DSA NORTH STAR
  • Welcome
  • Principles
  • Join Us
  • Our Strategy
  • Blog
  • About
    • About North Star
    • About DSA
    • Contact
  • Welcome
  • Principles
  • Join Us
  • Our Strategy
  • Blog
  • About
    • About North Star
    • About DSA
    • Contact
. 

DSA North Star Caucus blog

“Let’s You and Him Fight” Is Not Socialist Leadership

12/14/2022

2 Comments

 
Statement of the elected Steering Committee of the North Star Caucus 12/14/2022
​

When George Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, protest against that adventure inspired a legion of pro-war defenders who came to be known as keyboard commandos. These typists had little personally at stake. They were not mobbing local Army recruitment centers, begging to be sent to fight. Today on the Left and in DSA we have our own wave of people who would urge others to take great personal risk and foment a national rail strike. And the thing that our cosplay adventurers cannot grasp is that the workers themselves, while dissatisfied with the contract that had been negotiated, prefer to enjoy their upcoming holidays and year-end bonuses to hitting the bricks.

Take ex-DSA member Andy Sernatinger of the Tempest faction. (Please!) He and others would have DSA attack progressive Members of Congress, including actual DSA members, for “strike-breaking.” Now several DSA chapters are voting to expel electeds for voting as the rail unions and rank and file requested, cheered on by the comrades at Fox News. This criticism is grounded in vanguardist fantasy. 

There was no strike. There were no picket lines. There was no “scabbing.” The rail unions had failed to prepare for any such strike. A vote to reject a contract is not a vote to strike. The vote against the contract was 55 to 45 percent. Anyone with experience in labor knows these are not the preconditions for a successful strike. The fact is that progressive votes in Congress to accept the agreement were following the wishes of the unions on the spot, as well as the rank and file Railway Workers United organization. Sernatinger and friends have no answer to this. 

In his column, Sernatinger cites the justification of Squad members who followed the split bill strategy (voting separately on the negotiated contract and the addition of sick days) – namely, it was supported by the unions – but fails to note that the sick days bill had a realistic chance of enactment in the Senate.

It is the height of irresponsibility, not to say delusion, to criticize supportive Members of Congress for acting at the behest of the unions with a direct stake in the conflict. Pseudo-Marxist whining about the inherent conservative nature of unions does not cut it. Unions cannot be more militant than their own members. DSA is obliged to support workers’ decisions to fight, but any such decisions must, for the sake of their own legitimacy and practicality, originate among the workers themselves.

We ought to criticize the leadership of the Democratic Party, especially President Biden, for not providing greater support, especially after November elections that ended better for Democrats than anyone had a right to expect. Still, it was foolish for DSA’s National Political Committee to demand that the White House compel the rail bosses provide a better contract. The bosses could easily have said no. Then in the absence of further action, the White House would just look foolish and weak. We are not going to get socialism by calling for the government and the unions to go to war against the capitalist class.

The reality was that neither the workers nor the Democratic party leadership had any stomach for a national rail strike with potentially far-reaching implications for the unstable U.S. economy. At present they are just not made that way. DSA members in rail and DSA as a whole can work both ends of this, but for the time being the matter is settled.

In the working class, leadership is earned in struggle. It is not self-anointed by would-be vanguards. Neither DSA, nor anyone else on the left, are in any position to dictate to workers that the time is now to rise up and strike. To imagine otherwise reflects profound political confusion and ill-behooves the leaders of any socialist organization.
 
2 Comments
JOHN ZURAW
12/14/2022 03:02:27 pm

I'm stunned that North Star has arrived at such a bad statement.

There's so much wrong with it that I'm not sure where to begin. In the third paragraph, you correctly point out, "The rail unions had failed to prepare for any such strike." But elsewhere, you repeatedly claim that the members themselves were unwilling to strike. Please explain to me how any Union in 2022 can expect its members to strike nationwide without preparing the membership with an intensive internal organizing campaign? Wouldn't the lack of preparation for a strike have signaled something to the membership?

And, for God's sake, why do you run down the strike weapon? This aligns perfectly with the anti-strike message that carried the day for railroad management and their investors. A one-day nationwide railroad strike would not have killed anybody. The repeated, alarmist anti-strike messages from Biden, Walsh and Pelosi did harm to the entire Labor Movement.

I am in agreement with North Star's general realignment views, and I agree that it is destructive to blame progressives or DSA-electeds in Congress for following the lead of Union officers when the two resolutions came up for vote.

The Federal intervention was mishandled. Biden and Congress had other choices, other paths. IBT General President Sean O'Brien fumbled this (he loves football metaphors). Let's review the context briefly:

-- following the revelatory conduct of employers during the pandemic (dishonesty, indifference, profiteering, over-work), more workers are looking to Unions for answers;

-- Biden has basked in Trumka's moniker for him, "the most pro-labor President," and O'Brien has spent three years claiming to bring a new militancy to the Teamsters;

-- The Teamsters' UPS contract expires next summer, and this is O'Brien's big task (and it's the largest private-sector CBA); over-work is a pervasive, long-standing issue for UPS package car drivers.

The railroad labor dispute attracted steady media attention after the midterm elections. That rarely happens for Unions, and public perceptions get set in such moments (see PATCO). This was a fail.

Reply
Ramy Khalil (Reform & Revolution caucus member, Seattle DSA Local Council member) link
12/22/2022 10:25:34 am

I think this North Star statement ignores the fact that 55% of the union members voted down the contract and had been pushing for a strike for many months against the demands of their bosses, the government, and sometimes their own union leaders. I believe the article is mistaken in arguing that the group Railroad Workers United opposed going on strike. I have been reading their statement's closely and that was not the sense I got at all.

I agree with North Star that socialists should not be too far ahead of the mood of the working class to the point where we advocate risky actions that the workers themselves are not willing to take. But I do believe socialists have a role to play in advocating greater class struggle and militancy where we can help organize successful actions like a strike. In this instance it appears that a majority of the membership had been preparing for strike action. The Railroad Workers United has been growing stronger and stronger over the last 5 or so years. I met one of their activists leafleting in preparation for a strike at the Socialism Conference in Chicago in early September.

In particular, DSA members in Congress should not vote to take away workers' right to strike. This is different from DSA telling the workers that they must strike, whether the workers want to or not. DSA members in Congress must not vote to take away workers' right to strike. They should defend the right of the workers themselves to make that decision.

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Principles
    Join Us

    Our Strategy
    Blog
    Twitter
    Facebook

    ​The opinions expressed here are those of members and allies of DSA North Star Caucus meant to educate, inspire discussion and encourage comradely debate.


    RSS Feed


    North Star caucus members

    antiracismdsa (blog of Duane Campbell)

    Hatuey's Ashes (blog of José G. Pérez)

    Authory and Substack of Max Sawicky


    Socialist Education

    Online University of the Left


    Left Periodicals
    Democratic Left
    Socialist Forum
    Washington Socialist
    Jacobin
    In These Times
    Dissent
    Current Affairs
    The Nation
    The American Prospect
    Jewish Currents
    Mother Jones
    The Intercept
    New Politics
    Monthly Review
    n+1
    +972
    The Baffler
    Counterpunch
    Black Agenda Report
    Dollars and Sense


    Comrades
    Organizing Upgrade
    Justice Democrats
    Working Families Party
    Poor People's Campaign
    Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
    Progressive Democrats of America
    Our Revolution
    Democracy for America
    MoveOn
    Black Lives Matter
    Movement for Black Lives
    The Women's March
    Jewish Voice for Peace
    J Street
    National Abortion Rights Action League
    ACT UP
    National Organization for Women
    Sunrise
    People's Action
    National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights
    Dream Defenders



Home
Principles
Join Us
About
About DSA
Blog
Contact
© COPYRIGHT 2019. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.