Wojtek wrote: "For these guys, embracing the 'bread and butter' socialism or union demands is way too middle class and thus 'square' and un-hip. Romanticizing the life styles of social groups whose aesthetics ostensibly clashes with that of the middle classes is far more appealing."
FM: From the Oakland Commune article:
"This is why the general strike on Nov. 2 appeared as it did, not as the voluntary withdrawal of labor from large factories and the like (where so few of us work), but rather as masses of people who work in unorganized workplaces, who are unemployed or underemployed or precarious in one way or another, converging on the chokepoints of capital flow."
Let's me repeat that: "people who work in unorganized workplaces, who are unemployed or underemployed or precarious in one way or another..." Basically the majority of people in the country. How is that a romanticization of the poor and the homeless? The Oakland Commune article brings up a crucial point in an era where there are fewer and fewer unionized jobs and the unions themselves are more interested in preservation than fighting for the unionization of new workforces.
>From the Oakland Commune article:
"Though they [the unions] employ the tactics of the historical workers’ movement at its most radical, the content of the Longview struggle is quite different: they are not fighting for any expansions of pay or benefits, or attempting to unionize new workplaces, but merely to preserve their union’s jurisdictional rights. It is a defensive struggle, in the same way that the Madison, Wisconsin capitol occupation was a defensive struggle – a fight undertaken to preserve the dubious legally-enshrined rights to collectively bargain. These are fights for the survival of unions as such, in an era in which unions have no real wind in their sails, at their best seeking to keep a floor below falling wages, at their worst collaborating with the bosses to quietly sell out workers. This is not to malign the actions of the workers themselves or their participation in such struggles – one can no more choose to participate in a fight for one’s survival than one can choose to breathe, and sometimes such actions can become explosive trigger points that ignite a generalized antagonism. But we should be honest about the limits of these fights, and seek to push beyond them where possible. Too often, it seems as if we rely on a sentimental workerism, acting as if our alliance with port workers will restore to us some lost authenticity."
These are the conflicts that lie behind the caricatures of anarchists like the one Wojtek drew above or Chris Hedges' diagnosis of Occupy's "cancer". What's really being avoided is a frank discussion of how unions are going to fit into the fight against neoliberalism aside from the preservation of their own shrinking turf. The quote above makes it clear that the Oakland Commune believes that the fight for one's own survival as a union member is necessarily and useful to the general fight. But it's not enough.. particularly when the partisans of union militancy aren't willing to open up the discussion to what an alternative militancy and wider coalition might mean.
http://www.bayofrage.com/from-the-bay/blockading-the-port-is-only-the-first-of-many-last-resorts/