AFL-CIO pays lip service to international proletariat, but retains chauvinism and anti-communism Steven Fraser and Joshua B. Freeman, eds. Audacious Democracy: Labor, Intellectuals, and the Social Reconstruction of America Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1997, 273pp. pb. reviewed by MC5, June 3, 2000 In 1995, the main union of so-called workers in the United $tates called the AFL-CIO elected a new president, John Sweeney. This book includes an essay by him and a number of responses from the social-democratic "left" glad to hear his message of change. Sweeney disowned the strategy of the previous leadership and vowed combative tactics and alliances with the sectors of society that the social-democratic "left" wanted---intellectuals, students, wimmin, minorities as they were known by them and gays/lesbians. When the U.S. House of Representatives became a majority Republican in 1994, the stage was set for a repudiation of previous strategy. The AFL-CIO poured money into the Democratic Party for House races and started talking up the idea that "America needs a raise." Sweeney also looked to youth to fund for professional organizing and set about issuing various apologies to the sectors he now wished to ally the union with. This book is aimed at winning back those intellectuals and others who drifted toward the camp of the international proletariat. Many of the authors--particularly the authors of color--will sow confusion in the proletarian camp. Pressure from the international proletariat The AFL-CIO leadership is now keenly aware of pressure from the international proletariat. The AFL-CIO regrets losing the support of students and intellectuals in the Vietnam War for the AFL-CIO's lack of attention to solidarity with the proletariat outside U.$. borders. To patch things up, the AFL-CIO has put money into organizing U.$. students to protest sweatshops in the Third World. This move by the AFL-CIO accomplished two things at once, reaching out to students and perfuming its own agenda with that of sweatshop labor. Bands such as "Rage against the Machine" have been taken in by the effort. It is clear from the book and also from an interview with the Socialist Party recently published in the New York Times, that these electoral so-called socialists felt pressure from the proletarian line even as represented by limited sectors in the United $tates: "A labor movement that, since the 1930s, had laid legitimate claim to a pioneering role in the fight against discrimination, now found itself condemned by liberal intellectuals for betraying the cause of the black poor, and accused by more radical elements of the student movement of seeking to skim the cream from an imperial world order that exploited people of color at home and abroad."(p. 4) We can translate for our readers: on page four of the book, these labor bureaucrat spokespeople for the petty-bourgeoisie known as labor aristocracy started referring to the international proletariat as "students," since U.$. students were the only ones that counted in the discussion, not Lenin or Huey Newton, never mind Azanian miners. Majority rule The reason only students counted in the discussion is that thanks to the preoccupation of the writers in this book, they all assume that the object of politics is to win an electoral majority. Third World people cannot vote in U.$. elections; even though they are the most affected by the majority of U.$. government activities -- the Pentagon, CIA, State Department, NSC etc. That is what a book purported to be about democracy should have been about--how majority rule is really majority rule of white people over the majority of the world. Hence, although the title of the book is "Audacious Democracy," little of it is actually about democracy. No where do we learn that the United $tates government has overthrown elected governments throughout the world and no where is it discussed what it would mean if a majority decided to make a minority starve to death. The organizers in the book are not talking about how they are going to stop the U.$. government from overthrowing elected governments and giving military aid to U.$. lackeys organizing death squads. The title was an afterthought to this collection of social-democratic strategy and program thoughts. More attention is given to making swipes at communism than to actual scientific analysis of democracy. Indeed, some of the authors such as Paul Berman are proud that the former AFL-CIO leadership had an active part in intelligence gathering and sabotage of proletarian movements.(pp. 218-9) They are against communism but have not the foggiest idea about what democracy is supposed to be, which is why they are against communism to begin with. When it comes to workers rights, Eric Foner noticed that the conservatives and the former administration of the AFL-CIO cared more about the rights of workers in communist countries than in their own.(p. 55) He also reminded the AFL that it joined in the carnage of World War I enthusiastically while that same war was an excuse to smash socialist and labor organizers in the United $tates. Unfortunately, while Foner noticed the right things, he did not come to any appropriate conclusions. Apparently he fixated on winning a U.$. electoral majority too. Mainstream labor organizer Jose La Luz also noticed some things that MIM has said before. He correctly criticized the "Stop Imports, Buy American" slogans of 1980s union organizers.(p. 88) Yet, like Foner, he is a fellow traveler of the labor bureaucratic stream. Perhaps the sharpest exposure of labor bureaucrat chauvinism in the whole book was by Mae M. Ngai. "The origins of the union label lie in the anti-Chinese movement in the American West during the late nineteenth century. Its direct antecedent was the so-called white label, a creation of craft workers and guilds in San Francisco in the late 1860s. White shoemakers and cigar makers used the label to urge consumers to boycott products made by firms employing Chinese workers. For example, the white label pasted onto cigar boxes read: ITAL The cigars herein contained are made by white men. This label is issued by the authority of the Cigar Makers Association of the Pacific Coast.END"(p. 174) Despite knowing this, Mae M. Ngai is a leader of the AFL-CIO organization most responsible for what she is talking about, including the anti-import campaigns she rightly credits with leading to the death of Vincent Chin.(p. 177) As for Black workers and how they fit into the alleged majoritarian electoral alliance, Manning Marable notes that "During the late 19th and 20th centuries, white workers initiated more than 100 strikes in order to keep black workers from gaining access to certain jobs."(p. 202) Not surprisingly he pits the League of Revolutionary Black Workers against the Black Panther Party and finds the former more significant.(p. 207) Really the book is focussed on how to win a multiracial and pro- wimmin majority in the United $tates, which is why the above- mentioned writers have chapters in the book. Malcolm X referred to these sort as "house slaves." They seek a deal for the oppressed within U.$. borders at the expense of the Third World, while everything they point to shows that national oppression is part of the system. Sweeney bragged that union voters went up from 14% in 1994 to 23% in 1996. 68% of the union voters voted for the Democratic Party. He also gave a reason to fixate on numbers by pointing out that control of the House of Representatives could have been in Democratic Party hands if 11 Democratic candidates had received a combined total of 12,000 more votes.(p. 19) Such a number is so small that a few activists could swing that many voters in an individual district. Most of the book is about shoe-horning--how to get chauvinist workers to get along with their allies and how to get more wayward members of the alliance to fit in. It all goes back to the focus on obtaining an electoral majority within U.$. borders, while MIM sees the fight for the international proletariat as a fight without borders. Since an electoral majority cannot bring forward motion within U.$. borders--judged by the standards of the international proletariat--we at MIM are not for creating electoral majorities. Most of the above-mentioned writers are caught up in obtaining majorities for their own sake. They make no analysis of super-profits or how it is possible for Amerika to get a raise while the rest of the world falls further behind. Richard Rorty made a swipe at the MIM line in the name of shoe- horning for a majority: "We are still living with the consequences of the anti-Vietnam War movement, and in particular with those of the rage of the manic student protesters of the late 1960s. These protesters were absolutely right that Vietnam was an unjust war, a massacre of which our country will always be ashamed. But when the students began to burn flags and to spit at returning soldiers, they did deeper and more long-lasting damage to the American left than they could ever have imagined. When they began to spell 'America' with a k, they lost the respect and the sympathy of the union members."(p. 62) The basic message throughout the book is short-change the truth for the sake of winning votes of chauvinist people. These same people then wonder why political consciousness is so low after decades of their kind of opportunist strategy. Their leaders never tell them the whole unvarnished truth, so not surprisingly the masses do not know it. That is one of the reasons Lenin was correct that we need a vanguard party that does not get itself caught up in opportunism of any kind, including the electoral kind. According to Todd Gittlin who auspiciously named his essay "Beyond Identity Politics: A Modest Precedent," "political campaigns that require successful alliances--majoritarian alliances--have overall ITAL not END developed. . . .Identity politics has improved the coloration and sex distribution of the wealth pyramid, but left its shape untouched."(p. 153) Scientifically speaking, if the goal is majority rule within U.$. borders, then the poor must get beyond identity politics it is true, and in the way Gittlin says. So Gittlin ends up lecturing: "Oppressed and disadvantaged minorities are minorities. They win policies that work to their benefit when they persuade majorities."(p. 157) What Gittlin failed to do was analyze whether majority rule within U.$. borders has any progressive potential. There is no reason to exercise our scientific wits toward that end if the end cannot contribute to our goals of peace and economic harmony. Organizing for more super-profits spread amongst a multi-racial alliance instead of just white Republican men is still organizing for imperialism. Labor aristocracy alliance with imperialists As articulated by Sweeney, the labor aristocracy alliance with the U.$. imperialists used to be thus: "Here's what working people knew. If you got up every morning and did your job, you could ear a better life for yourself and a better chance for your children-- especially if you joined a union. Here's what business people knew. If you paid your workers fairly, tried to provide some job security, and plowed some profits back into their communities, you could count on loyal employees and loyal consumers. For employers back then, decent wages and benefits and high standards of corporate responsibility were seen as good business and good for business. And our leaders in government, business and labor understood what President Kennedy said best: 'A rising tide lifts all boats.'"(p. 13) Whether it is the so-called "Communist Party USA" or other labor bureaucrat organizers, nostalgia for the New Deal and the booming 1960s is heard again and again. In particular, the high wages and regard that manual labor within U.$. borders received is a theme. The fact that a majority of white workers has become white-collar since then is barely mentioned and only very indirectly and without detail by Joel Rogers. (p. 248) Now the majority of so- called workers in the United $tates consumes the labor of Third World manual workers in the form of cheap commodities to such an extent that the majority is a net beneficiary of global exploitation. For this reason a government based on a majority within U.$. borders is a government for war, national oppression and super-exploitation. Right now the interests of the majority within U.$. borders stands opposed to that of the majority of the world; however, if the majority of the world started to have the same interest in exploiting others (of a minority), we communists would stand against that kind of majority rule too. In the United $tates, we do not care if we obtain 5% or 20% or 51% on our side, but we will not compromise with a system of exploitation and super-exploitation, a capitalist system which is also a system of war risking global species annihilation. Electoral opportunism only delays the day that more people scientifically grasp that the capitalist system plays Russian Roulette with our lives. That is why we are building a party, a press and other independent institutions of the oppressed to tell the unvarnished truth.