In its study of the trade union question, the WSOC has attempted to synthesize its own limited experience in workplace organizing with the historical and contemporary experience of Marxist-Leninists and leftists. The conclusions which we draw from such a study must, by their very nature, be somewhat tentative and abstract. This is due to both our own inexperience and to the general lack of revolutionary practice and analysis within the workers’ movements of advanced capitalist nations. Thus, strategic principles laid out in this section are intended only to orient Marxist cadre to the basic issues involved in workplace organizing. They should be continuously re-evaluated and developed as our practice grows.
Marxist-Leninists active in the workers’ movement have two broad political tasks. The first is the building of a mass workers’ movement in this country around the principles of class-struggle unionism. The second is winning over the advanced elements among the workers to the principles of Marxism Leninism and organizing them into a party.
A number of organizations have mistakenly divided the two tasks as if they were polar opposites. Historically, the mistake of concentrating almost exclusively upon building a mass workers’ movement and ignoring the tasks of communist leadership and winning over the advanced workers was made by the Communist Party in the 1930’s under the leadership of Earl Browder. He was responsible for making an alliance with John L. Lewis in order to build the CIO which in and of itself was a good idea. However, the specific type of alliance which Browder built resulted in the CP almost completely ignoring independent tasks and uncritically supporting bureaucrats such as Lewis. This error mistakenly confuses working class militance with revolutionary movement. It assumes that an intensification of the economic struggle for higher wages, etc. against individual employers will, by itself, become transformed into a political struggle against capitalism. This is the error known as economism.
In reaction to this trend, the opposite “ultra-left” error of concentrating almost exclusively on winning over the advanced workers to communism has been committed recently by many small sects and collectives, such as the recent “revolutionary wing” of the Marxist-Leninist movement. Taken in extreme, this practice results in the complete abandonment of mass line and mass practice (for example, a collective working in a shoe factory in the Northwest decided to fight economism by distributing exclusively the principles of unity of the early October League – a communist organization – and Mao Tse Tung’s red book among the workers.)
While they reject this extreme, both the October League and the Revolutionary Communist Party have made serious errors which isolate them in practice. The Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), by its rejection of the trade union as a viable form of working class organization, the strategy of ”jamming” the unions and a subsequent reliance on classwide front organizations for themselves, cuts itself off from the arena of struggle where the mass of workers are to be found. Its influence is usually confined to a small handful of advanced workers who are ready to join its “front” groups. (This is far from denying that the RCP is also guilty of rightist errors, such as capitulating to white chauvinism and racism by opposing the special demands of minorities as “divisive”, and economism and “talking down” to workers in their “workers’” newspapers.
While the October League (OL) still considers unions to be the most basic and primary form of working class organization and an arena of struggle for Marxist-Leninists, it too has taken an ultra-left turn since it criticized itself for its past rightist errors in submerging itself in uncritical support for opportunists like Sadlowski and Arnold Miller. OL’s rejection in its day to day practice of the strategy of the United Front necessarily cuts itself off from the mass of workers. Its slogan of “no united action with the revisionists”, its recent lumping together of leaders like Cesar Chavez with men like George Meany – in short, its overly rigid and narrow criteria for determining “who are our friends and who are our enemies”, even in tactical respects in effect transforms rank and file groups into anti-imperialist organizations. Again, the result is the abandonment of mass line and the relegation of the great majority of working people to the continued leadership of opportunists and revisionists.
How, then, should Marxist-Leninists approach work in the trade union movement?
First off, as we said in Part I, the trade union is still the primary arena of struggle for Marxist-Leninists. Our primary organizational efforts should be, whenever possible, concentrated in unions. This includes:
1. Organizing unions where none exist.
2. Devising a strategy to win the unions over to class struggle and rank and file control.
3. Raising political consciousness within the context of trade union struggles.
In the U.S. today, the labor movement is under the control of bureaucrats, opportunists and class collaborationists. The basic organizational form needed for organizing within this context is the rank and file caucus. The rank and file caucus seeks to unite all militant workers within the workplace or union around a strategy of class struggle and aiming at the seizure of power within the union. (The idea that rank and file caucuses should remain a “permanent opposition” within the union is defeatist and demoralizing. It stems from either the anarchist mistrust of leadership or the revisionist fear of taking power and thereby exposing themselves.)
Basically, a rank and file caucus is a united front. The principles guiding its structure and. organization should be similar to those laid out In e WSOC principles of unity. The level of unity within the rank and file caucus will, of course, vary from workplace to workplace according to the concrete conditions. It should, however, at all times be high enough to allow for the principled participation of Marxist-Leninists, be in firm opposition to racism and sexism, and tend to exclude careerists and opportunists.
At this stage of the struggle the reliance on rank and file caucuses as the primary organizational form has certain definite advantages: (A) it puts Marxist-Leninists and advanced workers into direct contact with large numbers of working people and enables them to develop and articulate a line capable of mobilizing working people In struggle, (B) it allows Marxist-Leninists to make contact with advanced workers and to prove the correctness of their world outlook within the context of mass struggles, and (C) being an ongoing organization based in the workplace, it does not depend upon spontaneous outbursts of militance at one place or another, but rather carries on day to day struggle.
A caution should of course be added against the dual unionist approach. This consists not only in organizing competitive unions but also in focusing a struggle in such a way so that it becomes objectively anti-union or considers the union structure to be a greater enemy than the bosses themselves (identification of union bureaucrats as social fascists, etc.). At certain stages of the struggle, it may become necessary in order to preserve what the workers have won to lead a union out of a reactionary federation or international. This should be done, however, only when the integrity of the organization is maintained.
Besides rank and file caucuses, other types of organization are also necessary both to win over advanced workers and to lead mass struggles. On the shop level, Marxist-Leninists should attempt to set up some kind of ongoing organizational relationship with the most advanced workers. This could include common study groups, “cells” or “fractions” for common consultation on strategy and tactics within a rank and file caucus, and involvement of advanced workers in political struggles outside of the workplace. Marxist-Leninists should also participate in (or initiate where none exist) certain classwide organizations concerned with specific struggles and issues. Organizations such as Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), committees against unemployment, organizations of nationally oppressed workers, etc. are a necessary complement to the rank and file caucus. They enable struggles to be fought around mass Issues which are of a wider nature than the immediate workplace. These organizations should be mass organizations and have principles of unity similar to those of a rank and file caucus. Where organizations exist which are controlled by opportunists (such as CLUW), it is usually necessary to organize a caucus or fraction to struggle against misleadership.
Another important organizational form is that of the classwide fightback organization. These organizations may engage in support work for strikes or organizing drives, working class political action, work against the budget cuts, etc. In general, they have a somewhat higher level of unity than rank and file groups, encompassing several points of the class struggle program. They are desirable because they bring workers from different workplaces together, articulate the notion of class solidarity and to some extent overcome the danger of economism implicit in a purely trade union struggle.
In initiating such organizations, Marxist-Leninists in the past have committed two types of errors: l) Using these organizations as substitutes for rank and file caucuses. Many organizations, not having cadre in workplaces, attempt to build their ties to the workers from the top downs They set up organizations such as the Alaska Workers’ Alliance which, they hope, will attract militant workers, Without day to day contact with workers however, these organizations attract little more than those who already consider themselves leftists. 2) Using the organizations as front groups or extensions of the political party. The most outrageous example of this error was made by the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), whose Workers’ Action Movement (WAM) embodied almost every aspect of the Party program except the call for the dictatorship of the proletariat. The OL and the RCP have also made similar errors in initiating their various “fightback” groups which are dominated by the party and consist almost overwhelmingly of people who are either party members or on the verge of joining. This approach restricts the base of fightback organizations and “rips off” advanced workers from the mass struggles that they should be participating in.
In our mass work, the question of our relationship to “middle forces” will necessarily come up. These forces include the so-called “progressive unions” (District 1199, District Council 65, etc.) and opportunist and revisionist “rank and filers” leading a struggle against union bureaucracy.
The chief characteristic of all middle forces is their tendency to “waffle”. They are caught between the left and the right – susceptible to pressure from both the working class and the labor aristocracy/capitalist, class. This does not mean that all those who vacillate within the workers’ movement are the same. We must begin to distinguish between opportunists and “honest forces”. Opportunists vacillate because they do not wish the movement to assume a class struggle character. They will take a militant position only when constant pressure is applied from the ranks and will abandon that position as soon as it is in their interests to do so. Honest forces are those who vacillate because they do not have sufficient understanding of the conditions of the struggle. Their identification is with the working class, however, and they can be won over to a class struggle position, must not reject out of hand the question of unity with any type of middle force. We must be aware, however, of the type of forces with which we are uniting. The type of unity and our practice within movement should be determined by the class position of the forces involved.
In relation to progressive unions, it would be sectarian to assert that there is no difference between a union such as the Teamsters and the United Farmworkers. There are real political and economic differences between the approaches of progressive and reactionary trade unions. A tactic of limited or conditional support for the leadership of these unions s not a reformist error under certain conditions. Marxist-Leninists also have a responsibility to defend these unions against attacks made upon them by the ruling class. This must be done, of course, within a context of ongoing work which does not neglect the task of pointing out in a non-dogmatic manner the limitations of these unions, the need for a clear class struggle program, and the ultimate necessity of Marxist-Leninist leadership. Under no circumstances should the principle of independent rank and file organization be abandoned (or degraded into the formation of a “loyal opposition” without an independent program or strategy for taking power).
Our attitude toward opportunists out of office should be similar. Under certain conditions (usually when it appears that victory is near) opportunists assume leadership of legitimate mass movements for the democratic control of unions. The bankruptcy of these opportunists is witnessed by the Miller regime In the United Mine Workers which has been using undemocratic methods, capitulating to rightists and selling out the rank and file movement – the only real basis for its power in the first place. But to refuse to work within these movements merely because they are led by sell outs is to isolate oneself from the mass workers* movement, Marxist-Leninists must work within these movements, at times even giving critical support to middle forces such as Sadlowski in his bid for the presidency of the United Steel Workers. Marxist-Leninists must not, of course, spread illusions about these people. They should continue to maintain an independent program and organization. The main question is whether or not rank and file interests and a class struggle approach can be furthered or damaged by such tactical alliances. If we can further our struggle through tactical alliances, we must; always making sure that we are using the opportunists for our purposes, not the other way around.