Companies try to fire workers who are perceived as troublemakers, and those who are trying to organize unions, be they "official" or "unofficial," are troublemakers in their view. I recall a woman named Miriam Fried, a member of IWW, getting fired by Borders, when she tried to organize a union. I don't see the distinction that you make here.
At 8:15 PM -0400 6/1/03, Chuck0 wrote:
>>Not just business unionists but union democracy activists today
>>don't, revolutionary syndicalists of yore didn't, run meetings by
>>the sort of consensus method that you advocate here for all
>>purposes.
>
>That's one of the reasons why they suck. Unions are hierachical
>organizations that exist to protect their exclusive relationship
>with the capitalists. Unions are threatened by grassroots power.
>Unions are like Leninist organizations, in that the "democratic"
>process is controlled by the union pimps, not by the rank and file
>workers.
Union democracy activists and revolutionary syndicalists work to gain rank-and-file power, against the union officials who are committed to the politics of cross-class collaboration. Really corrupt union officials used to hire thugs to kill them for that.
At 8:15 PM -0400 6/1/03, Chuck0 wrote:
>>And they have probably learned to work with a variety of
>>decision-making processes, rather than try to offer consensus as
>>the "one size fits all" solution to all occasions.
>
>Which is what I would argue, but you don't seem to understand the
>nuances of my arguments.
If you had clearly argued for consensus as just one way among others, no one would have disagreed with you here. The problem is fetishization of consensus, as Gar noted, not consensus itself.
At 8:15 PM -0400 6/1/03, Chuck0 wrote:
>>When consensus was all the rage, the fashion wasn't confined to
>>anarchist youths and impacted a lot of young activists who got
>>radicalized by anti-WB/IMF protests and the like. Back then, some
>>young activists who got excited about what was (to them) "new" came
>>back to the local political scene and wanted us all (including
>>those of us who "had been there and done that") to discuss
>>"process" first of all and attend "facilitator workshops" that they
>>organized. :-0 That's history now, though.
>
>Yeah, like we know that your Leninist groups are rapidly becomes
>mere shadows of the shadows they used to be.
>
>When consensus was all the rage. Like when it has been the rage
>throughout human history.
Around here, it was all the rage among youth activists around 1999-2000.
At 8:15 PM -0400 6/1/03, Chuck0 wrote:
>>I suppose that simplifies political life for you.
>
>It means that I have to waste less of my time on Leninists, except
>when I'm bored and have fun kicking them around.
If you can't get beyond labels, that's the end of conversation. -- Yoshie
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