> I disagree with the "obvious" part of this assertion.
I think it is obvious that there needs to be a radical labor movement. If you don't think it's obvious, fine. I'll explain why in another post but now I'm too pressed for time.
>What *is* obvious is
> that the AFL-CIO is a corrupt bureaucracy, representatives of the Democratic
> Party within labor rather than vice-versa.
I agree most of it is corrupt, but I think the Democratic Party influence is sometimes over stated. Some elements of the AFL-CIO support Republicans. And even a few individual unions have supported Greens. Here in Texas the Teamsters supported Bush's candidacy for governor, just as they currently support his arctic oil drilling program.
> But, it is the hallmark of
> sectarian leftism to state that workers should abandon a large union to form
> some splinter sect of the little that remains of actual workers organizations
> with actual workers in them.
I don't think workers should necessarily do this. Many IWW members are dual carders: they belong to an AFL-CIO union but hold an IWW red card and try to inject some of the old Wobbly spirit into the organization. Technically I'm a dual-carder, too. As messed up as business unions are, I think a mass exodus from them now would be catastrophic.
> Rather, in
> order to advance the workers' movement in the U.S., the rank and file needs
> to be agitating and organizing within these corrupted unions from within,
> electing out the bureaucratic officials with a radical leadership not
> beholden to the Democratic Party.
This "boring from within" strategy has been tried time and again with increasingly dismal results. There's even a name for it: Fosterism, after William Z. Foster, an important IWW organizer and Communist Party leader of the past who urged a mass exodus from the IWW to work from within the AFL-CIO structure. http://www.geocities.com/redencyclopedia/bios/foster.htm It failed.
The AFL-CIO leadership recently circulated a memo that wondered at the viability of transitioning over to a style of industrial unionism and away from their favored form of trade unionism. Of course, the AFL-CIO bureaucracy would go with it, and it would be a top-down form of industrial unionism. And The Nation recently called for something called "Open Source Unionism" which is essentially the same as what the IWW has fought for in the form of "minority unionism." These are positive developments.
Maybe we can discuss this more later.
Brian
--
"At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid." - Friedrich Nietzsche