True to form, the Teamster union that for a short period of time sought to unionize workers at a McDonald's restaurant near Cleveland, gave up. The head of the Teamsters local 416, Dominic Tocco, stated that there was not enough support from the employees. It was the first strike at a McDonald's restaurant since the 70's. Unions, by nature, are interested primarily in well paid skilled sectors of the workforce. Which only makes sense given the close relationship between ruling parties and the apparatus of the unions.

Workers in the UAW have shut down GM factories across the country. It was estimated that weekly losses could stand around $500 million each week. As the auto industry seeks to build a global industrial base, workers in the upper mid-west continue to find that they can't possibly be productive enough for their employers. In this is the attempt by the leadership of the AFL-CIO to reclaim some of the steady losses in membership that have taken place over the last 30 years, so it is necessary that the unions win some well publicized strikes. From '95 to '96 the number of strikes jumped from 31 to 37, these figures are hovering at an all time low. The well publicized nature belies the fact that unions can only continue in the role they play today, which is to negotiate concessions and represent a stable capitalist order in the workforce.

One thing positive in this is that workers are fed up with economic restructuring, so much so, that the unions have to take action, or lose face. When Sweeny took the leadership of the AFL-CIO it was already evident for years, that the unions wanted a more populist image to compensate for the halo lost during the days when Lane Kirkland was ranked as one of the highest paid CEO's in the country (that's right the AFL-CIO is also an employer). The unions themselves are not concerned at all with stopping the collapse of whole communities as industry pulls out in favor of lower labor costs. They want to maintain their position at the head of the labor aristocracy, which is especially convenient for fleecing them with concessions, dues and labor-management cooperation schemes. For the service sector, which is now the largest part of the working class today, union representation will always be an impossibility. After all, its hardly worth shaking down a fast-food employee.                             UP

At the second congress of the Communist International, the fledgling American section was already in the midst of an organizational crisis. In a disgraceful display, they failed to resolve their theoretical and tactical differences. This failure hobbled the Communist party from the very beginning, by tying the party to a leadership that never abandoned the tactics of social-democracy. These institutional failings, combined with the mistakes of the second congress, allowed the party to be chained to a set of parliamentarist and opportunist tactics which led to the failure of the party and put a stopper on revolutionary consciousness as a whole by its failure.

On August second, Jakob Herzog opened the eighth evening session with "Dear comrades, the attempt is being made here to force through a decision that the Communist Parties must apply revolutionary parliamentarism in all those countries of which Bukharin said that, up to now, no revolutionary activity at all on the Russian pattern has yet been practiced in their parliaments, although the economic developments in those countries, like, for example, France, England, and Switzerland, have long been ripe for a proletarian revolution."1 Herzog made a principled stand against opportunism. Bolshevik parliamentarism imposed on an international scale allowed the newly forming Communist Parties an open road to opportunism, This set a particularly bad example for newly joining parties that had only just broken from the corrupt social-democracy. A little while later Herzog stated that he would go along with this tactic of the Bolsheviks "for a period" but he did not believe that it would meet with any success.

The fact that the Bolsheviks had made this turn in tactics shows how desperate the situation had become. Bukharin, explained this tactic best when he countered Bordiga's argument against parliamentarism with, "...we also in part accelerated this bankruptcy by fighting in parliament."2 It was the sincere belief of the Bolsheviks that they had actually accelerated the bankruptcy of the Russian parliament by participating in it. They did not take into account that all the revolutionaries of the west had been pursuing those same tactics and had given up on them.

On the trade union question Aleksandr Lozovsky stated the Bolshevik party position on the trade unions very succinctly when he stated at the ninth session of the Communist International that "A communist who understands the situation and hopes and believes that the mass of workers will go hand in hand with the communists, says: ' join the trades unions and win them for our cause.' That is a precondition for the conquest of power and the overthrow of the bourgeois state!"3 With regards to tactics in the trade unions in the U.S., Karl Radek stated that communists in the U.S. should work within the American Federation of Labor in order to take it over. The AFL had long been a bosses union and participation in this institution was a real risk given that the price of participation was isolation. There was never a real opening with which to conduct any sort of propaganda. The tactics that unwittingly backfired here in the United States ensured that there was almost no chance that a communist program could be put forward to workers in the U.S.4 Having just begun to form during the Palmer raids attempts at building a Communist party were consistently hampered by an absence of opportunities to openly organize. In order to go to "the masses" They had to eliminate all revolutionary content from their program. So that by the year 1936, found the Stalinized Communist party supporting the candidacy of the incumbent president Roosevelt.

The early communist organizations in the U. S. that arose came out of the left-wing of the Socialist Party. It was not until 1919 that the left-socialists were expelled or had their memberships suspended. The SP managed during the space of a few months to remove to thirds of the party membership.

By 1922, the two main factions of communists managed to form a United Communist Party but this did not end the factionalism. It was not until 1929 that they finally took the name of the Communist Party - USA. What arose, rather than being a Communist Party was more a social-democratic organization with a dressing of revolutionary sounding rhetoric that became shackled to a set of counter-revolutionary Stalinist policies.

The absence of a revolutionary party in the U. S. today is directly attributable to the mistakes of a party that was never communist, a party that since its beginnings has behaved as a cheerleader for the "liberal" wing of U. S. capitalism. If there is to ever be a revolutionary party that articulates a truly communist program, it must still overcome the dregs of counter-revolutionary state-capitalism that although it might call itself "progressive" or left, is in reality a pale reflection of a counter-revolution.

ASm

notes

The Second Congress of the Communist International vol. II. New Park Publications ltd. 1977. pg. 32-34

2. ibid. pg. 42-43

3. ibid. pg. 88 4. ibid. pg. 69                                                              UP

There is some question and difference of opinion among IWW's as to what it is that their organization stands for. The differences in opinion as to whether the IWW is a "political" union or and "anti-political" union, reflect more often the opinions of the individual members than the nature of the union itself. Although many would object to and disparage the term syndicalist, the IWW is the product of "American syndicalism". The IWW at first was not formed as such, given its initial ties to the Socialist Labor Party and a large presence of former the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance members, however due to the debates of the time, syndicalists came to be predominate within the union. The current confusion of the nature of the IWW is caused by its diffuse and federative organization that can barely agree on a platform, much less succeed in impossible task of building a revolutionary union.

This artificial distinction between a political union and an anti-political union is the creation of those who would wish to separate an economic from a political struggle. Unions as they relate to employers and governments are inherently political given that they are permanent institutions that bargain with employers and the state. Today even the most militant of unions is more a tool of management that acts as a pressure valve meant maintain the labor discipline of the employers. As much as militants might hate having to organize a revolutionary party, it is still indispensable.

Since most workers cannot benefit from union membership we must find ways for workers to struggle outside of the union straight-jacket as the first step towards rebuilding a class struggle.

Internationalist Notes    

Internationalist Notes #14 July 1

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