It's always interested me that the Establishment Media could focus on
the single issue of crushing democracy, while the Liberal/Progressive
Media turned on one another. It's the old Divide and Conquer game,
and the Establishment's Media has a decided advantage.
How can the fragmented Liberal/Progressive Media set the establishment
of a Labor Party, and hold off on the in-fighting until the new Party
has grown roots?
The current Ruling Class has its own share of factions. How does a
Labor Party use the divisions to turn the Establishment Media on
itself?
I would join a United Labor Party and work toward seizing political
control. If we could pull that off, then we could get down to the
business of determining how best to structure a government that met
the majority of its citizen's needs.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/10/21, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Mighty rise of unions in 1930s posed need for a labor party
https://themilitant.com/2021/06/05/mighty-rise-of-unions-in-1930s-posed-need-for-a-labor-party-2/
June 14, 2021
Sit-down strike by autoworkers in 1937 at General Motors in Flint,
Michigan, was part of strike wave during 1930s Depression that built
Congress of Industrial Organizations and posed need, and potential, for
a party of labor to advance the class struggle onto the political plane.
Sit-down strike by autoworkers in 1937 at General Motors in Flint,
Michigan, was part of strike wave during 1930s Depression that built
Congress of Industrial Organizations and posed need, and potential, for
a party of labor to advance the class struggle onto the political plane.
One of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for June is Teamster Politics by
Farrell Dobbs. It tells how Teamsters Local 574 members in Minneapolis
in 1934 during the Great Depression learned to wield their union power
to win strikes. With class-struggle leadership, the Teamsters extended
their union throughout the Midwest, helped organize other unions and the
unemployed, and strove for political independence. The book is the third
in a four-volume series by Dobbs, who emerged from the ranks to become
the central organizer of the Teamsters’ 11-state campaign to unionize
over-the-road truckers. He served as national secretary of the Socialist
Workers Party from 1953 to 1972. The first excerpt is from chapter 3,
“Mentality of a Union Bureaucrat,” the second from chapter 9, “Changes
in National Trends.” Copyright © 2015 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by
permission.
BY FARRELL DOBBS
If political action is left to the capitalists and their servitors
within the labor movement, power generated at the trade-union level can
be blunted, and even shattered, through blows from a government under
ruling-class control.
Conversely, if the workers enter the political arena as an independent
class force, with their own party, they have the strength to wrest state
power from the hands of the capitalists. That step could put an end to
governmental assaults on trade unions, like the one that struck the
Teamsters. A labor government could qualitatively increase the workers’
power, elevating it to a high plane on which all their basic problems as
a class could be solved through the necessary transformations in the
nation’s social structure.
❖
Even though reformist illusions could be expected to predominate when a
national labor party first appeared, the very existence of such a
movement would in itself represent an implicitly anticapitalist
development. For one thing, the latter characteristic would be a natural
consequence of the party’s working-class composition. In addition,
organized labor would begin to act in a more unified manner and on a
higher plane. The workers would start to generalize their needs in a
systematic way and direct their demands in political form at the
capitalist class as a whole. That step would not only constitute a
meaningful advance beyond pure-and-simple trade unionism; it would also
create receptivity to revolutionary policies, which would be oriented
toward a working-class struggle for governmental control in order to
reorganize society on a socialist basis.
For those reasons, the SWP concluded that questions of program should
not be made a decisive criterion for support of a labor party during its
formative phase. The main thing at the start was to promote a
trade-union break with the capitalist political machine. Therefore, it
was decided that the minimum requisites for support of labor candidates
on the electoral arena would be that they represent a significant part
of the working class and that their campaigns in no way be tied in with
capitalist politics. Given the fulfillment of those requirements, labor
representatives running for public office would be backed, as against
their Democratic and Republican opponents.
In shaping this policy, note was taken of the conditional aspects of
such support where matters of program were concerned. Reformist
shortcomings in the platforms of labor candidates had to be openly
criticized in a fraternal tone, and it was necessary to counterpose a
programmatic line based on a class-struggle outlook.
Objectives of this nature could be achieved during the formative period
through critical support of labor candidates. But once a labor party was
established, new complications had to be expected. These could range
from reformist blocs with capitalist politicians to right-wing attacks
on revolutionary supporters of the new mass party. Such developments
were bound to produce internal polarizations. In that case
revolutionaries would back the more progressive tendencies within the
party. In doing so, however, the half-way character of the progressives’
political development would be criticized in an effort to help them
advance toward a rounded class-struggle outlook.
Close attention would have to be paid to the problem of maintaining
trade-union hegemony within the labor party. Otherwise the reformist
bureaucrats would gang up with liberal politicians to usurp dictatorial
control over the movement, so as to use it in ways that harmed the
working class. If that happened, the organization would remain a labor
party in composition only. In practice, it would come to act more and
more like a capitalist party with respect to policies the bureaucrats
sought to carry out.
In combating these possible trends to the right, the revolutionary party
would most likely have to enter the electoral arena in its own name and
for its own purposes on some occasions. It followed that, once a labor
party had become a living reality, need for changes in the policy of
critical support would arise. Situations could be expected to develop in
which the SWP would run either a partial or full slate of candidates for
public office despite the existence of a labor ticket. In that way
questions of program could be more effectively stressed, and matters
related to the issue of workers’ democracy could be brought out into the
open.
On a related point, concerning direct revolutionary activity within a
labor party, it was decided that SWP members could join such a movement
as individuals wherever the step appeared to be in order. …
During that unfolding process an organized left wing, polarized
initially around immediate issues in the class struggle, could grow
quite rapidly. Under the impact of experiences in class conflicts,
members of that broad left wing could in numerous instances evolve
toward understanding and accepting the full socialist program. Finally,
in one or another organizational form, determined by the specific
circumstances, a mass revolutionary party could be built. Then, and only
then, would the insurgent millions have developed a leadership formation
capable of guiding them into decisive revolutionary action to abolish
the outlived capitalist system.
Refinery workers fight ExxonMobil lockout
BEAUMONT, Texas — Over 650 members of United Steelworkers Local 13-243
are picketing 24/7 at the ExxonMobil Refinery and Lubricant Blending and
Packaging plant here since they were locked out by the bosses May 1.
They’re standing up to the…
Manchester bus drivers strike pushed back bosses’ attack
MANCHESTER, England — Bosses at Go North West “wanted to take a lot, but
we’ve clawed a lot back and have got a stronger union that they have to
deal with,” Carl Walmsley, one of hundreds of striking bus drivers,…
Back iron ore workers strike in north Quebec
MONTREAL — More than 2,500 iron ore miners and processing, rail and
office workers in Port-Cartier and Fermont, Quebec, members of the
United Steelworkers union, have been on strike against ArcelorMittal
since May 10. The strike has important implications for…
Alabama miners rally, win solidarity in strike battle
MCCALLA, Ala. — Heading into their third month on strike, some 1,100
United Mine Workers of America members at Warrior Met Coal are
maintaining round-the-clock picket lines at more than a dozen mine
portals, railroad crossings, a coal preparation plant…
Coffee workers in UK win international solidarity
BANBURY, England — Workers at the Jacobs Douwe Egberts coffee factory
here held a three-day strike starting May 26, one of a series of
stoppages to oppose wage and pension cuts, worse job conditions and the
imposition of inhumane shift…
Striking Quebec meatpackers march for wages, respect
VALLEE-JONCTION, Quebec — Over 250 striking meatpackers, members of the
Union of Olymel Workers at Vallee-Jonction, marched here May 24
protesting their treatment by the bosses. Some 1,000 union meatpackers
walked out when the employers refused to show up for…
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Editorials
Workers need our own party, a labor party
On the Picket Line
Striking Quebec meatpackers march for wages, respect
Coffee workers in UK win international solidarity
Books of the Month
Mighty rise of unions in 1930s posed need for a labor party
25, 50 and 75 years ago
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--
Irvin D. Yalom “Truth," Nietzsche continued, "is arrived at through
disbelief and skepticism, not through a childlike wishing something were
so! Your patient's wish to be in God's hands is not truth. It is simply
a child's wish—and nothing more! It is a wish not to die, a wish for the
eveastingly bloated nipple we have labeled 'God'! Evolutionary theory
scientifically demonstrates God's redundancy—though Darwin himself had
not the courage to follow his evidence to its true conclusion. Surely,
you must realize that we created God, and that all of us together now
have killed him.” ― Irvin D. Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept