note: feel free to edit this if you feel like one of the points could use a bit more elucidation, just make sure to draw the distinction between what you write and what others write. I want to add annotations and clear this up a bit, and I’d appreciate input, especially from those who don’t entirely understand the discussion: it helps me to know what ideas need to be clarified or explained more. -Andrew
Hungryghoast: Re-reading “Organizing For The Anti-Capitalist Tradition” this morning, I was reminded of a Eugene Debs speech from 1920 that I read recently, “Why Are We Not Stronger?” particularly the moments where both of them lament the in-fighting amongst anti-capitalists. I don’t want to sound like one of those in-fighters, but the part of the Debs speech that most struck me were his opening words here:
“The labor movement in the United States, in proportion to the working class, is the weakest and most backward in the world. Most workers belong to something in the way of a labor union or a labor party, but there is utter lack of coherency and clarity and unity of aim and purpose when it comes to organization, economic and political, as a whole.”
The words are as true now as they were then and it seems to me that at least in America many labor unions (particularly the larger ones) have been weakened by the system by being accepted into the process of it. And there’s also the process that of stripping labor of its teeth since the 1970’s that Harvey points to. But I think that organized labor, when it has become too large, has almost always been more willing to work with the system rather than challenge it at all. The CIO was comfortable purging its Communists after WWII, for example, and the AFL has ALWAYS been against any anti-capital radicals (or at least since Samuel Gompers started running the show in the late 19th and Early 20th Century).
My question is: Can Harvey’s suggestions for “democratic administrative procedures (as opposed to the monetized shams that now exist)” and “labor processes organized by the direct producers” be at all possible with labor as it exists or does an anti-capitalist transition require a challenge against traditional labor as well? Can big-labor ever factor into an anti-capitalist transition or does it depend more on smaller/rank-and-file collectives that might be more loosely connected for collective action?
Andrew: David Harvey spoke about this at the Brecht Forum, at the “Talkin ‘Bout My Generation” panel discussion. He said that it’s important to look beyond traditional union means because unions have been declawed by Taft-Harley: the secondary boycott is banned and in some places unions can’t strike for more than 30 days. Jeff Mansfield, another panelist, talked about his experience with ROC-NY, a restaurant workers’ advocacy group. Unfortunately, their website is no longer active, but he talked about how important it was that they weren’t a union and that they presented themselves as a different kind of organization. Mansfield said that for many things union methods require majorities and with his group they have gotten significant improvements in working conditions with just 20 percent of the workers in a restaurant organized. So the key, as always, is organization, but industrial unions are no longer the best way to achieve effective organization of workers.
Harvey had a similar experience himself when he was still in Baltimore. The janitors at the Orioles Stadium were trying to get better conditions for themselves. But instead of using traditional union methods, they presented themselves as a “human rights organization” and therefore were able to engage people in the community (even liberals!) that would not have been ordinarily sympathetic to their cause into a larger coalition. They eventually did a hunger strike in front of the stadium, and the mayor caved really quickly because of the damage that would have been done to the city’s image if the press started reporting that people were starving on the steps of the stadium. So there are still many methods available to workers to organize, and industrial unions may be a part of this organization, but they are far from the be-all-end-all. The ideal model, according to Harvey is a coalition of diverse groups covering the different “moments” he mentioned, and a good example that Harvey has mentioned in multiple talks is New York’s RIght to the City. With capitalism in its present form, it’s no longer enough to simply organize workers. In order to cover the different “moments” the whole community has to be engaged, in both the urban and rural environments.
Jhnbrssndn: Craig, I see exactly the same happening here in the UK. In fact, I would suggest - as I did on Tumblr a year ago - that the limited raft of social democratic protections, such as healthcare, that you see in the UK and other European countries, serves to de-fang labour activism even beyond what you would see in the US. There’s also the fact that the very role of organised labour - that is, organised in the traditional forms such as trade unions - is inherently compromised by its proximity to, and dependence on, capital. Who was it said that trade unions are there to negotiate the rate of exploitation?
Picking up on Andrew’s point, have either of you read either Empire or Multitude by Hardt & Negri? I’ve just started on the latter, and they argue convincingly for a networked activism that outflanks traditional labour organisation very much as Andrew describes. Indeed it was that line of thinking that led me to set up the thing on Tumblr.
Andrew: I haven’t read Multitude, but I am aware of Harvey’s criticism of it, having read The New Imperialism. Here he says on page 179:
“Some way must be found, both theoretically and politically, to move beyond the amorphous concept of ‘the multitude’ without falling into the trap of ‘my community, my locality, or social group right or wrong’.”
Harvey’s criticism here isn’t of the idea itself, but rather its oversimplification of what he rightly sees as a very diverse problem- he thinks the concept of the multitude articulated in a general way leads to an abandonment of the particularity inherent in many struggles against neoliberal accumulation.
Going along with the point about traditional labor organization, however, I think that the industrial union model falls prey to the same weakness Harvey sees in the “multitude”- that it lacks particularity to local movements. The traditional industrial union tries too hard to homogenize the workers it represents and in so doing actually supports capitalist ends (after all, capitalists love a well-homogenized society, albeit with the appearance of diversity). So Harvey’s point about the difficulty here is clear: how are we to organize a movement large and cohesive enough to challenge the now-global nature of capital without abandoning this necessary particularity?