From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Marxist-Humanist Archives
November 2000
Practicing Proletarian Reason
On seniority and labor's emancipation
Editor's note:
As the 1960s "Freedom Now!" struggles against racism and segregation
continued into the 1970s fights against discrimination in hiring and union
representation, union bureaucrats and even left labor activists limited the
given choices to either supporting Black and women workers' rights or
supporting seniority rights. Raya Dunayevskaya, in a letter to autoworker
and colleague Felix Martin in 1975, posed a more total view of the issue of
seniority in relationship to liberation.
This letter is part of a new pamphlet by News & Letters which contains
writings by Felix Martin (Isaac Woods), columnist and Labor Editor of NEWS
& LETTERS for 27 years until his death last year. It represents a lifetime
of work, revolt, and thinking as well as NEWS & LETTERS' uniqueness as a
newspaper uniting workers and intellectuals. To order a copy, see the ad at
the end.
The letter has been prepared for publication here and will be included in
the SUPPLEMENT TO THE RAYA DUNAYEVSKAYA COLLECTION, July 25, 1975.
Dear Isaac,
Permit me to say a few historic-philosophic things on the question of
seniority precisely at the time we have no definitive position on the
question because...not only must all aspects be considered as a totality,
but also there is then greater objectivity than at a point when one "must"
take a position.
Marx, from the very start of being a revolutionary, declared, "The
proletariat is revolutionary, or nothing." He said so not only because he
was so set on spontaneity and what he called "the self-organization of the
proletariat," but because, again from the very beginning, he considered the
proletariat not only as revolutionary force, but as Reason. Thus in the
1844 Silesian weavers' strike-as against Lassalle and all other socialists,
communists, Left Hegelians, and whatnot that were opposing Prussia, but who
called for themselves, the intellectuals, to be elected to parliament and
speak "for" workers and thus both avoid their "anarchy" and rioting and
breaking up machines and other "backward" features-Marx insisted that they,
those poor, supposedly backward masses, were in advance of the great
1789-1793 French Revolution.
He said so because (1) "the reason of these poor Germans were in inverse
ratio to poor Germany." In a word, whereas "poor Germany," though they had
reached the height of philosophy with Hegel, were only talking of
dialectics, change, transcendence, the "poor German masses" were acting,
doing it. (2) It may not be good to break up machines-and workers will
surely learn otherwise once they see machinery helping them produce instead
of throwing them out of work-but in action, that is in fact, machines do
"represent" the bourgeoisie and all "truth is concrete." (3) And, moreover,
they are nowhere backward as compared to the intellectuals. For...they
found the deeds to the machines and made a bonfire of these.
So they are not just against machinery but private property, and even the
French Revolution had not gone that far in overthrowing feudalism; private
property remained, only this time belonging not to the lords, but to the
capitalists, whereupon the opposition between haves and have-nots had grown
to open contradiction, [that of] capitalists/workers, with this
overwhelming advantage: the have-nots are now united by the very method of
production with hundreds, thousands in a single factory-the revolutionary
force, the gravediggers of this society which "produces" them.
By the time Marx was involved, first in actual revolutions-1848-and in all
sorts of daily activities-unions, women's struggles, against child labor,
national struggles be it in Poland or by slaves for freedom in USA-just as
class struggle was the first and remaining major contradiction, the
concrete now became internationalism. The International Workingmen's
Association was established against blacklegging [scabbing], against
slavery, against Tsarism in Poland especially, and against Bonapartism in
France, but the overwhelming majority were English trade unionists. Yet the
minute the Paris Commune burst forth-and many British trade unionists said
they joined for international labor solidarity, not for proletarian
revolution-he hesitated not one moment to discount their membership, and
placed [ahead of them the] Paris Communards who never had belonged to the
IWA.
Not only that-and this is most applicable to our day on the question of
seniority vs. affirmative action and visa versa-just as in the 1850s after
defeats of proletarian revolutions of 1848 and "bourgeoisification" of the
proletariat in Great Britain because it was the empire then and Marx
demanded "going lower and deeper," so in 1871, when trade unions said they
were the masses and IWA was small, Marx concretized that "going deeper and
lower" as the International appealing to the masses, whom the trade unions
didn't know how to touch: unskilled workers, East side of London Jewish
ghettoes, peasants newly arrived in cities, women.
None in the Second International, even when it was still revolutionary and
all Marxists belonged to it, grasped that "lower and deeper." The only one
who organized the unskilled and women before [there was] the Second
International was Marx's daughter Eleanor, and precisely where Marx pointed
to-East London gas workers and women. It took nothing short of outright
betrayal in 1914 before ever Lenin "discovered" "going lower and deeper,"
though he must have read [Marx] dozens of times before...
When he did "discover" [this he] said, "Never again with the Second
International." STATE AND REVOLUTION came next, but when the Russian
Revolution of 1917 did succeed, what happened to the trade unions?
Because there was no national trade union in Russia before 1917, three
different organizations arose spontaneously: trade unions became national,
but meanwhile shop committees at the point of production, and soviets were
organized. Three different focal points were too much, but when Lenin
started out for "single" rule, it was not at all what anarchists claim,
that it was either political or trade union monolithism, but [rather]
workers must chose one. Yet at once arose both the "right"-Trotsky
insisting that trade unions be incorporated into state "since it was a
workers' state already"-and the "left"-not only anarchists, but Bolshevik
Shlyapnikov saying there should be no political party, calling for a
"workers' congress." That sounded great except if you looked at Kronstadt
which broke out at once, not to mention world capitalism and the remaining
White Guards in Russia. In any case...Lenin insisted the only [way] the
workers' state can be sure of remaining is if workers have the right to
criticize, and if they are permitted other forms of organization, and if
they are not incorporated into the state.
When we get to the American scene in the 1920s, we find that we Bolsheviks
couldn't for the life of us see that either the damned American Federation
of Labor would ever organize the unorganized, or the Blacks would be
permitted in anywhere. So we organized the American Negro Labor Congress,
the Trade Union Educational League, women workers in isolated places but
especially garment and textiles. But after many years of struggle and
failures, from below did arise the Congress of Industrial Organizations. By
"from below" I do not mean out of nowhere because we certainly were there
too, but from within and outside at one and the same time...
Presently, both Blacks and women find they have very little chance of
getting in, not only because of labor bureaucracy, but, most tragically,
the rank and file likewise do not recognize any value in "affirmative
action." Believe me, no one in the movement is unaware of how long it took
to get seniority, nor its absolute indispensability as against the boss who
can otherwise fight at will. At the same time we cannot use just the past
and old arguments since the opponents this time are not bosses but "lower
and deeper layers." We also know the bosses would nevertheless use that
against workers, even as they use the Equal Rights Amendment against
working women who fought hard to win the rights. But here, too, we always
defend the gains and demand proletarian women be consulted for working out
any ERA on the basis of men too gaining the rights, not on basis of giving
up rights. With seniority, instead of at once running to a "conclusion" and
line, let's keep all avenues open, maintain dialogue with those excluded,
or more precisely first hired, first fired.
AND ABOVE ALL, SEE THAT IT IS NOT ONLY LEFT IN THE TRADE UNION FIELD BUT
THAT WE ACTUALLY PRACTICE PROLETARIAT AS REASON AS WELL AS FORCE...
Yours,
Raya
+++++++++++
Off-The-Press December 1, 2000, a new pamphlet...
Labor, life and freedom: Articles by Felix Martin (Isaac Woods), 1972- 1999
(tentative title)
* Farming life, farm labor, and agribusiness
* Reading Marx's CAPITAL in light of labor struggles today
* 30 years on the line at General Motors' South Gate plant: the
rank-and-file "Blue Sheet," fights against lead poisoning, challenging UAW
bureaucrats
* A white worker's solidarity with Black labor and community
Prepublication price $5
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