michael yates
There are valuable lessons to be learned from Buhle's examination of our labor history for those of us who want to help to rebuild the labor movement and make it a force for radical social transformation. First and most obviously, the "New Voice" leadership of the AFL-CIO cannot, by its revolution from above, overcome the overwhelming weight of the past. It can make some progressive changes (such as dismantling the International Affairs Department) and open up some space for radical activists. But it cannot radically transform itself much less the member unions, over which it has precious little control, precisely because it is itself the product of a bureaucracy absolutely bereft of an ideology of class struggle. Federation leaders are busy creating new institutes and departments, endorsing various organizing drives and strikes, and organizing or speaking at conferences. But they are not busy developing a working class ideology, championing union democracy, or formally denouncing racism and condemning U.S. imperialism.
Second, it would be a mistake for leftists to ally themselves too closely with the new leadership, because, if we do, we will inevitably begin to apologize for its shortcomings and to make rationalizations for them, just as did many erstwhile radicals in the days of Gompers. For example, in the first labor teach-in at Columbia University in 1996, philosopher Richard Rorty came close to apologizing for the New Left's opposition to the war in Viet Nam (Buhle quotes Rorty as saying at this teach-in that at one time the AFL-CIO was leading the U.S. toward a classless society!). What sort of critical stance can we expect from people thinking like this? We can and should support any and all good things which the Federation and the member unions do and actively participate in them whenever we can. But we should do this as leftists, and we should at the same time insist on building the broadest possible movement and refuse to subsume the fights against racism, sexism, homophobia, and imperialism to the Federation's definition of the working class and the labor movement.
Third, we need to consciously think of ourselves as the left wing of the labor movement and begin to work out a left wing vision for the working class (including ourselves as members of this class). One way we might begin to do this is to take the egalitarian rhetoric of organized labor's most progressive voices at face value and turn it inward toward the unions themselves. That is, we should enunciate and act upon the idea that unions must be militantly egalitarian organizations, organized not just to fight the employers but to serve as training grounds for the growth of a democratic and egalitarian society.