Anarchism, Class Struggle and Political Organization

Mike, my disagreement with Mark isn't just about some far in the future situation of a parsoc/parecon political organization "reaping the harvest" as you say and assuming political power in its own right. That's part of it but it is also a disagreement about the present, about strategy. Because Mark is saying he thinks the whole of the social mass movement can somehow be accommodated within a narrowly defined poltical organization's "chapters".

yeah, contemporary dual organizational social anarchism, as I described in the article above, is basically a contemporary continuation or evolution of the distinction between the activist revolutionary organization and the mass organizations that Bakunin had proposed back in the 19th century (minus some of Bakunin's idiosyncratic bits, like the the business about secret conspiracies, which probably reflected the illegal nature of radical organizing in most of Europe in that era, and with hopefully having learned some additional things in the past century and a half).

Mark Evans may be interested to read the document (linked here) from which this excerpt was taken:

"Bakunin developed revolutionary anarchism from the proto-anarchism of Proudhon. Key elements of Bakunin's anarchism were the need to implant oneself in the popular movements and the organization of the revolutionary minority. This latter entailed the formation of a tight, well organized, international revolutionary organization. The goal of the revolution was to abolish capitalism and the state and introduce what we today call Popular Power. The goal of the revolutionary organization was to encourage the mass movements in that direction. Bakunin's "vanguard" was not authoritarian. It did not boss the worker organizations. Nor was the vanguard to rule once the revolution was made. It was simply composed of the most advanced people and lead by example and persuasion, not coercion.

After Bakunin's death, his followers, Cafiero, Kropotkin and Malatesta tried to continue the revolutionary anarchist tendency. But in doing so, they ignored those two key aspects of Bakunin's revolutionary praxis - involvement with the masses and the revolutionary organization. Instead, they proposed the formation of loose affinity groups. They also sought to encourage attacks against the authorities; the ill-fated tactic known as "propaganda of the deed." Their "revisionism" served only to distance revolutionary anarchism from the peasants and workers, marked anarchists as terrorists and chaotic people (to this very day) and bury the concept of the revolutionary organization. These errors allowed the Social Democrats to go unchallenged and to build powerful organizations that would then deflect the population away from revolution."

Mike: "In so far as the PS groups you are imagining are a part of the "an alliance or common front of mass social movement and class struggle organizations" that Wetzel mentions then yeah, because in your article you do talk about working with other organizations."

That's not quite it. Mark envisions his parsoc/parecon political organization somehow becoming or embracing the whole of the mass social movement that takes power. But mass social movements, labor organizations, etc that would have to be involved in the common front or alliance, would not...and should be conceived as...mere expressions or transmission belts of a political organization. Ideological/political organizations with highly defined programmatic politics, such as parecon/parsoc are, should be thought of as entirely different kinds of organizations. They may participate in social movements, and may try to influence them, but it is necessary to respect the inevitable political diversity of mass social movements/organizations. The latter have a different character than narrowly defined political organizations. There will be people with various viewpoints in the mass organizations...parecon/parsoc, anarcho-communists, Leninists, social-democrats, Greens, whatever.

Mark, you write: "I have to say that this sounds almost identical to what I describe in my proposal. The only difference, perhaps, is that I think that advocates of participatory vision and strategy should have their own organisation (like anarchists, Marxists, Fabians etc.) in which to effectively promote and implement our vision and strategy."

No, this is not the "only" difference. I have no objection to advocates of parsoc/parecon forming their own political organization. The disagreement wasn't about whether you should do that. The disagreement was over the role of a political organization defined by narrow agreement on some program or ideology. Like Steve, I am opposed to any such organization attempting to gain government power. As I said, it is the role of the mass social movement organizations to change the economic and political power structures of society. It is thru mass organizations that the oppressed and exploited are able to liberate themselves. But such organizations will inevitably has some diversity of political viewpoint. If I say we need to respect the political diversity and pluralism of mass social movement organizations and labor organizations, it is a bit strange for you to come back and say you are only talking about the existence of one particular political organization.

In the context of the USA, I would not advise parsoc/parecon advocates at the present time to form their own political organization because i think they would be isolated since their numbers are too few, and they have enough overlap in views with some other libertarian socialists. This is why I'm a member of a libertarian socialist group that is not specifically defined by parecon/parsoc, even if it has a lot of overlap in views. But of course parecon/parsoc advocates are entirely free to do that, on my view. As I say, it's fine with me if there are a variety of political organizations.

But I don't envision any one political organization taking government power. And I think any attempt to set up "neighborhood assemblies" that would be chapters of such an organization, would lead to either people not participating because  they didn't agree with the whole of the parecon/parsoc point of view,or because they viewed these councils as a mere front for a group with a partiuclar political agenda.

When you say that you envision your parsoc/parecon political organization somehow becoming a mass social movement in itself...sort of embracing the totality of the oppressed as it were...I would say that is highly unlikely, and doesn't adequately respect the autonomous development and political diversity of mass social movements.

 I'm generally in agreement with Steve D'Arcy's comment here, but I will go at this from a slightly different angle.

First,  let me make sure I understand you correctly. You say that you agree that a mass social movement is required for a social transformation, and seem to be saying that you envision the community assmblies/councils as the vehicle for this. At the same time, you see this as being developed as, or as expressions of, local chapters of a political organization. And I'm assuming that Steve and I are correct is supposing that your political organization would be a political organization whose membership is defined by agreement with a relatively narrow strategic and programmatic conception, that is,  parecon/parsoc as its program.

Thus you write:
BEGIN
But I have to say that I don't think that people "develop their forces" and their "consciousness" any differently in the political sphere than they do in the economic sphere - or any other sphere of society for that matter.

You say, "I mentioned the anarcho-syndicalist concept of developing worker-controlled unions that work through on the job self-activity and spreading broader solidarity as an example of mass movement building."

And I say, I mentioned an alternative concept of developing citizen-controlled chapters / councils that work through in-the-community self-activity and spreading broader solidarity as a possibility of mass movement building.
END

This would imply that the parecon/parsoc political organization would start today in setting up assemblies/councils in neighborhoods, and that these are to be used as a vehicle for building a social movement.

You say they would be set up "in embryonic form" but it's not clear what they would do. Mass social movements typically develop in areas where there are social fault lines, conflict, and these organizations emerge to fight for particular changes.

Let me take as an example a struggle against large-scale evictions that occurred in my neighborhood in the late '90s and early 2000s. This led to a number of assemblies occurring, both organized by Left-led organizations and also by the city government. The coalition in the neighborhood that was formed to fight the displacement of residents was based on various non-profits and tenant organizations and had a Left leadership. It defined the main group it was defending as "Latino working  class families" (overwhelmingly renters) altho there were others constituencies in the neighborhood drawn into the coalition, such as radical artists (overwhelmingly nativeborn white)  and very poor residents of residence hotels (a multi-racial group). The movement had regular, largish weekly open meetings and the high point was a 600 person neighborhood assembly (where I spoke as a representative of a progressive homeowners group). These meetings were instrumental in the sense that they were organized around an agenda and trying to build involvement and momentum for various demands against the city government and against the capitalist developers.

Subsequently the city planning bureaucracy held its own series of neighborhood assemblies. These were to provide input to an actual city planning process. These assemblies, which tended to break up into focus groups, were intensely class-contested terrain. To take an example, in one of these focus groups the city facilitator obviously was catering to the two business owners present at the table. He was carefully writing notes to everything they said. Sitting to my left were two working class Latinas for example whose opinion he never asked. I finally interposed myself, saying that for most residents the two main issues were affordable housing and retaining the better paying blue collar jobs, which were being displaced by high-end housing and office development. This was in fact the agenda of the anti-displacement coalition I described above. But the city facilitator didn't bother writing down what I said. An activist from a Latino community organization was exasperated by this, saying, "You need to write down what he said," referring to me. Many activists in this case regarded the struggle here as not just a class conflict but also a conflict over structural racism (the disadvantaged position of a relatively impoverished community of color with a large proportion of immigrants).

So the city sponsored assembly, being open to the various economic interests (business owners, land owners, developers, renters, homeowners) in the neighborhood ended up being in fact a site of conflict because of the conflicting social interests present. In cities in the USA often there are neighborhood organizations that have periodic open meetings, but if these are homeowner or business spondored associations...as often they are in the USA...then these interests will tend to dominate. They will be talking about more police action to get poor people off their streets, for example.

So one can't simply suppose that there could be at present a general assembly of residents of a neighborhood without the potential of conflict due to the various ways that social fault lines bear on that particular community.

So maybe the idea is to be an assembly that organizes around the issues of concern to the oppressed and exploited population in that neighborhood, takes their side. But in that case, if it is to gain participation, people will want to get people involved who are interested in the issues, and want to fight around that issue, such as against landlords. But if membership in it is open in that way, then it's not going to be just a chapter of a parecon/parsoc political organization. If it's a mass organization of, say, renters, then it will be more likely to reflect the views of at least the more active and politically aware renters or housing activists who would participate.

Your viewpoint seems to be a community organization mirror image of a certain kind of anarcho-syndicalism. Since the '20s anarcho-syndicalists have been split over the relationship between political organizations and mass worker organizations, that is, unions. Nowadays there are many anarcho-syndicalists who advocate the formation of a unitary politico-economic organization that would combine the roles of a political or ideological organization with a mass organization. That is, they propose to form a union that is defined as committed to a revolutionary libertarian socialist program, but tries to recruit workers to it in workplaces so it can function as a union. In practice these organizations tend to remain very small. We might call this the "unitary politico-economic organization" variant of anarcho-syndicalism or anarchist strategy. Your approach seems to me to be exactly like this.

My own political organization is anarcho-syndicalist but rejects this approach. We go back to an earlier approach. Historically, between the 1880s and World War 1, that was not how anarcho-syndicalism got started . Rather, anarchists, who had their own political organizations, got involved in unions, and tried to influence them, or build them in line with their own ideas of direct democracy, orientation to direct action, etc.

This leads to a different conception, what in my article here I called "dual organizationalism". So a dual organizational
anarcho-syndicalist or libertarian socialist says there is a role for both an organization that has a well worked out strategic and visionary ideas, a political organization (in the anarchist tradition, this was called an "ideologically specific" organization), and
also mass organizations, such as unions, tenant organizations, and so on.

The point to dual organizationalism is to respect the autonomy of both the radical activists, on the one hand, and the mass social movements, on the other. Mass social movements arise where there are social fault lines, such as along lines of class, around enviro destruction, racism, sexism, imperialism, etc. Mass social movements have their own reason for being and their own dynamics and patterns of development. Respect for their internal democracy and organic development means also respect for the reality of different political conceptions existing among the people involved in them.

Part of the point to dual organizationalism is to allow for a process of gradual development in consciousness in the mass social movements, and in the working class in general. People learn from their own experiences, from getting involved, engaging in
struggles. Class and revolutionary consciousness thus is something that develops through a protracted process. The ideas and influence of activists and organizers and organizations with an already worked out revolutionary point of view play only one part...are just one influence...in this process. Part of this process includes ongoing internal debates and discussions...discussions that reflect the inevitable diversity of opinion about what to do, what the aims are.

As Steve D'Arcy points out, Steve Shalom's conception of parpolity doesn't say what strategy is to be used to bring it about. Thus his "vision" isn't necessarily committed to a parsoc/parecon political organization being formed to build this through building its own chapters into embryonic community assemblies/councils, as you propose.

Instead, we can envision the neighborhood assemblies/councils and workplace assemblies/councils of a self-managed socialism being created by an alliance or common front of mass social movement and class struggle organizations who have, through their own struggles and development, and increasing influence of libertarian socialist ideas, come to adopt building a libertarian socialism as their aim.

steve and tom,

following these discussions is proving more and more difficult.

just as evans replied to albert, could you two respond to evans with two particular things: (1) your critique/concerns; and (2) your counter proposal

Charley, when you talk about life-time unionism, you're talking about the old post-World War 2 bureaucratic unionism focused on servicing contracts and private welfare states. There are other...both older and newer...ideas of what unionism is. I wrote a piece here on the libertarian syndicalist approach, in which unionism is based on the workplace collective resistance and activity of workers there. Even if people move from job to job, they can carry this kind of unionism with them. I gave the example of the Starbucks Workers Union, which has now about 400 members and is entrenched in a number of cities. This is in the low-paid retail sector where there is high turnover.

It's all well and good to talk about how it would be nice if the state were to provide us with better services and benefits...free universal health care, free quality child care, and so on. But the state is going in the opposite direction. The crisis of capitalism is pushing them further that way, imposing the costs of the crisis on the mass of the population. So how  do you propose to change that? It's not likely this will happen through electoral politics. The welfare state didn't come to the USA through electoral politics. It came through a massive working class rebellion in the '30s and '40s that imposed concessions on the plutocracy. So it's the mass movements that are primary.

Mark, from the fact that I agree that neighborhood assemblies would be an element in a new governance structure in libertarian socialism, it doesn't follow we can go out and just set up things we call "neighborhood assemblies." How would they get governance power? How does the mass of the opressed and exploited acquire power in society? I suggest this happens via mass social movements. I mentioned the anarcho-syndicalist concept of developing worker-controlled unions that work through on the job self-activity and spreading broader solidarity as an example of mass movement building.

There can also be mass organizations/movements built outside the workplace. Class struggles take place outside the workplace, at the point of consumption....there are struggles of tenants against landlords, of public transit riders against fare hikes and service cuts. There are environmental justice groups that work against toxic pollution of working class neighborhoods or communities of color. So, there are a variety of social movements. And their struggles, and the disruption they cause to the system, are also an expression of the force of numbers.

To talk about setting up a new governmental structure to replace the state is to talk about a revolutionary situation. But first you need to explain how we get to such a situation. This means, how do the oppressed and exploited majority develop their forces, and their consciousness, to the point where they have become a fundamental challenge to the dominating classes? And nowhere do you explain that.

Tom, Carl, and others,

I realize that this thread may be way out of date, but I just now got around to reading it.

As a three-time college drop-out working in the mostly un-unionized service sector for over 25 years (no pension, limited healthcare, etc.),  I found this conversation very engaging. I don't know what the solution is, both of you raise good points. I have always felt myself to be in a "no-person's land" between Marxism and Anarchism. I was a member of CWA for just over a year before I lost my job with Illinois Bell in the late 80s.

If I think about the current privately-owned mid-sized company where I've worked for 7 years, I can't see any way to do either bottom-up organizing anarchist-style nor top-down business union style. I am also not sure I think it's worth the effort. The number of people who work at this place for more than a couple years is tiny. My longer stretch is unusual. This shift in the economy away from long-term job stability seems to me at the heart of the lack of appeal of any sort of union.

Unions are based on a long-term stable workforce, but the problem is that jobs are becoming more variable and less stable. Also, why should job permanence, a fifties creation, be the basis for working class organizing? If the goal is to reduce alienated labor, shouldn't jobs become less time-consuming and even change dramatically as the productive forces advance? Someday, I will be able to "log in" to my job via my PC and never have to "go to work." Thousands already do this.

I don't see a way unions can advance with this sort of economic evolution. Workplaces are no longer life-time commitments. That's why I can't entirely forego the allure of social democracy, of the State divvying up tax dollars and giving a huge chunk to workers to fund healthcare, college, housing, public schools, daycare, transportation, etc. The problem is that the State is currently deadlocked by the divergent interests of capital. High-road capitalists (a term I learned from Carl) like Kucinich and Dean have no real power in the midst of the liberal/centrist struggle against the entrenched right-wing. 

I don't know the solution, but it ain't workplace unions or cooperatives. Mondragon is part of the old lifetime workplace model that will be obsolete in a few decades. I want a new form of labor organization that isn't tied to that model, One Big Union, maybe, but with modern strategies.

I intend to leave my job and go back to college for the fourth time this next year. I may not ever make it into the middle/coordinator class, but my life has to change and I can't see any movement out there that can do what a college education can. A big part of worker emancipation has to be college education for all, not vocational, nor just training us to be better skilled lifetime workers, like Mondragon.

Peace! Charley

Mark, yes, the "free municipalities" advocated as the basis of political governance in Spain are similar to Shalom's parpolity.

However, what you overlook is that partyism is a strategy. I wasn't objecting to the idea of neighborhood assemblies and delegates elected by them as a reasonable proposal for replacing the state's political governance functions. I was talking about how we get there. The anarcho-syndicalists proposed to get there thru the building of mass organizaions, such as their unions. they proposed  that it would be the unions taking over the economy and consoiidating working class  power in a new governmental system. We don't need to limit the conception of the strategy to unions but can consider mass organizations of the oppressed and exploited in thhe various areas of struggle as the relevant agents of change. What Steve D. called the "social left." partyism, on the other hand, is the view that the agent of social reorganization is a political organization.

I' m not objecting to the existence of political organizations. It's a question of what their proper role is.

One of my criticisms of Shalom's parpolity is the indirect system of election. I think this could easily lead to people at the "higher" councils being out of touch with the base. A difference in his proposal from  the anarcho-syndicalist one is also in the size of the base assemblies. Shalom, in personal conversation, told me he wanted the base assemblies to be small enough so you could know everyone and have some understanding of their needs and viewpoint. I don't object to the smaller assemblies but think they should be simply a subset of a larger assembly for a neighborhood.

I'm also inclined to favor a bicameral legislature with both worker congresses and congresses of delegates from neighborhood assemblies, to protect worker self-management of production. This would reflect the fact that a participatory economy has two co-equal governance elements, the worker assemblies and the neighborhood assemblies, who negotiate in the process of developing social plans.

Tom – you added a link to this essay for me to consider in the hope that it would clarify some issues we have been debating elsewhere regarding organising and movement building.

One of the things that you write here that caught my eye and that is relevant to our earlier discussions is –

"It was because of this experience with community struggle that the anarcho-syndicalist movement in Spain modified its "vision" at its congress in May 1936, adding neighborhood assemblies and resident-based councils as an equal building block of governance in a libertarian socialist society along with workplace assemblies and worker councils."

Now it seems to me that the "neighbourhood assemblies" that you say where added to the anarcho-syndicalists vision as an "equal building block of governance in a libertarian socialist society" are very similar to the political chapters / councils that I propose in my program for a participatory society.

However, you dismissed my proposal on the grounds that it is "partyist". But now, here, I find you positively advocating institutions that seems (details aside) almost identical in form and function.

As I understand it, the objective of this aspect of anarcho-syndicalists strategy is to replace the elitist and authoritarian government with a libertarian and participatory polity. If this is correct then we are both advocating the same thing … more or less. The only difference is in the detail of the vision and strategic priorities.

For me the neighbourhood assemblies / political councils should be based on Steve Shalom’s parpolity vision which I think is different in some ways to the anarcho-syndicalists vision.

Also, as you know, I argue that we should prioritise the establishment of these new political institutions over other activities including organising within the workplace.

These are important differences but I don’t think that my proposal should be dismissed as partyism any more than yours should.

ME:

1. Why has unionism in the USA been unable to mount an effective fightback against concessions drive
since the late '70s or the current economic crisis?

Carl: One reason is the lack of an organized socialist left in the working class to contend with business unionism, but class struggle unions and move everything leftward.

This answer is not clear. You could mean that there needs to be more leftists in leadership positions. I think that's a mistaken analysis. I think the problem lies in the structure and character of bureaucratic business unionism. You have many organizations dominated by an entrenched hierarchy of officials and staff. And officers who are often paid much more than the members. The union isn't run by the workers. The union hierarchy is there to make deals with the employers and service contracts. The contracts contain no-strike clauses and management rights clauses that tend to discourage direct worker action or challenges to the way the place is run and actual conditions on the job. The demands of the employers are going to have a much worse impact on the rank and file than the hierarchy, and the latter have not developed practices of mobilizing and involving the members in actions and decision-making by members about what is important to them. Nor do they do systematic training of the rank and file to do things like process grievances, negotiate with employers, how to run an organization, radical economics...in general a lack of training to empower members...often because they don't want to train their replacements.

As you say, whole books are written about this. Some books I recommend: Staughton Lynd ed "We Are All Leaders", Pete Rachleff "Hard-pressed in the heart-land", Vanessa Tait, "Poor Workers Unions", and Kim Moody "US Labor in Trouble and Transition".

ME" 2. Why have the unions shrunk drastically in the USA since the '60s?

Carl: One reason is that manufacturing has shrunk drastically. Combined with business unionism unwilling to enter the area of capital strategies, and the weakness of the left in the electoral arena,
and you have negative 'growth.'

I don't agree with your analysis here. Manufacturing has been shrinking since the '20s due to technical re-organization and improvements in labor productivity. It's too small a part of the economy to account for this. Unionism has shrunk also in "landlocked" sectors of the economy. Anti-union consulstancies have contributed but corporations have been willing to pour money in their direction because they think they have a winning hand. The paralysis of the bureaucracy and the inability of a demobilized service agency unionism has contributed very greatly to the decline of unionism because of its inability to mount an effective counter-attack.

ME:
3. How can we develop a form of unionism that workers control?

Carl: The old-fashioned way, by organizing and fighting for it.

A vague truism isn't an answer.

ME: 4. How can worker experience with unionism be empowering in the sense of helping them to develop a sense of being able to run things  and develop collective power agaisnt the dominating classes?

Carl: The Republic Windows UE workers gave a very good example.

I agree. Later you dismiss UE as too small when I use it as an example. It's much more of a worker-run
union than so many of the bureaucratic business unions. And notice it is outside their fold. Moreover, the workers at Republic Windows had a lengthy history of struggle for their own control. They'd been in a corrupt union before and had decertified it. This relationship between their willingness to try a plant occupation and their long history of rank and file activity is not accidental.

ME: 5. Why have radical Left efforts to bore from within the unions not changed the way they are run?

Carl: First of all, because there are not nearly enough of them. Most were driven out in the 1950s era by Taft-Hartley, which made Communist party people and other illegal as trade union leaders.

Again, I don't think that is an answer. The CIO's bureaucratic structures were adopted by Lewis and Hillman directly from the AFL model. This helped to consolidate the same kind of bureaucratic business unionism in the CIO unions, especially after the radical left were pushed out. The CP often did not oppose this bureaucratic model. In the early '30s there were other paths open to a more grassroots unionism...as discussed by Staughton Lynd and others in the anthology "We Are All Leaders." In any event, I was thinking of all the efforts over time. The Socialist Party attempted to change the AFL from within before World War I and was unable to do so despite the SP's huge size at that time.

ME: Some unions have changed their politics in some ways that make them more progressive...more open to supporting rights for immigrants, more willing to engage in things like cross border solidarity with workers in Mexico, more critical of American foreign policy, less accommodating to racism and sexism. But this has been limited to some unions and hasn't changed the fundamental character of the unions in ways that bear upon the questions I asked above.

Carl: Yes, and this is largely a result of the wave of 1960s new leftists, at least those part of the new communist movement of the 1970s, who made it their work to go into the factories and existing unions. Over time, many of these moved up to secondary leadership levels where they are making a difference. In some cases, it's also a result of a changing workforce. Mexican-Americans, for example, are considerably more pro-union than whites.

Yes, I agree with your analysis here (except I think some Trotskyists were involved as well). But my point was actually that they have not been able to change the basic way the unions work. Changing the way the unions work isn't the same thing as making some headway in terms of the politics of the unions. Some of these unions where there are some Leftists in various positions are run in a top-down manner.

ME: I can give some examples of unions that are run through member activity in the workplace, such as unions that operate as "non-majority" solidarity unions...organizations like UE 150 in North Carolina or the Starbucks Workers Union.

Carl: There are fine, but they are only a tiny example.

As is your Republic Windows example...another UE local union. It's true that independent unions often  end up affiliating to AFL-CIO or CtW unions...in search of resources. But this is a kind of chimerical search. The bureaucracy controls the "resources," the workers don't. What's needed is a sufficiently Left-motivated set of worker-run unions to maybe form their own alliance. Here is where I think your earlier point about the need for more radicals in the labor movement has its place. But the Left doesn't agree on what the way forward for unionism is to be. My suggestion in my essay here is that it is at the rank and file level, as organizers and catalysts, not as an incipient new bureaucracy.

ME: Since only around 12% of workers (7% in private sector) belong to unions, there should be plenty of open space for new organizations. There is also the historical evidence. As Pete Rachleff argues in "Hard-pressed in the Heartland," whenever new upsurges or periods of growth have taken place in the labor movement, new organizations have often been at the forefront.

Carl: Yes, but even these, like Jobs With Justice, are connected to and funded by the existing trade union movement. The spontaneous movements can produce all sorts of new shoots, but if they are to last and gain strength, they need wider and stronger alliances.

Well, some of the new worker organizations would include some of the independent unions that have been formed, and also the various worker centers...which are not always tied so closely to the AFL or CTW unions. The Coalition of Immokolee Workers won its epic battle with Yum! Brands without any significant AFL-CIO support.

Some of the newer organizations independent of the AFL-CIO or CTW unions have their own internal problems (such as dependency on foundation grants). I think it's as if the working class is sort of feeling its way to a new kind of labor movement  but hasn't gotten there yet.

An example of union paralysis: The May 1 2006 immigrant rights walkout was one of the largest national general strikes in US history. But unions weren't out there at those marches handing out leaflets and trying to connect with these folks, to organize them.

ME: There are three kinds of things that I think  can be done that are strategic: 1. groups forming organizing committees to create new solidarity unions focused in a particular sector where this makes sense. 2. rank and file groups organizing around getting people active and informed in the context of existing bureaucratized unions. 3. Creation of independent worker-oriented popular education centers which would do classes on things like basic organizing, how to run organizations democratically, how to negotiate, radical economics and various other things.

Carl: These things already exist and need to be multiplied. But its far easier doing so in cooperation
with existing unions than otherwise.

Not if the aim is a unionism run by workers and breaking in other ways from the narrow business union model. Consider my proposal for an independent worker oriented education center devoted to empowering workers to be able to do organizing and run their own organizations. The union hierarchy isn't likely to support this to any significant degree....they'd be training their replacements, in their view.

Just to take an example. Suppose that a sizeable organizing group formed a Retail Workers Organization in a particular metro area. And suppose that their strategy was to use Section 7 rights to do organizing in workplaces to gain concessions, fight against existing abuses such as wage theft, and suppose that people could simply take their union membership from job to job. The idea would be to force various kinds of concessions thru direct worker activity. This is the sort of model that the Starbucks Workers Union has been using to gain concessions there.

Carl, I think your question isn't clear. You refer to "progressive activity around unions." From that point of view, that doesn't address the real issues, as I see it. The issues are things like: 1. Why has unionism in the USA been unable to mount an effective fightback against concessions drive since the late '70s or the current economic crisis? 2. Why have the unions shrunk drastically in the USA since the '60s? 3. How can we develop a form of unionism that workers control? 4. How can worker experience with unionism be empowering in the sense of helping them to develop a sense of being able to run things  and develop collective power agaisnt the dominating classes? 5. Why have radical Left efforts to bore from within the unions not changed the way they are run?

Some unions have changed their politics in some ways that make them more progressive...more open to supporting rights for immigrants, more willing to engage in things like cross border solidarity with workers in Mexico, more critical of American foreign policy, less accommodating to racism and sexism. But this has been limited to some unions and hasn't changed the fundamental character of the unions in ways that bear upon the questions I asked above.

I can give some examples of unions that are run through member activity in the workplace, such as unions that operate as "non-majority" solidarity unions...organizations like UE 150 in North Carolina or the Starbucks Workers Union.

Since only around 12% of workers (7% in private sector) belong to unions, there should be plenty of open space for new organizations. There is also the historical evidence. As Pete Rachleff argues in "Hard-pressed in the Heartland," whenever new upsurges or periods of growth have taken place in the labor movement, new organizations have often been at the forefront.

There are three kinds of things that I think  can be done that are strategic: 1. groups forming organizing committees to create new solidarity unions focused in a particular sector where this makes sense. 2. rank and file groups organizing around getting people active and informed in the context of existing bureaucratized unions. 3. Creation of independent worker-oriented popular education centers which would do classes on things like basic organizing, how to run organizations democratically, how to negotiate, radical economics and various other things.

In regard to Mondragon, in your previous comment you referred to Kasrin's book as an "outlier"...as if to suggest it can be dismissed as idiosyncratic. In my observation a lot of the stuff written about Mondragon is advocacy or propagandistic and tends to take official pronouncements at face value. The great value of Kasrin's book is that it's a sociological study of the workers and managers that looks at the actual social power relationships. Her study doesn't show that the Mondragon university is aimed at enabling workers in general to control the coops. I think it's more about job training for certain skills and training the management cadre. You know under the first Five-Year Plan in the late '20s Stalin had a crash program to put Communist Party members from working class or peasant backgrounds thru university training. It was called the "Proletarianization" campaign. It wasn't aimed at creating worker management of the economy. It's purpose was to create a hierarchy of engineers and managers who would be more loyal to the regime. It was Stalin's form of upward mobility....select people could rise into the dominating class.

I want to reply to one thing Steve D'Arcy says here: "we should neither be uncritical advocates of generalizing the actually-existing Mondragon (since it is deformed by markets) nor of overthrowing it in a revolution (since it is probably still possible in principle for its members to retake control by means of a process of internal reform, because "coordinators" are not a ruling, exploiting class, monopolizing state power, as they were in the USSR, but more like a privileged layer of leaders -- i.e., more like the labour bureaucracy under capitalism than like the bureaucratic ruling class in the USSR)."

If you analyze the origins of bureaucracy in unions of the AFL, what you'll see is that there was a tendency for certain people to use their position as representatives to accumulate certain key kinds of expertise that made other workers depend on them. in the late 1800s a paid bureaucracy hadn't yet congealed. very often elected delegates were radicals who might get fired because  fought strongly for workers. workers didn't want to lose the knowledge and commitment these individuals had so they created paid positions, "walking delegates", which later became the business agent system. unions often do very little if anything to train union members in how to do the things needed to run a union...negotiate with employers, deal with laywers, run organizations, develop political contacts and alliances and so on. the idea of a "relative concentration of expertise and decision-making authority" is in fact the basis of the coordinator class in capitalist society. if we look at top union leaders their high salaries suggest a strong level of entrenchment in their position of power. within the UFCW many local union presidents, not just leaders of the national union. are paid over $100,000 and many over $200,000 a year.

consider the way the creation of state-wide or massively spread out "local" organizations in unions like SEIU and the carpenters union in recent years is a strong bureaucrat entrenchment device. I don't think Andy Stern is a member of the working class.

In fact I think it is very likely that to have the kind of labor movement that we need, we will need to create new organizations. since the early 1900s the radical Left has tried various strategies of chaning the bureaucratic business unions from within. Williiam Z Foster circa WW1 called this "boring from within." He pursued a kind of permeatiionist strategy of trying to work within the bureaucracy to influence it...as the Communist Party did in the late '30s in a number of unions. in more recent decades when Left oppositions have unseated leaders, the former Leftists have over time become not so different in practice from the people they replaced. for all the Left's attempts at "boring from within" there isn't a lot to show for it.

Many local unions are run in a reasonably democratic way, but what has happened at times, when there has been a revolt against the top leadership, is that some of the local unions have broken away to form new organizations. I think it is more likely that the labor movement would be changed through creation from scratch of the kinds of labor organizations we want, combined with segments of the existing unions revolting and breaking away. Historically major advances in unionism in the USA have seen new kinds of organizations emerge.

Carl, it's easy to sling the "dogma" label. but in this case it seems to mean merely that you don't like a particular viewpoint. that's not an argument against it. others can advance arguments for their viewpoints, even if you disagree with their conclusions. if a viewpoint is well argued and engages with actual reality, it's not appropriate to call it "dogmatic."

the idea that class society is going to be around for generations or even hundreds of years may be your view, but a kind of socialist politics that envisions continued exploitation and subordination indefinitely isn't worth fighting for. Why fight a revolution only to end up with continued boss rule and exploitation? isn't that in fact one of the reasons for the discredit of socialism in the 20th century?

if the working class were in a position to gain control of the means of production, markets are likely to continue in some form for awhile. i have no problem with people selling baseball cards or other personal possessions, but markets can't be the governing principle of society if we're to find a solution to the ecological crisis, among other problems. it's also hard to see why a working class movement that develops the kind of cohesion and solidarity and social justice consciousness required to challenge the capitalists and take possession of the means of production would then turn around and pit each together in competition in the profits game.

Steve, one way in which the workers in Mondragon could in theory democratize the coops would be to use the annual general assemblies. Kasmir makes this point. In fact she sees unionism as a potential agent for doing that. You may say that they are not like the coordinator ruling class in the USSR (or Vietnam) in not having state power, but consider the old system of fake "self-management" in Yugoslavia. That was akin to Mondragon in that there was also a formal system of democracy...elected worker councils...but with a hierarchical division of labor...managers and engineers and so on dominating workers. But they were part of a class that was the ruling class and held state power. In principle it would be possible for a coordinatorist mode of production to be based on cooperatives.

As you point out, being forced to compete in the world market tends to re-inforce these tendencies. Over time the Mondragon cooperative federation has become more centralized. In more recent years they've also set up conventional capitalist subsidiaries in countries such as Poland and Morocco to exploit the workforce more directly, without the limits posed by the cooperative form of organization.

On the other hand, there are some cooperatives that are run in a more genuinely collective way. Where I live, Rainbow Grocery has no general manager. It uses the principle of subsidiarity, pushing many decisions to the level of departmental meetings, in order to avoid need for a separate management cadre system. It's the largest retail cooperative in the USA.

Cooperatives formed in a capitalist context are a kind of reform, and like other reforms suffer limitations due to the context. Cooperatives seem to vary in regard to how far this is a problem. But this doesn't mean coops shouldn't be built. When the Mondragon coops were begun the Spanish economy was in very poor circumstances. The coops were a way to create thousands of jobs for the city of Mondragon. They were a kind of economic development project. Moreover, they offered a number of advantages over capitalist firms. For one thing, a capitalist business could more easily pick up and move the jobs somewhere else. In the case of the coops the members can at least prevent their jobs being moved elsewhere, as long as the coop is able to survive in the capitalist economy.

That said, however, the Mondragon coops are not a good model for envisioning how a socialist society should be organized. They're not a good model because workers there are subordinate to a dominating class, and they are therefore not an example of workers actually running the places where they work. Also, the market itself is a transmission belt for various limitations...for example, the need to find people with scarce and important skills in a labor market enables those people to demand privileged positions, and encourages the replication of the kind of division of labor that Mondragon illustrates.
 

Moreover, the Mondragon coops are also not even a good model for worker cooperatives. When we create worker cooperatives, we should try to create organizations that are more authentically worker self-managed to the extent we can, rather than replicating a corporate-style hierarchy.

Carl's point about the Mondragon university training people shows only that they have a need for managers and people with other skills, and look to people moving up in the hierarchy as a way to meet that need. "Upward mobility" still presupposes a hierarchical division of labor. Apologists for American capitalism also like to point to "upward mobility" and the possibility of people moving up in the social hierarchy.

I agree with Carl that this discussion has clarified our differences. I'm glad he raised questions that enabled me to clarify some points.

1. Carl writes: "You can, of course, define words however you like, and a small community, say of libertarian socialists, can do likewise. But if you want to be understood by a much wider majority of the population, then your specialized defintions become a problem, mainly for you."

I wasn't giving a stipulative definition. I was explaining one of the meanings of the word "hierarchy," that is, one of the things the word is used to refer to. Words acquire meanings through use. Humans use them to track various things in reality. So, if we want to know what the word refers to, it's helpful to look at the particular phenomenon. In this case I was describing a certain kind of social power relationship. What's relevant here is (1) whether it exists or not and (2) is my account of its nature a good hypothesis.

2. In regard to the Mondragon cooperatives, I'd suggest taking a look at Sharryn Kasmir's excellent study "The Myth of Mondragon". The idea that workers are in control of those coops is exactly the "myth" that Kasmir successfully refutes. If you're working at the Fagor stove factory running a machine or doing cleaning 40 hours a week, when do you have time to learn engineering or financial planning? In fact workers interviewed by her complain they get little support to learn about these things and have little real opportunity to learn how to analyze the plans presented by the engineers, financial planners and managers at annual meetings. The rules of the coop also forbid them from hiring outside consultants. The Mondragon coops have a higher percentage of managers than comparable capitalist firms in the Basque country. The managers, in her surveys, have much stronger identification with the coop than the workers. The workers are more interested in the profit sharing. They have no sense of being in control. They complained in interviews of being treated like subordinates. It is precisely the coordinator class...the managers, engineers, financial analysts...who are in power there.

This is not especially surprising. The Mondragon coops were an outgrowth of the Basque nationalist movement which was historically a "middle-class" dominated movement. Kasmir suggests the possibility of workers organizing unions at the Mondragon coops, as at the capitalist firms. So, yes, i'd say it's a hierarchical structure that would need to be overthrown.

3.  Carl writes: "As for your notions of an army without a structure of leadership and discipline, controlled only by a mass workers assembly, these are fanciful notions connected by paper rivets. In actual warfare, they get defeated rather quickly. If you want to know how people's armies work well, study the Vietnamese. For urban warfare, even A. Neuberg's third period Comintern manual on armed insurrection would be an improvement."

The Vietnamese ended up with a dismal coordinatorist dictatorship. That's what hierarchical party/armies get you.

As to "an army withourt a structure of leadership and discipline" you're putting words in my mouth. I'd suggest taking a look at the people's militia constructed by the anarcho-syndicalist labor federation in the Spanish revolution. They definitely had discipline.

They also advocated a unified militia with a unified command run by the entire labor movement...that is, incorporating all the various Left tendencies. They had both a defense committee elected by the union bodies to direct the militia, and elected internal committees and elected chief delegates (directing officers) of the various divisions, elected by the rank and file members of the militia units. Their view was that the armed forces had to be directly under the control of the organized working class or the working class would not end up controlling the society once the dust clears. And the history of Communist party-armies is evidence in their favor.

1. I agree that a new society in which the working class has gained control over the means of production and society is organized in a more authentically democratic way would require an armed force to defend itself as I say in my "Solidarity Unionism" essay. However in that situation the armed force would need to be under the direct, democratic control of the working class majority, the mass of the population, as opposed to some partyarmy or conventional hierarchical military.

2. Dictionaries chart usage and are not always very helpful in analyzing concepts. Let me start with the coordinator class. Yes I agree that within corporate capitalism the bureaucratic control layer -- middle managers, lawyers, engineers and others -- constitute a class between the capital-owners and the working class. The power of this class isnt' based on ownership of business assets but on a relative monopolization of decision-making authority and certain key kinds of expertise that are helpful to management in controlling the enterprise, government agencies and the workforce under  them. I believe this class was the ruling class in the "Communist" countries.

As I use the term "hierarchy" this refers to a relative concentration of decision-making power, expertise and ownership of assets in ways that enable them to dominate and manage those below them. In social production this is the basis of the class system. I'm thus opposed to this system of subordination of the working class to classes over it.

This is not the same thing as being opposed to delegation of tasks, or representation. Thus merely "having authority" doesn't create a hierarchy. I would say that ultimate authority is to lie with the body of people primarily affected by the particular sphere of decision-making...say a group of workers in a department. In a libertarian socialist political organization there might be, say, a national committee that coordinates work decided on, does tasks alloted to it such as finance and so on, but does not direct or "manage and direct" from top down the work of the organization.

As you notice "hierarchy" has different uses. Anarchists are maybe not always clear about what they mean by "hierarchy" but I've tried to explain my particular meaning here. I think this is a common way that "hierarchy" is understood among many libertarian socialists, particularly among "dual organizational anarchists with a class struggle perspective." So, this is like the fact that "bank" can refer to the side of a river or a financial institution. If I talk about going to the bank to make a deposit, the sides of rivers are not relevant. Similarly the various other uses of "hierarchy" you refer to, such as Mazlow's hierarchy of needs, are not relevant.

3. I have no problem with organized "militant minorities". That's what a libertarrian socialist political organization can be. But if a militant minority, in its efforts to develop a movement and change, concentrates expertise and decision-making authority in its own hands to increase its power, and does not work to develop skills and consciousness and knowledge and effective participation in decisions in the mass, then that prefigures a continuation of class hierarchy in my opinion. This is also a point where I agree with Michael Albert's theory of the coordinator class, and of how the "Communist" countries ended up having a dominating class of this sort.

4. in regard to gaining the support of the existing coordinators and small business people, tactical alliances are possible in particular cases and members of these classes may come over to our side also for moral reasons or because they identify with a particular section of the working class, such as members of an oppressed racial/national minority. what's not possible is an ongoing cross-class alliance because the interests of the owning and coordinator classes are antagonistic to the liberation of the working class.

the context is still not clear. you could mean organizing within the existing society or within a self-managed socialist society, a society based on direct democracy. obviously i and people who think like me have no power to ban anybody in the existing society nor do we propose such. we might have the power to ban people from organizations if they violate the norms of those organizations, but I gather that's not what you're talking about. so let's suppose you're talking about a self-managed socialist society. workers have seized the means of production and set up organizations to manage production, rooted in workplace assemblies. neighborhood assemblies have been set up and elected neighborhood councils. these assemblies have elected delegates to some regional congress, and so on.

if there were a Leninist organization in such a society attempting to change the structure of society to create some sort of statist structure, such as a hierarchical government apparatus and hierarchical army, we would organize within the various mass organizations, movements, assemblies and so on against any moves in that direction. Individuals are free to propose such hierarchical forms of social organization...and I don't doubt there will be conservatives...and Leninism is in that context a conservative ideology...trying to do so. So it's a question of the libertarian left movement and its allies out-organizing them.

the social movement that is building society on a directly democratic, self-managed basis needs to obtain dominant social support to be able to do so. no minority can free the working class of subordination to some dominating class (and in my view Leninism is an ideology that represents the interests of an incipient dominating class). this means that the working class has to have the clarity and maturity and strength of will and consciousness to reject hierarchizing schemes and structures....such as Leninism (or social democracy).

during the revolution in Spain in the 1930s, there were tremendous stresses and disagreements between left organizations. but the only Left political group that tried to destroy other Left political groups (including arresting and murdering their members) was the Communist Party. the anarchists didn't do that.

what would be the context you are referring to, Carl? Are you thinking of a mass organization such as union or something like that?

If so, then I would say it would depend on what it is they are working towards. If their aim is to hierarchize the organization and concentrate more power into the hands of a few, I believe that Left-libertarians should organize against that...and in fact I'd suggest they use exactly the methods you describe here to do so. So I'm not opposed to minorities in mass organizations organizing around some platform and working towards that...on the contrary, I think that's what Left-libertarians might do, if they are organizing around rank and file control and empowerment, a more militant collective action approach, etc. Sometimes it is necessary for minorities to organize in order to encourage more participation and fight for democratic control. Sometimes this isn't needed.

In union organizations often there is a tendency for control to be accumulated by a paid hierarchy and staff. To some extent this happens because the rank and file are never trained and they end up being dependent on the leaders. In such a case a minority rank and file group may organize in the manner you describe in order to wrest power away from the bureuacracy. but in that case, from my point of view, it should be in order to empower the members, not simply change who is in office or who possesses a bureaucratic apparatus.

In my observation, what I've seen Leninist groups do is to concentrate decision-making authority in small groups such as steering committees or executive committees, rather than in the base assemblies. This comes out of an idea of focusing on achieving leadership where this is posession of a formal decision-making power over some larger organization.

In your 'direct democracy,' suppose a group of like-minded workers decided to form an organization around a minority platform they liked, and then used unfied organizational methods to deploy their forces more effectively, grow their strength and influence, until they could win a majority or plurality position, and then proceed to see it implemented. How would you stop them? Would you even try?