We are fairly well acquainted with PWOC’s efforts in building rank and file caucuses, and we have noted several patterns which conform to their labor strategy as we have outlined it. In general, we feel that PWOC’s success in building rank and file caucuses has been greatly overrated by communists in other cities. Many of PWOC’s mistakes in this area stem from their use, misuse, and overuse of program. At this point, though, it is important to note that in PWOC’s labor strategy the word “program” can be understood to mean two different things. While PWOC may view these two concepts to be inextricably linked, we think that they can and should be treated separately.
On the one hand, “program” can refer to the four points of the Class Struggle Program (see section II). Here, program means a perspective or ideology. We agree with PWOC that it is necessary to try and bring workers to the consciousness embodied in these four points.
But PWOC also uses program to mean a mass organizing tactic, and it is this sense of program at which our criticisms in this section are directed. Specifically, we hope to show, that program is not an effective tool for “catching the eye of the masses” and “drawing the masses into conscious struggle” as PWOC’s strategy suggests. Later in this paper, we will deal with the effectiveness of program as a tool for political education. In this section we will discuss, using specific; examples, several general errors in PWOC’s rank and file work. These include: the substitution of program for organizing issues, both in union elections and in forms of rank and file organization; the use of program as a basis for electoral support; and inadequate worker leadership development.
PWOC’s activity in a local union election campaign in 1976 provides a concrete example of what is meant by “program” and it is one of the better illustrations of PWOC’s tendency to assign roles to program which it cannot play.
Local 196 of the Amalgamated Meatcutters covers nearly 100 retail and wholesale food markets and a few food processing plants in Philadelphia. The Rank and File Committee for Reform of Local 196 had existed for two years and had successfully fought for some particular issues concerning health and safety, benefits, and union democracy. They had opposed the union leadership on these issues and had even forced the union secretary-treasurer to resign.
By concentrating on these popular issues, the Committee had been able to pull people together, develop strategy, generate some mass activity, and expose and pressure the union leadership. In short, there was the beginnings of genuine rank and file organization.
Then the local’s election time came, the caucus put together a slate to challenge the leadership in most major posts. The election campaign of the Rank and File, though, did not focus on the issues around which they had organized and their candidates’ role in that process. Instead, the campaign emphasized “what they stood for”–their program.
The Organizer held the program of the Rank and File Committee for Reform of Local 196 up as an example to be imitated. The entire text was reprinted in the Oct-Nov ’76 Organizer.
The Rank and File Program combined immediate, short term demands which would “catch the eye of the masses” with more advanced demands designed to “educate the membership in the principles of rank and file unionism”. That’s a lot for one program to accomplish, and by the time it was finished, it contained no less than 55 demands grouped under six: general headings. Demands ranged from “Fold away stools for cashiers” to “An end to all discrimination...”
Such a cumbersome platform may have presented a clear statement of what the caucus stood for, but it failed to galvanize rank and file sentiment into a movement for change. Despite heavy leafletting of the membership with the Rank and File Program, the caucus was unable to effectively raise any of their demands as campaign issues. The union leadership managed to raise the issue of union experience, arguing that the caucus slate was inexperienced and irresponsible.
The Rank and File Committee lost the election by a three-to-one margin (though there may have been come tampering). Worse, though, the caucus became thoroughly demoralized and virtually inactive for several months. Sensing the Committee’s weakness, the union leadership stepped up its attacks on the caucus.
The campaign was somewhat useful to the caucus in that the caucus became better known. Although no new people were brought into the caucus through the campaign activity, a few peripheral people became more active and the caucus made contact at workplaces where they were totally unknown. These positive effects, though, can be attributed more to the energetic activity of certain caucus members than to the Committee’s Program.
Our purpose here is not to denigrate the efforts of the Rank and File Committee, or to say that they should have won the election. Our point is simply that the particular use of “concrete and politically correct program” in this case did not help, but in fact probably hindered rank and file organization.
Whenever a rank and file caucus commits massive amounts of time and energy in an election campaign for major union posts, it should have clear goals in mind. All too often activists seem to treat union elections as ends in themselves, jumping at every opportunity to run a candidate or a slate of candidates. For PWOC activists, elections offer good opportunities to get together a program (“what our candidates stand for”) and agitate around it. But how to run an election campaign, which posts to run for, or whether to run at all at a given plant are important decisions which should be made in the context of a longer-term strategy to advance rank and file consciousness and organization. In short, election activity should always serve the development of rank and file organization, and not the other way around.
Had the 196 Committee emphasized a few popular issues, the kind of issues around which it had successfully organized before, it might have captured workers’ attention and forced the union leaders to speak to those issues. The Committee could have contrasted its own past activity around these kinds of issues to the union leaders’ opposition to them.
Instead, the Committee’s Program inundated workers with a list of 55 demands and the real issues which might have galvanized workers’ sentiment were lost in the shuffle. PWOC’s imposition of a “class struggle program” in a union election where concrete organizing issues were called for helped leave the caucus defeated and demoralized.
A second example of the misuse of program involves a case of a militant, class conscious shop steward who was fired for his role in leading a sit-down strike in his department. Because he had a history of militant shop-floor activity, the steward received little help from the local union leadership. A rank and file committee was formed in his department to fight for his job and was gaining some support.
Consistent with the PWOC approach, it was decided to change this single-issue committee into a generalized rank and file caucus. As its first act, the caucus put out a program and ran an opposition slate in elections for convention delegate. The union leadership counted a devastating attack on the committee.
Although the caucus members all understood what was wrong with the union leadership, some were not ready to constitute themselves as an opposition force and attack the union leaders head on. Half of the caucus members split and reformed a committee solely to fight for the steward’s job. Other workers in the local were even less inclined to support an unknown opposition. Many had never before heard of a “rank and file caucus” and were easily led to believe that this was a communist organization. The caucus was badly isolated and defeated in the election.
A key mistake here was the premature decision to form a rank and file caucus, a mistake stemming from PWOC’s dogmatic insistence that the rank and file caucus united around a class struggle program is “the most appropriate form of organization” for the workers’ movement.[15]
We are certainly not opposed to the rank and file caucus as a form of organization. But again, the rank and file caucus is not an end in itself. The appropriateness of the rank and file caucus in any given situation depends upon the extent to which it serves the development of rank and file organization at that time. And some recent history of the labor movement shows that the rank and file caucus may not always be the most appropriate form of organization.
The rank and file movement in the United Mine Workers, for example, began in the 1960’s as the Black Lung Movement. It might well have been wrong then to set up general rank and file caucuses rather than Black Lung Committees–this might have confused the issue and limited the number of miners involved. Nevertheless, the Black Lung Movement taught important lessons and established a base that was later able to attack the broader issues of union militancy and democracy.
In essence PWOC’s error in the shop steward’s case was similar to the error in the Local 196 election described above. Before, we saw that PWOC substituted program for organizing issues as the basis for a union election campaign. In the steward’s case, the question was what rank and file activists in the plant would unite around the kind of organization they should form. A number of workers in the plant were prepared to fight around an issue – the steward’s firing, but PWOC preferred instead to organize around a rank and file program. PWOC’s substitution of program for organizing issues, in a union election campaign in one case and as a basis for rank and file unity in the other, held back the movement for rank and file organization.
In the preceeding example we saw that PWOC consistently promotes program as the correct basis for rank and file organization. PWOC also holds that program is the key element in determining how a rank and file caucus should act in union elections where it is not running its own candidates. Agreement with some form of the class struggle program is the critical factor in deciding to support non-caucus candidates. For example, steward elections came up early this year in one workplace where a rank and file committee had been active for a few months. The committee did not have a program as such. The Organizer though, offered the committee this advice:
...the rank and file committee has a big role to play in the elections. The committee needs to put forward a strong program that unites all rank and file candidates who are really committed to moving the union forward. Willingness to actively back such a program can then be the means through which the workers separate the genuine rank and file candidates from the phoneys who hide behind vague promises and empty talk. Of course, there is no guarantee that any candidate’s endorsement of such a program (had it ever been developed) would have amounted to more than “empty talk”.[16]
PWOC urges caucuses to support “progressive” candidates who agree with some, but not necessarily all, of the caucus program; in this situation, PWOC advises “critical support”. When two candidates are running, “the caucus would want the more progressive candidate to win, but in the course of the campaign for him, it must also point out the differences that divide him from the caucus”.[17] But adequate tactics for union elections must be based on more than just the candidates’ degree of support for a general program. An example demonstrates this.
A number of activists were working in Boilermakers’ Local 802 when elections for the union’s executive board came up. No caucus had yet been formed and the activists had no ties with either slate of candidates. The incumbents had exposed themselves miserably by stuffing the ballot box during the previous contract vote, by sabotaging two wildcat strikes over safety and speed-up, and by letting almost 200 arbitration cases pile up, unattended to. The opposition slate, headed by a president and business agent who had both previously held office wasn’t much better. In this situation, The Organizer wrote:
In choosing between the different slates, the key thing is to what extent each slate commits itself to a program that really represents the interests of the rank and file. Rank and filers have to come together to formulate such a program and demand that candidates for union office run on such a platform and implement it once elected.[18]
This article suggested the opposition slate was substantially better than the incumbent slate because ...
The opposition slate, while it has overlooked important issues such as job combination, discrimination and safety, has campaigned for increased union democracy and rank and file participation and increased militancy in fighting contract violations.[19]
Thus PWOC judges the slates on the basis of their campaign rhetoric; if the opposition supports militancy and union democracy, then we are told that these are not “phoneys who hide behind vague promises and empty talk”. But, in fact, the opposition slate won the election and has demonstrated over the last six months that its talk about union democracy was just such “vague promises and empty talk”.
Moreover, the Organizer article evaluates the opposition slate solely on its campaign rhetoric; the Organizer failed to mention the opposition candidates’ performance when they held office. Investigation would have revealed they were bad leaders indeed, and, in fact, the opposition presidential candidate had reportedly tampered with the union’s treasury. According to The Organizer, the opposition embezzlers were substantially different from the incumbent ballot-box stuffers because they mentioned union democracy and militancy in their campaign speeches.
PWOC’s error is again an over emphasis on program. They chose to overlook or not even research the leaders’ past performance and instead focused on their campaign which could be interpreted to sound like parts of a class struggle program (even though no one at the workplace had yet put forward such a program). The caucus program alone is just not an adequate guide for tactical judgement in union elections.
Because this particular example concerns former union officials on their way back to power, it is relevant to consider PWOC’s views on labor leaders in general. PWOC takes great pains to distinguish its view from that of the CPML which holds that practically all union officials are “bureaucrats” which must be constantly exposed in rank and file work. PWOC argues strongly that “The bureaucrats are those who are cut off completely from the rank and file both by their high salaries and because they are not elected and therefore not directly accountable to the membership”.[20] These traitors are to be distinguished from local officials, many of whom are “honest but conservative” (or “well-meaning, but misguided”) trade union leaders.
Does PWOC view all local officials (non-bureaucrats) as “honest but conservative”? Apparently not, because PWOC admits that most local officials share the class-collaborationist philosophy of the bureaucrats. Or can a local official be both class-collaborationist, and “honest but conservative”? PWOC never clarifies this confusion, and as a result its theory remains muddled.
The differences PWOC points out between top-level union fat-cats and local officials are a valid distinction, but what is its practical significance? Theory must be a guide to practice, and these theoretical points are not developed into a strategy for trade union work. In fact, the tactics which PWOC advocates are the same regardless of the character of the particular local officials they are dealing with:
A rank and file challenge will have a duel effect: either mass pressure will force the officials to join our ranks, or if we have developed the issues clearly his or her refusal to join with us will expose the official to the masses as the collaborationist he or she really is.[21] The tactics are the same, whether the official is “honest but conservative”, class-collaborationist, neither, or both. Perhaps the only practical significance of PWOC’s theory of labor leaders is that it can be used to justify PWOC tactics like those employed in the Boilermakers’ election mentioned above. If we believe that many union officials are “honest”, it is a little easier to focus on their campaign rhetoric which resembles program and to overlook their record.
The real value of PWOC’s theory of labor leaders is to be found, though, not in the area of practical labor strategy, but in the area of theoretical polemic against the dogmatists. In order to counter CPML’s theory of the “bureaucrats”, PWOC advances its own theoretical categories of “bureaucrats” and “honest but conservative” union leaders. The problem is that neither theory implies a comprehensive strategy for dealing with trade union leaders. It does little good for the communist movement to pose one abstract theory against another. We can call labor leaders “bureaucrats”, “honest but conservative”, “class-collaborationist”, or some other name, but unless these categories imply clear strategic alternatives, they serve only to keep our debate abstract and confused.
PWOC’s theory also fails to adequately guide communists in identifying and developing worker leaders. First of all, PWOC’s strategy articles do not explicitly address the problem of worker leadership and how it can be developed. Nor do they specify the quality of leadership required for effective rank and file organizing. PWOC does devote a lot of space to the role and tasks of these leaders – the advanced workers. They say basically that armed with a program, the advanced workers will educate the middle workers and gradually win them over to the left-center alliance in the trade unions. But nowhere does PWOC spell out exactly how the advanced workers become prepared to carry out this task, nor what the requirements are for conscious rank and file leadership.
This weakness in PWOC’s theory is not at all surprising. As we noted in section II, PWOC isn’t even clear about who the advanced workers are. Sometimes they describe advanced workers as extremely class conscious and politically developed.
They “have the deepest understanding of the questions facing the working class movement.” They are “most advanced in their overall knowledge of the class struggle.[22] They are even revolutionary. “The advanced workers desire above all else to lead their fellow workers to victory in the struggle to capture the unions for the revolutionary movement.”[23]
The advanced elements will seek to bring forward the reason for the bankruptcy of the trade unions. They will teach the masses of workers what is wrong with a trade union philosophy which is predicated on the identity of the interests of the workers and the capitalists. They will patiently explain the role of the labor bureaucracy in the trade union movement and the inevitability of such a bureaucracy under capitalism. They will explain the basis of racism and sexism in in bourgeois society and the necessity of class unity in the struggle against them.[24]
Yet other times PWOC describes advanced workers as trade union militants and self-motivated activists who lack a very advanced consciousness.
The advanced workers are defined merely as the “active leadership of the class struggle” and “the quickest to respond to the tyranny of capitalism.”[25]
Though two pages before, they desire to win the trade unions to revolution, now we are told that “few among even the most advanced workers understand the capitalist conditioned nature of their problems.”[26]
They are often “involved in community or Democratic Party politics.”[27]
Even the most advanced elements have little understanding of the urgency of the political struggle. Some have argued against mixing politics in the rank and file movement, and others if and when they do address the question, urge the rank and file movement to fall behind reform Democratic politicians.[28]
PWOC has clearly confused these two definitions of advanced workers. Workers who are the “quickest to respond” do not necessarily have an advanced understanding, and vice versa.
PWOC further displays confusion in its middle-advanced schema when it describes Miller and Sadlowski as “middle workers.”[29] Yet they describe middle workers as “not initiators.”[30] They lack “sufficient independence to take on leadership of the struggle.”[31] Miller and Sadlowski are definitely leaders, but they are not politically advanced. And it would be stretching things somewhat to call them workers at this point.
This confusion is especially crucial because if the workers who are the “quickest to respond” to the formation of a rank and file caucus lack an advanced understanding, they will not be able to provide effective political leadership to the broad sector of middle workers – not at least until they themselves are politically educated. They will not be able to effectively choose issues, nor develop tactics and strategy to win over the masses of middle workers and guide their activity. PWOC has failed to consider how capable leaders can be identified and recruited, or how trade union militants can be developed into effective advanced leaders. PWOC has not even spelled out what minimal political understanding and practical organizing skills are required for the leadership of the rank and file movement.
For example, every caucus will eventually (and usually fairly quickly) face difficult decisions that call for a sharp understanding of the limits and class nature of labor law and the government, whether it be a local court injunction against a strike or mass picketing; an arbitration case heard by a state appointed arbitrator; or the need to use OSHA or the NLRB. Every caucus will be faced early-on with a choice between militant mass tactics and other available alternatives such as legal action. They will usually be confronted with a local union leadership whose behavior is often entirely contradictory - speaking militantly on behalf of the workers and sometimes backing up their rhetoric with action, while at the same time attempting quietly or openly to smash the workers’ efforts to organize themselves. A caucus will sooner or later have to identify and know how to deal with opportunists and careerists within its own ranks; how to handle red-baiting attacks made against caucus leaders; when and why to enter into union elections; how to build working class unity at a time, for example, when some honest middle workers express hostility toward foreign torn workers during a period of heavy lay-offs; etc.
These lessons are obviously learned chiefly in the course of practice. But there must be a specific process or method by which communists and advanced workers assure that these lessons are clearly drawn by other workers involved. Specifically, a conscious core of leadership made up of communists and advanced workers must be developed systematically and intentionally. Beyond the day-to-day practice of advanced workers in the rank and file movement there must be a formal means by which they can themselves develop, and learn the most effective ways to teach others what they know.
There are at least three questions that need to be considered here. We emphasize that these are elements of a theory which needs much further thought and elaboration. First of all, there is the question of timing. PWOC never speaks of the necessity to seek out a small number of advanced workers and forge a common perspective on certain organizational and political principles – before proceeding too far into mass campaigns and organizational meetings.
The second point deals with the way advanced workers might be identified and recruited in the absence of much practical activity. One of the key tools here is the use of the communist press. Our own experience suggests that PWOC has not aggressively used its distribution of the Organizer to establish initial contacts, gather names and phone numbers, and engage regular readers in discussion which would reveal the nature of their interest in the newspaper and their general level of militance and class consciousness. We have seen this done effectively by several members of another communist organization. It allowed them to quickly establish close contact with workers having more seniority and a much better base and develop them as potential leaders of the rank and file movement. The organization using these methods made other mistakes which soon undercut these gains. But if carried out properly, we feel that these methods can help to counter left domination and allow other workers to identify a keen tactical ability and an advanced political consciousness with co-workers whom they’ve known for some time. In contrast to this, we have often seen the Organizer simply handed out with no attempt at discussion. This is further complicated by distribution which is irregular.
The third suggestion relates to the specific ways that the core of leadership prepares itself to skillfully educate others in the rank and file movement. Something which can be extremely effective is the use of prepared, topical educationals. By this we mean the following: A situation arises in which a rank and file caucus is faced with a difficult tactical choice such as those we mentioned two pages back. In order to make the lesson a lasting one and to clearly convey the logic and long-range significance behind a particular decision, communists and the worker leaders must prepare themselves. A small, informal group interested in that particular issue might meet and appoint someone to research the question and give a brief presentation on it at the next caucus meeting. Then the others who have already considered the question could help direct a discussion structured to make certain points. We should add that we’re not advocating these educationals have an explicitly communist content. Above all, we would note here that PWOC’s labor strategy contains no guide or method for preparing and making instructive political lessons among the rank and file.
In summary, we don’t believe that PWOC has presented an adequate theory for the identification and development of worker leaders, though it may, from time to time, employ some of the above approaches. As a result, it is our impression that several PWOC caucuses are weak and inconsistent in the area of worker leadership and in fact often suffer from domination by leftists.
A key task of labor organizers, according to PWOC, is to bring the masses of workers into militant activity in a rank and file caucus. Unless masses are drawn into such activity, the unions cannot be transformed, workers will not be politically educated, and a “communist current” will not be built. PWOC’s theory describes program as the means to draw these masses into militant activity and the role of communists in this process is to provide “concrete and politically correct program.”
It is our analysis, however, that program by itself does not draw masses of workers to action. Lacking an adequate theory of how the masses can be drawn into action, PWOC’s labor approach does not work effectively overall and sometimes brings serious setbacks.
The case studies discussed above demonstrate that attempts to use strictly program to draw masses into action or into an organization may lead to disastrous results. Militant activity of workers often may require critical factors other than program such as key organizing issues or a consolidated worker leadership. To effectively build militant organization, we must understand how to choose key issues, how to develop leaders, which types of organization are appropriate under different conditions, how to relate to union leaders, etc. But PWOC fails to discuss these critical theoretical questions comprehensively; instead they tell us that program is the means to developing militant activity, a caucus united around program is the “most appropriate” form, and union leaders can be judged by what they say about points on a program. As a result, PWOC’s approach is one-sided and somewhat mechanical, occasionally leading to the sort of mistakes we analyzed above.
Certainly not all of PWOC’s workplace practice so blatantly reveals, the weakness of their theory as do these case studies. But significantly, PWOC’s practice overall has failed to effectively draw masses of workers into action.
We reviewed 8 unions where PWOC activists have recently been organizing rank and file groups for a year or longer. In total at least 16 PWOC organizers had been involved in these unions, each on the average for over 3 years, some for as long as 5 years. The total effort in these unions was therefore quite substantial. Our knowledge indicates that these 8 unions account for most of PWOC’s non-professional workplace concentrations and are representative of their labor practice.
But only one of these organizing efforts has consistently drawn significant numbers of workers into several activities during the last year. Two other caucuses have some degree of general support in specific departments where caucus members have won departmental elections (steward, committeeman). However, these 2 caucuses only have limited support in their unions as a whole and, more important, they have been unable to consistently draw many workers into caucus activities. The remaining 5 concentrations have little significant base today although some had a temporary base in the past which has since collapsed. Thus overall, PWOC’s approach has not been very effective at drawing even small numbers into militant caucuses and sustaining these organizations for very long.
Moreover, most of the caucuses which drew in a significant number of workers at one time or another did not use program to build this base; rather, as in Local 196, program was introduced after workers had been drawn in over specific issues or by other means.
We have great respest for the dedication with which PWOC labor activists have pursued their tasks for the past several years, but it is important for the communist movement to assess their results honestly and evaluate their work critically. If we hope to effectively develop mass militant activity, we must discuss and eventually answer many difficult theoretical questions. This discussion may well begin by concretely examining the weaknesses and inadequacies of current approaches such as PWOC’s.
We do not wish to argue that program is of no use in communist labor work. Certain kinds of program can be a valuable tool in some situations. Programs can, for example, help consolidate an organization by expressing shared views. We have only argued here that program by itself is not an effective tool for drawing masses of workers into militant activity and attempts to rely on program to do this may court disaster.
We have shown in this section that PWOC overemphasizes program as an organizing tool in its labor work. Why do they rely on program even to the point where it becomes an obstacle to rank and file organization? In order to answer this question, we must examine more closely the longer range aspects of PWOC’s labor strategy.
[15] Trade Union Question, P. 27.
[16] The Organizer, December, 1977. P. 6.
[17] The Organizer, March-April, 1975, P. 15.
[18] The Organizer, June, 1977, p. 12.
[19] The Organizer, June, 1977, P. 12.
[20] The Organizer, June-July, 1976. p. 20.
[21] The Organizer, June-July, l976, p. 21.
[22] Trade Union Question, P. 24.
[23] Trade Union Question, P. 25.
[24] Trade Union Question, P. 26.
[25] Trade Union Question, P. 24.
[26] Trade Union Question, P. 24.
[27] Trade Union Question, P. 42.
[28] Trade Union Question, P. 32.
[29] Trade Union Question, P. 42.
[30] Trade Union Question, p. 42.
[31] Trade Union Question, P. 24.