Vol. 72/No. 5      February 4, 2008

BY JACK BARNES  
During the quarter century of relative economic expansion and stability following the post-World War II labor upsurge, social conflicts were widely viewed solely in terms of conflicts between the “haves” and “have nots,” or between Blacks and whites.

Today these social conflicts can more easily be seen as expressions of the fundamental class struggle between capital and labor—between the exploited producers and those who exploit them. Social and political struggles have a more direct and rapid reflection within the labor movement. A broader layer of workers understand that solidarity with farmers’ struggles, Black rights, women’s rights, and fights against U.S. military intervention abroad are labor issues. These issues should be raised in the unions for action, not just talk.

The ruling-class offensive—carried out both by the employers directly and by their government—will result in a growing tendency for the irreconcilable conflict between the capitalists and working people to find expression more openly in political life and for the unions to be drawn into involvement in these struggles.

Class polarization gives an impulse to the radicalization of the most combative workers. At the same time, it emboldens rightists to make probes, to become more “radical” themselves. Wind is put in the sails of proponents of right-wing views on such issues as Black rights, women’s equality, the rights of unions, the rights of immigrants, government social programs, and military intervention by imperialism abroad. Their reactionary propaganda falls on particularly receptive ears among the tens of millions in the middle-class and professional layers who directly benefit from the current policies of the government and big business. For these layers, which have been substantially increased by the recent evolution of the structure of the economy, 1975-85 has not been a bad decade; their economic position has significantly improved.

There is also a growing ideological differentiation among working people—workers and farmers alike. More rank-and-file workers become combative and more politically class conscious, in spite of the trade union officialdom’s failure to chart any class-struggle way forward.

But a minority, especially among the relatively privileged layers, the aristocracy of labor, are misled into thinking that various rightist solutions offer a way out for themselves and the section of the working class with which they identify. They look toward collaboration with the capitalist class as it pursues its goals at home and abroad, rather than toward class struggle as the way forward. Those workers who respond to the pressures of the capitalist offensive in this way identify more firmly with the interests of “their” country, “their” industry, “their” company. They become even more susceptible to the ideological weapons that the rulers use, especially all the varieties of national-chauvinist, racist, anti-woman prejudices, and other reactionary ideas that cover up opposing class interests. A similar political differentiation has begun to grow among working farmers.

An essential part of the strategic line of march toward the establishment of a workers and farmers government in the United States is the fight for the transformation of the industrial unions—the most powerful existing organizations of the working class—into revolutionary instruments of class struggle for the interests of the exploited and oppressed.

During the long postwar period of capitalist expansion, political conditions in the United States stood in the way of effective revolutionary work by socialists in the industrial unions. The political and economic situation that opened in the mid-1970s made it possible once again for communists to advance this fight from within the industrial unions. This dictated a sharp turn. The SWP decided to get a large and stable majority of its members into the industrial unions and to build national fractions of its members in these unions.

Without such a turn to the industrial unions a retreat from the struggle for a proletarian party would have been unavoidable. The party’s internationalism, its political homogeneity and centralization, and its revolutionary centralist character would have been eroded. The working-class composition of its milieu, its membership, and its leadership would have been diluted instead of strengthened. It would have become more white and anglo. There would have been even greater pressure on party members who are female to retreat from the demands of political leadership and lose their political self-confidence. The party would have been more susceptible to the pressures of a growing economic and social crisis and war preparations—pressures originating in the bourgeoisie and transmitted through various petty-bourgeois layers and organizations. It would have been more vulnerable to cliquism and permanent factionalism, and therefore less democratic. If a revolutionary proletarian party does not base its membership in the industrial working class and industrial unions when it is politically possible to do so, this inevitably results in the erosion of its program.  
 
 
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