First Published: The Call, Vol. 8, No. 7, February 19, 1979.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The past year has witnessed new signs of growth in the influence of communists in the trade union movement.
In part, this has been due to the worsening crisis of capitalism which is leaving more workers disenchanted with the system. At the same time, communists and other revolutionary workers have gained more experience in trying to lead the class struggle and have learned valuable lessons that have strengthened their work.
One of the most important of these lessons has centered around the need to base labor organizing work on the concrete conditions of the class struggle.
Strategically–that is, in the long-range sense–our Party’s aim is to transform the trade unions into fighting, class struggle organizations freed from the stranglehold of the corrupt union bureaucrats who now control them. The Party works to win the broad majority of workers in the unions to the cause of socialist revolution.
Communists also strive to play a leading role in all the day-to-day struggles of the workers against the economic and political attacks of the bosses. Wherever people are fighting for their rights and the betterment of their economic conditions, communists give support and guidance, pointing out the need to get rid of the system that spawns these attacks.
But how to work towards the strategic goals under conditions today when, in general, there is no great upsurge by the working class, and the labor movement is in a relative ebb–this is primarily a question of tactics.
Being in tune with the concrete conditions means having an accurate knowledge of the workers’ actual situation and knowing what issues and demands are most pressing in any factory situation. It also means being able to gauge what forms of organization and methods of struggle the rank and file is most ready to take up.
In the recent history of struggle, the communists in the labor movement have been plagued with subjectivist errors, at times confusing strategy with tactics, concentrating only on the former and paying too little attention to the latter.
This means that in the strategic fight to build class struggle unions or to promote multinational unity, for example, they sometimes have ignored what the masses of workers felt were the most pressing demands in their shop. They therefore failed both to advance the immediate struggle or use it to build the broader fight of the workers.
The work of communists active in District 31 of the United Steelworkers Union (USWA), though, contains some positive examples of how revolutionaries have practiced the “mass line” and rejected this subjectivist method.
Prior to last September’s USWA convention, for example, communists in District 31 worked with a number of militant workers in area mills to formulate an eight-point program that reflected steelworkers’ main demands.
In general, this program was sound, having been based on investigation and discussion with the workers. One of the contributions of the communists and more politically advanced workers was the program’s opposition to the ellout leadership of both USWA President Lloyd McBride and the liberal “opposition” forces headed by District 31 director James Balanoff.
This eight-point program called for no layoffs, a shorter work week with no cut in pay, smash the ENA (no-strike agreement) and win the right to strike, no discrimination against minorities and women, no support for the jingoist anti-import campaign, worker-enforced safety programs, democracy for the union membership, and U.S. Steel out of South Africa.
Some demands were more readily accepted by the majority of workers than others, and communists had to carry out more education around such issues as why the anti-import campaign was against rank-and-file interests. But the fact that this program did speak to the needs of steelworkers was shown by the popular support it received. Some communists and militant workers even ran on this program in convention delegate elections and received hundreds of votes.
However, a weakness showed up in the work at the USWA’s convention.
For example, the biggest floor fight at the convention and the sharpest focus of debate proved to be over the membership’s right to ratify. Thousands of steelworkers were demanding the right to vote on their own contracts.
While the demand for union democracy was one of the planks of the eight-point program, it did not go far enough. The program wasn’t supplemented with a more specific convention platform on the right to ratify. As a result many rank-and-file militants active in this fight couldn’t look to the Party for concrete leadership in this important battle.
Party activists drew the conclusion from this that their tactics had not been flexible enough, and that fighting for the longer-range goal of union democracy required them to also fight for each specific demand in this area, such as the right to ratify. Communists saw more clearly that general programs must be supplemented by specific demands at given times, and that industry demands must also be supplemented by union, millwide and even departmental programs of struggle.
Because of the communists’ class-wide outlook and Marxist analysis, the leadership of the Party was necessary in the struggle. But at the same time, the Party’s program for struggle must be taken out to the workers so that they can correct it, make it more concrete and applicable, and therefore genuinely fight for it.
Another question facing these activists was what forms of organization the workers would more readily adopt in their fight.
Many of those active in the USWA locals in District 31 correctly saw the need for organization among the rank and file, because the union misleaders constantly worked to squash struggle against the bosses. But many workers didn’t agree that this was necessary.
Rather than trying to form a rank-and-file caucus without the support of a number of active workers, CPML members tried to educate their fellow workers through the course of waging the day-to-day struggles, and showing why organization was necessary.
At one mill, such a committee was organized out of the fight to rehire a Mexican worker unjustly fired. At another, a rank-and-file committee grew out of the workers’ opposition to the bureaucrats’ efforts to expel two union militants on phony charges of “antiunion” activity.
Out of the step-by-step formation of various local committees, the District 31 Rank and File Committee got off the ground last year. This committee helps coordinate rank-and-file activity in the various locals and publishes a district-wide newsletter. Again, the committee was built, not because some militants thought it would be a good idea, but because through their own experiences, a number of workers saw the need for it and acted.
In District 31 some lessons were also learned about how to employ methods of struggle which workers could most easily respond to and take up.
Aside from running delegates to the USWA convention, petition campaigns were launched around specific shop floor issues. Because steelworkers in the district had little recent experience with strikes or other millwide actions in the fight against the bosses, they were more ready to participate in the departmental meetings, slowdowns and walkouts which were organized than in larger-scale actions.
This approach is different from that of the revisionist CPUSA, which tails after and praises every reformist bureaucrat in order to build their so-called “left-center coalition.” The revisionists use the rank-and-file movement only as a means to pursue power for themselves in the steel union.
Our Party’s approach is also different from that taken by the various ultra-“leftists” and Trotskyists, who claim that big strikes, demonstrations and militant actions are the only good methods of struggle.
The CPML, in contrast, makes use of all methods of struggle–mass action included–in accordance with each situation. Speaking to this, V.I. Lenin, the leader of the Russian revolution, once ridiculed those who always and everywhere advocated ”revolutionary” actions among the workers. In his book, Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder, Lenin added:
“It is far more difficult–and of far greater value–to be a revolutionary when the conditions for direct, open, really mass and really revolutionary struggle do not yet exist, to be able to champion the interests of the revolution (by propaganda, agitation and organization) in non-revolutionary bodies ... among masses who are incapable of immediately appreciating the need for revolutionary methods of action.”
The progress in communist work in District 31 also helped to correct some rightist thinking by some Party members who held that because there was no great upsurge shaking the mills, that therefore workers were not ready to fight for their demands. It was shown that workers will fight if they have a program that reflects their main demands and if they have acceptable forms of organization and methods of struggle to carry out that fight.
Finally, it was shown that communist education and recruitment can and must go on at the same time that the day-to-day struggle is being organized, even during today’s period of relative ebb.
During the three-month campaign to build the Party newspaper, The Call, late last year, one CPML steel unit sold 33 subscriptions to steelworkers. One district of the Party held a Call Day in which over 130 papers were sold to new readers in and around the mills. And with the participation of a number of worker correspondents, the number of Call articles on the struggle in steel increased by three times over that of previous months.
In addition, Marxist-Leninist study groups and groups of workers who regularly discuss The Call grew out of the shop floor organizing efforts of the communists. More workers came to see the link between their own struggles in steel and class-wide issues facing all workers. A number also saw the need for a socialist revolution to replace the capitalist system, and have joined the CPML.
Through the course of our Party’s work in the last year, lessons were also learned about how–and how not–to expose and fight the reactionary trade union bureaucrats, while at the same time making use of alliances and splits within their ranks. This will be the subject of the next article on communist tactics in the labor movement.