hits workers will not struggle for power. What's sober about it?
In fact any glance at history will tell you that the working class has frequently struggled for power, there are literally countless examples. I won't bore you by repeating them.
It is of course at one level glib to attribute the defeat to the crisis of leadership. The world today is not that of the 1930s. Fortunately, now we do not have a section of the socialist movement, trying to slaughter the other part and what's more being backed by all the resources of the state to do so. (That's the stalinists by the way, in case you hadn't clicked.)
The defeat of which certainly had a very negative immediate consequence in terms of class consciousness and the revival of capitalism, but is ultimately very positive, as will i'm confident become apparent in the future.
So we don't have to be messanic to be socialists. Far from it. The soberer the better, but that doesn't mean getting drunk of cynicism instead.
And what's your answer....charity?
In fact any glance at history will tell you that the working class has frequently struggled for power, there are literally countless examples. I won't bore you by repeating them.
It is of course at one level glib to attribute the defeat to the crisis of leadership. The world today is not that of the 1930s. Fortunately, now we do not have a section of the socialist movement, trying to slaughter the other part and what's more being backed by all the resources of the state to do so. (That's the stalinists by the way, in case you hadn't clicked.)
The defeat of which certainly had a very negative immediate consequence in terms of class consciousness and the revival of capitalism, but is ultimately very positive, as will i'm confident become apparent in the future.
So we don't have to be messanic to be socialists. Far from it. The soberer the better, but that doesn't mean getting drunk of cynicism instead.
And what's your answer....charity?
nino_savatte said:
This is actually the biggest left wing myth of all time, that the shouty left fought for anybodys rights except that is the right to be shouty left
what rights are these? what rights were these?
The rights that the shouty left saved during the thatcher years?
The same shouty left who watched the miners lose and did fuck all excpet sell the odd worker?
The same shouty left who voted for clause four and blamed new labour?
The same shouty left who recently fought against the governments new disabilty and employment bills?
The shouty left that organises mass demonstrations and marches on the scale of the anti war marches for affordable housing?
The shouty left who whilst running London via the GLC only spent ONE PERCENT of its arts funding on arts projects involving innercity housing estates/ working class areas?
All credit to you nino this time you have really revealed what a deeply ignorant person you are.
Btw funny how you have yet to reply to any of the points in my recent posts and have resorted to the usual abuse still i supose the real world can be scary...
brasica - our rights througout the 1980s/90s and now have been under attack and being taken away. Why is it that Blair boasted that the UK was the least regulated and hardest place to take industrial action in the EU?
Answer - so that business could invest in the UK and really exploit the workers. The left and others have been part of arguing for our rights and better rights over the years.
In the US its worse. Even Gore Vidal believes it is heading for totalitarianism.
Answer - so that business could invest in the UK and really exploit the workers. The left and others have been part of arguing for our rights and better rights over the years.
In the US its worse. Even Gore Vidal believes it is heading for totalitarianism.
so who did take the lead when we fought for the right to vote?
What right to vote and for whom?
My understanding is that women got the vote later than men and that some feminists would take issue on your narrow use of ' we ' or are you suggesting that female sufferage was 'leftwing ' in origin?
In terms of the male vote my understanding is that it was a loose coalition of proto-unions chartists and liberal social reformers of all different political hues
for better housing??
Christian missionaries to start with then the luftwafa.Then there was the post war consensus...
for better working conditions?? etc etc ..
what the same working conditions which mean women are still paid less than men?
do you vote labour duruti?
What right to vote and for whom?
My understanding is that women got the vote later than men and that some feminists would take issue on your narrow use of ' we ' or are you suggesting that female sufferage was 'leftwing ' in origin?
In terms of the male vote my understanding is that it was a loose coalition of proto-unions chartists and liberal social reformers of all different political hues
for better housing??
Christian missionaries to start with then the luftwafa.Then there was the post war consensus...
for better working conditions?? etc etc ..
what the same working conditions which mean women are still paid less than men?
do you vote labour duruti?
Zeppo said:
I know, understand this and agree with you zeppo i think the uk is also heading for totalitarianism. However my point is that people are too interested in belonging to the left and delegate to it as an ideaology instead of being able to effect any real change. You cannot even say white meiddle class people own more homes than anyone else without it being infered that you are a nazi.
fanciful said:
Christian !
ffs...Find a post where i blame the left for everything it is fairly obvious what the right can be blamed for. Are you suggesting fanciful that the left are beyond critisism and should be absolved of any blame at all? If this is the case then why are you reading this thread?
I think the left will continue to fail as it insular and its debates are far to narrow to appeal to the growing discontent within society.I also think there is a massive political vacum that is opening up.
Voting labour fanciful?
Blagsta
Minimum cage, maximum cage
brasicattack said:I know, understand this and agree with you zeppo i think the uk is also heading for totalitarianism. However my point is that people are too interested in belonging to the left and delegate to it as an ideaology instead of being able to effect any real change. You cannot even say white meiddle class people own more homes than anyone else without it being infered that you are a nazi.
No one inferred you were a nazi, you utter utter pillock.
If you want to know what's wrong with the left, have a look in the fucking mirror.
cockneyrebel
New Member
Rauscher as said I don't think there is a set model of what a rank and file would look like in a union. But stuff like regular members meetings, stewards networks, accountable delegates and democratic conferences and general secretaries on a workers wage would probably form the basis and yeah a rank and file paper would be good as well. My point is that the RMT, CWU and PCS show some encouraging signs with this kinda thing even if there is a way to go.
As fanciful has pointed out there is nothing wrong with having a sober assessment but I think in your case this has led to cynicism and a view that charity is as good as it can get.
I agree with you that just saying everything is a crisis of leadership is not a good enough analysis. Indeed I think that WP use it as a catch all phrase and haven't assessed global capitalism in any kind of serious way.
As fanciful has said there a lots of examples of the working class challenging for power and there are a myriad of reasons for different failures. But capitalism has only been around for a tiny amount of time so I think it's total short termism to take the political "End of History" approach.
I don't doubt your sincerity but I think that if you think charity and scraps from the bosses is the best we can get I can't agree and never will.
brasicattack have you got anything constructive to say?
As fanciful has pointed out there is nothing wrong with having a sober assessment but I think in your case this has led to cynicism and a view that charity is as good as it can get.
I agree with you that just saying everything is a crisis of leadership is not a good enough analysis. Indeed I think that WP use it as a catch all phrase and haven't assessed global capitalism in any kind of serious way.
As fanciful has said there a lots of examples of the working class challenging for power and there are a myriad of reasons for different failures. But capitalism has only been around for a tiny amount of time so I think it's total short termism to take the political "End of History" approach.
I don't doubt your sincerity but I think that if you think charity and scraps from the bosses is the best we can get I can't agree and never will.
brasicattack have you got anything constructive to say?
Any glance at history will tell you that in all these struggles the revolutionary element has always been in a small minority and has always been soundly defeated - Russian revolution, Hungary/Austria 1919, Germany 1919 (and maybe later).
This really was the moment but it didn't happen.
The Spanish civil war was another opportunity but working class power was short lived and regionally limited.
China, Vietnam and so on were anti-imperialist nationalist uprisings where the working class played, at best, the supporting role. Cuba is slighly different but the working class was never the central agency of social change.
Well obviously not in 1917. And neither were they a tiny minority either. In fact to suggest that's a reasonable view of history, whether after a glance or otherwise is simply perverse.
In fact thinking about it there absolutely plenty of occasions when the revolutionary left were neither a "small minority" or "soundly defeated."
What this charity fella Rauscher's philosophy amounts to is that because we don't yet have socialism, then we have failed to have socialism. Clever him.
Much better to get the shaker tin out.
In fact thinking about it there absolutely plenty of occasions when the revolutionary left were neither a "small minority" or "soundly defeated."
What this charity fella Rauscher's philosophy amounts to is that because we don't yet have socialism, then we have failed to have socialism. Clever him.
Much better to get the shaker tin out.
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