It seems to me, though, that the leftists who have been drawn to the LP are not "democratic centralists" but those who are in such groups as DSA and Solidarity (the latter of which Jane Slaughter is a member), those who subscribe to such journals as _Labor Notes_ and _New Politics_, etc. (Well, maybe those are also "democratic centralists" in your eyes, for all I know. If leftists are altogether unwelcome to the LP, perhaps it ought to put it clearly in its constitution, a la non-Communist affidavit provisions in Taft-Hartley.)
In any case, if the LP has been mainly made up of members of either the endorsing unions or such leftist groups and individuals as I noted above, that's probably because most US residents outside of either circle have not heard of it.
At 6:07 PM -0400 10/14/02, JBrown72073 at cs.com wrote:
>And many who insist on
>this at this stage seem to be asking the LP to pass some kind of
>anti-imperialist litmus test in order to be worthy of their support.
Opposing the war against Iraq isn't an "anti-imperialist" litmus test, though. Even some Republicans and a fair number of Democrats, who can't be remotely accused of "anti-imperialism," are against it. Why can't the LP oppose it? Where's the difficulty?
At 6:07 PM -0400 10/14/02, JBrown72073 at cs.com wrote:
> >You can probably have a "political party" that does not run
>>candidates and make it even grow. The Labor Party's _raison d'etre_
>>is, though, to become an electoral alternative to the Dems, no?
>
>A political alternative. Running candidates is just part of that, and
>certainly not the first part.
If the LP wants to be a political, not just an electoral, alternative to the Dems, that's all the more reason to oppose the war on Iraq and lay out a principled international policy that's not just pro-American worker but pro-worker, not just on economy but also on war and diplomacy.
At 6:28 PM -0400 10/14/02, JBrown72073 at cs.com wrote:
>Organized labor, whatever else you can say about it, is, well, organized (I'm
>thinking specifically of organizing skills, resources, and a certain
>understanding based in experience). It's easy to complain about union
>bureaucrats and sell-out misleaders but in my experience, that's only half
>the movement leadership. The other half is struggling against impossible
>legal odds and high-paid propaganda offensives to serve the members and even,
>if they get a free breath, to promote the idea of class solidarity as a
>general community value.
>
>Organizing the unorganized is a noble idea, and certainly a goal, but it's
>resource-intensive to start there. I just think a Labor Party has to come
>out of the existing labor movement. Crazy, I know.
What if the existing labor movement continues to decline in the rate of unionization toward a vanishing point, before the Labor Party gets going?
***** NYT January 21, 2001
Unions Hit Lowest Point in 6 Decades
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
The percentage of American workers belonging to unions fell last year to 13.5 percent, its lowest point in six decades.
In releasing its survey of union membership last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics also found that the number of union members declined by 200,000 last year to 16.3 million, a discouraging development for the labor movement at a time it is straining to reverse the decline....
Last year's membership decline was a blow to union leaders after they had boasted of an apparent turnaround in 1999. That year union membership climbed by 240,000, its largest increase in more than a decade. In addition, the percentage of workers in unions remained steady at 13.9 percent, giving unions hope that they had arrested a steady decline in that percentage.
Despite small jumps and declines from year to year, the overall unionization rate has fallen compared with recent decades. Last year's 13.5 percent unionization rate was down from 20 percent in 1983 and a peak of 35 percent in the 1950's.
For unions, one embarrassing aspect of the report was that the membership among private-sector workers fell to 9 percent, down from 9.4 percent in 1999. That has left unions with strong bargaining leverage in a handful of industries, including aircraft, steel and autos.
In contrast, membership among government workers rose to 37.5 percent from 37.3 percent. About 9.1 million of the nation's union members work in the private sector, while 7.1 million are government workers.
The A.F.L.-C.I.O. sought to put the best face on last year's slide, noting that membership was still up 150,000 from three years ago. Leaders of the labor federation said much of the drop stemmed from the loss of 160,000 manufacturing jobs in 2,000.
The decline came after John J. Sweeney, president of the A.F.L.- C.I.O., had prodded unions to invest more money and personnel toward organizing more members. Last year, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. said, unions organized 400,000 new members, compared with less than 100,000 in 1995, the year Mr. Sweeney became the federation's president.
But Mr. Sweeney said that for unions to add members on a net basis, after accounting for retirements and layoffs, they needed to recruit 500,000 to one million new members each year....
<http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/21/national/21LABO.html> ***** -- Yoshie
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