"Workers want an “independent” labor movement designed to help the working class, not a specific party or candidate." AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka is expected to tell the National Press Club in his speech there today. This might be something new to a worker or Union member under 18, but we've heard all this before.
Twenty years ago this stance became the norm at the AFSCME International Conventions to which I was a delegate. Year after year, the Democrats betray workers and year after year, the Labor leadership urges their members to continue voting against our class interests and for this Wall Street Party that most workers have already abandoned. Due to the role that people like Richard Trumka play many workers have drawn the incorrect conclusion that all politics is bad; that all politicians are naturally corrupt and they have withdrawn from the process. This suits the capitlaist class well to a degree but is also welcomed by Trumka and the right wing bureaucracy at the helm of organized Labor as it abrogates them of any responsibility to lead and offer a political independent working class alternative to the Democrats.
The language is almost identical to fifteen or twenty years ago. Trumka will "say that unions intend to focus their 2012 political efforts not based on lawmakers’ party affiliation but rather their stance on issues near and dear to labor.", the Hill reports. “Our role is not to build the power of a political party or a candidate. It is to improve the lives of working families and strengthen our country.” he will say.
What nonsense. Building an independent mass workers' political party is the role of any activist that wants to improve the lives of workers, especially a leader in the position to actually bring it about. The capitalist class with two parties has a monopoly on political life in the US. An independent party of our own would give us a place to fight, to become active in, it would change the balance of forces as each election cycle the strategists of capital would have to take in to consideration that we might all vote for the other guys. It would change the balance of class forces. A political party is different than a Union that limits itself primarily to wages jobs, working conditions. A political party aims to govern, and issues of trade, international relations, and other important issues arise; it changes consciousness.
And Trumka's claim that his role is to improve the lives of working families falls flat. The position of the leadership of the AFL-CIO, every one of them, is concessions. They are also wedded to the Team Concept, the view that workers and bosses have the same interests and the most disastrous concept in their ideological playbook. You can't prepare your troops for war if you believe the army across the river is fighting to achieve the same goals. His talk of strengthening the country is also about the Team Concept. He means strengthening US capitalism in relationship to its rivals, strengthening US business in their competition with international competition. For us this means lower wages and worsening conditions on the job. If he wants to strengthen the country he can start by demanding an end to all wars and occupations and bring the troops home.
No, this is simply the same old stuff. The record of the Democrats is so bad the Labor leadership can't tout them as the party of the people in any way or fashion. They will still support Democrats of course but the issue becomes one of individual candidates and what they stand for not which party to support. This gets them off the hook, puts the issue of independent politics on the back burner, and, with a little begging and whining to their Democratic friends, might get a crumb or two out of them in 2012. The bosses aren't afraid of Trumka.
Any Union member knows that these officials do all they can to keep the members in the dark and out of conscious activity. They openly side with the employers and act as an obstacle to any movement from below that challenges their collaborative stance. The idea of an independent political party terrifies them even more than winning major gains in an industrial dispute because it would increase tremendously the expectations of people; workers would now expect them to "deliver the goods". They would have to actually stand for something different and they do not believe there are alternatives------- they have the same world view as the bosses.
Richard Trumka and his colleagues atop organized Labor will not build an alternative party to the Democrats, a party based on workers and our organizations in the workplaces and communities. A mass workers' party will be borne out of a movement that will arise at some point, huge struggles and clashes that are inevitable as a bankrupt and declining world power has to place its working class on rations.
To borrow a line from Seinfeld, Trumka's message is "Just so much fluff."
* A good biography of Debs is The Bending Cross by Ray Ginger
No comments:
Post a Comment