>It's a caricature to say, as you and Nathan do, that Soli & LN (not the
same
>thing, as you comment) reject all expansion of democracy in the work place.
>In fact, that is exactly wrong. We support all expansion of democracy in
the
>workplace. But we are pretty doubtful that labor-management cooperation
>schemes are the way to promote this end.
* Everyone* supports the expansion of democracy in the workplace - that's fundamentalist Americanism from right to left. And then everyone accuses everyone else of not supporting it for not being for the particular reform or idea, since we all have differences in how we define democracy. I frankly am extremely sympathetic to LaborNotes view of the matter, which is why I've written for the magazine and identify with a lot of their positions on union democracy. When I was in a UAW local in my old grad student union, I used to distribute New Directions propaganda. So I'm probably closer to their position than to Leo's, but as I said, his is in the context of teaching, so it's a bit apples and oranges.
Not everyone in Solidarity is a Trot by history but there is no question that a lot of its political positions track the historical positions of Trot groups in the debates on the left - from the total rejection of Dem politics to many of their views on foreign policy. And that's not bad since the Trotskyist tradition on substantive political positions is quite honorable (even where I disagree with it); most the problem in the Trot tradition is in its sectarian practice. I always saw the Solidarity project as building on the best of that principled theoretical and policy tradition while breaking with the sectarian practices. Just by changing such sectarian practices - almost by definition - that opened up the gates to a large number of people sympathetic to the old Trot amalgam of principled positions who never joined because of the psychosis of practice among many of the Trot sects. Freedom Road Socialist Organization has tried to do the same in the Maoist tradition. The Committees of Correspondence never really figured out if it was trying to create a more democratic version of the old CP politics or if it was trying to unite all these different left currents- it never really decided between those two choices and somewhat foundered on the dillemma.
Not that we all have to live endlessly with the sectarian geneologies of groups, but they do live on in all sorts of subtle ways that shape peoples understanding of principle, including what different unions mean when they speak of "democracy" in the workplace.
-- Nathan Newman