I think you might enjoy Paul Buhle's new book, "Taking Care of Business: Samuel Gompers, George Meany, Lane Kirkland and the Tragedy of American Labor." Given the history of the AFL-CIO, I do not think it is especially romantic to talk about building democratic rank-and-file unions, ones in which the leaders are meaningfully responsible to the members,as in say the United Packinghouse Workers (see Roger Horowitz's fine book, "Negro and White, Unite and Fight") or the UE. These unions and other show that there is not an insoluble opposition between a central "bureaucracy" and an educated and democratically-minded membership. I think history shows that a lot can be achieved when the two are combined. Josh Mason seems to confuse a little the remarkably undemocratic local unions so common in this country with rank-and-file movements and to oppose them to a more enlightened central leadership. Of course, Sweeny et. al. are better than a corrupt Teamsters local, but are they better than the folks in Atlanta's Central Labor Council or the brave dissidents in that corrupt Teamsters Local? The AFL-CIO might consider, if it is really serious about rebuilding the labor movement, condemning local autocracies(and national autocracies as well) and encouraging local and national democracy in unions large and small. One thing is sure. The UFW was never a democratic union. If the new president (Chavez's son-in-law) is aiming to make it one, this is news to me. Perhaps the farm workers who had been organizing with some success before the UFW jumped on the boycott bandwagon would have made different decisions had they been more powerful in the union.
Michael Yates
Max Sawicky wrote:
>
> . . . Why
> the-left-such-as-it-is insists otherwise is an interesting question, but
> personally I'm convinced the search for grassroots authenticity is a
> dead end, at least for labor.
>
> Any thoughts?
> >>
>
> Just a few. The left has a romantic notion of decentralization
> or autonomous action. It (some of it, obviously) would like to
> blame bureaucrats for its own failure to reach the rank-and-file,
> and ignore the extent to which bureaucrats really do reflect the
> conservative views of the rank-and-file.
>
> But this is really a question for Herr Doctor Eisenscher,
> if he's around.
>
> mbs