Re: Re-reply

[Waistline2]

Somewhere in our dialogue misunderstanding has occurred in respects to the role of trade unions. In no way do I consider the trade unions revolutionary organizations or agents of social change in the Marxist meaning. In fact the contours of the trade union movement in America, as the most organized form of the social motion of those who must sell their labor to live, resembles - for all pratical purposes, a fascist labor front.

Please note the word "resemble" because I do not believe that the trade unions are fascist organizations. Also note the words "for all pratical purposes."

My point in article "A" was to begin to draw a line of distinction between the fight for class politics and wwhat is called "labor politics" or "trade union" politics. On the other hand the new configuration in the productive forces must by defination give rise to changes in the form of trade unionism in a similar maner that the transition from manufacture to industry changed the predominate form of unionism from craft unions to industrial unions. This is an objective development rooted in the productive forces. This does not mean or is stated to imply that trade unions are "revolutionary" or or I would dare say "progressive" for that matter.

The call for "Open Source Unionism" expresses in the ideological realm transitions in the form of industrial unionism, although the document as such is very shallow in my opinion and in fact confused the trade union movement with the labor movement and the intense stratification of the working class.

There are sharp disagreements about the character of the trade union movement in America amongst Marxist. I believe that in the main the trade union movement in America is the primary social prop of capital. I do however believe that communist must work within the trade unions but this does ot necesarily mean running for office or supporting the trade union leaders.

No comrade, I do not believe that the trade unions can lead the workers anywhere - in the main, except into the arms of capital by definition.


> I respect your long political career  but I disagree with you about union’s
positioning.<


Apparently I wrote a confusing article because my purpose was not the articulation of a "position on the unions" as such. The above outlines my position on the trade union movement as it exists in America and for that mater the imperial centers of capital. My bottom line point is that there has never developed in America a real class body politic. Today we have a real shot at the development of class politics and this development occurs outside the trade unions as such.

My articles are an attempt at unfolding the dialectic of development applied to the here and now. I am arguing against trade union politics.

You state and I absolutely agree with the following:

> IN recent movement nonunion workers grow certainly, but its cause from
usual trade unionism going to conservative role and impossible
to show alternative economy or representing worker’s fundamental needs
which include self-expression self-reality, non-alienated work.<

In a previous article I went as far as to say that the historic categories called "left and right-wing" are becoming obsolete, from the standpoint of the new developments within this stage of the decay of capital. I dare not clarify this proposition at this point in time. I do not state that the trade unions are even progressive. To fight for the extension of the historic bribery of the upper layer of the working class - made possible by colonial plunder, is out right reactionary - which I outline in my article.

I do however point out that the struggle on the part of workers for non-existing reforms - impossible to achieve at this stage in the decay of capital, is the battle field in which they will cut their class teeth and learn the politics of class battle, not armed struggle. Here I am referring to the workers in the imperial centers and specifically the working class of Anglo-America. Armed struggle as a form of combat is out of the question because the revolutionary process unfolds differently outside the colonial, neocolonial and formerly colonial and semi-colonial world.


******

A portion of some of the very good material you quoted from Marx speaks of the mystical character of capital and its social form that hides how men are dominated through the ownership of things that dominate men and women. Allow me to re-quote a portion of this excellent material:

>"It is an enchanted, perverted, topsy-turvy world, in which
Monsieur le Capital and Madame la Terre do their ghost-walking as social
characters and at the same time directly as mere things. It is the great
merit of classical economy to have destroyed this false appearance and
illusion, this mutual independence and ossification of the various social
elements of wealth, this personification of things and conversion of
production relations into entities, this religion of everyday life.e
accidents are grouped together in large numbers, where it remains,
therefore, invisible and unintelligible to the individual agents in
production. But furthermore: the actual process of production, as a unity of
the direct production process and the circulation process, gives rise to new
formations, in which the vein of internal connections is increasingly lost,
the production relations are rendered independent of one another, and the
component values become ossified into forms independent of one another.”


I would call attention to the last sentence and quote it separtely:

>But furthermore: the actual process of production, as a unity of
the direct production process and the circulation process, gives rise to new
formations, in which the vein of internal connections is increasingly lost,
the production relations are rendered independent of one another, and the
component values become ossified into forms independent of one another.”<


"Connections is increasingly lost" is articulated as polarization within a unity.

"the production relations are rendered independent of one another," is the exact description of the antagonistic movement as contradiction or a contradiction moving in antagonism. In part B my exact wording is the following:

>Antagonistic contradictions are resolved by the kind of leap, - that is a nodal line is reached, in which the internal opposites emerge as relatively independent opposites, external to each other,"<

I use the words "emerge as relatively independent opposites, external to each other," because the connection can not be broken without the assumption of power by the working class because the capital and bourgeoisie are connected by way of the property relations. The destruction of bourgeois property relations breaks the connection, hence today is is proper to speak of "relatively independent opposites, external to each other."

Again Marx states: "the production relations are rendered independent of one another, and the
component values become ossified into forms independent of one another.”<

I did no more than abstract the logic - methodology, and presented the raw dialectic - perhaps poorly and inaccurately, to show how the methodology unfolded and confirms the so-called new class.


More later.


Melvin P.