adherents, although it has been a long time since communists were real players in the UAW.
The basic error of opportunism , the UAW's included, is to attempt to solve the workers' problems within the capitalist system . Reutherism and the UAW policy at bottom does not seek to be part of a movement to end capitalism and seeks only reforms, not revolutionary change. It therefore is not militant class struggle trade unionism.
The situation in Flint is the result of that long term policy and its more recent manifestations specifically related to Flint as mentioned by Doug. If the UAW concedes the ultimate perogatives of private property to GM , et al., they really cannot oppose , in the end, GM's decisions to do what it wants with its plants and cut its workforce to the bone. This private property line is that between socialism and capitalism. The whole history of social democratic governments shows there is no in between. There is a leap between these two, and the UAW has been scared to take the leap , to plan for the leap since the Reuther gang took over.
Reuther led the whole CIO and AFL-CIO down this opportunist path in a conspiracy with McCarthyism.
The UAW is incapable of opposing its own ultimate demise. It must either change its fundamental philosophy from reform to revolution or die.
Charles Brown
>>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 06/29 11:21 PM >>>
Justin Schwartz wrote:
>Now, I grant that Legal is sort of isolateed from other parts of
>Solidarity House; we do legal stuff, oddly enough, and don't make policy.
>But I think that the unrelievadely horroble impression of the UAW that's
>being promulgated on this list is misleading and erroneous. Sure, it's a
>rather stick in the mud labor bureaucracy. No, it's not a revolutionary
>organization. Yes, a lot of my comrades in New Directions spend a good
>deal of time eyeball to eyeball with their local unions and the
>International. It's far from perfect. But it's not the old Teamsters or
>MIneworkers or Laborers or the East Coast Longshoremen. It's fairly honest
>and within the blinkered limits imposed by a foolish commitment to DP
>politics, progressive as US unions go--one of the more progressive. It
>needs to be democratized. But it shouldn't be demonized.
I've been yakking around a bit over the last couple of days, as background for a Feedmag piece on the Flint strike, and I've got to say that the UAW deserves lots of demonization on this one. The bosses have permitted locals to strike sporadically over the last few years, and they hindered the Flint local from striking until after the offending stamping equipment was removed from the factory. They're pretending that the strikes are really about local issues when they're really about outsourcing, speedup, and disinvestment - issues which, to paraphrase Schumpeter, go to the very core of the capitalist process. They're doing nothing to get the support of other unions or the general public - even though support, at least across the industrial Midwest, is very strong. (There are so many volunteer pickets that they've set up guestbooks for people to sign in.) In other words, the spontaneous consciousness of the working class right now is that the Flint strike is over issues of great interest to the whole class, but UAW HQ is blowing this opportunity badly. They have no strategy, as I've been saying. Ok, so they're not corrupt. Gee, isn't that a sterling endorsement.
Doug