PWOC’s overemphasis on program weakens their efforts to build a rank and file movement. PWOC seems to emphasize program to the detriment of the rank and file movement because they rely on program to fulfill another important function; program is expected to “elevate the political consciousness of the masses”.[32] Program is, in fact, the only means of political education mentioned as part of PWOC’s strategy for the rank and file movement.
Political education is important because PWOC sees its role in the trade unions, “primarily as partybuilders and not primarily as builders of the rank and file movement”.[33]
PWOC argues that partybuilding must be a process of “fusing communism with the workers movement”, and so, workers must be politically educated to communism. Moreover, “communist work in the trade unions is the focal point for fusing the workers movement and the communist movement.”[34] Thus program is emphasized because it is at the center of PWOC’s whole partybuilding strategy; PWOC makes program the main means of political education at the focal point of partybuilding.
But, in fact, this emphasis is misplaced; program by itself cannot develop revolutionary consciousness and PWOC fails to spell out how revolutionary education can be effectively integrated into rank and file work.
PWOC fails to spell out exactly how program can “elevate the political consciousness of the masses.” For example, the Organizer held up the heavy distribution of the 55-demand program in Local 196 as an example to be followed; the key about this election campaign, according to the Organizer, was that the caucus slate had a program that “points the way forward for the union, exposes the misleaders currently in control of the local and educates the membership in the principles of rank and file unionism”[35]
But program cannot do these things by itself. Obviously the mere printing of 55 demands can’t expose the union misleaders. Explicit exposures must be made based on the leaders’ response to real organizing issues. And while the program informed the masses of the caucus’s views, the program itself did nothing to educate workers to accept those views. The worker who supports the demand for “Fold-away stools” will not automatically support “An end to all discrimination...” just because it is in the same program. Rather, we must educate workers to this demand by continually drawing object-lessons from workers’ own experience, or by a similar method of education. Only such an explicit process of political education can elevate workers’ consciousness, and PWOC fails to spell out such a process.
Moreover, even if PWOC’s labor strategy worked and masses of workers accepted the entire Class Struggle Program, communism would still not be fused with the workers movement. Class Struggle Unionism is not a revolutionary ideology. A revolutionary not only recognizes the need for a militant, unified class struggle; a revolutionary also recognizes the fundamental inability of the present social and political system to meet basic demands of the class, and, therefore, the need to overthrow the system. Without this explicit realization, a class struggle unionist cannot be a revolutionary.
But PWOC’s party building discussion has been rather abstract and PWOC fails to precisely identify what particular understanding workers must achieve. PWOC defines Class Struggle Unionism as “the ideology and practice of a section of the workers conscious of their class position in the struggle to overthrow capitalism.”[36] But no aspect of PWOC’s Class Struggle Program explicitly implies a desire to overthrow capitalism. Class Struggle Unionism, in PWOC’s view, involves a “militant defense of our standard of living”, but this does not necessarily imply a desire to overthrow capitalism. Nor does the fight against discrimination or the fight for union democracy. The Class Struggle Program calls for independent political action, eventually a mass people’s party; this may involve a desire for class-wide unity, but it does not necessarily imply a desire to make the working class the ruling class.
Thus class struggle unionists do not necessarily desire the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism; class struggle unionists may be nothing more than militant reformists and, in fact, PWOC’s Class Struggle Program would be quite acceptable to a substantial part of the reformist British Labour Party.
PWOC does call for “communist agitation and propaganda.”[37] In practice they do discuss revolutionary issues in their individual contact work and in their advanced study groups. We understand this work is currently being emphasized. But PWOC’s labor “Strategy and Tactics” paper does not deal with communist political education in any explicit, concrete way–and this for a group that sees its role in the labor movement “primarily as partybuildars.” Apparently, the rank and file movement does not serve PWOC’s communist education except as a place to meet militant workers and recruit them to study groups. PWOC separates communist political education from the labor movement.
But this separation greatly limits the political education of labor activists. Study groups can teach revolutionary lessons, but study groups alone are not effective. Study groups can only educate relatively small numbers of workers compared to mass forms of political education; and the number of workers educated is especially limited when PWOC recruits workers first to a study group on trade union question and later an explicitly communist study group. Moreover, study groups are often academic, studying economics and the Marxist classics. But the most vivid, meaningful and clearest lessons for labor activists are those real-life lessons drawn from their own struggles–political exposures of their union, their company, the government, the political parties and other institutions which effect their daily lives. These exposures cannot be made separately from the rank and file movement and are a critically necessary complement to study groups.
We do not suggest that rank and file caucuses take revolutionary political positions. But we do suggest that PWOC unnecessarily limits the revolutionary content of education in mass forms such as newspapers, magazines, public forums, teach-ins, etc.
The extent PWOC separates revolutionary education from the labor movement is demonstrated by their newspaper, the Organizer. PWOC puts much effort into producing and distributing the Organizer each month and PWOC sees it as an important form of political education more advanced, say, than their personal contact work. “Agitation with the newspaper will invariably be in advance of the agitation that can be done from within the rank and file movement”.[38] PWOC also currently stresses the organization of special discussion groups to study Organizer articles.
But this is not a revolutionary education. The authors studied the content of labor articles in the first 19 issues of the Organizer (1/75-11/77,1:1-3:9). We counted 130 full length articles on current labor struggles, labor analysis or advice. Only 2 of these drew revolutionary lessons: one (Org.2:5,p. 10) argued that socialism was necessary to deal with problems of speed-up, discrimination and unemployment. The other talked about the weakness of OSHA at enforcing job safety and concluded “as long as it’s profits over people, the death march...will continue”(Org.3:7,p.3). All the other articles only drew lessons of class struggle unionism at one level or another. Many argued the need to fight racial and sexual discrimination; a smaller number argued for international labor solidarity, or for independent labor politics or against redbaiting; 55 of the articles only drew lessons of militancy and over two-thirds of the articles only discussed specific workplaces and unions, raising no broader questions at all.
In addition there were 57 short labor articles and 23 labor history pieces. None of these drew revolutionary lessons. There were also 11 articles on the labor-related topic of jobs and unemployment. 4 of these drew revolutionary lessons arguing that capitalism could not solve unemployment. Thus altogether, only 6 of 221 labor-related articles drew revolutionary lessons and only 2 of these really dealt with trade union matters specifically.
Thus revolutionary education was largely separate from articles related to the labor movement. The Organizer did include non-labor articles with communist content on such topics as the CP’s revisionism and the errors of the “dogmatist trend.” But many of these articles were not fully comprehensible to people unfamiliar with the CP, CPML and RCP. No consistent attempt was made to draw concrete revolutionary lessons from real-life experience of the greatest concern to labor activists.
Thus while the Organizer may help develop class struggle unionism, it separates revolutionary lessons from discussion of the labor movement, and therefore it cannot train revolutionaries effectively.
PWOC justifies the separation of revolutionary education from the labor movement by arguing that reform struggles do not directly teach revolutionary lessons, they only teach lessons of militant unionism. “...The struggle for reforms does not teach workers the necessity for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism...it does not expose the impossibility of real working class well-being under capitalism.”[39] But “the experience of revolutionaries demonstrates that it is possible to introduce a class conscious understanding of the trade union question and win the mass of workers to it”.[40]
But reform struggles can and do teach workers revolutionary lessons, lessons that the system is unable to meet many of their most basic needs. And where workers do not spontaneously draw revolutionary conclusions, reform struggles provide ample material for communists to draw out the revolutionary lessons for them.
We must remember that our present movement owes its origins to powerful revolutionary lessons taught in the reform civil rights and anti-war movements of the 60’s. Substantial parts of these movements became subjectively revolutionary. The reason for this revolutionary turn was not the special education provided by a communist organization; nor was it simply that these movements developed militant programs. Rather the course of struggle starkly revealed the fundamental inability and unwillingness of the government and socioeconomic system to combat racism and imperialist oppression.
For example, the experience of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) taught just such revolutionary lessons to SNCC and other civil rights activists. SNCC organized voter registration drives in Mississippi starting in 1961. In 1964, since blacks were largely unable to register in the regular Democratic primaries, SNCC and other organizations established LIFDP as a parallel structure. The MFDP registered black voters (and whites), ran parallel primary delegate elections, and sought to have their delegation replace the regular Democratic delegation to the 1964 national Democratic convention. They expected this would happen, in part because the regular Democratic delegation was already pledged to Goldwater, the Republican candidate, and it stood on a racist platform. On the other hand, MFDP pledged to support the Democratic nominee and platform. But the MFDP was refused admittance to the national convention and President Johnson, with the help of Walter Reuther, Hubert Humphrey and other liberal-labor leaders, sought to enforce a “compromise”–the regular Democrats would be seated and the MFDP would get 2 at-large delegates and a promise that 1968 would be different. The Democratic leadership was unwilling to expel the racist delegation for fear of losing power in the South and for fear that the MFDP might replace the Southern Congressmen in powerful Committee positions (due to their long, unchallenged tenure) who were the bulwark of the conservative-business bloc in Congress.
This experience taught SNCC and MFDP a powerful lesson about what the system and its liberal-labor supporters were willing to do. It marked a change which James Forman, one participant, described as “from idealistic reformers to full-time revolutionaries.” The MFDP experience led directly to an attempt to build independent black political power and control in 1965 (the Lowndes County Freedom Party) and to the Black Power slogan and movement in 1966. Although SNCC did not largely take a Marxist or socialist turn, it did draw largely revolutionary conclusions from this reformist struggle.
Seldom do reform struggles teach such clear lessons as this. But we must realize that reform struggles are all the time throwing out concrete examples which we can draw out and elaborate to demonstrate the inability of the system to meet workers1 basic demands. It is important to draw lessons of labor policy from labor struggles as PWOC does. It is important that workers learn the need for militancy, class-wide struggle, etc. But it is a mistake to limit our political education in the unions to such matters. We must also teach revolution.
And this can be done in our labor work; our labor work can teach labor activists far more effective political lessons than can be taught by study group lectures. Let us look at what revolutionary Political education can be done around concrete issues of racism that arise in the workplace PWOC sees agitation around racism as being “primary” and “central” and of great importance in winning advanced workers to communism. Consequently a large number of Organizer labor articles touch on this issue. The theme most articles touch on is that the company and the labor bureaucrats use racism to divide workers and so, successful rank and file struggle requires unity built around an antidiscrimination program; white chauvinism must be defeated. A couple other articles also talk about job discrimination and the EEOC and about labor’s role in the school desegregation struggle.
As an example let us look at job discrimination. Discrimination in hiring and promotions is quite common and many individual workers and rank and file caucuses think of going to the EEOC; some workplaces are faced with EEOC consent decrees. Struggles involving the EEOC can teach important lessons. These struggles can teach that workers cannot rely on the Federal government, that it often acts in the interests of employers against workers; that EEOC is a limited tool which may be useful when combined with rank and file militancy. These are important lessons which the Organizer makes[41] and which every trade union militant must know.
But to be a revolutionary, a militant must learn more than this. The revolutionary must understand why the EEOC is limited–that the system is fundamentally unable to eliminate job discrimination in the private sector; that job discrimination and inequality has been growing in recent years in spite of the EECC. The revolutionary must realize that rank and file militancy alone will not solve job discrimination; that the EEOC was itself the token victory granted a large, militant civil rights movement; that the civil rights movement made substantial gains in voting rights and access to public accommodations; it won job training programs and Poverty Program jobs for minorities (particularly for militants who could be coopted), it made substantial gains against job discrimination in the Federal government; but the civil rights movement hardly made a dent in private sector job discrimination despite many attempts. And the revolutionary must understand the reason for this: that control over the labor market is at stake. We must use concrete experience with the EEOC to teach these lessons, to demonstrate that the Federal government is not about to infringe on this right of capital, that we will not end job discrimination until the “free” labor market is abolished and workers control hiring and promotions. The history and practice of the EEOC provide living proof of this.
Company and bureaucrat efforts to divide white and black workers provide another example. It is highly important to draw the lesson of unity. Trade union militants must raise issues which unify blacks and whites, they must support anti-discrimination issues and they must consciously fight white chauvinism, many workplaces provide concrete proof of these lessons and PWOC has amply made these points.
But to become a revolutionary, a militant must go beyond this. A revolutionary must understand the source of racism among white workers; he must realize that racism is not just an idea, an ideology, a myth accepted by whites, but that there is a material basis for racism among many white workers. We must make clear the connection between racism and the skilled trades; we must use the example of the skilled construction crafts to explain that it is no accident that these are the most racist unions. We must explain that the earning power of craft unions is based on their ability to exclude other workers and racism is a powerful tool of exclusion; that this sort of incentive produces the most important form of racism among urban workers; that this racism is the direct result of an economic system which treats labor as a commodity and skilled labor as a different commodity. We must use every concrete instance of this sort of racism to draw the conclusion that racism cannot be fully overcome until there is a fundamental change in the production system and labor is no longer a commodity.
It does not help to argue, as the Organizer does, that in the construction crafts “only the contractors will gain if the unions continue to allow racism to divide the workers from each other...”[42] It does not help to argue that white construction workers need to let black workers in to help in the struggle against the union bureaucrats. This is wrong and somewhat silly. We must educate workers that racism is somewhat more difficult to conquer; that as long as craft workers are concerned only with their workplace and their union, it is in their immediate interests to exclude minorities. Only when these workers are roused over broader concerns, only when their struggle must of necessity take on a more class-wide aspect (as in a political struggle for steady employment in the entire construction industry), only then is there a sound basis to win many of these workers to racial unity.
Nor does it help train revolutionaries to argue that labor bureaucrats are the “main proponents of racism”[43], that “the racist practices of the trade unions grow out of the existence of a labor bureaucracy...”[44] The labor bureaucrats do not just fool the white workers into becoming racists. Rather, there are material incentives which encourage racism and union leaders can often play on this prejudice to their benefit. But bureaucrats do not cause racism.
Nor are all trade union bureaucrats thoroughly consistent racists. We must paint a real picture of the bureaucrats. Labor bureaucrats have been important allies in many civil rights battles. It is one-sided to portray the AFL-CIO as against school desegregation (Organizer 3:2) when the AFL-CIO has done far more than the organized left to pass and maintain this legislation. Rather, we must use the positive record of the AFL-CIO to expose their hypocrisy and the hypocrisy of the whole system. We must point out the hypocrisy of the AFL-CIO which wants to integrate the schools but not the unions. We must relate this to the hypocrisy of the political system which supports civil rights in education, but not in jobs (not that it consistently fights for equality in education, either).
We must point out the substantial progress made in the percentage of blacks who have attained higher education; and we must point out that nevertheless, the black-white income gap is growing because of job discrimination–that, for example, median black college graduates earn less than median white high school graduates. Or we must point out the hypocrisy of labor leaders like Walter Reuther who support voting rights for blacks except when these rights might upset the conservative-business bloc of the Democratic Party coalition.
The trade union militant seeks to expose union bureaucrats simply to replace them. But in order to train revolutionaries, we must paint a complete picture and fully draw out the significance of current events so that our militant does not see the labor bureaucrat as the main enemy, but, rather, the capitalist system.
The lessons of labor policy that PWOC draws are indispensable political education; but a militant Class Struggle education is not a revolutionary education. Our exposures must delve far deeper than lessons of militancy. We must challenge the implicit notions of labor militants that their lives can be fundamentally changed merely by uniting workers around a militant program and replacing union leaders. We must not discourage them from the militant reform struggles, rather we must prepare them for defeat; teach them to learn from defeat as well as victory, so that their militancy does not vanish after the first, inevitable early casualties.
If we develop a militant movement against racism and fail to effectively incorporate revolutionary political exposures, then we can expect our movement to follow a similar course to the 60’s civil rights movements. The inevitable defeats will bring on the demoralization and collapse of the mass militant movement, replaced by a minority of reformists seeking to advance themselves within the system. And another minority will turn from militancy to ultra-militancy and black nationalism. This subjectively revolutionary minority will write off white workers as hopeless and thus will not turn to revolutionary socialism. We cannot build the foundation for a revolutionary socialist movement merely by preaching militancy, unity of black and white workers, and by blaming white racism on union bureaucrats. Rather, we must prepare the movement for defeats by teaching the real limits of the system, prepare it for overcoming obstacles by teaching the real basis of white workers’ racism.
[32] Trade Union Question, P. 27.
[33] Trade Union Question, p. 46.
[34] Trade Union Question, p. 46.
[35] The Organizer, October-November, 1976, p.
[36] Trade Union Question, P. 28.
[37] Trade Union Question, P. 48.
[38] Trade Union Question, P. 51.
[39] Trade Union Question, P. 25.
[40] Trade Union Question, p. 26.
[41] The Organizer, January-March, 1976, pp. 16-17.
[42] The Organizer, January, 1977, P. 4.
[43] Trade Union Question, p. 29.
[44] Racism and the Workers’ Movement, PWOC, P. 32.