The October League is a communist organization working along with other Marxist-Leninists towards the formation of a new party. Part of this process includes summing up areas of our work in order to learn the necessary lessons from our advances and our setbacks.
For communists in the U.S., the trade union movement is an essential area of work and a testing ground for the development of a correct political line. As part of our efforts to unite in a party with communists on the basis of the principles of Marxism-Leninism, we have written the series “A Communist View of the Trade Unions” (of which this is the concluding part). In these articles, we have summed up our understanding of this question and our experience.
It is only through this process of practice, criticism, and transformation that our work can improve and that communism can develop in the heat of mass struggle.
During its five years of existence, the October League has consistently placed great emphasis on working inside the trade unions. The OL has waged a continuous fight against opportunists of all stripes who preach standing outside the trade union struggle.
These opportunists attack work within the unions from two angles. On one side are groups like the Revolutionary Union (now the Revolutionary Communist Party) who have promoted the dual unionist line of “jamming the trade unions” and building a pure “revolutionary workers’ movement” rather than waging the struggle within the unions. On the other side are those like the “Revolutionary Wing” and the Marxist-Leninist Organizing Committee (MLOC) who have promoted the theory of “first build the party-then work in the mass struggle.” This line calls for building a new party based exclusively on narrow propaganda circle work, ignoring communist tasks in the trade unions and other areas of mass work.
Behind both incorrect views, as well as the view of the right-opportunists and armchair revolutionaries like the Guardian, stands the anti-working class bias of petty-bourgeois radicals. They go against the rising Marxist-Leninist trend towards fusion between communism and the working-class movement.
The OL’s view from the very beginning was that, despite the backwardness of the trade unions and the reactionary character of their leadership, the unions are still the most basic form of working-class organization. Especially in an advanced capitalist country like the U.S., no communist party worthy of the name can be built apart from the trade union struggle.
At its First Congress in 1972, the October League adopted the principles of building party organization at the point of production and carrying out work through the factory nucleus and trade union fraction. With little in the way of practical experience, the OL set about the task of integrating itself with the movement of the working class. In this early period, the OL mainly carried out investigations and engaged in limited forms of agitation and propaganda.
Since there was no national newspaper and no national organization, the OL began its work through the form of local shop a newspapers such as “Blowout” (among the rubber workers), “Ignition” (among International Harvester workers), and “The Scoop” (among Nabisco workers).
These papers were aimed primarily at the advanced workers. They tried to teach communist ideas based on the workers’ own experiences in the unions. They waged sharp struggle against the union bureaucrats and revisionists of the Communist Party (CPUSA). They took a revolutionary stand in support of the Afro-American and other minority struggles and against white chauvinism. They were also influential in a small number of strikes by giving tactical guidance to the struggle and winning respect for communist leadership among a small section of workers.
This attempt to establish a network of local communist shop newspapers produced many positive results. However, in many ways, it was premature. Without a national newspaper or a party to tie these separate struggles together into a nationwide class struggle for socialism, this shop paper work served to disperse the efforts of a small organization. In some places, propaganda and agitation work through shop papers was carried out to the exclusion of work inside the unions. As a result, the communists and the shop papers became isolated from the masses of workers.
The main achievement of this early period of factory work was the recruitment of a strong group of advanced workers into the OL. As a result of the initial attempts at political agitation and propaganda, these workers came forward. They participated in and led plant struggles and soon joined communist study groups and later the OL itself. These initial and small links to the workers’ movement set good conditions ft future work.
During this early period, many nuclei of communist workers were formed, and the OL placed itself firmly within the working class movement, both ideologically and organizationally. The OL also organized mass labor conferences to sum up the experiences of communists in the unions and to develop working unity with other communists.
In October 1972, the October League first published its monthly communist newspaper, The Call. This also marked the development of the OL as a national organization and a period of expands work within the trade unions.
That same month, a strike of great significance broke out in Atlanta at Mead Packaging Corporation, where the OL had one of its nuclei. It was the first strike openly led by communists in many years. Under this communist leadership, the Mead workers stood up against mass jailings and violent attacks by police. They also fought the betrayal of their strike by their own union leaders and the reformists like Hosea Williams of SCLC. Both these opportunists tried unsuccessfully for weeks to get the workers back into the factory.
The Mead strike also demonstrated a theme that OL has pushed forward in all its work–that the labor struggle and the movements of the Afro-American and others must be merged. Through the course this mostly-Black strike, the communists pointed the way forward towards working class unity which led the strike to victory. Despite widespread red-baiting, communists were able to win broad support from the rank and file and were openly elected to strike leadership. Many workers were mobilized to demand the release of the communists when they were jailed. Through the course of this strike, a leading core of workers was won to the OL who later assumed leading positions in the organization.
In addition to the strike at Mead, the OL in that period played a role in organizing mass struggle in the basic industries like steel and auto against the reactionary leadership of those unions. In auto, the rank-and-file Brotherhood Caucus with some 2,000 members was built at General Motors (Fremont, Calif.) against the reactionary Woodcock leadership.
The Brotherhood Caucus, in which OL played an active role, ran a slate in the union elections in 1973. It included many open communists as well as reformists and won a significant election victory. In steel, a mass rank-and-file movement was built with OL’s participation. This movement hit hard at the Abel leadership. Standing in league with the steel companies, the Abel leadership has defended their racist hiring and promotion policies and attacks on the right-to-strike.
In the United Mine Workers, the OL worked in the rank-and-file miners’ movement built in opposition to the reactionary Tony Boyle regime. During this period, OL was also working in several organizing drives to win union rights for the unorganized.
In the course of this period leading up to OL’s Second Congress in 1973, many breakthroughs were made. Communists began to deepen their ties to the workers’ movement and win recognition from the most advanced and militant workers. The circulation of The Call among factory workers increased many times over. But in summing up this period, it is important to look at the errors that were made as well as the advances.
While the OL’s trade union line was only in the process of development, a strong rightist deviation appeared in the midst of a generally sound approach to the labor work. The rightist deviation took the form of tailing sections of the reformist union leadership. It preached gradualism as opposed to revolutionizing the trade unions. It blurred over the task of turning the unions into organizations which fight for the total emancipation of the working class.
In combating the “leftist” line of skipping over work in the trade unions, the OL incorrectly called for working in the unions to “push the unions to the left.” This line, which was later criticized at the Third Congress of the OL in 1975, called on communists to unite with such liberal union bureaucrats as Miller of the UMW and Sadlowski in the USWA against a “fascist” wing represented by Boyle and Abel.
The line of “pushing the unions to the left” mistakenly underestimated the great danger of the liberal reformists (who appeared to be part of the “left”) in the trade unions. This erroneous line called for a “united front against the fascist union leaders.” It abandoned a scientific understanding of reformism and revisionism as the main ideological props of the imperialists inside the workers’ movement. It mistakenly saw the main contradiction in the trade unions as being between the “fascists” and the “anti-fascists.” This view is not in tune with today’s realities. Today the trade union leadership as a whole, including Meany as well as Sadlowski, are reformists. Trade unionism is a reformist ideology.
The OL opposes all fascist measures aimed at the working class and the broad masses. But the main enemy of the workers in the trade unions is the reformist and revisionist union leaders. It is these opportunists who have the greatest hold on the workers ideologically and organizationally. They have turned the trade unions into flabby, bureaucratic organizations based on class collaboration rather than class struggle.
As the danger of fascism and open terror attacks on the unions increases, it will be these opportunists who leave the working class disarmed. The different wings of the reactionary union leaders have their contradictions, which must be used to our advantage. In general, however, this whole bureaucracy, and the labor aristocracy on which it is based, stands as the enemy of the working class.
OL’s earlier incorrect view led at times to alliances with Arnold Miller and Cesar Chavez and their like, based not on class struggle, but on tailing spontaneity and trade unionism.
Summing up these experiences, we can see that, in carrying out their work, communists are often forced to make tactical alliances with sections of the union leadership. This is done to deepen the ties between communists and workers under the influence of the reformists. Such tactical alliances can also be used to widen the contradictions between the rank and file and the reactionary leadership, creating the conditions for the isolation and ouster of the bureaucrats. But such alliances must be based upon the independence and initiative of the communists. To form such alliances from a position of weakness, without the right and ability to criticize the reformists, amounts to tailing behind these reformist leaders. This was the essence of the line of “pushing the unions to the left.”
Through its work in building the Brotherhood Caucus and other rank-and-file caucus work, the OL gained rich experience in fighting the reformist trade union leaders. A participant in the Fremont struggle summed up that experience in The Call this way:
“One of the best forms that the working class has come up with in its fight against these misleaders has been the caucuses within the unions. These caucuses provide a concrete organization of struggle with the ultimate goal of isolating them (the misleaders–ed.) and kicking them out of the union. Caucuses provide a mass organization for communists to win the masses to see the need for revolution, to struggle with other strata for political leadership of the class, to exert revolutionary influence on the whole union, and to work toward revolutionizing the unions.”
The comrades in the Brotherhood criticized their work on three grounds: first, “propaganda work was much too limited.” This it was pointed out, made the OL weak in linking the caucus struggle to the final goal of socialism and distinguishing the communists from the opportunists.
Secondly, the “task of building a strong communist organization in the plant was not always taken up” and, thirdly, “we did not struggle as we should have within the united front.” This meant that Early Mays and other opportunists within the Brotherhood were able to wrest control of the caucus and destroy it following the election campaign victory.
Rightist errors of this type became evident in OL’s work in the UMW and USWA and weakened the struggle against the reformist and revisionist trade union leaders.
Following the OL’s Third Congress, a campaign of intensified struggle and study was directed against right-opportunism as the “main danger within the communist movement.” This campaign focused heavily on work within the trade unions and has led to significant new breakthroughs. The main principles of trade union work have already been summed up in this series.
In the course of the past few months, OL has continued to give leadership to some of the most important struggles within the labor movement. The National Fight Back Organization was established with OL’s leadership. This organization is uniting hundreds of employed and unemployed workers in the fight against capitalism and its attempt to make the working class pay the price for the economic crisis.
Recently, the OL’s role in struggles such as the protracted Sloane strike, the six-month-long Capitol Packaging strike, and many others, has shown what communist leadership means in practice. Working consistently to educate the workers; to integrate the science of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete conditions and basing work on the workers’ own experiences and understanding, the October League has been able to play a vanguard role in these struggles. The OL has been able to promote more and more workers into the advanced detachment of the class struggle and deepen its still-developing ties to intermediate workers and even sections of the backward workers.
Summing up the experiences of communists, the nucleus that worked in the Capitol strike wrote an article for The Call which pointed the way forward during this period:
“In this present period of bringing a new Marxist-Leninist party into existence, we must strengthen the base for this party among the workers themselves. The advanced workers who came forward in the leadership of the Capitol strike are exactly the kind of cadres needed by the new party-workers won to the science of revolution on the basis of their own experiences, tied closely to hundreds of other workers in the plant, and respected for their dedication in the fight against all oppression.”
This is exactly the kind of work OL is carrying out in its party-building efforts. Basing itself on the factory nucleus as its form of organization; developing an extensive agitation and propaganda network in dozens of factories, mills, and mines; and winning the best elements of the working class to communism and the party, the OL’s line has shown itself to be strong in practice.
Waging a consistent struggle against all forms of opportunism, the communist movement is developing in the heat of struggle. With the formation of the new party, the fight against the reformist and revisionist leaders and the fight to revolutionize the trade unions and turn them into instruments of liberation for the working class will take a giant step forward.