Strata
in the Working Classs
The following article was written by Martin glaberman under the
pen name Martin Harvey. It first appeared in the Internal Bulletin of
the Johnson-Forest tendency no. 6 August 21 1947
1 In the discussions we have held and in some of the articles that
have appeared and will appear in this Bulletin we have begun to
concretize one of our most basic political concepts which has
appeared in generalized form in our political resolutions and
documents. We have based our politics in large part on Trotsky's
conception of the instinctive urge to socialism of the working class.
This theoretical statement is, for us, not a holiday phrase for
manifestoes and May Day speeches but, as all theory, a guide to
action. Our theoretical analysis and concrete understanding of the
proletariat must form the basis of the theory and practice of the
revolutionists. How can it be otherwise with a movement which bases
itself first and foremost on the conquest of power by the working
class?
We began, therefore, by learning to seek out in the daily life of
the workers in the factory the expression of their instinctive
striving toward their liberation and the liberation of all humanity.
We learned to analyze the thought, the speech, the actions of the
workers--not at face value, superficially--but rather fundamentally,
in its innermost essence, in a word, dialectically. In this study and
preparation our worker comrades have contributed immeasurably from
their store of personal and immediate knowledge of the life of the
proletariat.
The concrete knowledge we are now acquiring is serving to confirm
and deepen our theoretical understanding of the proletariat as a
class and its relation to other classes. Full Marxist understanding,
however, requires that we extend our analysis deeper. Understanding
the nature of the working class as a whole, we can go on to an
appreciation of the conflicts and contradictions within the class,
the conflicting currents that play their part in the class
struggle.
Fundamentally the proletariat is tied together by common
conditions of life, by common aspirations. But to view the working
class as one homogeneous whole is to view it staticly and abstractly.
In discussing the working class itself, Lenin rarely failed to
describe the different strata of workers and their differing, often
contradictory relation to class struggle. Probably the most
outstanding dialectical analysis of the proletariat is contained in
Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution and the book
deserves a careful study from this point of view alone.
Basic to an understanding of the working class as a whole is its
relation to production. And a further analysis must also proceed from
this point, which is at the heart of the contradictions contained
within the proletariat.
The relation of workers to production, their role in the process
of production, is not uniform or identical One of the most easily
recognized differences is that of skill. The tool and die maker has a
different relation to production than the worker on the assembly
line. His work involves a substantial degree of special training and
skill. He is one of the few workers that can get a certain amount of
satisfaction from his work. He feels a greater freedom on his job
since he exercises a degree of influence over his machines unlike the
assembler or production machine operator who is completely dominated
by the machine or the assembly line. He even owns certain expensive
tools himself. And he stands in a relation with other phases of
production which give him an understanding of his strength.
Unskilled and semi-skilled work in the modem factory is impossible
without the skilled worker-- the builder of machines, the maker of
tools and dies, the maintenance and repair man. His special skills
and training also command higher wages and make him a bit less
susceptible to unemployment.
All this affects him socially and politically. It is the basis for
the fact that skilled workers were the first to achieve powerful and
stable union organization which in turn helped to raise them even
further above their fellow workers, economically and socially. But
the development was contradictory. At the same time that they were
the first to struggle militantly for their unions, their higher
social status and their special conditions of work introduced a
strong counter- tendency of conservatism. They are the backbone of
reactionary craft unionism - defending their special position not
only against the capitalists but also against the rest of the working
class.
Their higher income, home and car ownership,occasional entry into
the ranks of the lower bourgeoisie, etc. make them especially
susceptible to bourgeois ideology in general and bourgeois politics
in particular. As Lenin pointed out long ago, these higher strata of
workers are corrupted by capitalism (and colonialism) and provide the
social base for reformism-in the United States, New Dealism and the
alliance between local unions and municipal political machines. Their
features can be summed up by the contradictory role the skilled
workers play in the auto unions. In most locals of the UAW there is a
solid core of union leaders from the skilled departments. They are
the ones with ability and experience, untiring in their efforts to
maintain the union and fully educated in the principles of unionism.
But their understanding goes no further than formal unionism. When
militant struggle is required which clashes with the peaceful running
of the union, they are a conservative and backward force that acts as
a break on the rank and file workers.
The size of the plant in which they work plays an important role
in forming the thought and determining the actions which workers
take. Compare, for example, the huge Ford Rouge plant in Detroit
which employs over 60,000 workers (about 90,000 at the height of war
production) with the plant of an independent auto parts manufacturer
employing, let us say, 2000 workers. Marxists have always understood
that workers are organized by the process of production itself. But
in the Ford plant the effects of this on the workers' consciousness
are much more direct and immediate.
Within the gates are assembly lines, production lines, machine
shops, a tire plant, a steel mill, a glass factory and much more. The
worker understands the complexity of modem production but sees
directly its integration, its social character. He has a direct
relation with workers in very different occupations. He can see at a
glance that he has tremendous power over the whole productive
process. A strike at the Rouge plant has extensive and visible
ramifications. In a matter of hours other companies in Detroit begin
shutting down, producers of parts which can no longer be used The
hugh international empire of Ford can be tied up.
Even outside the factory: In the huge anti-Taft- Hartley Bill
demonstration in Detroit the presence of the Ford workers made a
qualitative difference which they could see. Through force of numbers
they could run the city of Dearborn. A demonstration of Ford workers
has national repercussions. they are a power in the factory and
outside it.
Compared to this the 2000 workers are as nothing. They don't see
and can't see as readily and as concretely how any action they might
take can have substantial significance other than on narrow shop and
union questions. The tendency is always to wait for the lead from the
bigger shops and locals for that is where the power lies.
All this is reflected in the Ford worker. The Rouge plant contains
within it among the most advanced and militant workers in Detroit
and, therefore, in the nation. Directly political questions play a
much greater part in the life of the union than in other locals. And
the special history of the Ford Rouge local reflects this in part,
particularly the influence the Stalinists have gained and retained
since Ford was organized.
There are many more sources for the differences that exist within
the working class, most important among them, the question of the
Negro and national minorities. But one final one will be considered
here. That is the relation of workers in different industries to the
class struggle.
We accept as a commonplace the distinction between heavy and light
industry, between production goods and consumers goods industry. But
very often the effects of this distinction on the workers themselves
are not appreciated. What are the differences between the two types
of industry? (Actually, for a serious analysis, this should be broken
down further for there are many gradations from the heaviest to the
lightest.) By and large, heavy industry is characterized by larger
factories, greater centralization and huger corporations and a
greater proportion of constant capital to variable as against smaller
shops, decentralization and a minimum of heavy machinery in light
industry. In addition, heavy industry has a decisive influence over
the economy as a whole which is not shared by light industry. All of
this has different effects on miners and steel workers on the one
hand and textile workers and agricultural laborers on the other.
The effects of large factories, great corporations and extreme
centralization we have seen. Heavy industry workers tend to be
organized in huge combinations, often centralized in one or two big
cities. In light industry the workers are dispersed and are deprived
of the feeling of strength which characterized the others. The mass
of constant capital which the workers in basic ndustry face, their
direct domination by the machine, makes it easier for them to see the
impersonal and generalized character of their exploitation and their
anger and hatred is turned readily against the "system." In light
industry the exploitation is more personal, the capitalist or his
direct agents can more easily be held responsible rather than capital
itself. There is a greater tendency to believe that in the next
factory or the next town things are better. The knowledge that any
miner or steelworker or railroad worker has that when he shuts his
industry down the whole economy creaks to a halt is absent in
non-basic industry.
These differences have had their influence on the history of the
workers. The workers in light industry are only partly organized,
have a much lower standard of living, are more backward politically.
The workers in heavy industry are more "progressive."
But the matter does not end here. The situation does not remain
static but develops dialectically. The advanced workers who have
demonstrated their ability to set up permanent organizations, who
have fought their way upward, are subject to a counter tendency which
is the result of this very progressiveness. The very organizations
which they have built in struggle act as a partial brake on their
further movement. They treasure their unions and their traditions and
are loathe to break from them when a higher stage in the class
struggle is reached. They develop a certain organizational
conservatism - a very understandable conservatism to preserve what
they built at such cost--but a conservatism nevertheless. Certain
strata of the workers achieve a petty bourgeois standard of living
and enter the corrupting atmosphere of the aristocracy of labor. The
permanent crisis of declining capitalism tends to lessen the
importance of those differences--but they remain and must be
understood.
The more backward workers, oppressed by their greater
exploitation, by illiteracy, by subsistence or below subsistence
standards of living, are not bound by the confining influence of
fully developed class collaboration and their hatred for their lot,
which has not the safety valve that traditional unionism can supply,
explodes with the greatest fury in times of crisis. At such times
strata which have been retarded for many years can leap far ahead of
the more advanced sections of the working class and what they lack in
stability and tenacity is made up in striking power and explosive
force.
Indications of this are visible around us. Poor southern whites
who flocked to the northern factories during the war demonstrated in
themselves these contradictions. They had no union tradition, rarely
attended union meetings and often spoke antagonistically of the union
and its leaders. Yet they played an important part in the wild-cat
strikes and resorted regularly to direct action against the boss with
total disregard of the no-strike pledge and the discipline imposed by
the union bureaucracy. Another indication is the greater violence,
with which more backward strata enter into the class struggle,
particularly the great post-war strike waves. The great mass strikes
of the CIO demonstrated perfect organization and an extremely high
level of consciousness. So solid were the workers in these industries
that practically no defense of their picket lines was required except
in special local situations. Compare this to the militant struggle of
the telephone workers for lesser demands, or even the foremen and the
violence in their stride at Ford, and the potentialities of strata of
the workers that arrived late on the scene of the class struggle can
be clearly seen.
An understanding of the different strata within the working class
and their movement is essential to guide the politics and daily
activity of the revolutionary party. Comrades should develop within
themselves a perceptivity to the slightest shift in current or change
in mood in the working class. For it is with such understanding that
the program of revolution can most effectively be brought to the
workers.
2. The decisive field of work for revolutionists today in the
United States is the organized labor movement. That is, therefore,
the section of the working class we should study with the greatest
care. One section of the organized working class has a special
status. Born out of the working class, based on the working class yet
standing apart from and above the working class is the labor
bureaucracy.
The union bureaucracy has its origin in the struggles of the
proletariat to improve its conditions of life and to assert its
position in society. From the very beginning of working class
organization for struggle leaders have been thrown up to guide, to
direct, to organize the fight. Some of these leaders have come from
outside the working class, others were motivated by the purest
self-seeking opportunism, yet fundamentally all were put forward by
the ranks because in one way or another they represented the
strivings of the workers. They were able to formulate more clearly or
do more effectively what the workers wanted formulated or what the
workers wanted done. But they expressed not merely the progressive
aspirations of the workers but also their backwardness, contained in
the bourgeois ideology that dominated the formal thinking of the
proletariat, and this, too, they expressed with greater clarity and
consciousness.
In the newer unions in the CIO the roots in the ranks of
even the top layers of the bureaucracy are still visible. Dodge
workers still recall when Frankensteen worked by their side in the
Dodge Main plant and held secret meetings in back rooms and basements
to organize the union. R. J. Thomas is still remembered by Chrysler
workers in the same way.
But the upper layers of the bureaucracy are completely
divorced from their origins in the ranks of the working class and
play a special role dictated to them by the positions which they
occupy.
Their conditions of life are no longer that of the workers.
Their huge salaries and expense accounts, their homes and vacations,
the social environment of capitalists and government officials in
which they feel very much at home remove them from the problems and
pressures of the workers and remove from their thinking the worker
and his point of view. The influences of the workers on these people
is indirect and distorted and derives only from the fact that the
social basis of their positions, salaries, etc. is the membership of
their unions.
Much more decisive than their personal living conditions,
however, is the role dictated to them by the nature of the trade
union movement under capitalism. The trade unions arose as
instruments of struggle of the working class under capitalism.
Their function is to represent the workers in their day to day
conflict with the capitalists in the factory. But the unions are
limited by two considerations: First is the all-inclusive character
of union membership. The most backward workers in a shop must be
included in the union if it is to be effective. The result is to tie
the union movement to an elementary minimum program on which all
workers, or most workers, can agree at all times. Secondly, the
unions are limited by the fact that "normal" functioning in a
capitalist society requires relative labor peace and some sort of
agreement or understanding with the capitalists, usually embodied in
a contract.
Thus, although one essential element of unionism is its
character as an organ of struggle, contradictory to this - even
because of this - the unions are also organs of class peace. Just as
the state exists to control and confine the class struggle in society
as a whole, which otherwise would be torn apart, similarly the unions
control and limit the class struggle in the factory and make possible
longer or shorter periods of class peace.
The union contract itself embodies those contradictory
elements. On the one hand it contains the gains won by the workers
and obligates the company to carry them into effect. On the other
hand it stabilizes the worker- capitalist relations for a year (or
two years) and is enforced against militant workers who utilize
opportunities to make greater gains.
This contradiction cannot be contained indefinitely in the
labor movement. With increasing force as capitalism declines and
makes more and more difficult the achievement of even the smallest
gains, this contradiction tears the labor movement apart and can only
result in the explosion of the revolution which overthrows completely
the element of class peace and its human agents in the labor
movement. An increasing polarization in the labor movement is taking
place today in which the forces of revolt, the hatred and resentment
of the workers, are collecting at one pole and all the weight that
bourgeois society can muster to enforce class peace is being
assembled at the other pole. In this situation the labor bureaucracy,
driven by the need to maintain the labor unions in their traditional
form, goes over completely to the side of class peace and abandons
entirely its original role of representative of the workers in their
struggle against capitalist is thus the need of capitalism to limit
the class struggle and the nature and role of the labor unions that
makes of the labor bureaucrats agents of capital in the working class
movement, labor lieutenants of capitalism - a position, it must be
said, which they occupy very willingly, without any visible remorse
and for what is really a pittance considering their importance to
capitalist society.
The union leadership is not, of course, an unrelieved swamp.
It extends from the summits where it is in regular contact with the
government and the bourgeoisie to its lowest ranks - the stewards and
the committeemen in the shops who represent the men directly against
the foremen and plant managements. As one goes down the ladder the
contact with the ranks is strengthened and the officials became more
responsive to the moods and desires of the workers. Even in the
lowest ranks of the union leadership the contradictory elements can
be found but the greater weight is usually on the side of class
struggle leadership.
The committeemen and stewards come directly from the rank and
file. They share their income and their existence. The response to a
failure to struggle militantly or to represent the men adequately is
immediate and strong. In the lowest strata of the leadership can be
found many of the most self- s sacrificing workers, workers with
ability who have already established themselves as leaders of other
workers, workers with a high level of consciousness and
understanding. Here are workers who, when they become revolutionists,
can provide the most conscious leadership to the workers in the shops
and can recruit and build the part with the greatest effect. They are
an important field for party recruitment.
It is because of this, however, that comrades should
understand the contradictions which are present even here. The
committeeman and steward is called upon to enforce the contract and
while a good steward fights for all he can get for the workers he
represents he is tied to the contract and feels duty bound to support
it. He accepts the contract as a normal way of life in the factory
and is often in a position where he has to enforce it against the
workers, or at the least, inform workers that they have no claim or
grievance under the contract. The aim of the capitalists and the top
labor leaders and the tendency in labor contracts is to separate the
lowest officials from the rank and file. There has been a
considerable development in the direction of having fewer shop
representatives and putting committeemen on full time. Where a
steward represented 50 or 100 men with whom he worked, now (as in the
Ford contract) one committeeman will represent 500 workers and will
not have to work on a machine at all. Company representatives are
constantly attempting to bribe stewards with favors of all
kinds--easier jobs, higher ratios of pay, passes from the plant,
etc.- -provided the steward will play ball with the company. The job
of a steward is becoming increasingly technical (time study, etc.)
and many militants are scared away from the post by its complexity.
The result is that many of the lowest union officials have been
separated from the ranks to some extent and try to keep their jobs to
keep the protection and favors which the job gives them. The lowest
layers of the union leadership also develop a legitimate
organizational loyalty to their union. They are the conscious union
propagandists. But while this is a necessity in the building and
maintenance of any organization, in times of crisis this loyalty can
temporarily retard good union militants from striking out on a new
road.
Between the lowest and the highest levels of union
leadership there are many gradations. An understanding of the
leadership as a whole and its different strata is required for an
effective struggle against the labor bureaucracy and for the building
of the revolutionary party in the factories.
-Martin Harvey
Martin Glaberman Archive
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