Sociopolitical Syndicalism as Additional Partiinost “The ideal organisation is the unification of all proletarian parties, the political societies, the trade unions, the co-operatives, as equal members, not of a Labour Party without a programme, as is at the present the case in England, but of a class-conscious, all-embracing Social-Democracy.” (Karl Kautsky) Historically and today, so-called “bourgeois workers parties” that lay claim to “Labour,” “Social-Democratic,” or even “Democratic Socialist” labels reject the imperatives for their respective voting memberships to consist of an exclusively proletarian demographic and for combating sectoral chauvinism, and in so doing obstruct politico-ideological independence for the working class. Unfortunately, so have many parties that claim to be on the class-strugglist left, such as the official Communist parties. Their common answer is to create “organic links with the working class” – in the form of a labour party whose supreme bodies allot bloc votes to affiliated trade unions (which are usually “yellow,” but some can “orange” or “red”), or in the form of a “vanguard party” with a disproportionate number of the membership engaged in trade union activism. As Kautsky argued in 1909, neither sects nor gross overestimations of “class parties” that are mere labour parties are the answer. In September 2010, Sarah Morris and Gavin Jones reported on the rotten condition of one end of the “organic links with the working class,” the trade unions: So far, though, the most remarkable thing in this age of austerity is just how few strikes there have been and how weak and ineffective unions have proved. In many ways, Europe's workers are among the best protected in the world. When the temples of capitalism fell two years ago, some pundits dug out old copies of Marx and predicted the return of unions and worker power. But the crisis has laid bare a truth partially hidden during the boom years: Europe's unions are less powerful, less influential, and less relevant than they have been for decades. "In Europe generally there is a feeling that unions are facing a crisis," says Charles Powell, history professor at the CEU-San Pablo University in Madrid. "It's a question of identity as well. What sort of movement should they be? Should they be exclusively geared to obtaining improvements for their members? Should they have a say in broader issues like the environment?" […] One of the reasons for the drop in militancy is obvious: fewer people belong to unions now than two or three decades ago. Figures on membership are hard to find, but the statistics that do exist clearly show a downward trend. […] A person turning 20 in Spain today may be part of a generation that ends up worse off than the one before it, reversing the long-term trend. Twenty- and thirty-something Spaniards resent the fact that the only jobs they can get are on temporary contracts -- which offer fewer rights than permanent positions. Rather than looking to the unions as the answer, though, Spain's young see them as part of the problem: one piece in a sclerotic system that protects older workers and shuts the young out. That's especially true when it comes to the public sector, which is the real stronghold of unionism in Europe today. Up to a quarter of Spain's two mainstream unions -- the CCOO, which was the union of the now defunct Spanish communist party, and the UGT, seen as close to Spain's Socialist party -- derive their membership from the state sector. Unions in the public sector neglect workers on short contracts and focus exclusively on those who have secured "a job for life", complains Luis Gutierrez Fernandez-Tresguerres, 33, who as a librarian at Oviedo University enjoys a permanent contract himself. "They should defend the interests of the vulnerable." [...] A longtime unionist, [fifty-six year-old Silena] Trentin sees a bleak future for organized labor in Italy, as traditional industries are replaced by services and more and more jobs are offered on temporary contracts with few protections. "Years ago when the union reps said 'Everybody out!', everybody got up and walked out. Now, even when we weren't being paid, a lot would stay put and say: 'Why, what's happened?' It's incredible, now people are willing to even work for nothing." Could that change? Will hard times in Europe lead to stronger unions, a rebirth of the labor activism? "Potentially, yes. They have nowhere to go but up," says historian Powell in Madrid. "If they do succeed in finding a voice which is relevant, the danger of course is that they move in a much more competitive environment now. You have NGOs, the green movement. It's a much more competitive world for them as organizations than it was in the '70s. People have other institutions to turn to." Since these increasingly ostracized organs of collective bargain-ism that are “yellow” trade unions have a tendency to tail bourgeois or petit-bourgeois movements, they might as well tail the NGOs, the green movement, and the “new populism” advocated by Dan Atkinson and Larry Elliott in their 2008 work The Gods That Failed: How Blind Faith in Markets Has Cost Us Our Future. As noted critically by one Peter Taaffe in The Socialist, a British Marxist newspaper: The solution of the authors to the present dire situation, both in Britain and worldwide, is a “new populism”. To some extent, they wish to go “back to the future” by introducing restrictions on finance capital. They also want measures for the “protection and strengthening of an independent middle class”. They maintain that “social stability and tranquility are more important than market efficiency or shareholder value”. They, in particular, want to reintroduce controls on capital and the movement of capital. […] Commendably, Atkinson and Elliot want to “build alliances with the remnants of organised labour”. The choice of the term “remnants” clearly implies that the labour movement would be the tail end of a broad ‘movement’, largely centred in the ‘middle class’. Already, in fact, this tailing has happened in the form of the new phenomenon that is “social movement unionism” – linking collective bargain-ism with “horizontalism,” the “movement of movements” phenomenon, the fetish for the structure of today’s non-government organizations (NGOs), and so on. According to Jeremy Reiss, the basic premise is that mere “labour movements” (“yellow” trade unions) should “partner with other social movements – peace, feminists, immigrant rights, and environmentalists, among others – and look beyond its bread and butter issues of wages and working conditions.” All of these avoid meaningful interaction with political party activity, and moreover: Unions, at times, do partner with other social movements. But respondents overwhelmingly indicated that, at times, these relationships are more “strategic collaborations” for single-issue campaigns. Issues such as wages and working conditions remain labour’s core goals rather than goals integrated into a broader public policy strategy for progressive reform. I wrote in my earlier work that another way of going beyond mere “labour movements” is more radical unionism, which can be “orange” but which should preferrably be “red.” In 1905, the “red union” Industrial Workers of the World was formed, and among the first organizers were Daniel De Leon and Eugene Debs, though later notable members included James Connolly, Paul Mattick, and even Noam Chomsky. The syndicalist purpose of the IWW was to create “one big union” for workers the world over. In 2004, it established the IWW Starbucks Workers Union, which is notable considering the current popularity of the “Starbucks” brand of coffee. In September 2010, it established the IWW Jimmy Johns Workers Union for the service precariat (“precarious” plus “proletariat” to describe the conditions of the newest, cross-sectoral, and growing part of the young, midlife, and senior worker demographics) working at the Jimmy Johns franchise chain of gourmet sandwich restaurants. However, since it has always refused to address even political questions in general, it has never become a real party-movement. Contrast the apolitical IWW with the politicized All-Workers Militant Front (Panergatiko Agonistiko Metopo, or PAME), a radical union in Greece with equally radical political affiliations – the union that is openly affiliated with the only official Communist party that has embraced pro-Stalin “Anti-Revisionism”; in October 2010 PAME helped organize a one-day strike against fiscal cutbacks (“austerity”) on the part of the Greek government. Consistent with my earlier work’s suggestions on proper language and neologisms (new terms) as a means of building a worker-class movement, one new term needs to be introduced that emphasizes both “red” economic struggles and political action, yet gets past the manual “workerism” implied in the “revolutionary” or “socialist” industrial unionism of the IWW and of De Leon, respectively: sociopolitical syndicalism. Unlike previous forms of trade unionism or syndicalism, the sociopolitical syndicate would be a real party-movement, in that real parties are real movements and vice versa. In conjunction with an official party-movement, it would be capable of organizing alternative mass media, an alternative culture, and all the related in-house bureaucracy as a means of preparatory organization for realistically replacing the existing bureaucratic organs of state administration. Unlike an official party-movement, it would have a much closer relationship with strike activity and not even tactically participate in modern elections. In all the remaining details, the sociopolitical syndicate would resemble an industrial union as envisioned by De Leon (however wrong he may have been on the role of official political parties) and elaborated upon by one Martin Sayles at sufficient length: What makes the RIU revolutionary is its ability to go on the offensive, to move from simply fighting for better wages and working conditions to challenging the power of the capitalists and their managers. It does this through allowing working people to organize and educate themselves about how to administer their workplaces and their communities. […] This is where the industrial element of revolutionary industrial unionism comes in. As opposed to the craft and professional unions, which organize by job classification and trade, we organize by industry, from top to bottom. No worker is left out of the union, except by their own choice. And even in those instances, the RIU nevertheless makes all efforts to build bonds of solidarity and unity with them. […] By bringing all workers together into One Great Union, the ability of the capitalists and their managers to “whipsaw” – to pit one group of workers against another in a race to the bottom – is non-existent. Strikes and other types of labor actions would no longer be isolated; the One Great Union would see to it that picket lines – even informational ones! – are honored by all workers. And attempts to use the bosses’ courts to shut down workers’ action would be meaningless and unenforceable. The exploiters would no longer be able to point out the window to an army of unemployed workers and say to a worker demanding better, “If you ask for more, I’ll just fire you and hire one of them.” This is because unemployed workers are our brothers and sisters, too, and are welcome in the One Great Union. Out of the Units and Locals of the RIU comes the workplace committee. If the One Great Union itself is the heart of revolutionary industrial unionism, then the workplace committee is its soul […] Because the One Great Union includes all workers, including temporary and contract employees (provided they are workers), and seeks to include, at the very least, the voice of all workers at a facility, all working people find their interests in those [chosen] to serve as a part of a workplace committee. In the period before the defeat of capitalism, the role of the workplace committee is primarily educational. Its role is to prepare workers for the day when they take control of production and distribution. In the transition from capitalism to the classless communist society, the workplace committee functions as the focal point for the reorganization and reconstruction of production and distribution. […] Economic reconstruction is itself only part of the mission of revolutionary industrial unionism. The RIU also has a central role in the political reconstruction of society after the defeat of capitalist rule. Those same Units and Locals of the One Great Union that [choose] their fellow workers to be a part of the workplace committees to coordinate and control the economy will choose which of their brothers and sisters they want to serve in the workers’ councils to coordinate and control the new state and government […] This is because, as the workers’ councils are organized and develop, they can begin to take over the administration of services that most people look to the capitalist government to provide. Throughout history, ruling classes on the verge of revolutionary overthrow suffer systemic breakdowns that undermine their own ability to reassert control. Often times, one of the key failures of a revolutionary movement in this period is its unwillingness or inability to become an alternative source for essential services. That hesitation reduces the battle for control of society to a contest of brute force – a contest that the sitting class in power often wins. However, when a revolutionary movement provides that alternative source, they begin to starve the ruling class, its government and state, of key resources – not simply money (through tax withholding) or human resources (through strikes and other labor actions), but also the culture of reliance that the institutions of class rule rely on to maintain their power. […] Daniel De Leon’s theory of socialist industrial unionism is the basis of our strategy, and the work he and the [Socialist Labor Party] did at the beginning of the last century is much of the inspiration for what our Party wishes to accomplish […] It is De Leon’s theory that most self-described socialists and communists get their own generally vague concepts about workers’ councils and workers’ control of production. It was the SLP’s work in De Leon’s time that inspired the formation of the Industrial Workers of the World and Workers’ International Industrial Union […] It is here that revolutionary industrial unionism differs from De Leon’s theory. With the incorporation of the workplace committee and workers’ councils into the overall structure, RIU represents, in our view, and advance from De Leon’s specific writings on socialist industrial unionism, while also keeping with the spirit and sense of his method and concept. REFERENCES Sects or Class Parties by Karl Kautsky [http://www.marxists.org/archive/kaut.../07/unions.htm] Is there power in Europe’s unions? by Sarah Morris and Gavin Jones, Reuters [http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68Q2P920100927] False “gods” of a failing system by Peter Taaffe [http://socialistworld.net/eng/2008/06/24worlda.html] Social Movement Unionism and Progressive Public Policy in New York City by Jeremy Reiss [http://www.justlabour.yorku.ca/Reiss.pdf] M17: Commemorate the 4th Anniversary of the Starbucks Union and Honor Dr. King by the IWW Starbucks Union [http://www.starbucksunion.org/node/2011] First in Nation, Jimmy Johns Sandwich Workers Join Union to Increase Minimum Wage Pay by the IWW Jimmy Johns Workers Union [http://jimmyjohnsworkers.org/news/20...nimum-wage-pay] Public-sector strike grounds Greece by Tom Mellen [http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/i...iew/full/96165] The Character and Structure of Revolutionary Industrial Unionism by Martin Sayles [http://www.workers-party.com/index.p...d=87&Itemid=88]
