Conversation with an NYC Labor Activist

Gregory Butler is a blogger construction worker, labor activist, and author of Disunited Brotherhoods...race, racketeering and the fall of the New York construction unions.

Here is the text of an (incomplete) conversation we had on Facebook.

Sam Calvin via UnemployedWorkers.org
A disturbing chart...btw I don't know why they don't use the actual percentages...chart should read 67.5% on the left down to 57.5% on the right...

Daily Kos: Workers' share of national income fails to recover after 21st Century recessions
www.dailykos.com
But after the 2001 and 2007-2009 recessions officially ended, workers' share of national income did not recover but continued a downward spiral. It is now at the lowest level it has been since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping records 64 years ago.
June 19 at 1:58am · LikeUnlike · · Share

Sam Calvin one note- part of the decline is attributable to the fact that this measures "wages and salaries" as opposed to "total compensation"...ie healthcare costs squeeze take-home pay...
June 19 at 2:00am · LikeUnlike
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Sam Calvin The really interesting question is why there is no ability on the part of progressive elites to provide real support to unions, the only institutions which have proven capable of reversing this trend...
June 19 at 2:02am · LikeUnlike
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Gregory A. Butler
The Democratic Party represents the liberal wing of the capitalist class - they want to keep workers as impoverished and unorganized as much as the right wingers in the Republican Party do. The only difference is, they see America's weak, timid, incompetent, cowardly, racist, sexist and pro corporate union leaders as useful sources of funding and volunteers for the Democratic Party and they understand that those guys act as a barrier against the rise of an effective and militant working class movement. So, they tolerate unions as long as they are small, weak and divided (and solidly in the Democratic Party camp).
June 19 at 2:17am · LikeUnlike
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Sam Calvin Sure, but that said, independent from the Democratic party there is a real segment of the national elite that wants a curb on the wholesale slashing of working-class standards of living. They are just incapable of making real investment in the institutions that are capable of defending those standards.
June 19 at 3:03am · LikeUnlike
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Gregory A. Butler They see the necessity of raising the living standards of A PART of the working class, but just like the rest of the bosses, they really don't want workers to be independently organized by worker led organizations. That's why they absolutely do NOT want a stronger labor movement!
June 19 at 3:05am · LikeUnlike
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Sam Calvin I agree that it is the prospect of independent working-class power that prevents them from effective measures. But I think there is an interesting contradiction there, and one that we have to understand. The mediating institutions they construct - NPOs primarily - don't seem to be able to effectively blunt the disastrous drive towards immiseration.
June 19 at 10:34am · LikeUnlike
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Gregory A. Butler
NGOs aren't supposed to stop poverty - they are designed to manage discontent, sabotage the struggles of workers and the poor from within and persuade/coerce workers and the poor to be passive recipients of social services, and to jump through all sorts of hoops to get those services and see those services as a favor rather than as a civil and human right.

NGOs do an awesome job of doing all of those things - and providing employment opportunities for the professional middle classes as well.
June 19 at 1:35pm · LikeUnlike
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Sam Calvin I guess I don't agree with you that elites are uniformly, always and absolutely against working-class power, let alone reforms which benefit working people. Under some conditions, an alliance with segments of the ruling class is not only tactical, but strategically necessary IMO.
June 19 at 1:56pm · LikeUnlike
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Gregory A. Butler
Well, I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree here, Sam.

The interests of the capitalists are ALWAYS fundamentally opposite those of the workers - our classes are in contradiction because of our contradictory relationship to the forces of production (they own them and profit from them, their profits come from the value generated by our labor over and above what we get paid - the less we get paid the more they profit).

Since they are a ruling class as well as an exploiting class, any "alliance" with them is going to be an "alliance" on their terms for their benefit.

One of the main reasons that American labor unions are in a death spiral is precisely because they are "allied" with a section of the capitalist class - that "alliance", while it did help a small privileged layer of workers, always and primarily served the interest of the capitalists and hurt the working class as a class.
June 19 at 2:47pm · LikeUnlike
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Sam Calvin I agree that there is a contradiction between classes, but there are also contradictions WITHIN classes. Not to admit the possibility of this puts you at a disadvantage. Surely you admit that the working class can be divided against itself - why not the ruling class?
June 19 at 3:15pm · LikeUnlike
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Gregory A. Butler
The path you're advocating has been tried again and again in the working class movement - UNSUCCESSFULLY.

Collaboration with what Lenin called the "liberal bourgeoisie" has always and everywhere led to defeat for the working class.

The bottom line is, no matter how divided they may be among themselves, they are united by their class need to exploit our class, and the need to subordinate our class to theirs politically to defend that exploitation.

So no, it is NEVER a good idea to form an "alliance" with a section of the capitalists - they are always our enemy and any "alliance" with them will always be to their benefit and our detriment.See More
June 19 at 3:20pm · LikeUnlike
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Sam Calvin I respect your conviction on this issue, but I'm still not convinced. My study of history (and of Lenin for that matter) suggests that the story is less clear-cut, and that tactical compromise has played a key role in most political struggles.
June 19 at 7:01pm · LikeUnlike
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Gregory A. Butler
Based on about 25 years of studying the various branches and ideological trends of the working class, and 13 years of "participant-observer" study of the NYC construction unions, I can safely say that any strategy based on "compromise" or "...cooperation" with ANY bosses (no matter how "progressive" or even "revolutionary" they may claim to be) is an express route to defeat for our class.

The # 1 reason that the American labor movement is in a death spiral is due to 74 years of "compromise" with the liberal bosses who control the Democratic Party.

We need to fight for 100 per cent CLASS INDEPENDENCE for our movement, not "compromise" with the liberal wing of the alien exploiting class that parasitically lives off of our labor - any such "compromise" is the "compromise" between a malnourished child and the tapeworm living in her gut - the kind of "compromise" that only benefits the parasite!
June 19 at 7:47pm · LikeUnlike
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Sam Calvin So you see popular front strategies as a mistake?
June 19 at 8:20pm · LikeUnlike


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Gregory A. Butler
Absolutely!

Popular Frontism was an unmitigated DISASTER for the working class!

Popular Frontism prevented revolutions in France and America, helped crush the Spanish Revolution (causing the deaths of 2 million Spanish, Catalan and Basque workers at the hands of Franco) and made it possible for the capitalist classes of America and Western Europe to wage WW II and carry out another imperialist redivision of the world.

The opportunism that led to Popular Frontism subverted the Chinese revolution of 1925, forced Chinese workers to subordinate themselves to their enemy Chang Kaishek and enabled Chang to slaughter 200,000 communist workers (while simultaneously receiving Soviet aid!)

The flip side of Popular Frontism in the USSR was the Great Purges; forced collectivization of farms, the wholesale denial of workers rights during Five Year Plan industrialization, soldiers and sailors being stripped of the civil rights they'd won in the Revolution and, above all, the slaughter of just about every single surviving participant in the Russian Revolution (all intended to make the USSR into a paletable ally for whichever imperialist power they could ally with in the coming world war - the Soviet state actually spent time on both the Axis side - at the beginning of the war - and the Allied side)

Popular Frontism led to the destruction of everything that was good and progressive about the USSR and led to the slaughter of about 4.5 million Soviet citizens

That episode of colossal butchery paved the way for the slaughters carried out by Popular Frontist regimes in China, North Korea and Vietnam.

So yeah, I see Popular Frontism as the worst defeat of the 20th century for the working class and I am 10,000% opposed to any and all forms of Popular Frontism.
June 19 at 9:58pm · LikeUnlike
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Sam Calvin OK - I guess I see more or less where you're coming from. On the flip side, do you think that there is such a thing as "ultra-leftism"?
June 19 at 10:37pm · LikeUnlike

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Gregory A. Butler The main problem of the working class movement for the past 220 years or so has been right opportunism. That's where ideas like Popular Frontism come from, that's what gave us Stalinism, Maoism, Hoxhaism, Juche, "Pure and Simple Trade Unionism" and, actually, that was the original origin point of Fascism.
June 19 at 10:50pm · LikeUnlike
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Gregory A. Butler Right Opportunism has it's roots in the privileged labor aristocratic layers of the working class, and, in places like America, in the privileged layers of the oppressor nationalities. Right opportunism is the best friend of the capitalists - it's been saving their bacon for about 90 years now.
June 19 at 10:52pm · LikeUnlike
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Sam Calvin To play devil's advocate for a moment: isn't the victory of right opportunism also an indication of ultra-leftism? That is, unless you think there is merely a shortage of left ideas, the conclusion must be that left leadership has not gained traction because it cannot deliver political gains.
June 20 at 11:37am · LikeUnlike
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Gregory A. Butler
Actually, no.

The victory of right opportunism is evidence of a large labor aristocracy within the working class, a layer of privileged workers who's class loyalty is purchased by the capitalists with a portion of their profits (in a country like ours, usually they'd be superprofits extracted by the imperialist plunder of other, weaker, nations, or in countries like ours with national questions, they can also be the superprofits that result from institutional racism).

In other words, ideas reflect not the smarts or lack thereof of groups of leaders but are instead the intellectual echo of class forces - in this case, right opportunism is the ideology of the labor aristocracy.

Those ides are dominant because the labor aristocracy is dominant within the working class, because of its privileges due to the bribes it receives from the capitalists.
June 20 at 1:01pm · LikeUnlike
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Gregory A. Butler
As for "political gains", what exactly does that even mean?

Do you mean that in the Tammany Hall ward heeler sense of the term?

By that definition, it's all about "clout" - that is, can a union chief get face time with politicians and can the narrow needs of a privileged layer of workers get taken care of?

By that definition, the Screen Actors Guild and the Stagehands Union have made "political gains" - their lobbying has persuaded just about every state where movies and TV shows are filmed to give a permanent tax holiday to movie studios that film in those jurisdictions

The result?

A few hundred extremely well paying jobs for actors, and a few thousand well paying jobs for stagehands.

Has it brought the working class any closer to actually COMING TO POWER?

NO!

Has it even improved the conditions of actors and stagehands in the low paying sectors of the industry (porn, independent films, Black movies, basic cable)?

NO!

Its just provided some momentary "political gains" for a few labor aristocrats at the expense of the rest of the class.
June 20 at 1:08pm · LikeUnlike
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Sam Calvin I chose the ambiguous term "political gains" precisely because I'd like you to "fill in the blank".
Tuesday at 9:34am · LikeUnlike

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Sam Calvin Whatever you think political gains are - e.g. development and consolidation of power and position...Isn't the whole purpose of characterizing "right" and "left" errors specifically to refine the debate on leadership?
Tuesday at 9:40am · Like