Is John Sweeney a Socialist?

Rakesh Bhandari bhandari at phoenix.Princeton.EDU
Sat Jan 29 13:25:06 PST 2000


Hi Nathan,


> I don't dismiss them in absolute terms; I am defending the right of Sweeney
> to call himself a socialist.

Which brings us back to Hal Draper's fourth volume of his monumental study Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution--Critique of Other Socialisms (or some such title).


> I agree with some of the criticisms
> voiced against Sweeney and disagree with others.

What do you agree with? That by giving up rights to strike for collective bargaining, workers are left mired in bureaucracy and powerless against the discretionary power of capital which the union leadership then must itself protect as a matter of its own survival-- thereby enforcing social control at the worksite through, among other things, aiding in the identification of the most radical workers and rationalizing both layoffs and capital's aribtrary, albeit purposefully divisive, job hierarchies-- given what would be the bosses' otherwise absolute intransigience to any collective organized worker power since the threat of any true proletarian radicalism has already been rendered idle by the waiving of rights to autonomous strikes or wildcat, boycotts, secondary strikes.

Well, I don't have the issue of New Politics with me, but I remember (i think) such points being made in criticism of business unionism. But obviously what we need is an accurate summation of the most empirically sound criticisms of business unionism and the institution of collective bargaining in particular. These ultra left criticisms may turn out be wrecklessly unfounded or they may turn out to be disturbingly true.

But since schools have depts in ethnic studies, not labor studies generally, I do not know enough to reach a conclusion myself. At this point, I take Glaberman and CLR James, Rachleff and Lynd, Moody and others seriously enough to hope that their arguments are engaged,instead of dismissed as fundamentalist.


> All I am against is excommunicating other people because of those
> differences over tactics and strategy.

As for me, I would want nothing more than to be excommunicated from most socialist movements. See volume above.

yrs, rakesh



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