The following is the second in a series published by the Cross Union Classwide Caucus in 1977. The CUCC was a paper organization fashioned by Fred Newman's IWP during the formation of the Nationwide Unemployed League (NUL)—a joint effort between the IWP, the National Labor Federation and the California Homemakers Association. NATLFED and CHA were front groups of the Provisional Communist Party, which was in turn run by another political guru, Gerald William Doeden (aka Eugenio “Gino” Parente). The article reveals remnants of LaRouche-like ideology (vis-à-vis grand conspiracies involving the Tri Lateral Commission, the union movement, corporate America, former President Jimmy Carter and the Rockefellers)—the seeds from which the IWP's bitter vitriol towards the Democratic Party were apparently sown.

Labor Must Lead: Part II

New Ways of Making Old and New Ties

Strategy and tactics live by “taking in each other's wash.” Thus, to give real meaning to the strategic perspective—labor must lead—we must examine in greater detail the tactical realities of this historic period.

Two concrete and interrelated questions provide us with an appropriate focus, namely (1) how must the CUCC relate tactical to the Democratic Party, and (2) how must the CUCC relate tactically to the complex and somewhat diffused social phenomenon-known as the community movement? The answers to these questions will give us a better understanding of how we must implement the strategic perspective of the CUCC; that is, more precisely, how labor must move itself and be moved into a leadership position in the upcoming historic period.

Big labor is, for the most part, politically tied to Big Business by way of the Democratic Party. The economic relationship between trade union leader and boss has become increasingly less central as Big Labor became a political force within the context of the Democratic Party and as U.S. Big Business became increasingly monopolistic and directly political. Thus, the actual (historic) political conflicts (the underlying class conflicts) between the producers and those who own the means of production have been covered over by decades of prosperity here in the U.S. and the real-politik relationship between Big Business and Big Labor has more and more come to be accepted a the actual nexus between labor and management.

Of course, bargaining has continued on the union management; sometimes bitter bargaining and extended and angry strikes. But more and more the issues effecting labor and management were being decided on a real politik level and not at the negotiating table and surely not on the picket line. Often, in fact, local trade union leaders and the ranks saw their hard-fought victories sold-out by union tops far removed physically and politically from the rank-and-file. The points of intersection between Big Labor and Big Business are multiple and varied (the Tri Lateral being a significant contemporary point of intersection). But the ongoing social institutions here in the U.S. wherein these forces typically meet is the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party is not to be naively identified as a homogeneous social force. To merely identify it as a “party of big business”—or even of a faction representing certain Big Business interests—is naive ultra-leftism, a mechanical application of Marxism which is not Marxism at all. Actually, the Party is an extremely complex social institution with various and varied factions, elements, perspectives, pushes and pulls, etc. It is tied to many different things in U.S. society and tied in many different ways and, moreover, is itself in a continuous process of social change. The Democratic Party is the totality of this process and at the same time is that social vehicle which reconciles the various diffuse social elements within the Party and within U.S. society.

The process of social reconciliation in a so-called pluralistic society is very complex and, furthermore, the very process of reconciliation (the vehicles of reconciliation themselves), change as the socioeconomic conditions of the society change. Thus, the reconciliative activity of the Party under Roosevelt's leadership during the 1930s and 1940s was vastly different than it is today in the early stages of Carter's regime. The basic socio-economic difference between then and now is that capitalist expansion was a real possibility in the 1930s (albeit a difficult possibility requiring, in the final analysis, a worldwide war), whereas today capitalist expansion is more than difficult, it impossible. We are not, of course, suggesting that some components of the capitalist economy nationally or internationally will not temporarily expand (and surely we are not suggesting that profits will drop) but rather that overall expansion of international capital is no longer socio-economically and politically possible. Hence, labor must be reconciled differently today than yesterday.

Labor's major struggle in the 1930s centered around the right to organize. Big Business ultimately compromised (that is the Democratic Party reconciled) by granting that right, at least temporarily. Indeed, the legislation of the period legalized the right of trade unions to organize. But over the ensuing decades labor has more and more lost that right and today Big Business simply cannot permit Big Government to reconcile labor by in any way loosening up the very tight reigns that have historically come to restrict labor's right to organize. Hence, for example, the recent developments around common situs.

Today Big Business works to reconcile Big Labor by offering security for the ranks of the labor aristocracy (and in some cases posh jobs for the labor bureaucrats who after all, feel they need security just as much as the ranks do). In a time when Big Government is trying desperately to sell the bitter pill identified in the October ‘74 editorial of Business Week, it is little wonder that everyone is looking for job security, and Big Labor, with no place else to go, is easy prey to this pitch. Within the Democratic Party, then, of today, Big Business and Big Labor try to work out an accommodation around the issue of job security. To oversimplify the issue for the sake of some clarity, Big Business through Big Government is sending Big Labor the following message: “Job security for the labor aristocracy, in exchange for Labor's right to organize.” Big Business and Big Government must insist that labor remain a minor partner in the Tri Lateral structure of contemporary society.

Now, of course, Big Labor, even the most compromised bureaucratic elements thereof, have a recognition of this attempt. They see the bad faith with which Big Business and Big Government are bargaining. For no matter how compromised Big Labor is, they recognize (if nothing else in “knee-jerk” fashion) that Big Business remains the natural enemy. Yet, despite that recognition, the social political links of Big Labor for these past several decades, links which have more and more separated it from its historic class location and tied it to the interests of Big Business and Big Government via their alignment in the Democratic Party, leaves labor—even Big Labor—in a position of extreme weakness and thus subject to accepting the deals of Big Business and Big Government. It is, as we mentioned, labor's historic bind. But, as was stated earlier, as well, Big Business and Big Government together have no alternative to their historic bind, save delaying the ultimate by compromising labor.

Big Labor on the other hand does have an historic alternative and that alternative is operationally manifest in the perspective of organizing the unorganized. Thus, to oversimplify matters, the strategic perspective labor must lead is tactically manifest in the perspective organize the unorganized. This, of course, leaves open the complex questions, which we must examine concretely on an ongoing basis, of how to operationalize this strategic tactical perspective.

Given, however, the role that the Democratic Party plays as the nexus, the political nexus, of the relationship between Big Government and Big Business on the one hand, and Big Labor on the other, how must the CUCC relate to the Democratic Party? Again, we begin by saying what it must not do. It must not adopt a naive ultra-left perspective rejecting thereby the social realities of U.S. society. That is, it cannot simply pretend that the Democratic Party does not exist and does not play the social political role that we have described above. Indeed, we must actively engage the Democratic Party at every step of the way.

It is no mere point of semantics to distinguish between “working in and around the Democratic Party with the perspective that the Democratic Party represents a potential institution of social change in the interests of labor,” and “working in and around the Democratic Party with the perspective that the Democratic Party represents no possibility as a political force representing the ultimate interests of labor but is nonetheless the social political location of labor's current ties with other social forces and, indeed, contains thereby some of the most progressive elements of Big Labor.”

Let me clarify this critical point still further. We must be clear that strategically labor must lead and that the Democratic Party is in the final analysis an ever-changing social vehicle which has as its social political raison d'etre the reconciliation of Big Labor with Big Government and Big Business. Hence it is a sociological, tautology that labor's leadership (as distinguished, say, from labor's interests) cannot be expressed in the Democratic Party. The function of social reconciliation (e.g., the Democratic Party) is to basically accept existing conditions and priorities—which are determined in the interests of those in control—and attempt to reconcile the conflicts and contradictions which arise from them.

Given the socio-economic realities of this period as outlined above, the conditions for reconciliation demand that labor relinquish even its traditional “constituency” leadership role in the struggle of working people for better jobs, higher union wages, adequate housing, decent education, nationalized health care, improved social security benefits, repeal of anti-labor legislation such as Taft-Hartley, Landrum-Griffin, the Taylor Act, etc. These are the social needs of all working people, organized and unorganized, and must be fought for by organized labor if it is to maintain its base of support, even amongst its own membership. But in order for labor to lead in the struggle for these necessary demands it must in this period do more than represent its constituency—it must adopt a position of political leadership of the society as a whole. For the interests of Big Business which currently provides political leadership is socio-economically inconsistent with the interests of labor.

What follows from this is that the CUCC must confront the very issues being confronted by the progressive labor elements within the Democratic Party and indeed must be willing to work in appropriate relationships with those elements, without ever losing sight of the strategic orientation of the classwide caucus. As the contradictions of current U.S. society become more and more manifest, which is to say nothing more complex or abstract than as Carterism becomes more and more manifest as a center-right politic, the progressive elements, who politically link themselves to Big Business and Big Government within the Democratic Party, will be increasingly prone to following the new leadership who hold the CUCC perspective provided that that new leadership has not alienated themselves from these elements so as to be unapproachable. We must walk shoulder to shoulder so to speak with the most progressive labor elements within the Democratic Party and yet, though our shoulders touch, there must be a clear line (a class line) between us.

There will be those of course who argue that pragmatism dictates working within the Democratic Party pure and simple. This perspective must be examined with great care and. not in a doctrinaire manner. Moreover, we cannot make the mistake of trying to adjudicate this issue on abstract or ultra-left principles. Rather, we must justify the perspective we articulate by an appeal to objective science and hard empirical analysis.

The question must always be, what is the Democratic Party and is the perspective that labor must lead attainable within the Democratic Party given what the Democratic Party is? Once we are clear on the answer to that, then we can reconsider the issue of how to realistically relate to the Democratic Party. The means and modes of relationships will, be necessarily complex and the science of compromise, which is to say the science of politic, will here be put to a severe test. But let us not fudge on the strategic issue and on the scientific analysis. For if we are not clear on where we stand on this basic question we may develop new leaders but all not be providing new leadership.

The relationship of the caucus (CUCC) to the community movement is ever more complex in large measure because the community movement has a much less well-defined character than the Democratic Party. Fundamentally, the caucus must stand for labor community unity. But in what does that unity consist?

The community movement, it must first of all be noted, is a significant force in the U.S. today. For example, one of its components, the consumer movement, with its de facto leader Ralph Nader, is daily gaining influence as a political force and as a lobbying force. Millions throughout the country, in a host of loosely interrelated organizations, form the consumer movement. Moreover, the movement has moved over the last few years from [an] anti-corporatist perspective to a sometimes articulated anti-capitalist perspective.

Surveys taken over the last several years throughout the country have indicated massive anti-corporate sentiment throughout the U.S. amongst those elements of the population who for the most part make up the consumer movement. In a recent Daily News survey 75% of those questioned thought the so-called oil crisis was a hoax. In the same article, tucked away at the very end, the News reported that 60% of those questioned favored nationalization of the fuel companies.

Another growing and related movement is the neighborhood movement. This movement generally has stayed closer to the center on the U.S. political spectrum, if anything veering slightly right, but, nonetheless, there are some elements in it moving more and more towards unity with labor and towards a more anti-corporatist perspective.

Now, these forces (the community movement) tend to relate to other social forces in the country, most specifically the trade-union movement, through the vehicle of the Democratic Party.

Hence the question that we must deal with is the following: given that the most progressive elements of the labor movement must, as we said earlier, recognize that the Democratic Party is, in the final analysis, unable to serve as the vehicle in which labor leadership can be manifest and given the importance of a labor-community unity, how are the most progressive elements of labor to relate to this amorphous community movement outside, so to speak of the Democratic Party? That is, how is labor to lead the community movement?

Again, we hasten to add quickly so as not to be misunderstood, that we are not literally suggesting that either of these forces, in ultra-left fashion, should immediately remove themselves from the Democratic Party. The question is: how is labor to relate to the community movement directly as leadership rather than as one constituency within the context of the socio-political reconciliator—the Democratic Party?

There are no doubt many answers to this complex question and they will hopefully emerge in more detail over the years as the strategic and tactical perspective of the CUCC becomes more and more a historic reality. For the moment, however, there is a concrete model which provides one central answer to this all important question. In order to clearly articulate this answer, to clearly describe this model, we must go back and do a little bit of analysis on the diffuse and amorphous term “community.”

The word “community” is characteristically defined geographically. This is true for various legalistic (and as has become more apparent in recent years, racist) reasons. But there is a more pro-working class definition of community organizing (a class-analytic definition) an operational definition relevant to the task of organizing the unorganized.

What we must mean by “community” is that component of the population of working and out-of-work poor people who, by dint of the socio-economic realities of this period, do not have the workplace and organizations of the workplace as their primary nexus with society. This group includes youth, the poor, non-unionized workers, other isolated workers, welfare recipients, most women, homemakers, etc. Even the elements of this strata of working and poor people who do hold jobs (sporadically or semi-regularly) in non-unionized locations may have a work relationship to society but that relationship is thoroughly unorganized by any form of either economic or political organization. Hence, that is not the primary nexus of their political relationship to society.

This broad mass of the labor force, mothers, homemakers, workers in small plants, domestic workers, farm workers, welfare recipients (who are increasingly made to participate in workfare programs), so-called undocumented workers, etc., are no handful of people. They represent at a minimum 50 million members of the work force. This portion of the population is basically organized by the institutions of Big Government. For example, the welfare system, CETA programs, Manpower programs, Methadone programs, etc., in ways which leave them totally unrecognized, misrepresented and, last but not least, thoroughly out of the organized work force.

These masses, organized by Big Government via the community corporation route, are “delivered” to the Democratic Party by local politicians—so-called community organizers or, more precisely, “poverty pimps.” However, they are not delivered as a component of the work force, but as the “poor”—a traditional and necessary electoral constituency of the Democratic Party. This portion of the population, this strata, is precisely those who are now being organized into the new union formations such as the NYCUWC, LCCS, CHA, EFWA. Significantly, they are being organized in the community for the sociological reasons articulated above (organizationally speaking, that is where they are). But they are not in the traditional sense, being “community organized.”

They are being organized into union formations with a strong pro-labor perspective, an anti-scab perspective and thus organized they represent an increasingly progressive political element in the development of the overall strategic perspective that labor must lead. This community organizing must be strongly supported by the most progressive elements of the labor movement and by the CUCC. These elements of the population currently organized by the apparatus of Big Government (the welfare state) in such a way as to render them at best “neutral,” and more typically anti-labor, can be effectively organized and, indeed, are being effectively organized, along pro-labor lines.

In addition to that being of great significance in itself, these forces serve as a pro-labor link between organized labor and community organizations in the more traditional sense. These new unions and related organizations must increasingly come to play the role that the Democratic Party currently plays in the community—that is, they must become the actual social vehicle for linking up the more progressive elements of the middle-class community movement with the most progressive elements of the labor movement. These vehicles, unlike the Democratic Party, are decidedly biased on the side of labor. It is in this sense that the organizing of the new unions is best understood tactically not as things-in-themselves, but as a critical organizational component (a tactic) in the development of new leadership committed to the strategic perspective that labor must lead.

The current alienation of minority groupings, based primarily in the communities—Blacks, Latinos, other minorities, women—from organized labor is easily understood in light of labor's traditional exclusion of so many from those groupings from its ranks and the historic conflict of interest, as separate constituencies within the Democratic Party. The community movement (as traditionally understood) has for the most part, reached its limits.

It has been organized in such a way that it cannot address the current organization of the economy and the need for re organization of existing priorities. It is made up of groupings limited to local issues attempting to manipulate in their own local interest what has already been largely determined at a higher level. However, the strategic perspective labor must lead and the tactical companion piece—organize the unorganized—pursued with principle and enthusiasm would plainly locate these oppressed and politically alienated groupings in the camp of progressive labor—precisely where they should be.

These notes, of course, represent the barest beginnings of a statement of the perspective of the CUCC. The CUCC is but an embryo. However, even in its short 17 months of existence, the caucus has to some extent uniquely identified itself as a formation which on the one hand does not suffer from adolescent ultra-leftism, and, on the other hand, does not suffer from senile collaborationism. The discussions surrounding this document and the final statement of purpose, strategy and tactics, hopefully developed from these discussions, must not be simply another collection of words to be published, but must actively dictate a course of action in the years of struggle ahead.

Part One