Marv Gandall <marvgand2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
, turbulo at aol.com wrote:
>
>> I don't think Gandall is trying to let the union leadership off the hook,
>> exactly. (At least I hope not.) Bureaucrats remain in place, with their rotten
>>> class-collaborationist politics, in good times as well as bad. They continue
>> to be on the lookout for any kind of rank-and-file
>> militancy, and try to thwart it, even though it may be uncommon. I think Marv
>> is trying to explain why the rank and file
>> accepted this leadership for so long. I agree that the explanation should be
>> sought in objective circumstances.
>
> Jim's understanding of my position is correct. My view of the union bureaucracy largely conforms to what Ernest Mandel, following Rosa Luxemburg, wrote about it a couple of decades ago, and was confirmed by my own contact with the phenomenon in both private and public sector unions. Mandel noted that the development of unions and workers' parties was "inconceivable without an apparatus of full-timers and functionaries", typically composed of militants risen from the ranks and middle class intellectuals. But he also noted that this leads to a centralization of knowledge, and therefore of power, which inevitably distances the apparatus from the base - unless it is held accountable by an active and militant membership.
>
> In the absence of such accountability, the officials confer generous incomes and other privileges on themselves, curry favour with their employers who go out of their way to flatter them, and, most important, make the preservation of the union on which their careers and lifestyles depend an end in itself rather than attempting to deepen and extend workers' struggles which could place the institution at risk. Rather than encouraging militant mass action by their members, they rely instead on electoral campaigns and political lobbying and on the highly-regulated collective bargaining system to win partial concessions.
>
> In Mandel's view, the potential for unchecked bureaucratization increases when the balance of forces weighs heavily in favour of the bourgeoisie, class conflict is at a low ebb, and the vast majority of workers are passive. It is in that sense that the conservativism of the labour leadership is a reflection of the lack of class consciousness of the base rather than its cause, though obviously there is a dialectical relationship between the passivity of the membership and the reluctance of the labour leadership to mobilize it. Mandel, and Luxemburg before him along with other Marxists, viewed such periods as temporary lulls in the class struggle, but it seems to me that the lull has lasted so long as to define an entire epoch.
^^^^^^^^^
CB: Now will the tea Republican successful assault on labor in Wisconsin, Indiana and the current epoch's trade union stronghold of Michigan drum dialectics into the heads of the Midwest American 99% ;and beget a radical struggle against today's Koch Brothers led bourgeoisie ?