At 12:04 PM -0500 12/5/02, Nathan Newman wrote:
> >According to Dick Nichols, writing
>>from Caracas, Chavez's most serious mistake has been his failure to
>>move against the union old guard, following a national referendum in
>>which a majority gave him a mandate to reform the CTV....
>
>"move against"-- language like this is why sectors of the Left have little
>credibility. They turn to antidemocratic means, thereby making most of
>their rhetoric look like hypocrisy.
>
>The CTV was forced by Chavez to hold new elections for leadership-- which
>Chavez forces lost despite great pressure from the government. There are
>pro-Chavez parts of the unions, but not a majority. That's called
>democracy, just as it's democracy that Chavez has been elected to run the
>government.
-You mean you shouldn't go after corrupt union leaders unless you are -a Democrat like JFK and RFK? -BTW, Chavez's error was Ron Carey's as well.
Wrong and wrong.
To repeat, Chavez did force new elections on the CTV and his forces still failed to win election. Frankly RFK and JFK failed to reform the Teamsters-- they put Jimmy Hoffa Sr. in jail and even worse people took over leadership of the union. That's one of the problems with top-down reform.
Chavez as a government leader has NO RIGHT to try to strongarm internal decisions of an independent union. Supporting union democracy is fine and he is free to make alliances with dissident forces within the union but if he uses government resources to help them or government power to target opponents, he is an authoritarian union buster, nothing more, nothing less.
As for Carey, he was the elected leader of the Teamsters, not an outside government, so failures of his internal strategy is quite a different issue. That you don't see the difference between internal democratic struggle and coercive use of state power is symbolic of the problems of the Left that has too much identification with authoritarian state action.
-- Nathan Newman