Workers in Wisconsin and across the nation are at a cross roads. Either we continue down the road of dependence on the Democratic Party, political lobbyists, court-rulings and reliance on union leaders, who offer concessions instead of fight, who tell us to: “share the pain” instead of taking actions designed to make the capitalists pay for their crisis; or, we open a new road of working class independent action to make the bosses pay!

The Democrats and union tops will have us “put down the placards and pick up the clipboards” they intend to channel the masses energy off the streets and into the electoral arena and courts. A recall campaign will be coupled with mobilization for Democratic candidates and a demoralizing wait for court cases to be adjudicated. This is a dead end strategy which leaves resolution of the crisis in the hands of the capitalist’s institutions and capitalist politicians. For a solution to the crisis in favor of the working class a strategy of self activity and political independence is required.

The outcome of this struggle is decisive for the entire working class. Either the workers’ movement will prevail, and based on this victory a sense of revitalization will swell the ranks of labor with a new spirit to turn the tide, or the capitalists will be victorious, and will take their campaign from state to state and pick the unions to the bone, crushing the working class. For big capital, this is a nationwide attack; for the working class, the response must be nationwide as well. The Democrats could not even deliver the Employee Free Choice Act no way can they protect our right to collective bargaining.

Break with the Democrats:
To resolve the economic and political crisis in the interest of the working class we must organize from the bottom up (factory/office/job-site committees), we need to develop new leaders who will prepare for general strikes. As a recall campaign is already underway we need to reject the Democrats who expect our support and instead run independent labor candidates, build working class political independence and lay the foundation for a fighting workers’/labor party.

The old strategy is one of class collaboration between labor and the Democrats have long tied the American worker to the imperialist project, pitting the American workers against the workers of the world. Labor allied with the Democrats has, for over a century, endorsed imperialist interventions supported and planned on a bi-partisan basis by Wall Street politicians who took labor for granted, promised us crumbs while militarily plundering and exploiting the resources of the world. An alternative strategy which breaks the stranglehold of class collaboration, identifies that workers’ interests are not the same as Wall Streets’ and opens the road to international workers’ solidarity joint actions.
Our task: to exploit the cracks in consciousness
The consciousness of the working class in America is changing under the pressure of deteriorating material conditions. Old prejudices and illusions in the American dream are daily being crushed under the weight of unfulfilled expectations. Workers are starting to question the efficacy of the strategy and tactics of the current crop of labor fakers. As workers find that their dependence on the Democrats, even coupled with daily protests, candle light vigils and pajama parties in the Capitol Rotunda, have not produced the desired results, they will be looking for working solutions.

The general strike and a system of transitional demands is our answer; with it we fight for control of the work and the workplace, as the bosses have shown they are no longer capable either of administering the work process, or of guaranteeing the product – which, in the case of public work, is providing services (education, health & safety, roads, transit, home care etc.) to the people. WE DO THE WORK! WE SHOULD CONTROL IT!

Advocacy for a general strike, today, exposes the incapability of the existing union leaderships to guide the working class to victory. The call for the general strike puts them on notice that we know they do not have a strategy or tactics that can resolve the crisis in the interest of the working class. Our strategy is to take every step with the masses toward greater and greater self expression of the historic interest of the working class. The tactics we use must rely on workers’ self organization, united front action, and the international workers solidarity needed to win. The emergence of a general strike poses the question of which class should run society: the capitalists or the workers. As the crisis becomes more acute and it becomes apparent that capital can not resolve the crisis.

Confronting old limitations and roadblocks
The path to victory in Wisconsin is via general strike, but we must not ignore what it will take to win. In order to win, ties to the Democrats and the entrenched labor fakers need to be broken. A new militant rank and file leadership committed to class struggle methods and class independence must be forged, must fight for and win leadership. Without ousting the bureaucracy and reclaiming the unions as democratic unions run by the most militant workers, the general strike will flounder and be smashed.
All the hurdles in the way need to be consciously considered by mass assemblies of workers and popular forums, run on the principles of workers’ democracy. The task at hand is to convene and turn solidarity actions into popular/worker/labor assemblies that meet everywhere to plan and prepare for a nationwide indefinite general strike. Local assemblies should delegate strike committees of the activists in the ranks to go to all worksites to organize meetings, help establish rank-and-file committees, caucuses, and networks, and enlist support for the strike to build locally and regionally before setting the date for the big one. Our strategy is workers’ self-activity and solidarity! Such organizational developments are the very foundational organizations needed for the formation of a workers’ government that can administer the economy in the common interests of the masses. The union busters have not hesitated to use their ‘nuclear option.’ We workers must not hesitate to use ours! Solidarity Forever!

HUMANIST WORKERS FOR REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM
e-mail: hw4rs@yahoo.com
March 2011 Labor Donated

I noticed a tension between the program offered in this article and the one offered in Garvey’s excellent “Rethinking Educational Failure” in the same issue. Here, Goldner calls for “universal outreach” among various sectors of the U.S. working class, including racialized sectors. From this I gather that Black, Latino, and white workers (among others), need to reach out to each other so that they might be forged into a class-for-itself. In Garvey’s article, he insists that teachers under attack in Wisconsin and elsewhere need to express solidarity with the communities they teach in (particularly Black communities), before they can or should expect to be supported by these communities when they themselves are under attack by tools such as Wisconsin’s Governor Walker.

These programs appear similar, but they are not. Garvey suggests something much more profound than white workers reaching out to Black and Latino workers, for example. He seems to argue that public sector workers (teachers, prison guards, cops, etc.) must take responsibility for their own role in reproducing racial inequalities in education, incarceration, and police brutality (among other public sector functions)–by which I take him to mean they must work to abolish them. Further, he seems to suggest that addressing these inequalities is a _precondition_ for racial alliances among the working class.

This seems much harder than universal outreach. It also seems like there is no such program in the works among the left in Wisconsin, or elsewhere. Yet it also seems desperately necessary.

Am I right to read this tension? Perhaps this is related to the “sharp debate” within the editorial board on this matter.

Thanks again for this issue of IN.