[lbo-talk] help

Eric rayrena at realtime.net
Wed Sep 26 15:56:13 PDT 2007


Michael and Ravi:


>Eric says unions are anachronistic. I don't understand this. Can you
>explain what you mean? It might be that new forms of workers' organization
>are needed. Maybe we can call thme something else. But don't workers need
some collective way to fight employers as much as they ever did?

Yes, of course we do. I'm just not sure anymore that unions are the right way to do it. And I don't think of this as some sort of moral failing of certain unions or union leaders, but as a problem with the whole form of unionism. Thing is, I don't really have any alternative options, nothing in mind that could step in and take its place.

But I think having no available alternatives is not such a bad thing, as new forms would arise in the process of struggle. These organizations would be immanent to each situation, not a universal form that has to be applied to every political moment. Walking away from the established organization would be hard, but I'm thinking it might be necessary. Sort of like what Carrol says about the Democratic Party.

Put another way: I keep thinking of something Mario Tronti said in his essay "Lenin in England" -- "The capitalist class does not exist independently of its formal political institutions," but the working class "exists independently of the institutionalised levels of its organisation." Which is another way of saying that the working class needs organization, not representation. Once capital has saddled the working class with representatives, it wins. Unions may have once been a useful organizational form, but it seems to me that now their sole function is representative.



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