>FM: Too bad this debate shows up only as a snitty article in The People's
>World. I think it's a debate worth having. The article by the Oakland
>Commune is well written and worth reading, particularly its analysis of
>the ritualized way the ILWU participated in the Oakland port shutdown:
>
>"...under the system that ILWU has worked out with the employers'
>association, only a picket line at the gates to the port itself will allow
>the local arbitrator to rule conditions at the port unsafe, and therefore
>provide the workers with legal protection against unpermitted work action.
>In such a situation we are not really blockading the port. We are
>participating in a two-act play, a piece of legal theater, performed for
>the benefit of the arbitrator...
>
>"If this arbitration game is the only way we can avoid violent conflict
>with the port workers, then perhaps this is the way things have to be for
>the time being. But we find it more than depressing how little reflection
>there has been about this strategy, how little criticism of it, and how
>many people seem to reflexively accept the necessity of going through
>these motions. There are two reasons why this charade is problematic. For
>one, we must remember that the insertion of state-sanctioned forms of
>mediation and arbitration into the class struggle, the domestication of
>the class struggle by a vast legal apparatus, is the chief mechanism by
>which unions have been made into the helpmeet of capital, their monopoly
>over labor power an ideal partner for capital's monopoly over the means of
>production. Under such a system, trade unions not only make sure that the
>system produces a working-class with sufficient purchasing power
>(something that is less and less possible these days, except by way of
>credit) but also ensure that class antagonism finds only state-approved
>outlets, passing through the bureaucratic filter of the union and its
>legal apparatus, which says when, how, and why workers can act in their
>own benefit. This is what 'arbitration' means."
>
>http://www.bayofrage.com/from-the-bay/blockading-the-port-is-only-the-first-of-many-last-resorts/
>/
What is up with the snittiness? I don't know enough about the politics of this factions to understand why such a weird article was written - why it left out so much about the port shutdown, the reasoning behind it, and what is at stake that they have to position OO as anti-labor.
shag
-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)