cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5594440
In light of the recent capitulation by Z on the phrase “globalize the intifada” I wrote a comment on another post that I want to discuss with others
“The Democratic Party must be destroyed root and stem. I will bang this drum for the rest of my fucking life.
We have to recognize that the call is coming from inside the house. They could have throttled the RNC into submission after bush 2. The Republicans weren’t that much less radical then! They deliberately chose not to because they would rather be the lesser evil than do any good with the privileged position they occupy. At a certain point negligence becomes indistinguishable from culpability, especially when your whole thing is you are the only game in town.
I don’t think Zohran really made any major tactical mistakes up to this point. It remains to be seen what the fallout from this will be. The reality is that in NYC you can’t even get close to any position of power without being a Democrat. There are aberrations to this but the historically privileged position of the Democrats in NY specifically makes participation in the party pretty unavoidable in that region. They were and are a necessary vehicle for him in this mayoral race.
But with all that said: does anyone see this shit happening with a party that actually has his back? A party that actually operates like a disciplined party with political goals and values? Not just a coterie of consultants and opportunist, like the Democrats. The way the Dems have handled arguably the greatest political talent to join their ranks in over a decade should tell you everything you need to know. The average Democratic politician would rather see him dead than actually have any meaningful effect on the status quo.
I truly believe he needs to take whatever political capital and good will he has and invest it into another party ASAP. Whether it’s something new or the PSL or whatever, anything less will be a slow and suffocating death filled with illusory near-victories and nothing ever truly happening.
I don’t think the backlash from the rest of the party could get any worse anyway. They already see him as disloyal and some kind of outside force trying to upset this revolting political consensus they have worked so hard to construct. He cannot afford to keep all his eggs in one basket.
I’m just some fucking random person on the Internet but I think a lot of us have staked an uncomfortable amount of hope on this guy. I’m just hoping and praying he doesn’t go down easy and he recognizes the totality of who his adversaries are before it’s too late. He cannot afford to give these people one inch and it looks like he’s starting too and that makes me very nervous. Hoping for the best but unfortunately expecting the worst.”
I've often thought about a new labor movement in the US to take over the space of the dead unions. How do you see that potentially happening? Like, what are potential forms a new labor movement and new unions would take?
The big growth will happen in essential industries (meaning things break down within days without them) that have low union density or inactivity and are labor intensive. My guess is warehouse work and anything in the food chain, hospitals, maybe hospitality, and maybe public education. It has to break from the majoritarian NLRA approved organizing and be willing to violate the law. These operations all run on skeleton crews so a few people walking out would have profound effects if it happened at enough worksites. The big unions won't support this so it has to be done independently of them, but should definitely happen regionally or even nationally and not be isolated to single worksites/employers. The goal won't necessarily be contracts but rather approaching political demands (e.g. living wages + COLA, just cause, usable health insurance, etc.) It will resemble how the CIO emerged in a lot of ways.
The big unions will either follow the tides of change or will have to be brought down from the inside. Workers committees should be formed in shops that are already under union contract and they should organize and fight regardless of the support of their representative union. Socialist caucuses (distinct from democratic/reformist caucuses) should be formed to fight or disaffiliate from reactionary unions. Workers councils will be needed to coordinate all this activity but not in the narrow-viewed way the CLCs of the AFL-CIO do now.
The most important things will be maintaining independence from the AFL-CIO and the Democrats and keeping to broad visions of what the labor movement should be fighting for. It won't necessarily be communism or Marxism or whatever but the vision will be a lot more than the next contract.
All of this will take an immense amount of work and time of course. Less so than reforming the Democratic Party and the AFL-CIO, but still a lot. Nothing will change without it though and there will never be a base for a socialist/communist party without it.
I largely agree with what you are saying here. I’ve always felt that one of the biggest shortcomings of organizing in America is the actual process. The idea that your union needs to be granted sovereignty by the state is a huge organizing barrier and makes the labor movement kind of inherently beholden to state actors in some capacity. All of this serves to neuter the labor movement as an antagonistic force to the state. The organizing you are describing does not have the same issue necessarily.
Importantly too basically all labor law is case law which means it's very malleable and it people just start doing things differently en masse then the law will change. For example briefly during the Clinton administration Weingarten rights extended to all workers, not just workers that had won a certification election. Under Biden that was also NLRB policy though a legal precedent was never established. If workers organize around and demand Weingarten rights regardless of the majority status of their union then that will become standard practice. The broad scope of the NLRA is in some respects very useful because it gives a legal framework for the masses to set the standards. They actually have to make it happen though.