Workers will develop a movement of their own, a labor party
https://themilitant.com/2020/07/11/workers-will-develop-a-movement-of-their-own-a-labor-party/
July 20, 2020
Workers in Baltimore battle state troopers as 1877 rail workers battle
became first nationwide strike in U.S. history. Karl Marx called it
“first eruption since the Civil War against the associated oligarchy of
capital.” Out of 1884-86 struggles, unions took steps to form a labor party.
Workers in Baltimore battle state troopers as 1877 rail workers battle
became first nationwide strike in U.S. history. Karl Marx called it
“first eruption since the Civil War against the associated oligarchy of
capital.” Out of 1884-86 struggles, unions took steps to form a labor party.
Revolutionary Continuity: The Early Years 1848-1917 by Farrell Dobbs is
one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for July. This is the first of
two volumes that document the birth and growth of the communist movement
in the U.S. Dobbs emerged as a young leader of the 1934 Minneapolis
Teamster strikes and joined the Communist League of America. He was the
chief architect and leader of the Teamsters’ 11-state campaign that
organized over a quarter of a million over-the-road drivers into a
powerful union that transformed the Upper Midwest into union territory,
the legacy of which is felt to this day. Dobbs was national secretary of
the Socialist Workers Party from 1953 to 1972 and the SWP’s presidential
candidate four times. This excerpt is from Chapter 3: “Gains and
Setbacks.” Copyright © 1980 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.
BY FARRELL DOBBS
During the 1884-86 labor upsurge large numbers of both native-born and
foreign-born workers joined trade unions. This widening discontent with
existing social conditions led to an expansion of the workers’ united
struggles as a class, which manifested itself in a series of strikes
over economic demands. Then, early in 1886, the conflict assumed
political characteristics with a massive strike wave in support of the
eight-hour day. While trade unions directed this demand against one or
another particular employer in economic struggles, it had broader
significance. The workers as a class were pressing a political issue
against the capitalists as a class, explicitly so in calling for laws to
limit the hours of labor.
The indicated next step for trade unionists was building their own
political organization, and they moved instinctively in that direction.
By the fall of 1886 labor parties, with platforms that varied from city
to city, had again sprung up in several industrial centers and were
running candidates for public office. …
A major campaign was organized in New York City, where the Knights of
Labor, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, and the
Socialist Labor Party acted jointly to launch a mass party in labor’s
name. A majority chose Henry George to head the new party’s slate as its
nominee for mayor. He was the leader of a petty-bourgeois sect that
advanced a taxation scheme as a cure-all for the evils inflicted by
capitalism. It centered on the notion that all social ills were rooted
in the private ownership of land. …
But this strategy left the existing social relations of production
untouched. Without the expropriation of the decisive forms of productive
property, the industrial and financial bourgeoisie would remain free to
exploit the toiling masses, who produce the surplus value that is the
source of all rents, interest, and profit. And they would continue to
use their ownership of capital to maintain political sway over the
nation. Hence, the whole proposal was reformist to the core.
Nevertheless, the “single tax” panacea of Henry George, the main
candidate, was included in the New York party’s platform. The socialists
— who rejected the “single tax” fallacies — backed the campaign
organized around the George ticket, because what was decisive was
organized labor’s stepping forward into the political arena as an
independent class force.
Labor party campaigns launched in other cities were supported by the
Socialist Labor Party for the same reason. The various platforms for
these independent mass political actions focused on issues of immediate
concern to the workers in each locality. Little or no attention was
given to the “single tax” idea, which remained limited essentially to
New York.
The labor slates, taken as a whole, made an impressive showing in the
November 1886 elections. Henry George, for example, got almost a third
of the total vote cast in New York. Elsewhere, candidates put forward by
the organized workers were in a few instances elected, and the overall
results of the balloting maintained interest in the developing
independent political action. The workers’ mood opened the door to
uniting the several local labor parties as the first step in building a
national political movement. Engels took up this perspective in the
letter of November 29, 1886, to Sorge, cited previously, centering his
remarks on the New York situation.
“The first great step of importance for every country newly entering
into the movement is always the constitution of the workers as an
independent political party,” he counseled, “no matter how, so long as
it is a distinct workers’ party. And this step has been taken, much more
rapidly than we had a right to expect, and that is the main thing. That
the first program of this party is still confused and extremely
deficient, that it has raised the banner of Henry George, these are
unavoidable evils but also merely transitory ones. The masses must have
time and opportunity to develop, and they can have the opportunity only
when they have a movement of their own — no matter in what form so long
as it is their own movement — in which they are driven further by their
own mistakes and learn through their mistakes. . . . If there are people
at hand there whose minds are theoretically clear, who can tell them
[the workers] the consequences of their own mistakes beforehand and make
clear to them that every movement which does not keep the destruction of
the wage system constantly in view as the final goal is bound to go
astray and fail — then much nonsense can be avoided and the process
considerably shortened.” …
To follow this advice the socialist movement needed to act flexibly in
collaborating with the existing labor parties, city by city, to help
them shape a common program. If the party’s initial program dealt with
important aspects of labor’s interests as a distinct social class; if it
set forth aims upon which all concerned were agreed — it could help
advance toward a mass nationwide working-class party. At the start the
Marxists within the labor party would have to tentatively and partially
indicate the course required for the workers’ emancipation from
capitalist exploitation. Time and experience could then make it possible
for the party to develop explicit anticapitalist political goals and
strategy.
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Workers will develop a movement of their own, a labor party
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Richard Dawkins
“The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all
decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this
sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running
for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from
within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation,
thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this
very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the
natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons
and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people
are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find
any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has
precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no
purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
― Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life