Your response reminds me so much of a trot tho. Like this is exactly their playbook and no one cares what they have to say.

What I'm describing is the basic approach taken by every successful communist party that made use of unions. Any adjustments I make are an attempt to work around the specific challenges of organizing in the heart of capitalist empire.

Trots ape this but in a Trot way that is ultra and often self-defeating and a lot of that comes down to how they communicate and whether they build well and authentically among the workers. Trots trying to do union things often come across as preachy and inauthentic because they are being preachy and inauthentic and they are bad at faking it. Our task is to be competent and authentic, not ignore the time-tested tools of building socialism with unions.

Trots also cite Lenin, call themselves communist, and emphasize class struggle. Is it wrong to do these things? Of course not. The devil is in the details and how you approach discipline. Strategy and tactics must align. Trots tend to fail at this because they are ungrounded and stick to dogmas (and even language!) that barely even worked in the 1910s in the Russian Empire. Their writings are de facto masturbatory.

Unions are not going to bring about the revolution. They are a way to get working people engaged in the class solidarity and organizing in the hopes that some join a communist party.

The usual hope is that unions can be used as part of class struggle organizing, yes. They are not themselves the labor movement nor a socialist party, they are a localized realization of the labor movement that is easily coopted into both liberalism and fascism to defang and kill us and those like us, and even self-defeat the labor movement as a whole. Thus is the central contradiction of trade unionism, their tendency for self-defeat through class collaboration, through liberalism. It's whybther are imperialist unions. Our task re: doing anything constructive with uniond is to foment class struggle both in and outside of unions. Trots also say this, they are just bad at it. Lenin and Mao said it too and it is a very common sentiment among communists of most tendencies. Union members don't even need to join a socialist party in order to engage in cognizant class struggle, though you will naturally engage in party building by simply doing a good job organizing and being a magnet for those you work with - they will want to know more about what you are doing and will join your reading groups if you ask.

To be an effective magnet, however, you cannot be noticeably inauthentic. The best way to avoid this is to be authentic. If that is not possible, you should at least be competent. Uncritical cheerleading sets you up for inauthenticity and handcuffs your ability to organize a movement within a union. You must have struggle, you must note failures, it just needs to be done effectively so as to court the workers.

In the imperial core there is no viable communist party. And then that party can not only criticize but can enact change because they are actually working in the unions their criticizing the decisions of.

There are small communist parties in the imperial core. Some of them engage in class struggle work in unions. I mentioned FRSO somewhere in this thread. They have a focus on the Teamsters. They have members among the Teamsters. They worked with TDU. They cheered the contract with no constructive criticism that would direct workers into a sustainable reform movement. TDU got this childish as their president, lol.

FRSO is small. But it would benefit from doing soft constructive criticism in its messaging so that it can build a proper class struggle, militant movement, which TDU clearly is not. Otherwise you will be "underground" and facilitating liberalism and fascism and burning out your organizers on that. It is worse than embracing sectarianism and making no attempt at class struggle, though not worse than what Trots do.

It will always be easy to criticize wins in a trade union within a capitalist system. Maybe things do get TA too quickly maybe they don't struggle enough. But at the end of the day being the person or group of people that is constantly criticizing workers wins is not going to help people listen to you.

It isn't so simplistic. We should reject a dichotomy of "we either just criticize workers' winsthem, the time or we uncritically cheerlead every TA and ratification vote". The former is not what I suggested and the latter is what the would-be major communist parties are doing.

What should be done follows from an analysis of how these trade unions actually function, who is in them, who is in leadership, and what you want to accomplish. All of these things have to align and be accurarely grounded for us to be effective and intentionally work towards our ends. The solutions will be a balancing act due to the nature of having opposing forces in the spaces we want to influence.

That last point is important.

Are you going to cheerlead a union full of chuds that builds the Brown People Bomber 3000? DSA libs are going to do that. They already do that. So what is your orientation? Do you ignore that union? Do you try to join it and actively make it easier to bomb the brown people? If so, what is your plan for contradicting this later? How many people do you need? With whom will you operate? Will you criticize that union and from what angle? In that scenario, it is almost certainly pointless to do anything at all in that union until our organizations are more powerful. You will build better by having a consistent anti-imperialist line that foments class struggle outside that particular union.

Or perhaps there is just a union that is run by the usual incoherent liberals, full of reactionaries, radlibs, etc. They make widgets at the widget factory. Their leadership is entrenched and always supports the Democratic party. They do typical collaborationist bargaining and staff are probably on the dole. Your organization decides they want to use this union as a venue for class struggle. What do you do? Do you praise the current bosses' work, uncritically? Surely you will rapidly find that you have enemies in the union. This is not because you are being a dogmatic Trot. It's because you want to do something that other people don't - and that threatens their positions and career trajectories. That thing might be something as vague and liberal as TDU. They will fight you to the death over it. You will self-isolate if you uncritically praise the current leadership's outcomes while also saying leadership needs to be changed. Everyone knows that's inconsistent and the exact people you want to attract will write you off. You want to capture the people who are unhappy with the outcone or who can be made to understand it as inadequate. There are too few of us. Any project within a trade union must be premised on massive growth and political education. You can't do that without identifying problems and bringing people in to work on them.

Anyways back to messaging. Rather than constantly crapping on contract wins or harping on about "union bosses" like a Trot, this is why you should use constructive criticism that celebrates the wins but notes where more is needed and what to do about it. Your message should build your org and/or projects. It should appeal to the dissatisfied and those who are okay with the contract but still wanted more or who saw some bullshit in the process and likes that you think it is bullshit, too. And it should hsve sonething tangible that they can do beyond feeling good. Trots just throw shot into the ether, they barely think about audience. They all write exactly like each other because they are literally copying a polemic approach as a dogma. They profess that if you build it (a lengthy esoteric polemic), the working class will come.

Does this make sense?