Unions can sometimes be corrupt, bureaucratic, right-wing etc.
It is fine to criticize unions for not serving their members, not being as democratic internally as they should be, not representative leadership, and having bad politics.
You are criticizing the unions for not being strong enough. You are criticizing them for not being the ideal, class war institutions they are mean to be.
However, strike breaking, or joining a "right to work" campaign, or calling for open shop contracts, or aiding the government jailing labor leaders is something different.
Strengthen unions. Seek to improve them.
Likewise, defend socialist states, and seek to unite and strengthen them.
The practices of the Trotskyist movement in the U.S. are the equivalent of labor activists supporting Taft-Hartley because it will "weaken the trumpka apparatus."
The Fourth International crowd hailed every political move to the right in the USSR, sometimes simply claiming it will "create an opening."
In 1991 they rejoiced calling it is a victory when capitalism was restored. (Except SWP, which thinks that Putin's regime is still a worker's state.)
Thank you for your comment. I do not disagree with your summation.
On restoration, USSR, and the SWP
I disagree with your point that in 1991 capitalism was restored in the USSR. In 1991, the USSR ceased as a legal entity; whether this also resulted in the immediate privatization of the economy is another issue. It reminds me of the arguments of so-called anti-revisionists who claim socialism was overturned in the USSR on 5 March 1953 or 25 February 1956; or overturned in China on 9 September 1976. A workers state does not turn into a pumpkin "at the stroke of midnight."
The US SWP statement that capitalism has not been overturned in the USSR is not a position I accept. It has not been explained in other than rhetorical flourishes. Given the information and analysis contained in books like Keeran and Kerry's "Socialism Betrayed" [The book can be read here: ], and the fact that the SWP has produced no historical-sociological analysis of post-Soviet society to defend their thesis, the burden of proof rests with the SWP.
Your statement that world Trotskyism in 1991 "rejoiced calling it is a victory when capitalism was restored. (Except SWP, which thinks that Putin's regime is still a worker's state.)" is incorrect. Reviewing the relevant contemporary media of the Trotskyist movement at Marxist Internet Archive, and my own experience in the SWP, I can say without a doubt that the events of 1989-1991 were not viewed as an end to the workers states themselves as post-capitalist societies. What was ending was the Stalinist bureaucratic police apparatuses that ran the countries and acted as a brake on workers' democracy and self-organization. No party or tendency in the Trotskyist continuity saw capitalist restoration as automatic in 1991 because none believed the working classes in those countries had been so broken and depoliticized as to not offer any militant resistance to restoration.
In the SWP, both in the leadership and the rank and file, we saw the 1989-1991 events as a prelude to workers and farmers in those countries rising up to defend soviet power and the historic conquests of their revolutions. We firmly believed capitalism would not be restored in the face of such class-wide resistance.
--
A few notes on the 'Fourth International'
The Fourth International was a historic abortion. The objective reason: the expansion of post-WW2 capitalist economic development in imperialist countries; the maintenance and expansion of USSR-style workers states in Eastern Europe; the Chinese Revolution; the anti-colonial upsurge with Stalinized and semi-Menshevik leadership perspectives; the Cuban revolution.
The subjective reason: From 1945-1952, the devastation and slow rebuilding of a small group of cadres. 1952-1963, leadership divisions leading to a series of splits and only half-successful reunifications based upon conflicting views of the role and historical potential of Stalinism within the vanguard of the international labor movement. 1969-1979, the catastrophic detour into guerrillaism by the majority of the United Secretariat. 1979-1984, the failure to systematically proletarianize a majority petty bourgeois student and professional cadre. Post-1984, the retreat of the FI leadership and rank-and-file majority from the Leninist perspective completed in all but name. In the 1990s, completed in name, too.
Today the FI cadre in Europe, for instance, are part of the reformist Green Parties and semi-social-democratic formations like the French LCR.
Trotskyism today, as Jack Barnes noted in 1982, is only a by-word for irredeemable sectarianism.
Think of the USSR as a union.
ReplyDeleteUnions can sometimes be corrupt, bureaucratic, right-wing etc.
It is fine to criticize unions for not serving their members, not being as democratic internally as they should be, not representative leadership, and having bad politics.
You are criticizing the unions for not being strong enough. You are criticizing them for not being the ideal, class war institutions they are mean to be.
However, strike breaking, or joining a "right to work" campaign, or calling for open shop contracts, or aiding the government jailing labor leaders is something different.
Strengthen unions. Seek to improve them.
Likewise, defend socialist states, and seek to unite and strengthen them.
The practices of the Trotskyist movement in the U.S. are the equivalent of labor activists supporting Taft-Hartley because it will "weaken the trumpka apparatus."
The Fourth International crowd hailed every political move to the right in the USSR, sometimes simply claiming it will "create an opening."
In 1991 they rejoiced calling it is a victory when capitalism was restored. (Except SWP, which thinks that Putin's regime is still a worker's state.)
This is betrayal, not criticism from within.
Thank you for your comment. I do not disagree with your summation.
DeleteOn restoration, USSR, and the SWP
I disagree with your point that in 1991 capitalism was restored in the USSR. In 1991, the USSR ceased as a legal entity; whether this also resulted in the immediate privatization of the economy is another issue. It reminds me of the arguments of so-called anti-revisionists who claim socialism was overturned in the USSR on 5 March 1953 or 25 February 1956; or overturned in China on 9 September 1976. A workers state does not turn into a pumpkin "at the stroke of midnight."
The US SWP statement that capitalism has not been overturned in the USSR is not a position I accept. It has not been explained in other than rhetorical flourishes. Given the information and analysis contained in books like Keeran and Kerry's "Socialism Betrayed" [The book can be read here: ], and the fact that the SWP has produced no historical-sociological analysis of post-Soviet society to defend their thesis, the burden of proof rests with the SWP.
Your statement that world Trotskyism in 1991 "rejoiced calling it is a victory when capitalism was restored. (Except SWP, which thinks that Putin's regime is still a worker's state.)" is incorrect. Reviewing the relevant contemporary media of the Trotskyist movement at Marxist Internet Archive, and my own experience in the SWP, I can say without a doubt that the events of 1989-1991 were not viewed as an end to the workers states themselves as post-capitalist societies. What was ending was the Stalinist bureaucratic police apparatuses that ran the countries and acted as a brake on workers' democracy and self-organization. No party or tendency in the Trotskyist continuity saw capitalist restoration as automatic in 1991 because none believed the working classes in those countries had been so broken and depoliticized as to not offer any militant resistance to restoration.
In the SWP, both in the leadership and the rank and file, we saw the 1989-1991 events as a prelude to workers and farmers in those countries rising up to defend soviet power and the historic conquests of their revolutions. We firmly believed capitalism would not be restored in the face of such class-wide resistance.
--
A few notes on the 'Fourth International'
The Fourth International was a historic abortion. The objective reason: the expansion of post-WW2 capitalist economic development in imperialist countries; the maintenance and expansion of USSR-style workers states in Eastern Europe; the Chinese Revolution; the anti-colonial upsurge with Stalinized and semi-Menshevik leadership perspectives; the Cuban revolution.
The subjective reason: From 1945-1952, the devastation and slow rebuilding of a small group of cadres.
1952-1963, leadership divisions leading to a series of splits and only half-successful reunifications based upon conflicting views of the role and historical potential of Stalinism within the vanguard of the international labor movement.
1969-1979, the catastrophic detour into guerrillaism by the majority of the United Secretariat.
1979-1984, the failure to systematically proletarianize a majority petty bourgeois student and professional cadre.
Post-1984, the retreat of the FI leadership and rank-and-file majority from the Leninist perspective completed in all but name.
In the 1990s, completed in name, too.
Today the FI cadre in Europe, for instance, are part of the reformist Green Parties and semi-social-democratic formations like the French LCR.
Trotskyism today, as Jack Barnes noted in 1982, is only a by-word for irredeemable sectarianism.
Comradely,
Jay