> <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
> <<ut there would have been no CIO,
> UAW, UMW, etc. without the CP's organizing>>
>
> That's elitist bullshit. I dont discount the fact
> that the CP did important things for these unions.
> But the idea that the CP made the UMWA, for example,
> is utter nonsense and betrays an elitist point of
> view
> (that the workers need a vanguard party to wage
> struggle).
This is not a proposition I maintain. I only note the fact, acknowledged by all serious students of the UAW and the CIO, including Trots like Bert Cochrane, that CP activists were absolutely crucial in organized the UAW and the CIO generally in the 30s. Nothing follows from this abouta generalized needfor avanguardparty or some such. My point was really much more modest, that people with a bad ideology could play vital and imporatnt roles in popular struggle.
You obviously were not around in West
> Virginia in the mid to late 70s when the miners were
> fighting tooth and nail against the mine owners (and
> even against the UMWA bureaucracy presided by Arnold
> Miller). They did that without the CPUSA...And had
> been militantly fighting the bosses for a long time
> without the CPUSA.
I also didn't say that the CP was a necessary
ingredient of every struggle. However, with respect to
the "long time," in the 20s and 30s, CP activists were
utterly crucial in organizing the coal fields, first
in the NMU and then in the UMW, similar to their role
in the UAW.
>
> After the 1950s, the CPUSA had virtually no presence
> in the UMWA.
Gee, do you suppose that Taft-Hartly and its anticommunist provisions might have had something to do with that? And the anticommunist purge within the unions themselves? And why do you think the bossesand the govt were so eager to drive the party out of the unions? Maybe it was because the CP activists were awesome organizers.
> And good riddance.
Well, you side with Taft-Hartley and the purgers. Taht says somethinga bout what side YOU are on.
Dont forget that
> the
> CP were scabs during WWII when the UMWA decided to
> strike. Of course they did so under the pretext of
> the
> United Front Against Fascism.
Look, I have already accused the CP of worse. This is irrelevant to its role in building the unions in the 20s and 30s. One might also debate whether they were right about the need to win the war first, a position on which I am undecided.
>
> In the late 70s some of the groups from the New
> Communist Movement were involved in the coal
> strikes.
> However, they could at best tail the movement.
>
And this shows? I didn't say that a bad ideology is a guarantee of political effectiveness either. But,a s you know, activists in the NCM did super union organizing in otherplaces, e.g., in the textile mills.
I am not a defender of Leninism or vanguardism. As you know, I am a liberal democratic (lowercase). But I have to acknowledge political efficay when I see it. Unfortunately, your political blinders seem to make impossible for you.
jks
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