Introduction
The Million Worker March (MWM), due to take place in Washington, October 17, 2004, represents a dramatic break with both the policies and the action forms of the American Federation of Labour-Congress of Industrial Organisations (AFL-CIO). Despite a palace revolution at the top of the organisation, in 1995, it had continued to preside over the secular decline of US unionism. Unionism today covers only 12 percent of the wage force in the USA, leaving whole sectors of industry, whole geographical areas, virtually union free. The neo-liberal model, of public political democracy but concealed social fascism, making unions redundant, has been exported worldwide.
We have witnessed the dramatic socio-political-economic transformation – for the worse – from a national industrialism capitalism (NIC) to a globalised networked services and financial capitalism (GNC). But the AFL-CIO has only continued with policies, forms of organisation and action that have accompanied its further decline, social isolation and ineffectivity. Where it has innovated or attempted to fight back this has been by public relations techniques, technical fixes, or by proposals for re-organisation – by almost any strategy other than that of the self-activity of labour itself.
The MWM (http://www.millionworkermarch.org/index.php) is modelled, of course, on the series of new social movement marches on Washington over past decades, it takes place under the slogan, ‘Uniting Organised Labour, Unorganised Workers, Anti-War and Community Organisations, and Our Inter-Faith Allies’. It puts forward a wide range of social, economic, industrial, political, anti-militarist and cultural demands of what one must call a radical-democratic nature (given that self-identified social-democrats are amongst the leading figures of the current AFL-CIO). The MWM, accompanied by major public union demands for a worker-friendly AFL-CIO foreign policy (see below) represent the most significant indication of renewal within the US union movement for many decades.
The AFL-CIO has responded to this grassroots, shopfloor, community initiative in predictably defensive and conservative fashion – by denouncing it and insisting all current union efforts go into getting the vote out for the Democratic Party in the November elections. In the face of innovation, the AFL-CIO depends on denunciation of anything it does not control, on ritual, on dependency and self-subordination to the political and economic elites in the USA. Whenever it seems to be breaking away from its old habits, as at the Battle of Seattle or attendance at the World Social Forums, the efforts are half-hearted, ambiguous or nullified by contradictory following behaviour.
The propositions below are intended as both an expression of and contribution to a direction in which the MWM appears to be pointing. They are drawn from some 15 years of work on the subject (http://jwsr.ucr.edu/archive/vol10/number1/pdf/jwsr-v10n1-waterman.pdf.
There is no intention here to claim that the MWM demonstrates the argument for a new social unionism internationally. There is, for example, nothing specifically international/ist about MWM demands (though the announcement of the MWM coincides in time with a major grassroots union attack on the state-funded and secretive foreign policy of the AFL-CIO www.labornotes.org/archives/2004/09/articles/h.html). Nor, on the other hand, does the argument below claim to be the one right way to develop a new, relevant and effective unionism internationally. This note should be seen as no more than a provocation to thought and discussion on the future of unionism under, against and beyond the ‘cancer stage’ of capitalism.
1. A New Social Unionism
By a “new social unionism” I mean one surpassing existing models of “economic”, “political” or “political-economic” unionism, by addressing itself to all forms of work, by taking on socio-cultural forms, and addressing itself to civil society. Such a union model would be one which, amongst other characteristics, would be:
• Struggling within and around waged work, not simply for better wages and conditions but for increased worker and union control over the labour process, investments, new technology, relocation, subcontracting, training and education policies. Such strategies and struggles should be carried out in dialogue and common action with affected communities and interests so as to avoid conflicts (e.g. with environmentalists, with women) and to positively increase the appeal of the demands
• Struggling against hierarchical, authoritarian and technocratic working methods and relations, for socially-useful and environmentally-friendly products, for a reduction in the hours of work, for the distribution of that which is available and necessary, for the sharing of domestic work, and for an increase in free time for cultural self-development and self-realisation
• Intimately related with the movements of other non-unionised or non-unionisable working classes or categories (petty-commodity sector, homeworkers, peasants, housewives, technicians and professionals)
• Intimately related to other non- or multi-class democratic movements (base movements of churches, women’s, residents’, ecological, human-rights and peace movements, etc) in the effort to create a powerful and diverse civil society
• Intimately related to other (potential) allies as an autonomous, equal and democratic partner, neither claiming to be, nor subordinating itself to, a “vanguard” or “sovereign” organisation or power
• Taking up the new social issues within society at large, as they arise for workers specifically and as they express themselves within the union itself (struggle against authoritarianism, majoritarianism, bureaucracy, sexism, racism, etc)
• Favouring shopfloor democracy and encouraging direct horizontal relations both between workers and between the workers and other popular/democratic social forces
• Active on the terrain of education, culture and communication, stimulating worker and popular culture, supporting initiatives for democracy and pluralism both inside and outside the dominant institutions or media, locally, nationally, globally
• Open to networking both within and between organisations, understanding the value of informal, horizontal, flexible coalitions, alliances and interest groups to stimulate organisational democracy, pluralism and innovation…
2. A New Labour Internationalism
In so far as this addresses itself to the problems of a GNC (of which inter-state relations are but one part), this would have to see itself as part of a general global solidarity movement, from which it must learn and to which it must contribute. A new kind of labour internationalism implies, amongst other things:
• Moving from the international relations of union or other officials towards face-to-face relations of concerned labouring people at the shop floor, community or grassroots level
• Surpassing dependence on the centralised, bureaucratic and rigid model of the pyramidal international organisation by stimulating the self-empowering, decentralised, horizontal, democratic and flexible model of the international information network
• Moving from an “aid model” (one-way flows of money and material from the ‘rich, powerful, free’ unions, workers or others), to a “solidarity model” (two-way or multi-directional flows of political support, information and ideas)
• Moving from verbal declarations, appeals and conferences to political activity, creative work, visits, or direct financial contributions (which will continue to be necessary) by the working people concerned
• Basing international solidarity on the expressed daily needs, values and capacities of ordinary working people, not simply on those of their representatives
• Recognising that whilst labour is not the privileged bearer of internationalism, it is essential to it, and therefore linking up with other democratic internationalisms, so as to reinforce wage-labour struggles and surpass a workerist internationalism
• Overcoming ideological, political and financial dependency in international solidarity work by financing internationalist activities from worker or publicly-collected funds, and carrying out independent research activities and policy formulation
• Replacing the political/financial coercion, the private collusion and public silences of the traditional internationalisms, with a frank, friendly, constructive and public discourse of equals, made available to interested workers
• Recognising that there is no single site or level of international struggle and that, whilst the shop floor, grassroots and community may be the base, the traditional formal terrains can be used and can also be influenced
• Recognising that the development of a new internationalism requires contributions from and discussion with labour movements in West, East and South, as well as within and between other sociogeographic regions.
Elements of such an understanding can be found within both international union pronouncements and practices. It is becoming the common sense amongst left labour internationalists although some still seem to consider labour (or even union) internationalism as the one that leads, or ought to lead, the new wave of struggles against neo-liberal globalisation.Yet others are beginning to go beyond ideal types to spell out global labour/popular and democratic alternatives to ‘globalisation-from-above’ in both programmatic and relational terms.
3. Internationalism, Labour Internationalism, Union Internationalism
We need to distinguish between the concepts of “internationalism,” “labour internationalism,” and “union internationalism.” Within social movement discourse, internationalism is customarily associated with 19th century labour, with socialism and Marxism. It may be projected backwards so as to include the ancient religious universalisms, or the liberal cosmopolitanism of the Enlightenment. And it should be extended, in both the 19th and 20th century, so as to include women’s/feminist, pacifist, anti-colonial and human rights forms.
In so far as it is limited to these two centuries, and to a “world of nation states,” we need a new term for the era of globalization. Some talk of transnationalism. I prefer global solidarity, in so far as it is addressed to globalisation, its discontents and alternatives. As for labour internationalism this refers to a wide range of past and present labour-related ideas, strategies and practices, including those of co-operatives, labour and socialist parties, socialist intellectuals, culture, the media and even sport. As for union internationalism this is restricted to the primary form of worker self-articulation during the NIC era. Trade union internationalism has so displaced or dominated labour internationalism during the later 20th century as to be commonly conflated with the latter. Yet it is precisely union internationalism that is most profoundly in crisis, and in question, under our GNC.
4. Networking, Communications, Culture
We really need an additional, even an alternative, principle of worker self-articulation (both joining and expression) appropriate to our era. In other words, we need one that would continually and effectively undermine the reproduction of bureaucracy, hierarchy, and dogma that occurs also within “radical” and “revolutionary” unions.
This principle is the network, and the practice is networking. There is no need to fetishise the network or to demonise the organisation. “Networking” is also a way of understanding human interrelations, and we can therefore see an organisation in network terms, just as we can look at a network in organisational ones. Nonetheless, it remains true that the movement from an NIC to a GNC is also one from an organised to a networked capitalism. It is from the international labour networks and networking that the new initiatives, speed, creativity, and flexibility tend to come. An international unionism concerned with being radical-democratic and internationalist will learn this, or it will stagnate. International union networking itself will stagnate if it does not recognise itself as a part of a radical-democratic internationalist project that goes far beyond the unions, far beyond labour problems.
“Networking,” relates to communication rather than institutions. International labour networking must be informed by and produce a radical-democratic style of communication and sense of culture a “global solidarity culture.” Labour has a long and rich cultural history and has in the past innovated and even led popular, democratic, and even avant-garde cultural movements. Once again, international trade unionism has to either surpass its reductionist self-definition or remain invisible in the international media arena, which is increasingly challenging and even replacing the institutional terrain as the central site of democratic contestation and deliberation.
Conclusion
The current crisis of and challenge to the sclerotic AFL-CIO in the USA is but one expression of what is happening within the trade union movement “inter/nationally” and globally. The German trade-union movement – representing the very model of social-democratic unionism – is itself in increasing crisis. The model “social movement unions” of the South – identified variously as those of Brazil, the Philippines, South Korea and South Africa – have tended to lose their social-movement characteristics and socialist aspirations as they adopted the defensive, and now evidently defeatist, “social partnership” strategies urged on them by the International Labour Organisation, the Northern trade unions, and numerous academic specialists.
The challenge, inter/nationally and globally, has been coming from different directions: from shopfloor union networks in countries like France and Italy, from the “global justice and solidarity movement”, with its World Social Forums and myriad, cross-sectoral moments of protest and proposition. It has also come from an increasing range of dissident union and labour activists and from a growing number and range of university labour specialists.
The discussion on “social movement unionism”, “the new social unionism”, “international social movement unionism” and related terms has now become worldwide and extensive (a search on Google for “social movement unionism” – within the double quotes – finds 50+ pages of references). Moreover, much of this material comes from the USA itself. The question therefore arises: does the MWM mark the time at which this idea will take off from Cyberia and into the heart of the labour movement globally.
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