On 2013-08-15, at 2:24 PM, michael yates wrote:
> Marv asks "when didn't the power of ruling class ideology have this effect on the masses?" What I said wasn't just about the masses but leaders of working class organizations and movements...
>
> ...The trajectories of the UAW and the SEIU tell us something profoundly depressing about organized labor in the United States...Capitalism brings forth behaviors and modes of thought in its own image and likeness. We are forced to act in certain ways if we want to survive and prosper. But these cannot liberate us; they only help to recreate an oppressive system. Unions might raise wages, improve working conditions, and force governments to enact worker-friendly laws. These are good things, but they do not challenge the rule of capital. And if unions come to mirror their class enemy, they would not even be able to achieve these victories. If the UAW and the SEIU hold themselves up to a mirror today, the faces they see will be those of GM and Health Corporation of America."
I see your point, and agree with it. Many trade union leaders share the same aggressive individualist ethos and skills as corporate bosses and find it easy to relate to them and to identify with their values when they begin to mix. At least, that has been true of the white male old guard in the US which rose from a working class and a trade union movement tragically infected by racism, sexism, national chauvinism, and other backward prejudices. Women and non-whites are beginning to make their increased presence felt in the labour movement so perhaps that is changing.
But it's easy to imagine that if the Meanys, Sweeneys, and Trumkas had been born on the other side of the class divide, their "behaviours and modes of thought" would have been little different than the corporate executives sitting across the table from them; only the class interest represented would have changed. Of course, not all or even most trade union leaders display the braggadocio and ruthlessness of a Donald Trump or a Jack Welch. But even the more decent and well-intentioned sort who earned the trust of their fellows as militants at the rank-and-file level soon find themselves overwhelmed in power on discovering the constraints imposed by an adverse relationship of forces. If they're unable to push the boundaries of those constraints as far as possible by concentrating all of their attention and energy on informing, educating and mobilizing their members, as we would, it's because they lack the ideological independence to even conceive of doing so. The tension and struggle between the classes has not become acute enough to force workers and even the best of their representatives to think and act in new ways.