Youth, Class & Party

Section V. The Labor Movement

The RCY seeks to provide support for the left opposition within the unions. The criterion for determining such a left opposition must be adherence to a class-struggle program. Unless we take a hard, programmatic approach to oppositional currents within the unions, we will end up serving tomorrow’s Reuthers and Abels.

Nixon’s wage control policy is the most serious attack on the labor movement in the post-WWII period. Strongly supported by liberals and acquiesced to by the union bureaucracy, the wage controls, if effective, will destroy the unions as a weapon by which workers fight their exploiters. The central agitational demand of revolutionists toward the labor movement, at this time, must be to break the government’s wage-control policy and purge all union bureaucrats supporting that policy. In addition, compulsory arbitration and all anti-strike laws must be opposed.

We recognize that workers have seen their hard-won wage gains disappear under inflation and higher taxes. We want to fight inflation, but at the bosses expense, with price controls on consumer goods, rent control and free quality medical care.

A primary concern of the labor movement must be fighting unemployment. Unemployment not only causes suffering for jobless workers. It weakens the power of the unions and contributes to lumpenization of the working class, particularly young workers entering the labor market. Since unemployment bears an extra heavy burden on black ghetto youth, the fight against unemployment is essential for the unity of the working class. The unions must meet all layoffs with strike action and not look to liberal politicians to right the economy. The recent New York state budget crisis demonstrated that threatened widespread strikes can make the ruling class retreat from imposing layoffs.

A central demand in eliminating unemployment is a shorter work week with no loss in pay. This demand unites both employed and unemployed, both creating new jobs and providing a higher hourly wage for those employed. By providing greater leisure, it raises the cultural level of workers and lays the basis for greater involvement in political life.

The root cause of idle labor and unused productive resources is production for profit rather than social use. In periods of great unemployment, the transitional demand for expropriation of industry under workers control is posed. While selective nationalizations (as in England or France) can be a sop to the masses and a means of subsidizing bankrupt capitalists, the struggle for control of productive resources by the workers movement is a basic element of our politics.

In addition to direct wage controls, threats to the independence of the labor movement stem from government intervention into the internal life of the unions in the name of union democracy (Taft-Hartley, Landrum-Griffen) and the rights of minorities and women. Unfortunately, many black and women’s liberation activists advocate government intervention to end discrimination, while many union militants seek government support in their fight against a corrupt and dictatorial bureaucracy. We maintain that the state is an instrument of class oppression, which uses slogans about fighting discrimination and corruption as a pretext for weakening and discrediting the labor movement. State intervention in internal union affairs is a powerful means for the ruling class to determine the policies and leadership of the labor movement. Whatever doubtful short-term gains minority workers and union reformers make by accepting government support will be more) than offset by losses sustained by the entire working class due to increased state control over the labor movement. A genuinely democratic (not, to mention class-struggle oriented) labor movement can only be achieved by a fighting communist opposition, not by an “enlightened” bourgeois state.

Only if the left wages an aggressive, uncompromising struggle against all forms of discrimination in the labor movement will oppressed minorities be broken from seeking support from the liberal bourgeoisie. The existence of lily-white unions, especially in the building trades, poses difficult problems for radicals concerning the correct way of integrating minorities into the labor force. Some radicals, following the black nationalists, advocate black dual unions, preferential hiring and ethnic quotas. Since our goal is establishing the equality and unity of all workers, we reject such “solutions.” Rather we struggle to force Jim Crow unions to abolish their exclusive membership requirements and seniority systems and allow all workers in their field to be hired on a first-come, first-get basis. This is not to say we let the capitalist market take its course. We oppose all seniority systems which perpetuate discrimination, and all unnecessary job requirements such as B.A.’s for jobs that don’t need them. Further, we support the aggressive recruitment of ghetto youth for higher education and apprenticeship programs.

In addition to opposing extension of government control over the labor movement, we oppose the existing legal pacification of the struggle between organized workers and their exploiters. The no-strike clause in contracts must go and the full resources of the international should be at the service of any group of workers striking over any issue. In addition, we advocate the systematic use of secondary strikes and boycotts (outlawed by Taft-Hartley), in support of all labor actions. Secondary strike support can be particularly effective in organizing non-union shops.

Despite the New Left’s lack of interest in the labor movement, it is not surprising that certain currents within the present labor radicalism reflect New Left ideology. New Left commitment to militancy for the sake of militancy combined with a belief in the virtues of decentralization has produced a form of New Left syndicalism. The goal of New Left syndicalism is to break the shop floor from the authority of the international unions. Shop-floor militancy can be an important element of a left-oppositional movement, but only if put at the service of all-union programmatically-based caucuses which alone can provide an alternative leadership to the bureaucracy as a whole. The trouble with the American labor movement is definitely not that it is too centralized but that it is too fragmented. A revolutionary leadership would concentrate the entire resources of the labor movement in support of currently isolated groups of struggling workers.

Another New Left idea, touted by the International Socialists, is that black and women’s caucuses are the instinctive vanguard in the unions. Specially oppressed groups may be the most militant, but their leadership must be demonstrated through interaction with the class as a whole. Nothing would reinforce the backward prejudices of white male workers more than the assertion that they are automatically (on account of their biology) excluded from playing a full role in leading the class. We seek to create an integrated left caucus, whose membership is determined by adherence to a comprehensive class-struggle program. Such a program must be directed against the special oppression of women and minorities, but this struggle will not necessarily dominate the activities of the caucus. In certain union situations there is a need of inclusive black or women’s caucuses to deal with the particular problems of these workers, just as there may be need for caucuses of apprentices, immigrant. workers or particular job categories. Such special organizations may play a valuable role in the labor movement, but they are not a substitute for the integrated, programmatically-based vanguard.

The interests of workers and the oppressed generally cannot be defended by unions alone. The power of the unions is narrowly circumscribed by the bourgeois state. The ability of union action to wrest concessions from capital can be shaken by war, inflation and depression. Only through the development of a working-class movement whose program culminates in the establishment of a workers government which in its very nature is anti-capitalist can the working class liberate itself. We, therefore, struggle for a workers party based on the labor movement.

The demand for a workers party based on the labor movement is a key to the transitional program and is aimed at driving a wedge between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. We do not call for a reformist workers party. We do everything possible to make a workers party adopt a revolutionary program. The purpose of the demand is to provide a vehicle for independent class action, to break the workers from the leadership of the trade-union bureaucrats who are tied to the bourgeois parties, and to test competing programs and working-class leaders and misleaders in action. A workers party must act not only as an electoral alternative, but should lead political strikes, demonstrations and other struggles. The slogan of the workers party thus provides a way in which the Trotskyist vanguard can break out of its isolation, convey its program to the mass of workers who are not yet ready to join a combat Leninist organization and provide a means for winning cadre to the vanguard party.

The present generation of young radicals has few illusions about reforming the Democratic Party. The Vietnam war clearly showed up the Democratic Party as the party of American imperialism. Some sentiment remains for a vague radical third party along the lines of the happily defunct Peace and Freedom Party. The entire history of the New Left demonstrates that petty-bourgeois protest politics cannot rally a stable mass following. For the mass of workers to break with the traditional bourgeois parties, they must be presented with an alternative party with which they can clearly identify their class interests.

Another objection to a workers party, often voiced by PL, is that to call for anything less than a Leninist vanguard party is a betrayal. Unlike the unions, the small ostensibly revolutionary groups have little authority among American workers. To offer workers no alternative between the Democratic Party and the revolutionary left is to guarantee the continuing dominance of the Democratic Party. Although very militant, the U.S. working class does not have, as yet, communist consciousness. While we fight for a revolutionary program in any workers party formation, we do not make adherence to socialism a precondition for breaking with the bourgeois parties. Widespread socialist consciousness can only develop over many years of intense class struggle, in which the fight to break the labor movement from the capitalist parties will play a decisive part.

Next>