Anthony Teso replied to my last comments. I am not sure what he means in his reply, but I think he misunderstood my comments in this sense: As I made clear in my opening sentence, those comments were directed at the material written by Steve Colatrella, not Anthony Teso. It was the former who talked about the fragmentation of the working class, and that only. Incidentally, it is no accident that the origin of his comments was an article he'd written for Counterpunch. Both that journal and Jacobin steer very clear of any serious critique of the union leadership.
As I had made clear, my comments on the role of the union bureaucracy were not meant to deny the importance of the structural changes in the working class, its fragmentation. It's not entirely a *new* fragmentation though (although it has increased enormously). Take my former trade, carpenters, for example: In the first place, our employment is usually fragmented and always has been. We tend to go from job to job, basically working as glorified temp workers and often on job sites of just a few workers. Not only that, but almost all carpenters do side work; they are also petit bourgeois at the same time as they are proletarian. And even more, some of them go into becoming contractors and many of those who don't have aspirations to become one. It is no accident that those carpenters who mainly work in heavy construction tend to be the most union conscious since the possibility of becoming a contractor (or even doing side work) in that branch of the industry is almost nil. So, that is the "structural" issues with which carpenters deal, but that doesn't explain everything. Very far from it, because the consciousness has changed a lot since I first entered the trade back in 1970. (I'm working on a piece on those changes and more.) In other words, the "structural" issues have always been there, so how do we explain the changes (for the worse)? Part of the reason I keep emphasizing the role of the bureaucracy is exactly the point I made about the role of Counterpunch and Jacobin - that they ignore exactly that issue. And it's not only those two journals; the overwhelming majority of socialists - including most on this list - also tend to ignore it or at most apologize for the "progressive" wing of the bureaucracy. And by doing so they are in effect covering up for it. This gets us to the failure of events like No Kings and the airport occupation to "generate a durable power structure" as Anthony Teso put it. I disagree with Anthony about that. They have generated such a structure - various NGO's as well as - and often connected with/in thrall of - the Democratic Party. What they failed to do was build anything of, by, and for the working class. And THAT was intentional on the part of the organizers. After all, doing that would be a direct challenge to.... yes, the union bureaucracy among other forces. For a more thoroughgoing historical analysis, see my pamphlet What Happened to Our Unions? <https://oaklandsocialist.com/2013/06/06/what-happened-to-our-unions/> John Reimann -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#42060): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/42060 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/119831499/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
