Cheers,
Hugh
_______________________
When it comes to old answers it is hard to improve on the original.
For example, J.T.Murphy in his pamphlet 'The Workers' Committee' written in 1917, put the problem of the bureaucracy very clearly. The pamphlet starts:
'One of the most noticeable features in recent trade union history is the conflict between the rank and file of the trade unions and their officials, and it is a feature which, if not remedied, will lead us all into muddle and ultimately disaster. We have not time to spend in abuse, our whole attention must be given to an attempt to understand why our organisations produce men who think in the terms they do, and why the rank and file in the workshops think differently.'
He proposes a system of workers' committees, based on shop steward organisation. In the final section of the pamphlet he writes:
'Having outlined the manner in which the structure can grow out of the existing conditions, we would emphasize the fact that we are not antagonistic to the trade union movement. We are not out to smash but to grow, to utilise every available means whereby we can achieve a more efficient organisation of the workers, that we all may become conscious by an increasing activity on our part how necessary each worker is to the other for production and for emancipation'
There is much more of value in Murphy's pamphlet. On the question 'How to proceed in the here-and-now?', one can usefully add the much quoted leaflet issued by the Clyde Worker's Committee in 1915:
'We will support the officials just so long as they rightly represent the workers, but we will act independently immediately they misrepresent them. Being composed of Delegates from every shop and untrammeled by obsolete rule or law, we claim to represent the true feeling of the workers. We can act immediately according to the merits of the case and the desire of the rank and file.'
The weakness of Murphy's pamphlet, however, lies in its syndicalism. It does not even mention the world war raging at the time, which produced not only the conditions in which the powerful rank and file movement he was helping to lead could develop, but the Russian Revolution and the first workers' state, which Murphy himself came to support, joining the Communist Party on its foundation in 1920.
A revolutionary movement has to take up political issues. Though Murphy and all the leaders of the rank and file movement were opposed to the war they allowed shop floor questions and the question of the war to be separated. When the war came to an end, their movement disintegrated and only a tiny number of rank and file activists remained involved. The Communist Party in Britain when it was founded had just 2,500 members.
The Russian Revolution was destroyed by Stalin and the bureaucracy in Russia. Murphy left the Communist Party in 1932. The international revolutionary movement was destroyed because the forces ranged against it were to strong.
With the signs of a revival of the international workers movement, not just the Australian dockers' dispute, but the UPS strike, the strike movements in France, Greece, South Korea etc., there is a revival of syndicalism. A good place to find this is Kim Moody's recent book 'Workers in a lean world'. Is it possible to build organisations that can lead the fight for emancipation without organising the conscious revolutionary minority? I would argue that just as syndicalism, including its left and revolutionary variants, proved insufficient in the past, it will prove insufficient in future.