______________________________________________________________________ Debate featured in this issue: Will the revolution require one big union? ______________________________________________________________________ issue number 5 april 10, 1993 // /// // //// // /// /// // //// ////// /// ////// //// // // // /// // // // // // // // / // // // ///// // // // // // ///// // // // // ////// // // // //\\ // \\\ ///// // // // // // \\\// / \\ // // //// \\//// \\ // /// // // // //// \\///// \\/// /// // \\\\\\ \\ ////\\\\ \\ \\ \\\ \\ \\ \\\\\\ \\\\\ \\ \\\\\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\\\\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\\\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\\\\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\\ \\\ \\ \\\\ \\\ \\ \\ \\\ \\ \\\ \\\\\ \\\\ address all correspondence to mlepore@mcimail.com #5.01 M. Lepore, 02 March 1993 #5.02 S. Szalai, 10 March 1993 All individuals and #5.03 M. Lepore, 11 March 1993 organizations are welcome to #5.04 S. Szalai, 05 April 1993 distribute this document freely, #5.05 R. Elbert, 19 March 1993 in electronic or printed form. #5.06 M. Lepore, 06 April 1993 ______________________________________________________________________ "If the road over which you will still have to pass should in some places appear to you tedious or irksome, you will recollect that you are in quest of information on a subject the most momentous which can engage the attention of a free people, that the field through which you have to travel is in itself spacious, and that the difficulties of the journey have been unnecessarily increased by the mazes with which sophistry has beset the way." Alexander Hamilton, _The Federalist_, #15 * * * * * * * "`Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?' `That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat. `I don't much care where,' said Alice. `Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat." Lewis Carroll, _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_ ______________________________________________________________________ #5.00 Hello .............................. M. Lepore ______________________________________________________________________ The following statement, called the Object -- "The establishment of a system of society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interests of society as a whole." -- has been adopted by the following organizations, which call themselves the Companion Parties of Socialism: World Socialist Party (U.S.) World Socialist Party (Ireland) P.O. Box 405 41 Donegall Street Boston, MA 02272 Belfast World Socialist Party of Australia Socialist Party of New Zealand P.O. Box 1440M P.O. Box 1929 Melbourne, Victoria 3001 Auckland, NI Bund Demokratischer Sozialisten Socialist Party of Great Britain Gussriegelstrasse 50 52 Clapham High Street A-110 Vienna, Austria London SW4 7UN Varldsssocialistiska Gruppen Socialist Party of Canada c/o Dag Nilsson, P.O. Box 4280 Bergsbrunna villavag 3B Victoria, BC V8X 3X8 S-752 56 Uppsala, Sweden These parties also call themselves World Socialists, and they present very convincing arguments in favor of a worldwide system without national boundaries. I'm impressed with their consistent avoidance of several pitfalls associated with the political left. Some of these deadly pitfalls of the left have been: -- lists of "immediate demands" which imply the continuation of capitalism, perpetuating the illusion that socialism is attainable through a sequence of incremental reforms. -- the idea that the working class ought to follow a "vanguard leadership" composed of an elite few who are intelligent enough to understand history. -- confusion between common ownership and government ownership, which causes many on the left to suggest nationalization of industry by the state, because it seems to sound so "radical". You won't find any of these faults in the eight parties listed above. The major point of disagreement between myself and the World Socialist movement is that it "... advocates the ballot, and no other method, as a means of abolishing capitalism...." (_World Socialist Review_, winter 1991, p. 13); the principle that "... the working class must organize consciously and politically...." (from their _Declaration of Principles_). In other words, they don't propose the use of a large industrial union as the lever for inaugurating social ownership of industry, a concept which is central to my own viewpoint. Although there are other points of disagreement, I predict that this is the difference which we would argue most energetically. Although I cannot pretend to be an unbiased moderator, I hope to give these parties an opportunity to present their side of the story. I began by summarizing my opinion in the article which is copied below, and invited Steve Szalai, the General Secretary of the Socialist Party of Canada, to debate the matter with me in this forum. Additional critique was contributed by two members of the World Socialist Party (U.S.). Ron Elbert, whose letter is attached below, is the editor of the _World Socialist Review_, the publication of the WSP (U.S.) [quarterly, $4 per year, from the address provided above]. The next issue of O.T. will include contributions from Harry Morrison, who served for many years on the WSP's National Administrative Committee. Harry's articles are being postponed until next time because they deal with, not only the industrial unionism debate, but also several other aspects of defining a socialist goal and program. ______________________________________________________________________ #5.01 M. Lepore, 02 March 1993 ______________________________________________________________________ From capitalism to socialism: SHOULD THE WORKERS ORGANIZE POLITICALLY, INDUSTRIALLY, OR BOTH? Opinion by Mike Lepore Abstract ________ How should workers who agree with the recommendation, "Workers of the world, unite!", actually set out to unite? Should the organization of the entire working class take place on the political or on the industrial field? This paper defends the thesis of the North American Marxist Daniel De Leon (1852-1914), who argued that a dual political/industrial program will be necessary for success. WHY INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION? ____________________________ The change from class-divided to classless society will require a workplace-based association encompassing all occupations. Since approximately the year 1900, this concept has been called industrial unionism. This statement is given in response to the Companion Parties of Socialism (the World Socialist movement). These fellow workers, who do not see in the industrial union an instrumental role in the revolutionary transition, are welcome to explain why I'm wrong. I view the industrial union theory as a switch-over theory. A new system of industrial planning has to be assembled, at least in it's basic or foundational structure, while capitalism still exists. Only then can we smoothly switch the task of industrial management, from the old class-ruled system, to a new democratic system. This revolution must be enacted without any interruption in the flow of food, medicine, education, transportation, and the other necessities of life. The flow of these necessities requires workplace units to be in close and daily communication, such as designers sending specifications to fabricators, tool operators placing orders for field repair, repair crews obtaining replacement parts, public services sending requisitions to suppliers, procedures prearranged between hospitals and laboratories, an unbroken connection from agriculture to trucking to food stores, etc. Therefore, our preparation for instituting a new economic system needs to be workplace-based, linking up the departments of workers from manufacturing, mining, transportation, health, education, and all other necessary functions, into a network which is intended to provide the substratum for cooperative administration in the future. We need to erect the skeleton of the new system, as the IWW preamble points out, "within the shell of the old". The revolution will mean reidentifying, not some, but all of the workplace connections we have with one another. For example, let's say the working class decides to abolish capitalism next Tuesday at 9:00 A.M. GMT. (This is to be a coherent action, not a fuzzy "transition period".) At that time, we are to discontinue making military weapons, and, in their place, start making useful items such as school books and medicine. This will require new plant and office committees to meet, new communication lines installed, machinery relocated, specifications written, blueprints requested, shipping instructions changed. We're talking about a class revolution. In nearly every workplace, the recently-deposed capitalist managers will be shouting and insisting that we must obey their "Plan A", yet we must be ready to laugh at them, ignore them, and if necessary lock them outside, so that we can perform our new "Plan B". Our preparedness for that will require that the workers in each facility must have had at least one prior meeting, and that this meeting must have also resulted in some communication among different types of work facilities. This minimum requirement, at least one prior meeting with department level co-workers, would fulfill the basic requirement of the industrial organization of workers needed to bring the industries under social ownership. More likely, however, there would be many prior meetings, since the working class is expected to attain class consciousness over some period of time. The revolution itself can be enacted in five minutes, but learning to advocate a revolution can take years (decades, centuries). But elements of instantaneous change are not all. Even in cases where some aspect of the work does NOT change, for example, if the same driver intends to drive the same truck, or the same operator intends to use the same machine, we would still need a completely new procedure for scheduling everything. We will suddenly have a non-profit economy, with a workweek that's less than half as long as what we work today. The coordination of everything must be rearranged from scratch. The magnitude of this restructuring is such that it must begin well before the industries are converted to social ownership, otherwise we will have a vacuum, and not a new system, to switch over to. This vacuum would have worse implications than our lights going out, and our food pantries being empty. It would mean that another force would fill the vacuum, such as an unpredicted retention of the political state. Worse yet: If our food pantries and coal bins are empty for a month, some workers may start to welcome a fascist dictator to enter -- especially since a political mandate for socialism could occur with a fragile majority of 51 percent. I ask the World Socialists to respond to this, my objection: I don't see how a conquest of the political field by the working class could logically and quickly handle the redesign of the industrial interconnections. The geographical lines of the political state (city, town, county, province) are irrelevant to the linkage of all the departments within the industries and services. Also irrelevant to production is the state's basis of regulating human behavior, such that its major organs are legislatures, courts, police and armies. The rational plans for moving materials, parts, information, etc. from one economic department to another are nowhere found in the anatomy of the state. If the working class unites politically but not industrially, we would then have to start remaking the industrial links, from the very first steps, after announcing that the old management system is ejected. Only then would we begin the identification of the naturally-occurring economic functions, subdivision according to minor functions, committee formation, proposals, feasibility study, and debug by trial-and-error. Meanwhile we would very soon get cold and hungry while waiting for production to resume. * * * * * Another reason for workplace-based organization is because there are at least two advantages to permanently retaining a degree of sectional workers' self-management, e.g., councils of nurses selecting the best procedures for nursing, committees of electricians deciding on the electrical codes, educators voting on the best mathematics syllabus, etc. (1) The people in the respective fields possess greater technical understanding of the details than a democratic assembly of the general public would have. (2) Our basic right to control our own bodies would seem to imply that some facets of management should be decentralized (admitting local preferences for certain tools, methods, shifts, holidays, etc.). However, the general public (either the direct democracy of referenda, or the indirect democracy of a public congress) should always have the ability to overrule the plans of the workplace sub-departments, if ever the more localized choices are seen to be in conflict with principles which have been adopted by society as a whole. Therefore, I conclude that we need both forms of industrial administration - some general population control of industry (which the World Socialists usually recommend), and also some localized and occupational forms of control as well (which the syndicalists usually recommend). The balance between the two, of course, would need to be written into the Constitution which the people eventually decide to adopt. WHY POLITICAL ORGANIZATION? ___________________________ The preceding section doesn't tell the whole story. I also believe that the working class must unite POLITICALLY. Many reasons have been cited by De Leonists for the political organization of labor, e.g., because an election campaign can be used as a soapbox by the industrial organization, and because election results can be used by the union as a gauge of class-consciousness. I would personally like to see those arguments set aside. I don't consider any of that to be fundamental. Those purposes may or may not be possible, depending on fluidic circumstances, and they appear not to be efficient means for achieving their ends. In my view, organization on the political field is needed mainly because the police and military agencies of the state take their orders only from one place -- political offices. These violent agencies of the state will not hesitate to massacre millions of workers if the political offices give them the order to do so. If the capitalist political parties still control the state on the day that revolutionaries start taking collective control of the means of production, the state will certainly order a massacre to take place. Let me break this reasoning into three parts: (1) present-day law says the capitalists are the owners of the industries; (2) the law-enforcers would be the very last segment of the working class to become revolutionary; and (3) the law-enforcers possess such an enormous inventory of deadly weapons and other supplies, that even a general strike could not deprive them of the materials they would need to conduct a slaughter. How can we prevent this ruling-class reaction? -- here's how: When someone is about to hit you with a stick, you're fortunate if you have the option of grabbing the stick away from them and breaking it into several pieces. We must have workers' delegates elected to political offices -- not to "run" these offices, but, rather, to distract and disassemble the oppressive state mechanism, which is merely the ruling class's instrument for maintaining its privileged status. There is also a possibility that the recently-deposed capitalists will contact bands of thugs (Mafia? Klan? CIA?) and promise them riches on the condition that they can restore the old ruling class to power through acts of violence and terrorism. If the working class has acquired control of the state, then this state force can be used for riot control. This riot control should take no more than days or weeks, certainly not the many years imagined by those who advocate a "dictatorship of the proletariat." THE SYNTHESIS _____________ I conclude that a synthesis of the industrial and the political programs shall be required. The optimum point between those who propose political organization (like the World Socialists) and those who propose industrial organization (like the Industrial Workers of the World) would be to combine the strengths of both fields. ______________________________________________________________________ #5.02 S. Szalai, 10 March 1993 ______________________________________________________________________ Steve Szalai < 72607.2404@compuserve.com > First, and I think foremost, among your errors is the concept that socialism could be established "with a fragile majority of 51%." I believe that this is central to our disagreement on the "need" for industrial unionism. Second, and also very important, your belief that "at 9:00 A.M. GMT" everything will suddenly change dramatically in the workplace, is mistaken. The Companion Parties of Socialism, hold that a fragile majority cannot establish socialism. The establishment of socialism will be the work of the vast majority of the population. By allowing for the establishment of socialism with a fragile majority, you necessarily put yourself in league with the Leninists that you elsewhere argue so eloquently against. With a bare majority, you would have to try to lead the remaining 49% to socialism against their will. You would have to force them to follow some grand plan, with which they disagree. It seems to me that industrial unions could supply much of the required coercive force in league with the state, which could not be dissolved. The state would need to remain to provide the "dictatorship of the proletariat" so cherished by the Leninists. All of the links between productive organizations that would be needed on day one, will already be in place. The person in the hospital that orders syringes, would continue to order them from the same person in the same company that they ordered them from the day before. The world will not fall apart by removing the profit motive. I agree that the state, by and large, does not, and will not, have the procedures and expertise to run the productive mechanisms of society. I don't expect it to. Why do you believe that the coordination of everything must be rearranged from scratch, immediately? Why must this restructuring begin well before the industries are converted to social ownership? Why would there be a vacuum if it did not? How could this restructuring begin before the industries were converted to social ownership while the capitalist class retained ownership? Why would the managers be insisting we obey their "Plan A"? Let us consider an entirely different approach to a socialist revolution. An approach that recognizes the impossibility of imposing socialism upon a huge minority and does not try to do so. As socialist consciousness grows in the world populace and when socialists become a majority of the population, the ideas of socialism, and the ideas of how to organize a socialist world will become topics of everyday conversation. At work we will discuss what changes should be made, we will discuss them with our friends, we will have mass meetings, we will discuss these issues within our "professional groups". There will be no dearth of discussion, we will not have to have our union specially schedule last minute workplace meetings to determine the action to take place at the "moment" of the revolution. You make the very important point that "the revolution itself can be enacted in five minutes, but learning to advocate a revolution can take years (decades, centuries)." You seem to ignore it in the rest of your paper. In the years during which the revolution of consciousness is taking place, all of the issues will be discussed and planned for, without the need for "socialist" unions. I have used the phrase "socialist unions" as opposed to "industrial unions" very explicitly. An industrial union that is not socialist is of no more use to revolutionaries than is nuclear weaponry. I am a member of an industrial union that is, like most, anti-socialist. I have a strong preference for industrial over crafts unions, for much the same reasons as outlined by the IWW, but industrial unionism does not mean socialism. I digress. Whether or not the unions will ever divorce themselves from the capitalist parties they now support openly, I do not know. I do believe that if workers don't give up totally on the unions that they may indeed become socialist, but workers may accelerate past the anti-socialist unions and leave them in the dust of history, while organizing politically for the conquest of power. A socialist union today would have a very, very small membership and could not be overly successful in the day to day struggle against the employer. It is better for us as workers to cultivate un-socialist, un-NDP / un-Democratic / un-Republican / un-Liberal / un-Progressive- Conservative / un-Reform / un-whatever Party unions that can succeed for us today, in the limited fashion of unions. In any case the union is not necessary to the establishment of socialism, or to the planning for a new industrial organization. Because unions are inherently tied to the current economic system, it is possible that the most successful unions could not even approach the creation of a new industrial organization progressively. This is a bit tentative because none of us know what the future holds in store for unions. As the revolution progresses, management, the police and the military will also be composed of socialists. At the moment of changeover, with a political state in the hands of a huge socialist majority, the police and the military will be working for socialism. It is important to remember the lesson of Tiananmen Square in 1989. When the police were ordered to suppress the protest, they did not, when the local military was ordered to crush the protest, they did not. Military units from the boonies were required, units unaware of what was going on. That the military, did of course finally crush the protest, demonstrates the need for both a huge majority of socialists and political power. As socialist, conscious cooperation increases, it is inconceivable that planning on a global, local, and industrial unit basis would not occur. This is not a function of the industrial union or the "socialist" union, it is a function of socialist consciousness. It is my understanding that today there are groups "of nurses selecting the best procedures for nursing, committees of electricians deciding on the electrical codes, educators voting on the best mathematics syllabus, etc." What will change with socialism is that these groups will not have to consider the profit factor as a part of their deliberations about "best". I do not propose that production be controlled by some distant body of administrators with no knowledge of the industry. Of course the people in the respective fields possess greater technical understanding of the field than a group of "lay" people. Unfortunately that technical knowledge often involves training that ignores human need and leaves technicians very proficient at very damaging technological approaches. That is already starting to change, and the changes will accelerate as the socialist revolution of thought progresses. I oppose the idea of a community vs the industrial workers. The syndicalist workplace-based approach would engender this sort of antagonism. It seems that rather than some need for a community override, what is necessary is more open communication with others outside the immediate organization, an approach inherently fostered by socialism. If mistakes were made by the technicians, they would be quickly noted by others, inside or outside the organization, and would be corrected, not by override, but by the technicians recognizing the problem. The working class is the community. Workers are not distinct from that community. I suppose that if you are going to have some formalized general population vs industrial worker setup, as you propose, there would be a need for a constitution to balance the two. In a truly cooperative world, based upon production for need, I do not see any need for a constitution. The fine sounding constitutions of the Soviet Union, the United States, and Canada and other countries exist(ed) within a society that made (makes) them worth very little to the working class. Your point about decentralization does not argue for industrial unions, as far as I can tell. Industrial unions need not be decentralized or democratic. The Teamsters Union is a good example. To summarize. I don't see that you have shown the need for industrial organization either to overthrow capitalism or to establish socialism (if one can separate the overthrow of capitalism from socialism). By allowing that socialism could be declared (by whom?) with a slim majority, you fall into the Leninist, vanguard approach of leading the workers to socialism, against their will. Socialism is not the rebuilding of society from scratch, it is the rebuilding of society from wherever it happens to be when the time to rebuild is upon us. Constitutions are requirements of capitalist societies and some pre-capitalist societies. They protect only the welfare of the ruling class. They are not desirable in socialist society. ______________________________________________________________________ #5.03 M. Lepore, 11 March 1993 ______________________________________________________________________ Replying to S. Szalai's March 10th letter: > Why do you believe that the coordination of everything must > be rearranged from scratch > Why would there be a vacuum if it did not? Many workers under capitalism are trained according to job descriptions which put the boss's intervention in the middle of each transaction. For instance, to get a part on the assembly line from sector 1 to sector 2, the following sequence may be written: When the part finishes at sector 1, then the manager of sector 1 signs a certain form ... When the manager of sector 2 receives the signature of the manager of sector 1, additional paperwork is generated, bearing the number of a storage bin ... When the workers at sector 2 receive that paper, they go to the indicated bin and pick up the part. The whole system is set up so that nothing can move without the capitalist's hand-picked supervisor in the loop, placing phone calls to have doors unlocked at certain moments, distributing computer passwords, and processing financial documents such as contracts and bills of sale. Establishing common ownership of industry will require the prearranged adoption of alternative rules, otherwise, it seems to me, production would halt, and have a difficult time resuming in a democratically coordinated fashion. > How could this restructuring begin before the industries > were converted to social ownership while the capitalist > class retained ownership? At some point prior to a socialist revolution, the people in a workplace are likely to gather around a table and say things of the sort, "After the revolution, we will no longer have a supervisor chosen for us by Corporate Headquarters, but I do believe we're going to need one. I'd like to nominate Matilda to be our supervisor. And we should get rid of those blue log books. And we should slow down the inspection line a little bit. What do the rest of you think? Hey, let's hold this meeting every week. Let's ask the other departments to meet regularly too, and to exchange the meeting minutes with us." The association of workers which occurs before the revolution will begin to foreshadow some pattern-formation in the management process which will persist immediately after the revolution. > At work we will discuss what changes should be made, we will > discuss them with our friends, we will have mass meetings, > we will discuss these issues within our "professional > groups" > all of the issues will be discussed and planned for, without > the need for "socialist" unions I wonder if that discussion and planning, which you do allow for, might take on a certain departmental shape, like the way the IWW is composed of six definite departments (agriculture and fisheries; mining and minerals; general construction; manufacture and general production; transportation and communication; public service). If so, then that's exactly what I mean by unionism as part of the revolution. And if such a comprehensive plan is not used, I don't see where we are to have a "nervous system" to interconnect all of these complex functions into a harmonious whole. > I oppose the idea of a community vs the industrial workers. > The syndicalist workplace-based approach would engender this > sort of antagonism. If there is no antagonism between a small group and the human race, that's fine. I don't think that having a protocol which we can follow in the event of such an antagonism could itself engender that antagonism. If the workers in my office want to run UNIX instead of DOS on our desktop computers, the general public should not interfere and make this decision for us, since such interference would be unnecessary. However, if we set out to do something which has been found to be harmful to the public safety, a wider constituency of the public should be able to veto it. > In a truly cooperative world, based upon production for > need, I do not see any need for a constitution We can't even run a very small organization, let alone a whole society, without some sort of edifice -- an agreed-upon listing of what tasks are being delegated to what departments, and how the various committees are related to each other. I don't care if the composition is amended daily, but we must at least know what composition we're talking about at any given time. > that socialism could be declared (by whom?) I don't understand the part about "by whom". It seems that your own program, no less than mine, calls for the votes to be counted, the final results to be announced, and then acted upon. Otherwise there is no working class conquest of the powers of the state. > the concept that socialism could be established "with a > fragile majority of 51%." I believe that this is central to > our disagreement Many of the Wobblies and De Leonists disagree with me on this point also. They too give me the immense majority argument that you're giving me. So I'm not sure that this is central; in fact, I fear that I might have gone off on a tangent. But the tangent illuminates a possible problem that may lie ahead. Suppose that socialist consciousness grows at a rate of one population percent per year. Then there will be a significantly long period of time in which a majority, but not a vast one, advocates socialism. Are we then to continue the operation of capitalism, a system which kills and mutilates hundreds of thousands of people per year? With even a slim majority, socialists may win the control of the parliament. If so, do we then say that the mandate is not sufficient, and that the horrors of class rule should continue until the majority becomes more vast? I can think of no other course but to say that the majority has won. > the impossibility of imposing socialism upon a huge minority I'm not sure that any "imposing" would be taking place. In this hypothetical case, many of the people who failed to vote for socialism would be of the opinion that "socialism is a beautiful dream, but it will never happen"; "I'd support socialism if other people would, but I don't think other people would, so I won't either." In fact, in my experience, that's the most common objection to socialism. The next largest group is likely to be those who say, "I was outvoted on this proposal, but willing to give the new form of administration a chance to prove itself." > By allowing for the establishment of socialism with a > fragile majority, you necessarily put yourself in league > with the Leninists Leninists strive for votes by a failure to concentrate of the education of the working class regarding a clearly enunciated goal. Leninist parties seek votes by filling their platforms with lures, such as demands for a higher minimum wage, local control of ethnic communities, etc., instead of presenting a direct systemic approach. I differ in that I consider the unwavering statement of the goal to be everything. > Why would the managers be insisting we obey their "Plan A"? The capitalists personally choose the management chain, and are likely to choose only individuals known to be loyal to them. > As the revolution progresses, management, the police and the > military will also be composed of socialists We don't have any evidence that class consciousness occurs uniformly among working class people of all backgrounds. The opposite seems to be indicated. The least class conscious individuals are more likely to have self-images based on joining management or the police. (Soldiers are more likely to be "regular" people, because, if they're not conscripted, they might have volunteered just to get the guaranteed work with room and board.) Any segment of the population which has been consistently known to fire (or fire upon) the workers, shrugging it off with the Nuremberg war crimes defense, "I'm not the one who gave the order, but it's my duty to carry it out", cannot be counted upon for a last-minute display of proletarian solidarity. ______________________________________________________________________ #5.04 S. Szalai, 05 April 1993 ______________________________________________________________________ Re: Job descriptions with the supervisor in the middle. Re: Managers loyalty. Re: Small majority. Re: Production stoppages. Your argument seems to stand upon two legs: 1) the belief that current supervisory personnel will be loyal to a deposed, tiny minority, 2) the establishment of "socialism" by a small majority. It is not necessary that socialist consciousness develop evenly throughout the populace, although I think that it will probably be a lot more even than you suggest. If, as proposed by the World Socialist Movement (WSM), there is a huge majority of socialists in the worldwide and local populations, the supervisors will most likely be as socialist as other workers. In my workplace I find that management is no more and no less progressive than the rest of the staff. Managers are workers too. My manager, for example, is reasonably receptive to socialist ideas. I haven't convinced him, but that is not the point. The point is that managers are workers too and face the same problems as the rest of us. In the dying days of capitalism the managers may be forced to "follow orders" to keep their jobs (just like the rest of us), but when the time comes, I see no reason to believe that managers and supervisors will not be supportive of socialism. I am a member of an industrial union, and when it comes to negotiation time, there are always managers who wish us well. They know that as a union we have more power to push our demands for better wages and working conditions, and that management will be able to tag on to our improvements. These people understand their position in society as well as the rest of the workers. I note that more than one manager has told me that one of the reasons they became managers was to try to organize their department more rationally, and to try to get a better deal for their staff. These are not the motivations of anti-worker, crush the revolution recidivists. If a specific supervisor, or other worker for that matter, was getting in the way they would simply be ignored or ejected. This does not require a massive rewrite of the rules and procedures of production. It is a simple, obvious outgrowth of the change to socialist production. While workers may be trained to put the supervisor or manager in the middle of every work sequence, I think most of us, including those who think capitalism is great, chafe at this kind of approach, recognize how unnecessary it is and easily see how to eliminate the useless steps. It is not a big deal. Most workers do not open a book when they go to work to find out how to do their jobs. Workers know how to get the job done and often get the job done DESPITE the rules and procedures that are in place. When the supervisors are socialists, no matter how chosen, they will have no incentive to insert themselves unnecessarily into the production process. If rule changes are required they will be made. It is not a big issue. If production methods need to be changed, while it may be a big issue materially, it will not likely be so intellectually. The capitalist, at least in large organizations, plays no part in the day to day running of the organization, and therefore does not hand-pick the supervisors and managers, they are picked by other managers. The criteria, in a successful organization is not that the manager/supervisor to be a slavish devotee of capitalism. The criteria for choosing a manager (in a successful organization, and most others) is the belief that the person can get the staff to get the job done, economically. The two are very different. I do not see any reason that socially useful production should stop just because there are no pre-arranged alternative rules to govern the process. I do maintain that these alternative "rules" would have developed anyway, without the requirement for union intervention (which is what superficially distinguishes us). Re: Restructuring within capitalism. The restructuring you speak of does not take place in the capitalist system. We seem agreed on that now. What you are talking about is PLANNING for restructuring. The WSM has no disagreement with that, and I did state that it would occur. I do not care how supervisors are chosen, the point is to get the best one. Re: Union Departments. We are not in agreement. The union department is still a WORKER-oriented as opposed to a WORKING CLASS-oriented approach. More on this later. The "nervous system" already exists. It does not have to be invented. It might need modification or even wholesale change, but it does exist and can be used. Re: Community vs Industrial Workers. The decision of what operating system to run on your computer is, of course, going to be decided in the workplace. But that does not require the antagonistic approach that your dual decision making stream puts in place. Every worker is also a member of the community. There is no stone wall of isolation (except that I believe your idea of workplace based organization imposes one) between the "community" and the "industrial workers". I repeat that without this wall, there is no need for overrides of one group by the other, because there is only one group. Re: A Constitution. The reason that society today needs a constitution, and "we can't even run a very small organization ... without some sort of" rules and constitutions is because we live in a competitive society where, as workers, we have to be at each others throats to survive. In a cooperative society this problem goes away. It seems to me that a constitution could not change every day because the structures you build around it would then REQUIRE daily modification to follow this constitution - as opposed to perhaps needing daily modification to adjust to changing needs of society. Leave it loose. If something needs changing in a production-for-use society, it will change. Give the working class some credit for its ability to be creative and cooperative. If there is a constitution, changing it is not going to be a daily thing. In Canada, the capitalist political parties just spent months arguing about and convincing the working class to worry about every cross on every "t" and every dot on every "i" for a constitutional change that amounts to nothing except a public relations ploy and diversion. By having a written document that everyone is tied to, it is of utmost importance to ensure that it says what everybody wants. This is a monumental task that makes the program of the WSM look like child's play. Re: Fragile Majority. My comment "declared (by whom)" is based on my disagreement with your idea of the ability to establish socialism with a slim majority. I think the "immense majority" is in fact central to our disagreement on a whole range of issues. You ask "are we then to continue the operation of capitalism, a system which kills and mutilates hundreds of thousands of people per year?" The WSM answers no, WE are not going to continue capitalism, it is going to continue itself because a slim majority CANNOT end it. Even your rather modest proposals will require a significant majority to implement. If it is just that 51% have voted for it (some of whom may be a bit shaky) and the rest just think it might not be too bad an idea so they'll give it a try, it will fail. There will be problems. If the first serious problem has everybody saying that they should have stuck with capitalism, then come the next election, they'll vote out the socialists. I point to the current situation in the former USSR where workers disillusioned with their "new" capitalist bosses are even electing the old "communists" and questioning whether they did the right thing in supporting Yeltsin and his bunch. What socialism requires is a huge majority that UNDERSTANDS WHY CAPITALISM MUST BE REPLACED, without that all we will see is a temporary disruption (and it will be the sort of disruption that you worry about) followed by a, probably violent, return to the normal violence of capitalism. I see the violent return because ownership would have to be reasserted, and there would be no structures in place to accommodate that. Re: Leninism. My reference to Leninism was not related to its slimy vote-getting tactics. It was a reference to imposing "socialism" on the working class (or a large part thereof). This results from the slimy vote-getting tactics of the Leninists - the vanguard leading the masses to "socialism." The initial imposition might not be that great, but when there are problems, the imposition would necessarily increase unless we fell back to capitalism (see above). It seems to me that by the time 51% of the population are ready to vote for socialism, that people are not going to be saying "I don't think other people would" support socialism. It is more likely that those in disagreement would be saying that they don't think socialism can work. If that is the case, they are likely not to be easily convinced to stay on a bandwagon when a wheel falls off. Only if they have recognized the reasons for capitalism's failure to satisfy our needs, and that there will be problems that are WORTH overcoming to establish and maintain socialism are they likely to hang around the wagon and help put the wheel back on. Re: Uniformity of class consciousness. I disagree with your thesis that the least class conscious gravitate to management and the police. Your thesis seems to be called into question by the existence of police and management "unions". I have personally be on picket lines where there was a police presence. It was generally cordial until a SPECIFIC order came down, or senior officers showed up to get the job done. In fact the police often showed a sympathetic approach to the picketers. I am not claiming that there are not many (more) occasions when the police employed a jackboot approach, but in general that jackboot approach has had community "sympathy", perhaps through ignorance, so it does not show a difference between the police and the general populace. In dog-eat-dog capitalism, the "just following orders" defense is tried, true and justified. How many of us would tell the boss to shove his job because we thought that what we were doing might be deadly. If it was common we would not have the reality of capitalism today. In truth the bully-boy approach of the police is partly based on following orders and partly based upon general societal beliefs. When unions are hated by the general populace, the police will hate them too. Of more significance is the firmly rooted popular support for LAW AND ORDER. As long as this ruling class idea prevails and comprehension of the reasons for our problems is low, the knee-jerk law and order responses to "problems" will continue. And they will continue to have popular support. As long as property rights are superior to human rights, in the minds of the majority, the police will continue to enforce property rights. The East German revolt for "democracy" was accomplished without the police slaughtering the populace, precisely because the police are not a separate entity apart from society. The Tiananmen massacre was preceded by police and military refusal to fire upon the protesters. Your thesis is based, I think, on not clearly analyzing societal norms. This is a major problem that I think extends to most of our disagreements. I do not count on the police for a "last-minute display of proletarian solidarity." I count on them being socialists, just like the rest of the majority. ______________________________________________________________________ #5.05 R. Elbert, 19 March 1993 ______________________________________________________________________ To: M. Lepore < mlepore@mcimail.com > From: R. Elbert < ronel2@aol.com > The "IU concept," you begin, is what you call a "switch over" theory, "a new system of industrial planning [that] has to be assembled, at least in its basic or foundation structure, while capitalism still exists." Implementing this embryonic system under these conditions will allow us to "smoothly switch the task of industrial management .... to a new democratic system." You single out some of the salient characteristics of the new system: (1) "our preparation for instituting a new economic system needs to be workplace-based"; (2) "we need to erect the skeleton of the new system, as the IWW preamble points out, 'within the shell of the old'"; (3) "the revolution will mean reidentifying, not some, but ALL of the workplace connections we have with one another." It would be out of keeping with historical materialism to deny any of these points as generalities; but what you subsequently do with them presents certain problems. In the first place, you take a misleadingly concrete focus on the whole question of expropriation; you picture the revolution as happening AT THE WORKPLACE. Workers "in each facility" will, if necessary, "lock them [the managers] outside." The world outside each workplace is made up of "different types of work facilities" (which communicate with each other as the revolution moves along) and an undefined mass of social experiences and activities. The revolution itself consists of replacing the capitalist-inspired hierarchical arrangement of work relations ("Plan A") with a non-authoritarian arrangement based on the satisfaction of workers' needs ("Plan B"). Of course, as a result of this seizure of what to the capitalist class appears as capital, the capitalist class itself ultimately disappears, bringing "the industries under social ownership." The class consciousness workers have developed up to this point ceases to be a means to an end: it becomes social consciousness, an end in itself. But are things so simple? Capital accumulation, the progressive appropriation of value (profit) by the capitalist class at the point of production, is a FUNCTION. Whoever controls the use of capital becomes an investor and therefore a capitalist; the names investors give themselves do not matter. Merely seizing capital assets and re-deploying them for the direct benefit of society does not by itself abolish the use of capital in production. "Plan B" offers no guarantee that the "social ownership" aimed at will materialize. This happens because the ownership of the means of production is also a function; it is the "soul" of a system of production, and it resides as a generality throughout the entire community of possessors. (World socialists insist for this reason that the revolution must be essentially worldwide in character -- it must happen everywhere.) The revolution in consciousness that precedes and directs this replacement, this switchover, has to be functional AT THIS LEVEL. This makes it not only a takeover of the production and distribution of goods and services in the economic sense (wealth) but also the replacement of a system for producing and distributing wealth in the political sense. This revolution only completes itself when it has become society's official decision to make access to goods and services unconditional, as a result of the consciously expressed desire for it by a clear majority of people -- workers or otherwise. World socialists stress also that workers generally (not simply in industry) must UNDERSTAND AND WANT common ownership, and they must want it because they can control the production and distribution of wealth democratically. This phrase, "understand and want," is admittedly a bit of shorthand we have gotten very used to wielding without much reflection; it signifies precisely what you have been speaking of as the class-conscious workers formulating their "Plan B" and following through on the impulse to implement it in place of the capitalists' "Plan A." Where would workers get a concrete sense of the implications of common ownership if not from their own experience of the class struggle? And where else would they get a sense of the urgency of replacing an anti-social system of production for sale at a profit on the market with a system of production based on the satisfaction of human needs? So "understanding and wanting" common ownership means this process you have rather simplistically described as the decision to abolish capitalism. Effecting this decision, however, can only occur OUTSIDE the workplace, and in fact it really occurs nowhere in particular because, as the implementation phase of a revolution in consciousness, it occurs everywhere in general. It has to be on a generally understood, politically defined, signal that the revolution is enacted -- the explicit, formal abolition of the use of capital in production and of any prior restriction on gaining access to needed goods and services. (It might take a little longer than five minutes.) Terminally, massively and completely decapitalizing wealth production is the only feasible alternative. Having a "Plan B" and "taking and holding" is not enough. It's easy to see why De Leonists would accuse us of concentrating exclusively on the political aspects of this changeover in the basis of society. We have all been sold by the propaganda system on the top-down character of the political parties doing their Byzantine thing at the pinnacle of the pyramid of privilege. But to this you have added the oversimplification I mentioned above: picturing the revolution as a concrete event. "How," you ask, could "the working class...logically and quickly handle the redesign of the industrial interconnections" if they simply decided at the polls to replace profit for use as the motor-force of the production system? You very consistently maintain the concrete frame of reference in projecting the working class as "uniting politically but not industrially" and being then forced to "start remaking the industrial links, from the very first steps, after announcing that the old management system is ejected." And you add a dreary finishing touch to the whole picture: "Meanwhile we would very soon get cold and hungry while waiting for production to resume." (Also, the unintended implication of this scenario is that, pending the outcome of this way of proposing a change of Plans ["B" for "A"] and putting it into effect, the revolutionary socialist government would meanwhile become involved in .... er .... governing; i.e., it would at the very instant of carrying out the revolutionary mandate cease to be socialist.) The "continuity" of production already operates now against a global backdrop of ongoing, routine disruption and dysfunction: continuity seems a rather moot point, on the whole. Also, in this age of Social Democracy's decline (and Bolshevism's demise), the corrosive question of where exactly is this working class anyhow? seems to have been broached. If "workers" must be employed in industry, are unemployed or non-industrial workers excluded? The trouble with the industrial union concept is that it pegs itself too narrowly to one specific phase of capitalism's evolution; well under a majority of wage-slaves are employed in production these days in the rich, developed centers of the capitalist world-system. This question of a "majority of 51 percent" you bring up is thus problematic, since industrial workers have become so productive they no longer even constitute a majority of their own class. How can an "industrial" union speak for the majority, if most workers are not industrial? But the whole problem of counting heads is pernicious. Exploitation may look a lot fuzzier where you can't pin it down to exact formulas (as Marx did in CAPITAL), but its functions and effects still bedevil everyone who works for a living. It may be much more of a "syndrome" for most people than it was in the classical heyday of theoretical socialism ("you say you're exploited -- what do you mean?"). The mix between "workplace" and "community" (as Cde. Szalai points out) should not depend on such a narrowly defined relationship -- especially one so vulnerable to the pressures of dynamic transformation -- as the organization of industry. The only coherent approach is to treat the organization of labor as a political question: since all workers have a stake in it, no matter how their experience of exploitation may have affected the way they conceptualize the system. The majority in the marketplace thus translates directly into a political majority -- one whose consciousness is not tied in any case to a number of differential categories of occupation. Finally, your mention of "the Constitution" fits in well enough with seeking merely to replace "Plan A" with "Plan B": whereas the transmutation of class consciousness into social consciousness IS the new "constitution." A document analogous to those which litter today's junkyard of nations is strictly unnecessary. Insisting on the need for one literally, moreover, creates a trap-door back into the system of exploitation, because the whole purpose of a political constitution is to spell out regimes of privilege and pecking orders showing everyone where their place is. Political constitutions reflect the class division of society. But your casual reference to one (even taking it metaphorically) demonstrates exactly why we in the World Socialist Movement frame the revolution in global, political terms. We do not propose "pure political organization"; but we do insist that the crucial phase of the socialist revolution is the political one. And while DeLeonists, on the other hand, may concede rhetorically that this phase has some importance, for purposes of carrying out the replacement of capitalism they really only dwell on the aspect of industrial organization. Control of the government certainly includes what you refer to as "riot control," but a working class that has felt its muscle should have relatively little to worry about from its "recently-deposed" employers (who will be more flabbergasted than anything else at the majority's succumbing to "social madness"). The main reason is rather that the process of decapitalizing production and decommercializing consumption (breaking the money-commodity-money cycle) requires an act of political coordination. Once this act has been definitively accomplished, the need for controlling the government, and with it the role of the Socialist Party, becomes superfluous -- to say nothing of any further need for repression. ______________________________________________________________________ #5.06 M. Lepore, 06 April 1993 ______________________________________________________________________ Your article, Ron, highlights some of the crucial questions facing the movement. I hope the readers are starting to form a picture of your party's unique solution. First I'll reply to some of your specifics, and then I'll make a general observation about how your philosophy sits with me. > If "workers" must be employed in industry, are unemployed or > non-industrial workers excluded? The word "industrial" in the phrase "industrial union" refers to the use of a tree structure which defines union membership according to the output or the function of the work site. For example, if you're a school nurse, you would be represented in the education workers' branch. It would be called "craft unionism" for the school nurse to be part of the medical workers' branch. (This distinction is made for the transition out of capitalism, and is not necessarily a permanent feature.) Any usage of the words "production" and "industry", by any Marxian as well as any syndicalist source, includes all career activities which the population finds use for. The IWW has been wise to realize this fact, and so it has organized subdivisions for everyone from poets to exotic dancers. Since the word "industry" isn't meant to imply the popular image which the word invokes, perhaps someone will suggest a word that isn't so misleading. Unemployed individuals need to be included in general membership branches, although usually not in the workplace branches. > The trouble with the industrial union concept is that it > pegs itself too narrowly to one specific phase of > capitalism's evolution The various types of social boundaries given by capitalism are used as vehicles for getting beyond them. Your movement does something similar when it forms national political parties. After the revolution, there will be no limit to the changes we can make to the form of democracy. No longer will we have to specialize in one career, nor act within national borders. We won't have to continue using any of the transitional forms of organization. But we must walk before we can throw away our crutches. > the new "constitution." A document analogous to those which > litter today's junkyard of nations is strictly unnecessary ... > the whole purpose of a political constitution is to spell > out regimes of privilege and pecking orders showing everyone > where their place is. You're speaking of a POLITICAL constitution, where the task at hand is to do anything necessary to preserve class rule, such as collecting taxes, regulating commerce, and fighting wars. An ECONOMIC constitution would be a snapshot of how all economic parts are arranged within the whole at any given moment. For instance, it might say that school bus drivers are being represented by two delegates to a local education council, and three delegates to a local transportation council. It would also give the formula for determining whether each administrative decision is to be referred to central planning, to municipal planning, or to the occupational associations. Perhaps, because of the huge volume of detail required, "almanac" is a better word than "constitution". I would call it a constitution because democratically amending the form of the economic departments and democratically amending the reference record would be the same action. _______________________ Finally, some general notes -- Your philosophy and mine both advise the working class, not to follow leaders, not to install leaders, but to attain an understanding of the better life we could have, and what we must do. Then we will express that new consciousness by building a classless society. No disagreement there. However, we seem to disagree on the type of details which we must learn to hold in our consciousness, and why. I argue that the manner in which we organize will largely determine the result we will end up with. The working class needs to focus on the question of what sort of administrative structure our collective economic planning should have, and we must organize along the lines which will implement that goal. Failing to do this, we may acquire some bureaucratic system which is not what we have intended. As you pointed out, I do believe that the revolution must occur at the workplace. I view the revolution as the act of implementing workers' control of industry, and an end to the extraction of surplus value. I begin with merely this, because there will be many future opportunities to do more. There will be plenty of time to change our whole thinking, to give up our metaphysical superstitions and our material greed, and to make additional social changes that might now be beyond our comprehension. When we make our history, we have to find our way as though a strobe light were intermittently shining on an obstacle course. I propose that we take just one leap, and then we can take another look at where we are. Perhaps the workers' council structure will be a temporary phase, but it provides a definable way to move from class rule to a new collectively coordinated system. You're probably right to say that "the revolution is not completed" until we transcend many remnants of the past, such as the use of exchange values, the division of labor inherited from capitalism, and so forth. But my objectives would also be transmutable into yours, by a majority vote, and I think that course can be taken more easily than moving directly from the violent storm of capitalism to a system completely free of all remnants of capitalism. It wouldn't be fair of me to attempt to paraphrase you, but I'll tell you what your message sounds like to me, subjectively: -- There's no need to experiment early on with workers' councils, because, when the revolutionary period comes, we will spontaneously deduce, and we will nearly all agree, how society needs to be arranged. The working class will attain such a highly evolved collective mind that the new socialist system won't even need a constitution. We won't need to prearrange any structural safeguards against bureaucracy because, in our condition of supercharged awareness, bureaucracy couldn't even begin to take hold. We won't even need that section of the constitution which guarantees individual freedoms, because no one will ever think of infringing on anyone else's freedoms. We won't need to require people to contribute some work before they can go shopping, because no one will ever think of being greedy or egotistical. And exactly how are we going to arrive at this elevated plane? I suppose that we're going to write our socialist pamphlets in such a convincing manner, that the whole working class will attain Buddhahood. Then we will all act in unison and synchrony, making a world in which no one will show any signs of competitive behavior, forevermore. Again -- I'm not claiming that this is what you said, but that's what your transitional program sounds like to me. However, I'm skeptical about this leap to enlightenment that's supposed to take place in our minds prior to the revolutionary period. If we were capable of that, I suppose we would have already done it long ago. While humans are capable of improving our reasoning capacity in gradual phases, we are not a wholely logical species. I see that, in a recent poll, between 65 and 80 percent of the U.S. population (depending on the age group) said they agree with the statement that "the Bible is the totally accurate word of God". (TIME Magazine, April 5, 1993, p. 47) Even if we leave alone the matter of blind faith for the moment, to conclude that any book so filled with self-contradictions can somehow be "totally accurate" shows our frequent inability to reason properly. If this is how the human species is, if we are often unable to recognize a simple logical fallacy when we trip over one, then I propose that we should set out to enlighten ourselves by one step at a time. Therefore I don't begin with a goal that expects people to abandon all false thinking before historical progress can commence. Instead, I identify the immediate goal to be the replacement of class rule by workers' collective self-management. Let our mental unfolding, and much additional social restructuring, come as it will. We may guess what habits and values we will live by a hundred years after the revolution, but we must be concerned now with the first decade after the revolution. At that time, we will show some tendency toward greed and chaos and bureaucracy, and we must have structured our revolutionary goal and program to work around these recurrent traits. The industrial union idea builds stability into the instrument of transition, the type of organization itself, so that we won't have to demand so much of "pure" consciousness. Industrial unionism is a program that we can enact without every member of the working class first becoming a Buddha. ___________________________ Line 1305; end of issue number 5 _______