As the following work summation makes clear, there is a material basis for Black workers playing the leading role in militant rank-and-file organizations. In this plant Black workers as a whole were the most eager to form a strong, militant workers’ organization and the most receptive to progressive and revolutionary ideas.
Clearly, the Black workers had the potential to provide leadership for the entire rank-and-file. However, because of subjective errors on the part of revolutionaries, due to not grasping thoroughly the crucial importance of the national question and a lack of a long-term perspective, this potential did not develop. The lessons learned hopefully will prove valuable to future work in that plant and elsewhere.
This report is based on the experiences of some Black and white revolutionaries now in or close to the RU, although at that time the RU as an organization did not play a role in the work.
There are deep divisions in the U.S. working class, divisions with a long history and roots in racism and white chauvinism which have existed in the U.S. since the country’s founding. These roots will not easily be eradicated, but as Mao Tsetung says, the struggles of the Black people and the struggle of the whole U.S. working class are bound to merge to overthrow the common oppressor.
This merger will not be spontaneous, but will develop out of common struggle guided by a correct political line, and the recognition that we live in a country that was initially built primarily upon the backs of Black men and women. The struggle of the Black nation is bound up with the struggle of the Black worker and the entire working class, and therefore we try to understand the role of nationalism and its relation to the question of organizing at the point of production.
Plant “X” is part of a large imperialist corporation and is one of several located in the area. The plant produces heavy construction equipment, and employs approximately 2300 workers in production. This corporation has extensive overseas operations, with 22 plants in foreign countries. It derives 20% of its profits from international operations.
The total work force is between 40-50% Black. Five to 10% of the work force is skilled, and these skilled workers are almost all white. The higher labor grades are, in the main, white and middle-aged, while the jobs on the production line are largely Black, with the balance of the production workers being young whites.
At first there seems to be little friction between the white and Black workers in the plant; but this is just on the surface. The clearest manifestation of the low level of unity between Black and white workers is the distribution of seating in the cafeteria: whites on one side, Blacks on the other. This is reflected in every other aspect of life in the plant, as well. Even on the line, Black workers tend to be actually on the line while the young white workers are on the less oppressive, sub-assembly lines.
On every job, in every area of the plant, the company, through its racist foremen and its own policies, conspires to separate Black and white workers. Black workers hold the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs in the plant. This, coupled with the oppression of Blacks in the community, makes the Black worker the most politically advanced and the most militant. This fighting attitude on the part of Black workers sets them apart in practice from the whites, at least as much as purely cultural differences.
White workers, on the other hand, tend to view the Blacks as a threat to their living conditions outside the plant, and a threat to their working conditions inside. This lack of consciousness naturally reinforces itself. For example, although conditions on the assembly lines are the worst, there is little support for the struggles of the men there because most of them are Black.
There is only one union in the plant; it is a big, so-called “liberal” union. There had been some militant struggles in the plant in the early fifties, but the history of these struggles is practically unknown to the young workers. The present union leadership is almost totally white and is firmly based on the more privileged workers in the plant. The leadership is well known for the open racism expressed by individual leaders, although they try to maintain a liberal front.
None of the leadership is militant, even in the defense of the interest of its base. Shop issues are invariably sent through a complex and exhausting series of company-union meetings where they are seldom settled in the interests of the workers. This holds true almost the same for white workers as for Blacks. (At one of these meetings, the union president served lemonade and then fell asleep during the discussion of wage adjustment grievances.)
The union leadership is completely petit-bourgeois in its class consciousness. The union president is a landlord, owning three multi-flat buildings, and he confided to a worker that the union was supposed to protect the “better class of working people” from the unemployed and the Blacks.
Two independent, non-RU collectives that only recently had been able to put some cadre in the plant immediately began to seek out young white workers, using a newspaper copied after the early Black Panther Party (BPP) paper as an organizing tool. They were successful in recruiting a few young white workers into a study group in which much of the discussion centered around armed struggle and support for the BPP. At the same time, two employees who supposedly represented the BPP were competing for the attention of the young workers. One was Black, the other white.
Joint sessions occurred with the workers at the union hall or local tavern, where the BPP representatives were running a strictly lumpen line that was opposed to dealing with shop issues, and pushing the non-importance of the plant and the all-importance of arming in the community. According to them, holding a job was counter-revolutionary. This line appealed to the young freaks in the plant who saw the job as temporary anyway, and to some Blacks who saw themselves as revolutionary pimps.
At this time the collectives decided to put out a plant newsletter, concentrating on shop issues, the union, and the super-exploitation of Black workers. Since there was already a union sheet distributed inside the plant, and the management was opposed to any other newsletter, the first issues were passed out at the plant by other members of the collectives and friends.
The newsletter was accepted by the workers and even defended. One day at the gates while a young woman was passing Out the newsletter, she was grabbed by the plant guards and roughed up. Immediately, the workers who witnessed the incident rushed over to defend the women, and rescued her from the plant pigs.
The newsletter caught on and a real interest developed around it, as more and more workers became involved in its production. Later, a clandestine distribution system was set up inside the plant, and there was no longer any need to hand it out at the gates. Some workers began to relate very closely to the newsletter and to write articles for it. Out of this core a multinational group was formed, but was unable to sustain itself.
The main reason why the first groups could not sustain life was the internal problems with the organizers in the plant. Although the newsletter launched a new level of struggle between the union-management and the workers, it also precipitated a struggle between the originators of the paper and the BPP representatives who wanted their line printed in the newsletter. Arguments ensued over the content of the newsletter, and finally the BPP was excluded from it altogether. Very soon after this, the BPP group ceased to function as an organizing force. The BPP line simply had no real legitimacy among the solid, long-term workers, and when the BPP representatives attempted to change at the last moment and substitute a revisionist line for the lumpen one they had been preaching, they lost their credibility.
Over a period of a year or more, groups formed and re-formed around the newsletter. At first these were all white; later, multinational, mostly Black groups were formed, but they all tended to be short-lived.
The company, in collusion with the union, openly banned the newsletter from the premises, and later fired outright those caught passing it out. The union refused to defend the workers, and ultimately the issue was taken to the NLRB and the jobs reinstated. One steward who was fired was never rehired; apparently, he was considered a real threat by the union and the company.
As an organizing tool, the shop newsletter had great potential, and certainly was successful in penetrating the plant and generating a following, but several factors militated against realizing its full potential.
In order to sum up the lessons we learned here, we must begin with the revolutionaries inside the plant. They were petit-bourgeois whites from student backgrounds who were attempting to build a revolutionary caucus in short order- and at the same time proletarianize themselves. The real problems of intellectuals integrating with the workers led to some mistakes, and these were compounded by a tendency to vacillate between “left” and right errors.
The climate inside the plant was ripe for organization. Workers gave a lot of attention to the new organizers and, later, they eagerly accepted the plant newsletter. Black workers were especially eager for a real militant workers’ organization. This was evidenced by the ready interest shown in the Panther Party, although it never put forward a program relevant to the worker and the workplace. With the exception of a few young whites, the most advanced workers and those most willing to relate to a revolutionary organization were the Blacks. It was the Blacks who in the main wrote articles for the newsletter, distributed it in the plant, and came to the meetings.
The creation of the newsletter signalled the switch from support of the Panther line, which was based mainly on the currency of the Panther image, to an economist approach, based strictly on in-plant demands without integrating them with the long-range goals of proletarian revolution. Along with the temporariness of some of the whites around the newsletter, was a paternalistic attitude which showed itself in putting forth ideas and articles without correct investigation and consultation; a resistance to writing articles in the language of the common Black worker; assuming they were the natural leaders of Black people; etc. Black workers were ready to listen to programs formulated by white revolutionaries, but they were not about to be led around by a white guru. Natural leadership of Black struggles by Blacks was never really encouraged and developed.
The groups around the newsletter were formed from advanced workers who responded favorably to it and who were actively organizing and helping advance the struggles of others in the plant. Constant visiting and socializing outside of the work place was necessary to sustain even a relatively small group.
In group meetings, grievances and general shop talk would go on, as well as discussion of the content of an issue of the newsletter, but there was practically no real political discussion or study. This was one of the main factors in the groups’ collapse. There was no concrete dealing with revolutionary politics and strategy and, therefore, those brought together never developed any long-range goals and ideas of how they related to the immediate work going on.
Most importantly, an incorrect analysis developed naturally from the incorrect premise that any caucus in the plant had to be multinational. The most advanced section of the workers obviously was Black, and an all-Black organization or caucus should have been encouraged and built which could have given leadership to the entire work force.
A multinational group could have been formed, as well, for advanced white workers to participate in, and developed as an intermediary organization for unifying a larger workers’ organization. On the other hand, a strong Black base would have been the motive force in organizing the entire plant. There were Blacks who refused to be in a caucus with whites because they felt it would “half-step” and vacillate, and these Blacks were considered backward because of it. Black national consciousness was more or less overlooked, along with concrete political programs that would lead to active struggle. These two factors were the most important in terms of the failures in this plant.
At present, there is still a formation in the plant that may benefit from our previous errors, as well as our modest successes. The newsletter is still being published and is overall a positive influence; and there are other contacts that can be developed along the lines of an all-Black caucus.