>Talk about misrepresentation? Leo, do you really have a Ph.D? I mean, I ask
>because I do not understand how anyone who has actually read Labor Notes or
>any of the Parker-Slaughter cxollections could actually say that they
>"refuse to take up issues of control over the labor process."
>Leo, that is virtually the sole concern of the Labor Notes crowd. If they
>can be criticized for anything, it is too narrow a focus on the labor
>process and neglect of wider politics off the shop floor, struggles for
>social unionism in a broad sense. That is _my_ beef with them.
>And, although I did not think about it at the time, Dennis is right that
the
>Trot reference is just redbaiting.
This is all ridiculous, seriously- Leo takes on a whole host of left traditions, notes Braverman's rejection of his own more orthodox Trotskyist tradition, notes the Monthly Review approach, and makes arguments about where Braverman and the LaborNotes crowd fall short in his view of seeing the more dynamic positive gains of engaging with the contradictions of "teams" or other contradictory reforms under capitalist unionism. I probably share more of LaborNotes skepticism of teams than Leo's view of their positive possibilities, but I also have the distinction of publishing probably one of the only positive articles about a team process ever published by LaborNotes - about a militant approach engineered by SF hotel unions. And Leo works within teacher unionism where the nature of the work process is so radically different from auto factories that it would be bizarre if the same theories really crossed over well, since the nature of the "teams" involved or so radically different.
Leo defined what he meant by arguing that the LaborNotes folks did not "focus on the labor process" - fine, you don't like his linguistic construction but as you note, the LaborNotes folks would basically accuse other unionists of failing to deal with the labor process. Everyone who gets pissy in the labor movement accuses other people of failing to deal with the labor process; it's the uber-theoretical trump card of labor sociology around trade unionism.
Whether Leo or Carroll are talking, I actually take them seriously when they argue because they are both engaged in the process of radical social change, even if they go at it from dramtically different theoretical approaches. Within LBO, they may each mark ideological endpoints of the theoretical debate -- not to insult anyone who thinks Carroll is a liberal sellout to capitalism and would claim the honor. So Leo (or myself at times or others) may get to standin for folks wanting to pound on a real rightwinger, but it gets silly and rhetorical.
I've spent years in the left where references to Trots, Maoists, DSAers, and even more escoteric classifications are shorthand for a whole range of positions. It's not red-baiting to note theoretical positions in that context, although it may be sloppy and worth avoiding because of the responses it provokes. Back when I was active in the Committees of Correspondence, I helped engineer a resolution calling for the hiring of youth organizer by the organizer. Oddly, because I was close politically on a number of issues to ex-Trot Solidarity types (believe it or not on the issue of independent politics), the ex-CP dominant leadership didn't implement the resolution partly because, it was reported to me, because she saw it as a "Trot" inspired resolution.
Cries of red-baiting every time factional labels are used just belittles the real venom that was McCarthyism and real uses of red-baiting in the broader society. Leo isn't stupid- playing redder-than-thou is a mark of pride on this list, so any "anti-Left" by him attack is a mark of obstinate individualism on his part, not a call to the waiting masses to mindlessly destroy his Red opponent.
It is silly preening to act aggrieved by a "red-baiting" attack on this list - most folks take such a label as a badge of pride and use it to delegitimize those who don't take as red a line.
Now, if the attack was made in a broader forum where a different audience was being appealed to by such an attack, there might be a real issue in use of a term like Trot, Communist or Maoist. But it ain't true here.
Context is everything.
-- Nathan Newman