On 2013-08-13, at 4:38 PM, c b wrote:
> The focus on leadership implies that the rank and file are more
> militant , but just being suppressed by the leadership. The rank and
> file are not more militant than the leadership.
For further evidence, we should remind ourselves that left-wingers from all political tendencies have been active in the unions for generations. They've freely been able to distribute their material at plant gates and to speak at union meetings and to discuss with their fellow workers in the workplace and community. If it were simply a case of corrupt and craven leaders holding back a more militant rank-and-file, these left activists would have succeeded - if not in each instance, in many of them - in multiplying their numbers and mobilizing a more militant membership behind a class struggle program to sweep away the backward leaders lagging behind them.
This hasn't happened since the 30's when large numbers of industrial workers followed the lead of Communist activists and other avowed Marxists in militant confrontations with employers and the state and the more conservative leaders of the labour movement.
Why? If you read the voluminous literature on this subject which has been produced over the years by left activists in the unions and the much larger number of left intellectuals outside of them, the problem is mainly reducible to the endemic "opportunism" of the many thousands of union leaders who have held office - most, incidentally, having risen as "militants" from the ranks - compounded by the chronic inability of the left, with the notable exception of the author or sect proffering the analysis, to hit on the right formula to displace them. In short, a "crisis of leadership" and a "crisis of ideas" in the labour movement, mirrored by a similar crisis in the socialist left outside of it.
However, as you indicate above, the union leaders who have held office in the postwar period are not the cause, but a reflection, of the relatively lower working class level of consciousness and combativity of the members they represent. This is mainly a consequence of the construction of the social safety net and collective bargaining system and the steady improvement in living standards in the wake of the economic depression and political instability of the 30's. This in turn has allowed union leaders to retain the loyalty of the majority of their active and passive members and to easily fend off challenges from left activists seeking a more radical direction. Where there have been rank-and-file rebellions, these have typically resulted in elevating leaders who have inevitably shared the worldview and replicated the behaviour of the faction which they replaced. The more recent decline in real wages and job security as a result of organizational and technological change and outsourcing has made workers less rather than more inclined to join unions and challenge their employers. The influence of the far left is as low as it has ever been.
In other words, changes in the underlying material conditions of existence have had more to do with the contemporary malaise of the working class than the presumed treachery of trade union leaders and the flawed understanding of the radical left.