http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_aristocracy

Labor aristocracy

"Labor aristocracy" (or "aristocracy of labor") has three meanings: as a term 
with Marxist theoretical underpinnings, as a specific type of trade unionism, 
and/or as a shorthand description by revolutionary industrial unions (such as 
the Industrial Workers of the World) for the bureaucracy of craft-based 
business unionism.

Contents [hide]
1 Use within Marxism 
2 Criticism of unions of elite workers 
3 Criticism of craft-based business unionism 
4 Notes 
5 See also 
 





Prominent communists[show]


Communism Portal 
In Marxist theory, those workers (proletarians) in developed countries who 
benefit from the superprofits extracted from the impoverished workers of 
underdeveloped countries form an "aristocracy of labor." The phrase was 
popularised by Karl Kautsky in 1901 and theorised by Vladimir Lenin. Lenin's 
theory contends that companies in the developed world exploit workers in the 
developing world (where wages are much lower), resulting in increased profits. 
Because of these increased profits, the companies are able to pay higher wages 
to their employees "at home" (that is, in the developed world), thus creating a 
working class satisfied with their standard of living and not inclined to 
proletarian revolution. Lenin thus contended that imperialism had prevented 
increasing class polarization in the developed world, and argued that a 
workers' revolution could only begin in one of the underdeveloped or 
semideveloped countries, such as Russia. This theory of the labour aristocracy 
is controversial in the Marxist movement. [1]

While this theory is formally shared by most currents that identify positively 
with Lenin, including the Communist International, few organisations place the 
theory at the centre of their work. The term is most widely used in the United 
States, where it was popularised in the decade prior to the First World War by 
Eugene Debs's Socialist Party of America, and the Industrial Workers of the 
World (see below). In Britain those who hold to this theory include the 
Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) and the Revolutionary 
Communist Group. Many Trotskyists, including Leon Trotsky himself, and the 
early congresses of the Fourth International, have accepted the theory of the 
labour aristocracy: others, including Ernest Mandel and Tony Cliff, considered 
the theory to have mistaken arguments or "Third Worldist" implications. US 
revolutionary socialist Charlie Post has developed a contemporary critique of 
the theory [2]


[edit] Criticism of unions of elite workers
The term was originally coined by Mikhail Bakunin in 1872 as a criticism of the 
notion that organised workers are the most radical. Bakunin wrote: "To me the 
flower of the proletariat is not, as it is to the Marxists, the upper layer, 
the aristocracy of labor, those who are the most cultured, who earn more and 
live more comfortably than all the other workers."

In the U.S. and Britain, the term "aristocracy of labor" is used as an implicit 
criticism of labor unions that have organized high-salary workers and have no 
interest in unionizing middle-income and lower-income employees--even in cases 
where organizing the unorganized would strengthen the unions involved. These 
unions, it is argued, are content to remain a "labor aristocracy." Examples 
might include the unions of professional athletes, which have raised the wages 
of a certain class of already highly paid workers--professional athletes--but 
refuse to organize other workers, including other employees of the teams they 
work for. It commonly charged that the Air Line Pilots Association, the Screen 
Actors Guild, and a handful of other AFL-CIO unions conform to the labor 
aristocracy model of trade unionism. In defense of these unions, the AFL-CIO's 
jurisdictional rules may forbid such unions from organizing workers in certain 
occupational classes.


[edit] Criticism of craft-based business unionism
At the beginning of the twentieth century in the U.S., "most American 
Federation of Labor (AFL) unions did not admit unskilled mass-production 
workers."[1] In 1905, many existing unions actively lobbied for racist and 
anti-immigration policies through the creation of the notorious Asiatic 
Exclusion League. That same year a new union called the Industrial Workers of 
the World (IWW) was formed in Chicago. The IWW, also known as the Wobblies, 
differed from the AFL in significant ways:

The IWW organized without regard to sex, skills, race, creed, or national 
origin, from the very start.[2] 
The AFL was craft based, while the IWW inherited the tradition of industrial 
unionism pioneered by the Knights of Labor, the American Railway Union, and the 
Western Federation of Miners (WFM).[3] 
The IWW promoted the concept of all workers in one big union. Ever cognizant of 
the common practice of AFL craft unions crossing each other's picket lines, the 
IWW adopted the WFM's description of the AFL as the "American Separation of 
Labor."[4] 
The IWW believed that unions needed to build a labor movement with a structure 
that closely mapped the industries they sought to organize. A great merger 
movement had swept through corporations in the period from 1899 to 1903, and 
labor radicals believed that "the unifaction of capital represented by the rise 
of the new trusts needed to be countered by an equally unified organization of 
the entire working class."[5] 
>From its inception in 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World criticized 
>existing craft unions for creating a "labor aristocracy".[6] Eugene V. Debs 
>wrote that "seasoned old unionists" could see that working people couldn't win 
>with the labor movement they had. Debs believed the AFL practiced "organized 
>scabbery" of one union on another, engaged in jurisdictional squabbling, was 
>dominated by an autocratic leadership, and the relationship between union 
>leaders and millionaires in the National Civic Federation was much too cozy. 
>IWW leaders believed that in the AFL there was too little solidarity, and too 
>little "straight" labor education. These circumstances led to too little 
>appreciation of what could be won, and too little will to win it.[7]

Animated by a class philosophy that saw capitalism as an economic system 
dividing society into two classes — those who own, manage, or rule, and those 
who have only their labor to sell — the IWW declared that,

"the working class and the employing class have nothing in common... Between 
these two classes a struggle must go on until all the toilers... take and hold 
that which they produce by their labor through an economic organization of the 
working class..."[8]

The AFL, in contrast, declared,

We have no ultimate ends. We are going only from day to day. We are fighting 
only for immediate objects—objects that can be realized in a few years... we 
say in our constitution that we are opposed to theorists... we are all 
practical men...[9]

Labor Historian Melvyn Dubofsky has written,

By 1896 Gompers and the AFL were moving to make their peace with Capitalism and 
the American system. Although the AFL had once preached the inevitability of 
class conflict and the need to abolish 'wage slavery', it slowly and almost 
imperceptibly began to proclaim the virtues of class harmony and the 
possibilities of a more benevolent Capitalism.[10]

The AFL therefore preached "pure and simple" trade unionism. The AFL concerned 
itself with a "philosophy of pure wage consciousness," according to Selig 
Perlman,[11] who developed the "business unionism" theory of labor. Perlman saw 
craft organizing as a means of resisting the encroachment of waves of 
immigrants. Organization that was based upon craft skills granted control over 
access to the job.[12]

While craft unions provided a good defense for the privileges of membership, 
conventions such as time-limited contracts and pledges not to strike in 
solidarity with other workers severely limited the ability of craft unions to 
effect change in society at large, leaving only the ineffectual means granted 
by a business-dominated elite society, i.e., electoral politics, lobbying 
congress, and a newly-enfeebled economic weapon, the injunction-circumscribed 
strike. But the AFL embraced this "businesslike" and "pragmatic" worldview, 
adopting the motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work."[13]

The AFL outlived the class consciousness of its own founding Preamble, but the 
IWW embraced the goal of abolishing wage slavery. In 1908 the IWW responded to 
what it considered the AFL's class collaborationist tendencies with new wording 
in the IWW Preamble,

Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," 
we must inscribe upon our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the 
wage system." ... The army of production must be organized, not only for the 
every-day struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when 
capitalism shall have been overthrown.[14]

The IWW saw itself as the answer to the conservatism of the AFL. The IWW hoped 
to "build a new world within the shell of the old."[15] Because the AFL 
declined to act as an ally in such a cause, the Wobblies sought to develop 
solidarity with all rank and file workers, while criticizing or spoofing AFL 
union leadership. AFL union "bosses" were (and still are) referred to by the 
Wobblies as "piecards," a term that may have been borrowed from the itinerant 
workers — the hoboes — who filled the ranks of the IWW, had a particularly rich 
lingo that contributed significantly to Wobbly slang, and described anyone with 
money as a piecard.

To the IWW, all the union bureaucracy of the AFL functioned pretty much as a 
"labor aristocracy." In that regard the IWW's views haven't changed much over 
the years.

Mainstream unions have evolved, embracing some of the principles of industrial 
unionism, and (in many cases) opening their doors to a greater spectrum of the 
working class. However, there are many aspects to business unionism that 
solidarity unionists still find suspect — a tendency to operate as a business, 
rather than according to "union principles"; enthroning elite hierarchies of 
leadership which are not easily recalled by the membership; deriving 
significant income from the sale of insurance or credit cards, arguably leading 
to conflicts of interest; union leadership compensation levels that are closer 
to those of corporate executives than of rank and file workers; top-down 
decision making; and building relationships with the leadership of corporations 
or political parties that the rank and file may view with suspicion.

All union movements function in some fashion to raise up workers in 
social/economic status, and/or in union privilege. The significant difference 
between a union movement with a labor aristocracy, and a union movement based 
upon class solidarity, is how and to what extent the structure, bureaucracy, 
and in particular, policies and practices of that union movement function, 
either to leave that level of increased privilege as the status quo — or, to 
recognize the necessity of building structural relationships, promoting 
education, and engaging in solidarity activities, with the specific intention 
of translating gains into an effort to enhance the status of all working people.


[edit] Notes



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