The conference on Dec. 10 between the leader of the AFL-CIO, Lane Kirkland, and President Bill Clinton was the first time in many years that a president of the United States has met with the official head of the trade union movement.
If for no other reason than that the AFL-CIO represents 14.1 million organized workers and is the only labor organization that can speak authoritatively for the U.S. working class as a whole, the capitalist press should have given it wide publicity and reported at least the essential points of difference between Clinton and the AFL-CIO.
As matters stand, the capitalist media boycotted the conference. Only one newspaper in New York reported on it, and that in an extremely tendentious, anti-labor manner. It focused on the union's opposition to the NAFTA treaty and the effort of the Clinton administration to begin what it calls "fence-mending" maneuvers to get labor back in his corner.
It is not likely to happen. There is a new mood in the labor movement that is reaching all the way up to the top echelons of the trade unions. There are even signs of growing militancy in areas where the conservative labor leadership has been entrenched, such as in Memphis, Tenn.
One must also take account of the flight attendants' strike, which signaled a real, though incipient, resurgence for labor as a whole, and won approval in all sectors of the labor movement.
The conference between Kirkland and Clinton dealt with more than the NAFTA treaty, which the labor movement has opposed. It cannot be emphasized too strongly that the vigorous opposition of the labor movement to the NAFTA treaty was the first and most important move on the part of the trade unions to take a position wholly independent not only of the capitalist administration but of the capitalist class as a whole.
It was marred to some extent by the chauvinist slogan on the so-called exporting of jobs to Mexico. But later efforts by the trade union movement seemed to correct this, and the emphasis was mostly against big business and the reliance of the administration on right-wing Democrats and Republicans to support the treaty.
The opposition to the treaty in itself is not as important as is the fact that the labor movement officially broke away from the capitalist administration and sought to carve out an independent position regarding the interests of the working class.
Little attention has been paid to this development. It dwarfs anything that the official leadership of the trade union movement has done in many years. The taking of an independent class position amounts to a breaking of class collaboration with the ruling class.
The history of the labor movement in this century has been mainly one of class collaboration with the capitalist government. A break with this tradition has to be regarded in a new light. It can be the harbinger of a redirection of U.S. labor politics and of the politics of the working class in an altogether different direction than the one pursued all these many years.
The meeting itself ended in rancor, without the usual photo session between the president and the head of the AFL-CIO.
It is easy for cynics in the bourgeois media and press to trivialize the meeting and harp on the rancor between Clinton and Kirkland. But this will soon be forgotten.
One cannot forget, however, that Lane Kirkland is and always has been a conservative trade unionist, and Clinton is and always has been a staunch supporter of the ruling class. He is now its official representative, its chief executive.
Nevertheless, in a sociological sense, Kirkland was at the meeting in his capacity as the representative of the working class and Clinton as the representative of the exploiting, oppressing ruling class. This is how the conference should have been explained in the press, if it were a free press instead of the communications tool of the capitalist class.
What is the lasting significance, if any, of the Kirkland-Clinton meeting?
It is the possible re-emergence of working class politics as the most significant factor in recent U.S. labor history. The meeting is demonstrative of the growing awareness of the emergence of class antagonisms. It is not the personality, not the individual that counts here. Those who dwell only on Kirkland's history will fail to see the forest for the trees and will confuse form with content.
By the fate of history, Kirkland and Clinton represent two divergent classes: the working class and the bourgeoisie. One may be a conservative trade union leader and the other a minor Arkansas politician. Yet none of this detracts from the broader forces that they represent.
What is it that has brought this extraordinary meeting at this particular time? It is not born of any desire of the labor movement to fix up this or that grievance, nor is it an attempt by Clinton to placate the trade union movement after he signed the NAFTA treaty in the face of labor's opposition.
It is the consciousness on both sides that class antagonisms, long buried beneath class collaboration, are re-emerging. And that this could be destructive of capitalist stability in labor relations.
The basic aim of the Clinton administration is to avoid a general outbreak of labor militancy, of which the American Airlines flight attendants' strike was a harbinger of the future. From the point of view of the union movement, as represented by Kirkland, the meeting was to bring to the fore the burning problem facing them: that traditional trade union strategies are becoming outmoded, and inapplicable, in the face of the growing aggressiveness of the bourgeoisie.
The trade union movement has come up against a problem which hitherto seemed to be solvable on the basis of the generally acceptable demands of the workers such as higher pay, better conditions, a shorter workweek. For many years that seemed to be the standard for combating any employer offensive against the workers. These demands were not incompatible with the further development of capitalism.
At the present time, however, due to the nature of the restructuring of capitalist industry, these demands in and of themselves do not fundamentally address the problem of mass layoffs such as we have seen. These threaten to make the working class itself superfluous. In the words of Friedrich Engels, "the perfection of machinery is making human labor superfluous." (Socialism: Utopian and Scientific)
The trade unions do not have an answer to the capitalist restructuring of industry as a whole. Merely protesting the layoffs or delaying them does not go to the heart of the scientific-technological revolution, which makes labor superfluous.
The answer of the Clintonites is to retrain the workers to do highly skilled jobs. But the highly skilled are just as vulnerable as the unskilled blue-collar worker. The progress of the scientific-technological revolution is not confined to the unskilled. There are many scientists and technicians who also suffer from the capitalist restructuring of industry.
But the truth of the matter is that it is the capitalist class that is superfluous. The working class can run the industrial plant and equipment without the intervention of the ruling class. Whatever function the bourgeoisie had in the early stages of capitalism, when most of the workers had to be recruited from the illiterate peasantry, is no longer valid. The working class is now the bearer of all culture, including the best of bourgeois culture.
The ever-growing importance of scientists and technicians attests to the fact that the ruling class, as administrator of the capitalist mode of production, is no longer necessary.
It was no accident that when Clinton entered the primaries, he did not solicit the support of the trade unions. True, he accepted their support, but throughout the entire campaign he conducted himself quite conspicuously as a right-wing Democrat, leaning heavily on the moderate Democratic primary voters and eagerly seeking out Republican defectors to his camp.
His primary campaign was a break with previous strategies and the general conduct of Democratic presidential aspirants. It was originally thought this was only a momentary right-wing departure by a candidate who would ultimately be forced to tread the usual route of strengthening his alliance with the labor movement as a broad base for launching his presidential campaign.
While he accepted substantial trade union funds for the campaign, his entire course of electioneering had a distinctly right-wing, pro-Republican character to it, as far as propaganda goes.
The trade union leadership tended to overlook this. But now, after he has been in office for almost a year, it has become plain that Clinton is removing himself from every vestige of traditional bourgeois liberalism, which previous candidates and presidents assiduously cultivated.
It is not to be forgotten that his principal adviser on domestic politics, David Gergen, has been for years a key Republican strategist. On taking this post, he was egged on by reporters to say that he was changing his politics, to which Gergen firmly answered that he was not changing them at all.
Still, the labor leadership had nothing at all to say about Gergen's appointment, although he was well known for his anti-labor bias.
The very symbolism of a high Republican strategist having a position of key significance in charge of the White House staff speaks volumes for the general political line of Clinton. He is pro-management all the way. Even the meeting between Kirkland and Clinton lacked even the most elementary courtesy. No handshake at the beginning or end of the conference. No photo session, which is usually one of the inducements for a White House meeting with the president.
All this illustrates that even a fence-mending maneuver on both sides was not possible. The sharp difference in approach on the basic issues dividing the Clinton administration from the labor movement is too great and too serious to be covered up by a mere fence-mending maneuver between the two leaders. Hence, it is correct to state that the meeting was a failure on both sides.
One thing has become patently clear. The labor movement always projected that the optimum conditions for its success would be to have a Democratic president and a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress. This has now been realized. But the results are the very opposite of what had been anticipated.
This is an enormously stubborn fact that can not be papered over by a fence-mending meeting between Kirkland and Clinton. It demonstrates up to the hilt that collaborating with capitalist politicians as the mainstay for trade union leverage in the political struggle with the capitalist class has reached the point of no return.
All those who are promoting a new meeting between Kirkland and Clinton merely demonstrate their fear of going it alone. But the fear is baseless.
Breaking with capitalist politicians is but one aspect of the struggle, even under the best of conditions. What it all points up is the necessity of getting on the "high road" and relying on the numbers and the strength of the vast working class upon which the capitalist class depends for its source of profit.
The labor movement has nothing to lose and everything to gain by reasserting its historical independence from capitalist politics. The break between Clinton and Kirkland could be the beginning of a mighty new development that will lift the vast trade union movement out of its passivity and open a new chapter in progressive, militant opposition to the heightened aggressiveness of big business.
Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute warns that the labor movement will become isolated if it breaks with Clinton and fails to support him on such vital issues as health care and striker replacements. This is an altogether false position which over the years has been used by a variety of different groupings both inside and outside the labor movement to scare them from breaking with class collaboration.
A close examination shows that Clinton is not the originator of any of this progressive legislation. These are issues which the labor movement has advanced over the years. Clinton has arrogated these issues to himself instead of honestly supporting labor's fight. The difference is fundamental.
It is one thing when a president supports issues that the labor movement brings up; it is another matter when he arrogates them to himself, fundamentally changes them, and then asks the labor movement to support him.
The fear that if labor breaks with the administration all kinds of anti-worker legislation will pass and everything will be lost is one of these canards that has to be answered in the same manner and spirit as the early class struggles in the United States. The Wagner Act, the National Labor Relations Act and all the subsequent progressive labor legislation came as the result of the struggle. It was the struggle that made possible the pro-labor legislation.
From this we must draw the conclusion, validated by historical experience, that the break with class collaboration which is inherent in the breakup of the conference between Kirkland and Clinton is definite and should not be papered over by sometimes well-meaning but utterly useless and false messiahs from the liberal bourgeoisie.
For the militant and class-conscious elements in the country, it offers an opportunity to view the organized labor movement in a new perspective. The problem is how to position itself in the light of the fact that this is only the beginning of a great breakaway from historic class collaboration and the beginnings of class politics.
Undoubtedly efforts will be made at conciliation, at bringing back the old tradition of tying the labor movement to the chariot wheel of finance capital. This was possible for a protracted period of time as a result of the favorable position of U.S. monopoly capitalism in the world struggle.
But there is now a new phase of development. It is regressive and degenerative. By contrast, all previous developments in capitalist production raised not just the level of capitalist technique but ultimately (although not without class struggle) the level of benefits for the working class as a whole.
This new development of capitalism brings in its train massive layoffs resulting from structural capitalist developments, a new phenomenon whose origins are traced in our book "High Tech, Low Pay" (Sam Marcy, 1986, World View Publishers). The easy road of seeking material gain for the working class via negotiation with capital, enlisting the goodwill and the services of capitalist politicians whose campaigns were well financed by the trade unions, is coming to an end.
In the days before the civil rights struggle began in earnest, the so-called progressive Democratic and early Republican administrations were looked upon as the saviors of what was left of the progressive legislation from the period of Reconstruction. One only has to remember that from the year 1880 or thereabouts until even the late 1950s, civil rights advocates in the U.S. Congress put up a sort of battle for an anti-lynching bill from year to year, from Congress to Congress.
The legislative struggle did not accomplish its objective. What ended the lynchings in the South was the rise of the civil rights struggle, the mass movement. The enactment of the civil rights bill in the late 1960s is almost universally regarded as the product of the struggle and not merely of legislative battles. The anti-lynching bill died aborning.
"The worker in the white skin will never be liberated as long as the worker in the Black skin is branded," wrote Karl Marx. This is a key facet in the struggle for the unity of the working class. How indispensable such unity is becomes obvious in every type of struggle. No labor movement can make progress unless it makes Black-white unity the top priority on its agenda.
Only a broad united front which goes beyond the narrow strata of the trade unions and reaches out to all the masses, the millions of Black, white, Latin, women and men, gay and straight, will fructify and enrich the struggle. All over the world oppressed workers will look to the U.S. from a new perspective, as the land not of capitalist opportunities but of working-class struggle.
Last updated: 15 January 2018