What in the hell …

No, not another IWW thing or whatever. It’s a proper name. Things seems to be jumping in Michigan re: contract concessions in auto plants, from my cursory reading. This site and another have some details. Some friends of mine are going to a meeting next week in Milwaukee, we’ll see what comes of it.

All this makes me think, despite a some talk about class composition it does seem that more old-fashioned sorts of marxists tend to have more to say about labor and the labor process than some of us who are invested in so-called autonomist marxism. Interesting, that. I suspect it’s partly because autonomist marxism is an academic distinction naming a lot of different phenomena (with some important commonalities, but the point is that it’s not a name that was applied [m]any of the folks themselves), and within academia there’s more interest in this idea among areas that do less study of the things that enter into class composition analysis. I could be wrong, though, and wrongly projecting my own shortcomings.

In any case, the autoworker stuff points up an organizational dilemma, which is that of what relationship to have with the business unions. Rank and file caucuses in union shops exist to make the union work better, rather like campaign finance reform proposals re: electoral democracies. Workplace organizations outside the business unions seek to build power by winning actions on grievances, taking on the union as well if needed. The Sojourner Truth Organization wrote some stuff on this, I should have an e-copy somewhere, need to check. In the middle seems to be stuff like what’s happening in Michigan now. I’m not - well, I try not to be - ideologically against the business unions so much as I don’t think they’re a generally useful thing, but if they’ve got a use, use ‘em. We don’t have the luxury of perfect tools. (For instance, the NYC transit workers strike had some good things about it, to say the least.)

But, yeah, what do these organizations accomplish, ones like those represented on the websites linked above? Good things, to be sure, but I think there’s a limit. They’re not organizing new workers. And more still, if they’re re-invigorating the old organizational structure (not all bad, if it wins gains) then it should be assumed that eventually that organization will come back around to police the rank and file. Someone (Norm somebody, I forget his name, he had a hand in this Stan Weir book I’ve been slowly reading now and then) spoke at a panel at the IWW centenary in June last year, in the panel on Glaberman and Weir. He said there’s an important difference between trying to get leadership positions in order to do things for people (this is one version of what a rank and file caucus does) versus trying to things together with other people, to get people to do things themselves. That’s a key limit to the business union, it’s delegation of decision making power, and one which groups the ones above run into when they get strong, and sometimes these groups end up making that same power of delegation stronger, though with a change of whose in the driver’s seat. We’ll see what happens…

Some last things - this stuff does raise questions of organization for those outside the shops. The solidarity organization is really quite limited and amounts to doing things for others. That’s abstract, but true. And solidarity organizations, while doing great work, end up playing into the organizational politics and careers of leaderships and careerists, and ultimately they don’t build much. At most they maintain. Given the relentless war on, well, all of us (the fourth world war), it makes sense to want to maintain. Hell, it’s needed. But it’s not all that’s needed. I don’t think these are contradictions that can be theorized away, but organizational problematics - longstanding ones.