In its effort to overcome the three-pronged character of the crisis which is rocking the capitalist system in the U.S., the ruling class is gearing up to place the entire burden of solving its crisis on the backs of the working class and the oppressed masses. This has posed the most acute problems for the official leadership of the U.S. trade union movement. Never have they been confronted with the magnitude of the problems with which they are faced today. In some respects, the contemporary problems greatly transcend those which arose from the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Labor leaders confronted with three crises
For the first time the labor bureaucracy has to deal with three crises simultaneously. It first of all has to deal with the current, cyclical, economic crisis which daily adds hundreds of thousands to the unemployment rolls and puts into jeopardy millions of others who are holding on precariously to their jobs as the crisis deepens. In other times, the labor leaders always tended to sit out the crisis and wait for the capitalist cycle of development, which brought on the crisis, to exhaust itself and thereby "solve" the crisis for the labor leadership.
In recent years, however, each capitalist crisis, even when it is overcome leaves more workers unemployed than the previous one. Even the capitalist economists who predict a short duration for the present economic crisis, say it will leave many more millions unemployed than the previous crisis.
In previous times, the labor leaders could content themselves by putting up a pro forma series of demands which were not seriously meant to be effective or fought for. Now, however, the growing restlessness and urgency of the situation makes this well-nigh impossible for them. One of the hidden reasons for their new concern lies in the fact that ever-greater numbers of skilled workers, the backbone of the old trade union bureaucracy, are becoming more and more endangered from layoffs arising from technological changes forced upon the workers.
Loss of U.S. competitive position
There is still another crisis. This crisis grows out of the loss of the predominant economic position of the U.S. in the world. This has meant the loss for U.S. capitalist commerce and trade of the competitive advantages it used to enjoy in the world capitalist market.
What this has meant in terms of the loss of jobs in this country is hard to estimate, but it runs into the many hundreds of thousands, and some say as many as two million jobs will be lost by the end of 1983.
Finally, there is yet a third crisis. It is called the geopolitical crisis. By this is meant the loss of the U.S. position as the world's military policeman.
Up until now, the labor bureaucracy was the most vociferous in its demands for huge military expenditures, going even far beyond the so-called moderate bourgeois elements in the capitalist establishment. The labor bureaucracy paid only lip service to the social and economic demands of the workers whenever they were arrayed against military expenditures.
Military expenditures won't soak up unemployment
Now, however, it has become plain, even to the dullest in the labor hierarchy that in a period when the ruling class is relentlessly pushing for retrenchment and austerity military expenditures will not bring the same benefits to the workers in the defense plants as was the case during the heyday of the Second World War or the Korean and Viet Nam wars.
For instance, the much-touted "vast employment program" of the military-industrial complex is now seen as greatly exaggerated. That's because the industrial tycoons bankers and military leaders are pushing more and more to replace blue collar workers with a minimum of white jacket technicians.
An index of how things are really working out can be seen in such key military-industrial firms as McDonnell-Douglas, Boeing, and others. Although there has been an increase in the workforce there since the promulgation of the infamous "Carter [War] Doctrine," hiring has nowhere reached the level it was played up to be in early January. Far from it.
In each of the huge military-industrial complex units, such as McDonnell-Douglas, Boeing, Martin-Marietta, and others, the contradiction between the civilian sector of the corporation, which produces, for instance, commercial planes, and military production is deep.
In the most cherished units of the capitalist, industrial machine, the deepening economic crisis shows itself in the civilian sector which means the bona fide sale of commercial planes, etc., as opposed to the guaranteed purchase by the government of military hardware. McDonnell-Douglas didn't even show a profit in this last quarter, although it's plain that its misfortune with the DC-10 was the main factor.
Nevertheless the broader aspect is the need by the industrialists including the military sector to shrink and reduce the work force. This is in marked contrast to what it was years ago when the retooling and gearing up of war industries was considered easy and employment even grew to excessive numbers because of a war economy.
Today it is different. The whole economy is shrinking and deliberately made so by the bourgeoisie. The reverberating effects throughout the economy which defense orders are supposed to have are coming slow and are nothing like they have been during periods prior to a war.
It is true, of course, that increased hiring in most of the defense plants is somewhat of a shelter for workers there. But here again even in the best of situations the ravages of capitalist inflation take their toll and overall cast a gloomy perspective This is especially so in the light of the fact that each new weapons system endangers the jobs not only of the unskilled, but of the highly skilled workers, who become an endangered species as a result of technological development.
Military is anti-labor
In previous periods, the labor bureaucracy could easily and falsely view the military as a sort of impartial arbitrator between labor and capital. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that the military entertains a hostile attitude toward the trade unions, stands in utter disregard of the needs of the trade union movement, and is destructive of its legitimate ends. The Department of Defense — the DOD, as it is called-plays an enormous and hidden role in the so-called reindustrialization plans of the ruling class. It has for years been a guide and adviser to big industry as well as commerce.
The military aims at dispersing the concentrated character of the U.S. labor force under the guise of "national security." It seeks to break up huge plants into smaller units and relocate them in remote areas, supposedly for military security but in reality to shield new plants in particular from the progressive character of urban areas and union organization.
The military favors high technology regardless of its cost in terms of the displacement of workers. It cherishes sophisticated and sometimes ridiculously fantastic weapons systems which have no use whatever, except in genocidal wars, and which require a preponderance of white jacket technicians as against blue collar workers.
It's to be noted that the military not only discourages unionization of the armed forces but was recently instrumental in getting a law passed to prohibit collective bargaining of civilian employees in the army.
The military brass is anti-labor. Rank-and-file soldiers, on the other hand, must be sought out as a supportive arm in the working-class struggle.
Crisis in perspective for labor bureaucracy
The triple character of the present crisis presents the labor bureaucracy with the deepest crisis of perspective that it has ever faced. The strategy of the ruling trade union leaders is totally out of accord with the new, multi-national character of the working class and the vast political problems the workers face growing insecurity plant closings shrinkage of industries and still-rising inflation, notwithstanding the drop in interest rates.
Above all the bureaucracy resists the influence in the workplace of the growing numbers of Black, Latin, Asian, and Native workers, young and old, women and men, gay and straight.
Retooling to mean massive unemployment
The ruling class is going to push, one way or another, its huge retooling programs in industry such as auto, steel, shipbuilding, mining, and other related basic industries. In one way or another they aim to get the workers to pay for this in huge capital outlays which may run into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
Whatever scheme they ultimately adopt or whatever combination of schemes they will finally compromise on, the cost of the so-called reindustrialization program means the introduction on a vaster more complex and truly more monstrous scale, of labor-saving devices which will reduce the massive U.S. labor force by millions. It entails a sharp escalation of plant closings, the relocation of plants as well as industries, and the dispersal of the concentrated character of the working class in huge plants, which has been the mainstay of working-class solidarity.
All these plans of the ruling class tend to undermine the solidarity of the workers. They also undermine whatever efforts are commenced at organizing drives among the unorganized and tend to erode the fighting spirit of the organized trade union movement.
Even now, there has been a steady and consistent erosion of trade union organizing drives, which the big business press has by no means lost sight of. The Wall Street Journal of July 28, 1980 states, "The latest National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) statistics show that in the 12 months ending last September 30, unions won just 45% of the 8,000 representation elections held, the smallest percentage since the NLRB was created 45 years ago."
The trade union bureaucracy does not have a program to meet any of the three crises and is merely coasting along, hanging on to the coattails this time reluctantly of the Carter administration It is totally lacking in any independent working-class program.
U.S. can't close door to imports
In previous decades the labor bureaucracy was in the vanguard of unloosing chauvinist attacks on imports as a way of doing yeoman service for the industrialists. Today, however, the U.S. ruling class is so deeply involved all over the globe as a result of military and diplomatic commitments that it cannot afford to close the doors to imports from its imperialist rivals. It needs their support in a reactionary struggle against the socialist countries.
It cannot even close the doors to imports from its satellites such as Taiwan, Singapore, south Korea, not to speak of the puppet regimes that the U.S. controls south of its border whose vast natural resources it needs and which it has to protect against the revolutionary opposition of the masses.
All of this points up that the strategy of the labor bureaucracy to the extent that they have one is totally out of accord with the real situation that is confronting the American working class. Even were it to try to seriously fight for what it considers to be its program of simple trade unionism — higher wages, encouraging the government to fight inflation, and fighting for a labor reform bill to put some teeth in the NLRB — it would be inadequate.
Whatever its merits might have been decades ago, so far as the needs of the working class as a whole are concerned — Black, Latin, Asian, Native, and white, men and women, young and old, gay and straight, disabled and able-bodied — the strategy is like trying to fit a saddle on a cow.
Mass struggles to come
The triple crisis of American capitalism is bound to lead, as it did in the past, to volcano-like, mass, spontaneous eruptions akin to those of the 1930s. The character of the crisis, which will fall on the backs of the workers, is bound to make itself felt in mass outbursts, no matter how long and by what means the ruling class delays them.
Just as the struggle of the thirties broke through and to a large extent away from the official trade union bureaucracy at the time, this is bound to repeat itself, only with far greater force. The Black and Latin struggles in recent years gained most of the concessions that were won by going beyond the traditional framework of Black and Latin leadership at the time.
In order to meet the coming assaults of big business and the variety of reindustrialization plans of the ruling class, some of which are utterly fantastic and impractical and will only operate to provoke a resurgence of the militant mass struggle in the final analysis, it is necessary to construct a revolutionary strategy.
It is often said that a revolutionary strategy is impossible in a period of regression or in reactionary times. But this overlooks the indispensable element of preparation and the inevitability of a mass upsurge in the light of the material foundations which lay the groundwork for it.
Workers' control
It is necessary once again to look into the nature and possibility of workers control of industry as an answer to the developing capitalist offensive.
It is said that workers control of industry is utopian in present-day conditions and that in any case the workers and the unemployed do not see it as an answer to their problems. On the contrary, it is the strategy of the labor bureaucracy and the bourgeois liberals whom they support which is a reactionary utopia and does not answer the needs of the workers.
It is true that workers' control has been a slogan for a long time as a transitional slogan toward a socialist revolution. The long period, which was ushered in by the Second World War and the capitalist stabilization and false prosperity that followed as a result of the Viet Nam and Korean wars, pushed the slogan into the background.
Moreover, the demand for workers' control of industry as a transition to the socialist revolution cannot always and everywhere be easily adapted to working-class needs unless it is adequately prepared and preceded by a series of concrete preliminary demands which are fully in accord and thoroughly in harmony with the needs of the workers.
One of the most pressing problems at the present time arising from the three-pronged character of the capitalist crisis is the virtual barrage of plant closings, especially of small ones. Also to be considered is the growing number of bankruptcies, especially among small establishments. How does workers control begin to have any significance in this area?
Had the labor bureaucracy had some vision of the future of capitalist development and its endemic crises, it would have had its eyes open to plant closings as long ago as the late 1950s when there was only a small scattering of plant closings in the midst of capitalist economic stability.
We had raised the problem then and proposed local, state, and federal laws that would require a year's notice, followed by hearings conducted by the workers and community groups before management dare close a plant. The proposal was first made in the Buffalo area where the Ford Motor Company closed its first plant and where Wickwire Steel also closed a plant. The labor bureaucracy on the whole paid no attention. The local union leadership listened with deep interest, but were unable to impress the national leaderships of their respective unions.
Only now, almost two decades later and in the wake of a virtual epidemic of plant closings and bankruptcies, are there a significant number of bills in several states and one in Congress calling for such prenotification plans before any plant closing.
A prenotification plan is one of the simplest and most elementary legislative measures to push for on a local, statewide, or national level. Had the labor bureaucracy pushed for a national prenotification law in Congress during the 1960s or even the early 1970s, it would have been far easier to garner support for it than it is now when big business has its hordes of lobbyists well aware of the significance of prenotification plans.
Yet what is a prenotification plan — which practically every worker would be favorably disposed to — than an indispensable element in the preparation for workers' control of industry? A prenotification plan acts like an injunction against the bosses without the necessity of going to an individual court against an individual employer and going through lengthy court hearings in order to obtain the necessary relief.
Opens doors to decision making
Prenotification plans are a means to open to the workers the doors to the bosses' decision-making process and to make it possible to stop the bosses in their tracks. It lays the basis for rallying not only the thousands of communities which are intimately connected with the workers but others who lean in a progressive direction to form progressive coalitions to wrest from management that is from the ruling class the decision making power which has been reserved wholly for the industrial barons who run the mighty multi-national conglomerates.
Right now merely starting a national campaign for the passage of a prenotification law in Congress before it adjourns or when the next one starts shortly thereafter could operate to mobilize the workers in this most crucial area of the class struggle.
The idea of the workers having a right to official notice in sufficient time, such as is the case in a prenotification plan, may be new in the labor movement. It is not new, however, insofar as the struggle among the competing groups and combines of capitalists in this country. On the contrary prenotification plans, so far as the inner struggle among the large corporations goes, are more or less an integral part of their business.
The present capitalist crisis was preceded by a wild orgy of takeovers by large corporations of smaller ones, of big fish swallowing smaller ones. It was also preceded by amalgamations between large corporations into conglomerates and by some of these huge conglomerates spinning off, that is, selling some of their units or divisions either for tax evasion purposes or other reasons. All of this usually results in cutting costs, which in the final analysis always means unit labor costs, followed by layoffs.
The tremendous merger wave, which took place before the capitalist cyclical crisis broke out, carries with it tremendous costs to the livelihood of the workers. These mergers always entail rationalization or modernization through labor-saving devices or other means.
The ruling class press and especially the business periodicals are full of stories of how, as a result of consolidations, top executives lose their jobs — heads roll — and middle management gets squeezed out. But who speaks for the workers? When Exxon attempts, as is currently rumored, to take over IBM, this may mean more dividends for the huge stockholders. But what will happen to the workers?
Today, July 28 1980 the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company announced that it is acquiring — that is, swallowing up — the huge real estate holdings of Pan American World Airways in New York City, worth about $400 million. Metropolitan Life has more than $46 billion in assets. Naturally, when such a huge big business octopus takes over such a lucrative unit of another giant corporation, other sections of the ruling class are vitally concerned.
Therefore, the capitalist government has made it a law that prenotification of any plans to acquire or take over or spin off must be given to the currency controller of the U.S., the Federal Reserve, the superintendent of Banking and Insurance, the Anti-Trust Division, and other departments of the capitalist government which look after some of the interests of other elements of the ruling class.
But no notice of any type is required to be given to a labor organization, to the communities involved, or to the workers in general, although it vitally, deeply, and profoundly concerns them most of all.
The end result of most of these mergers, consolidations, and spinoffs especially at the present time is huge layoffs especially among the lowest-paid category of workers which thereby shrinks the labor force.
Example of railroads
It is to be recalled that when the railroads in the U.S. were consolidated into the few that presently exist, it was all done without any consultation of the general public or the labor movement. Only specific individual unions pursuant to contracts had any say in the matter at all. It's no wonder that this has resulted in shrinking the labor force on the railroads to a mere one-third of what it was 20 years ago.
If instead of the bosses just notifying the Interstate Commerce Commission and a few of the unions, pursuant to their contracts, there was a requirement of prenotification to labor and the communities of at least a year and then hearings would be scheduled to take place, giving sufficient time to mobilize the masses, a great deal could have been accomplished.
When businesses go bankrupt
There is still a vast field of industry which is comprised of hundreds of thousands of small plants and establishments of all sorts which face disaster, especially as the crisis becomes more severe.
This shows itself up in the statistics as casualties in the form of 8,000,000 bankruptcies a year. It causes casualties among the workers in the many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, who go unnoticed but who swell the unemployment, food stamp and welfare rolls. No attention is paid to this aspect of the decline except when a mammoth corporation collapses.
What usually happens when these thousands of businesses, which employ hundreds of thousands if not millions of workers, collapse is that a bankruptcy court takes jurisdiction and divides the assets or reorganizes the business apportioning so much to each of the creditors.
The worker's interests, except for the last week's pay, get no attention whatever. Workers' pensions are gravely endangered, if not entirely wiped out. A federal court appoints a referee, usually a well-to-do business lawyer, to wind up the affairs of these establishments or reorganize them. The large corporations of course become reorganized or consolidated, always resulting in the shrinkage of the labor force.
Why should a court have any jurisdiction in the first place without having the workers' representative there as though it were a strike situation. Isn't this what happens during a lockout and doesn't a lockout have the very same effect? In reality a bankruptcy proceeding is just as much a struggle between labor and capital as negotiations for a union contract. Whether the company stays in business or not does not matter.
All the more is it necessary for the workers' representative to be included in any bankruptcy proceeding in the same capacity as the boss's representative as though the business was a going concern. In any division of the assets, the workers' interests as a result of the loss of jobs should come first among the creditors in all respects, not last as is the case now.
Ordinary collective bargaining cannot answer the problems that are made inevitable by a whole series of technological revolutions which have an industry-wide character but also take in their tow closely related industries. Take, for instance, auto. What happens in auto affects one out of every six or seven workers in the United States. What happens in auto has a domino effect in steel glass rubber textile and other industries.
Whoever takes a narrow or fragmented view of dealing with only one plant, no matter how big, ultimately finds that in this period of industrial capitalist decline they are utterly helpless. Take, for instance, what happened in Chrysler.
For years the United Auto Workers Union (UAW) dealt with each of the big auto companies on an individual basis, believing that dividing the three competing giants was the best strategy. Assuming that dividing the auto giants had some limited value, it was at the expense of general working-class solidarity which became a crying need when Chrysler announced that it was near bankruptcy and needed the aid of the capitalist government.
Ignored transition to state capitalism
The UAW failed to see that the U.S. auto industry was undergoing a transition long since passed in other industries, especially in Europe, toward state capitalism.
Immediately, the protagonists in this struggle were no longer the Chrysler workers versus the Chrysler Corporation. The subtle transition which took place transformed the arena of the struggle from that of the Chrysler workers against a single corporate giant into a struggle between the Chrysler workers and the entire capitalist state. The negotiations in truth were no longer between the UAW and Chrysler but between the UAW and the capitalist government as a whole.
The Carter administration tried to mask the situation with the help of Chrysler management by reducing the role of the UAW in the bailout proceedings which in reality were bankruptcy proceedings. Instead of there being a struggle between all the autoworkers against the capitalist government the capitalist government reduced the UAW to one of several parties in the bailout along with Chrysler suppliers, dealers, state and county governments, and the banks. All were viewed to have some interest in the bailout negotiations along with labor which also had "some interest" with the others.
But this merely masked the reality of the situation, which is a struggle between the auto workers, the real producers, against the bosses, the capitalists. Bankers, suppliers, dealers, state, municipal, or county governments, etc., are so many different arms of the ruling class.
The UAW was drawn into accepting a position on the Chrysler board as one of several parties long before the negotiations began for the bailout. The true position in the given situation, which is going to be repeated in many industries as the capitalist crisis continues, is that the workers, that is, labor, are not just one of several interested parties along with the varied assortment of separate capitalist cliques.
Only two parties — labor and capital
In such a situation, the preliminary position of the workers' representatives has to be that there are, in reality, only two parties in the struggle of which labor is one. All the other different groupings are on the other side, in the camp of capital.
Whether labor sits on the Chrysler board or not, it must have a veto power as against capital. To permit labor, that is, the working class, to be represented as one of many interested parties means that capital has the exclusive, predominant weight as against the working class by camouflaging the many separate interests of the bourgeoisie.
Now that class collaboration has advanced so far in the trade union movement that capitalist government officials and the bosses as well are pushing for the so-called partnership between labor government commerce industry etc., it is more necessary than ever to find some legal way to clarify the class struggle, of projecting the irreconcilable class character of the struggle between capital and labor, between the exploiter and the exploited, so as to make it more understandable, at least in a preliminary way, among the broad masses of the workers.
Thus if a union representative accepts a position on the board of directors of a large corporation and the union is obliged to support it as a result of unfavorable conditions, it would then be most important to propose that he or she accept the post with the right to veto any plans or projects whatsoever and not merely be counted as one of the board members or one of the several interests in the corporation since there are only two interests — that of the workers and that of the bosses.
Up until now, it has been management, the bosses, that have exercised a veto power over everything the workers need and want to do except that which the bosses are forced to surrender in their contracts. But the bosses have shown they cannot run their own plants and are looking for ways to shut them down or curtail operations, leaving vast areas of industry idle. Especially at a time when they are trying to entice the labor leaders and others into their so-called partnership to retool and modernize at the workers' expense, labor and its allies, whether on the board of directors or otherwise, must perfect and popularize its right to veto and not allow management to simply consult and then do what it wants to.
The veto power would then become another stepping stone in the direction of introducing workers' control of industry.
There can be no workers' control of industry without the workers having a job. This is the most indispensable element in the entire struggle. The right to a job must not be viewed solely as a political right, vital as it is.
In a country which is so heavily steeped in bourgeois legality it is important to put as many workers' demands as is possible in the framework of the bourgeois legal system. This lesson is easily learned in days of genuine mass struggle.
The right to a job as a property right is not an invention drawn out of thin air, divorced from the class struggle. On the contrary, jobs as a property right surfaced, even though momentarily, during the fiercest struggle of the sitdown strikes of the '30s, especially during the great General Motors sitdown.
The bourgeois press howled that the sitdown strikers were violating private property by occupying the premises of the giant industrial corporation. The answer of some of the more developed workers was that their right to a job was also a property right and should be regarded as equally important by the capitalist government.
It was not much later that even the then-Secretary of Labor Perkins said that she saw some validity to the idea that workers had a property right to their jobs. Indeed, it was an enforced recognition of what should be regarded as a commonplace and an elementary proposition in the struggle between the camp of the working class and the bourgeoisie. The latter own the means of production. These, however, are useless without the workers. The property rights of the workers derive from this inseparable relationship.
True workers' control of industry cannot begin without this right becoming central to the whole struggle.
Along with prenotification plans for plant closings, which will be in the offing as the retooling of industry progresses, there must also be a vast popularization campaign to enlarge the voting rights of the people in a somewhat new and different way than the mere biannual or quadrennial elections where the bosses pick their candidates and the people have to choose from them.
How should the voting rights be enlarged? By allowing the people to vote directly, on an advisory basis first, on industry takeovers, especially where industries are failing but also where they are gouging the public.
If given a chance, the majority of the people would vote for a people's takeover of the oil industry. Even a mere advisory vote, such as, for instance, is being attempted in the Detroit area, can give a powerful impetus to a takeover movement by the people.
Wherever possible, propaganda should be directed to loosen the restrictive laws which surround the right to a referendum by the people. This is especially important in areas where large plants, which are the lifeblood of a community, are on the verge of collapse or relocation, or where attempts are being made to shrink the labor force in such a way as to make ghost towns out of vital industrial cities.
If a Proposition 13 [1] bill can be effectuated because it favored the rich, why not a proposition which puts the oil companies into the hands of the people? This can be done locally, on a statewide level, and must be vigorously pushed on a national level.
Enlarging the rights of the people to vote when they think it is necessary, and not when they are dictated to, will introduce a wholly new perspective in the struggle of the workers for control of industry. This struggle is bound to escalate as the decline of capitalist production becomes more pronounced particularly in industries which have the greatest amount of obsolescence.
Wresting the authority from the ruling class
Workers' control, therefore, must be seen, first and foremost, as a series of concrete, preliminary steps of a varied character, depending on conditions before it can become an understandable and acceptable agitational slogan geared toward promoting the takeover of industry and putting it firmly under the control of the workers and their allies among the population.
It goes without saying that no preliminary step can be of much significance unless it is accompanied simultaneously by an attempt to break loose from the captivity of the capitalist parties who by and large dominate both the thinking and the politics of the trade union officialdom Devising ever-more concrete simpler urgently needed steps in the direction of wresting the authority from the ruling class over the means of production is a historical necessity for the working class and especially the most oppressed and super-exploited masses.
No policy, however progressive and revolutionary sounding it may be, can possibly succeed unless it becomes welded in a united front with the millions of undocumented workers and takes cognizance as well of the need to purge the movement of all racism and chauvinism. The U.S. labor force today is of a thoroughgoing multi-national character and both tactics and strategy must be fashioned to this all-important development.
National oppression and the privileged character of the white, upper-stratum of the workers are an axis on which the ruling class has thrived long enough. It must be broken in order to weld working-class solidarity, which is so urgently needed in the struggle against capitalist exploitation and imperialist oppression.
— July 28, 1980
Index
Prologue
Chapters 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
Last updated: 13 May 2018