Thanks, John, for the clarification. I didn't intend to imply that you were rejecting the importance of structural changes in the working class, nor to lump your argument in with Steve Colatrella's. My point was the link between those two levels of analysis.
I agree that the union bureaucracy has to be properly attacked. Indeed, I think one of the problems of much of the socialist left is that it confuses "labor" with the official union apparatus and the working class. They are not The bureaucracy has its own institutional interests, its own relation to the employers and the state, and its own interest in managing struggle from above. Any meaningful working-class politics has to start by separating the rank and file from the officialdom. Where I would differ slightly is this: the bureaucracy does not operate in isolation. The fragmentation, stratification, and political disarray of the class make its power more effective. Changes in the employment structure, location, union density, contracting, logistics, public sector employment, immigration status, debt, housing insecurity, and professionalization influence the terrain on which the bureaucracy acts. I would thus not contrast structural transformation with bureaucratic betrayal. Bureaucracy is one of the processes by which fragmentation is controlled, sustained, and politically reproduced. Your example of the carpenters is useful since it demonstrates that fragmentation is not a new phenomenon. But I still ask, why did older forms of job-site militancy, informal solidarity, wildcat capacity, and union consciousness diminish so dramatically? Part of the answer is probably bureaucracy. But another part is that the larger institutions that used to provide working-class life a collective political form — socialist parties, communist organizations, militant locals, shop-floor networks, working-class neighborhoods, radical newspapers, ethnic and fraternal associations, and durable political education — have largely crumbled. Absent those mediating organizations, real fury, too, is episodic. That’s what I meant by No Kings, airport occupations, and other such mobilizations. You are right; absolutely they do generate structures. But the structures they build are typically NGO structures, campaign structures, nonprofit structures, media structures, and Democratic Party-adjacent ones. They do not usually build separate working-class institutions. My point was that some durable things come out. My point was that what tends to last is not a political form of the working class. So I think the question has to be asked in this way: how can working-class people make the leap from protest participation to autonomous organization? Not just better demos, not just more militant rhetoric, and not just pressure on progressive union officials, but durable rank-and-file networks, democratic political organization, cadre development, independent press and education, workplace-rooted committees, and a party/programmatic form capable of linking workplace struggle, social movements, and electoral politics without subordinating them to the Democratic Party or the union officialdom. So I think we are nearer than it may have seemed. I do believe that any socialist politics that avoids the union bureaucracy is avoiding one of the key impediments to working-class self-organization. My contribution is to situate the bureaucracy's activity within the overall breakdown of the class as a political entity. The aim is not merely to condemn the bureaucracy, as vital as that is, but to build the autonomous institutions through which the rank and file can become politically conscious, organized, and capable of acting for itself. Tony -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#42073): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/42073 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]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
