Open Letter to Alan Benjamin
Introductory Note: The following open letter is a critique of the method of the leadership of the Workers Emergency Recovery Campaign (WERC), distributed in anticipation of a teach-in sponsored by WERC in San Francisco, California on May 9, 2009. (To read the flyer that HRS handed out at the actual teach-in, click here; to read it in Spanish, click here.) The letter was written by one of our comrades in order to press WERC to adopt the correct approach to the class struggle. The critique points out the flaws in the approach of WERC's leadership in regard to the working class response to the current global economic crisis. Their approach substitutes cross-class alliances, coupled with an insufficient and to a large degree reformist program, for a class struggle program and method. (See also Alan Benjamin’s Betrayal of the Class Struggle: A Compendium of Correspondence.) For a more light-hearted approach to the same subject matter, see A Cautionary Fable for Alan Benjamin and Friends.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Dear Alan Benjamin,
Tonight I received a package of information for the May 9th teach in of WERC.
I hope to attend and participate. I had hoped the package would address the objective needs of the working class, specifically elaborating on what type of actions working people and labor organizations must take to confront the crisis and win our objectives. Instead I saw a some useful information and a list of generally supportable demands; but with them were built in limitations seemingly designed to keep this campaign palatable to capitalist “friends of labor” such as the Greens and the Progressive Democrats who signed as endorsers of WERC.
For example the call for nationalization of banks and industry as elaborated by Professor Jack Rasmus does not mention workers' control. Experience shows that any nationalization by a capitalist government will be run in the interest of the capitalist class. Lets look at the professor's answer to your question about the meaning of nationalization:
Rasmus: .... But what is true nationalization? It means totally taking over these banks and financial institutions – with bondholders and shareholders not just taking a haircut, but taking a scalping. It means getting rid of management. It means consolidating and running these banks on behalf of the interests of the working-class majority in the country. You don’t pay dividends. You don’t pay stock shares. You take full day-to-day operational control of all strategic decision-making. You run it and turn over the profits for public investment, not to line the pockets of private investors.’
Professor Rasmus makes nationalization sound like a project for capitalist politicians to carry out on behalf of the working class. This totally obfuscates the role of the capitalist state. Without pointing to the role of the state and the need for workers’ control of nationalized banks and industry the current WERC/Rasmus call for nationalization creates illusions that such a project can be carried out in the working class’s interest by the existing Congress and President. Fostering such illusions will have devastating results for working people, we don’t need more jive we need the real thing (or as the song says ‘Marat don’t make us wait anymore ...’).
I don’t know what is more problematic: the lack of clarity on what it takes to nationalize banks and industry in workers’ interests, or the total lack of an action plan to win the 10 point program. Both need to be addressed at the May 9th teach-in. Realistically it will take massive unified strike action from one end of the country to the other to seriously advance many of the points of the WERC program. Such strike action will take months, if not years, of preparatory organizing. The goals and methods of struggle need to be constantly presented by labor and working class organizers without being watered down to make them “palatable.” Truthfully explaining to workers what it will take to win is a long hard piece of work, a lot harder than getting a platform endorsed by executive boards of unions that will lift nary a finger to fight for it.
But it appears, that in the interest of not offending capitalist party endorsers and labor mis-leaders, who shun independent working class political action, WERC’s plan is limited to actions such as writing letters to President Obama begging him to turn on his benefactors. WERC suggests labor activists conduct a cross class campaign of educational forums void of any concrete preparation for the type of militant struggles labor must engage in if we are to turn the current class war around. Of course educational forums are needed to supplement the education we get from the bosses’ frontal attacks every day; but what we really need from labor activists are strategy and tactics to turn our unions back into truly democratic fighting organizations which act in the interest of the entire working class not their own narrow interests or that of the labor aristocracy.
Last night I attended a school board meeting where school class sizes were increased and 71 facilities workers in the West Contra Costa School District Local 1 got the boot. After the vote of the school board, workers stormed out of the meeting hall shouting STRIKE!
I know the school board heard them. I know the local union leaders heard them, but I fear that the union leaders who primarily depend on suing their bosses in the bosses’ courts instead of organizing for strike action will continue their standard practice of pacifying the militant sentiment of the rank and file. Will WERC be the same? Will it limit itself to providing left cover for do little class collaborationist sell out union officials, who can easily vote for a radical 10 point program but who won’t put up a dime of our dues dollars toward strike preparation? I hope not. To that end I will do my best to attend the May 9th teach in and advocate for WERC to advance a campaign to prepare rank and file committees intent on revitalizing our unions and launching massive unified strike action to stop the budget cuts and advance the otherwise excellent aspects of the program currently being developed.
Militant Greetings,
[HWRS Member]
www.humanistsforrevolutionarysocialism.org