What with Venezuela, on the one hand, and the AFL tops hob-nobbing with the American far right and their Zionist Milosevic friends (do we have permission to make that comparision, or is that also 'ridiculous'?).
We can't just write off trade unions tout court. Some trade union sectors (some, perhaps, for the wrong protectionist reasons) have played a significant role in the global anti-capitalist movement. Distinction must be made between different trade unions, and also between those of imperialist and non-imperialist countries.
In the former, the political split tends to be horizontal, between the tops and the rank and file, or regional, as in a more independent-minded West Coast, vs. a more conservative East Coast. In the latter, the splits tend to be vertical and sectoral, as seen with the Venezuelan oil workers vs. the mass of low-wage workers. A similiar pattern was to be observed by some Chilean miners' unions in the period leading up to the Pinochet coup.
In purely political terms, it has _always_ been true - well before the 1920's, indeed since the beginning of 'proletarian time' - that "pure and simple" trade unionism was inadequate to the construction of a mass working class-oriented political opposition. Successful working class political parties never simply sprang directly out of the trade union movement, but instead developed in parallel with the trade unions. The failure of the American Knights of Labor - emerging in one of most violent and widespread episodes in capitalist class struggle in its history, and probably the largest experiment in anarco-syndicalist politics - is the counterexample of the same case.
There's no need to wait around for permission from the trade unions in order to build a mass working class-oriented party, right Doug? ;-)
-Brad Mayer
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>That's way too charitable. What I have read in the
Spanish media makes no mention of a change of heart
from the trade unions. The CTV has consistently been
Anti-chavez and pro coup. I would say that the main
reason the coup took place in the first place was its
support by the CTV. The anti-coup forces appear to
have come from the slums and they protested not only
the directors of the coup, but the Venezuelan media,
surrounding their offices, because of their
>anti-Chavez slant.
>
>
>D=E9jenme decirles, a riesgo de parecer rid=EDculo,
que el revolucionario verdadero est=E1 guiado por
grandes sentimientos de amor.
>
>
> Che
This needs to be heard. Unions are NOT going to be the force for the kind of changes needed in the US or anywhere else really. We no longer live in the 1920s.
I have to agree with Katha Pollit on her scepticism re the thnking that unions are our route to social justice though they can play a positive role for the workers who are members of particular unions. Frankly, they've been a huge disaappointment as a force for social change. marta
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