In the January 2015 edition of Jacobin Magazine, writer and union staffer Chris Maisano reviewed Thomas Geoghegan’s latest book on the current state of American organized labor, Only One Thing Can Save Us. Maisano’s “Bringing Labor Back” is a critique of Geoghegan’s cautious messianic thesis which promotes the importation of the German co-determination model of labor-management relations in order to revive declining American unions. This model made its debut in the United States last year when autoworkers at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee voted down this new form of labor defense. According to Maisano, Geoghegan’s optimism for co-determination is rooted in a deeper pessimism on the American workers’ ability to in fact pick themselves up in decades rooted in post-war defeat. Maisano, who is critical of Geoghegan, nonetheless points out that existing union policies has contributed to the rightward shift in “public attitudes” against organized labor. Maisano’s review is an intervention into the ongoing debate among socialists and organizers on how to revitalize unions in the United States. It remains less clear however, what exactly Maisano feels is the way forward, dodging on key issues such as the labor bureaucracy and the question of breaking with the Democratic Party.
According to Maisano, American unions are distinct from those in other countries in that they uphold what is called the agency shop. This policy allows for unions to extract fees from non-union members to cover the costs of collective bargaining. Maisano refers to a poll in which most participants of the “public” cited their support of right-to-work style laws as part of registering their dissatisfaction against agency shop policy. “Labor’s best argument against right-to-work is a political loser,” writes Maisano, “both in the ballot box and in the courts”. In this face of an allegedly conservative general public, Geoghegan’s solution is basically a class compromise: to let the right strip the unions of their agency shop policy in exchange for the right for workers to unionize. Tragic defeat suddenly becomes a shining opportunity where a leaner, meaner union of true believers would emerge entirely on a voluntary basis. While Maisano is less enthusiastic: “Geoghegan’s strategic proposals simply repeat the fundamental weaknesses of twentieth century US trade unionism: its dependence on employers and the state”. That said, he also agrees with Geoghegan that not much if anything can be expected from unions in their present operation.
Certainly unions are in a bad state throughout the country. It is true that the union bureaucracies in the United States, as elsewhere, live off contributions from workers, while at the same time undermining the workers in their struggles against the owners. But even though unions are being misused because of the officials, we still need the unions to defend ourselves, and we need the options that unions provide. When we have new union leaderships that call strikes and use resources effectively, we will need organizations that can provide strike funds for everyone, even those who don’t agree fully, using funds raised on an equitable basis. Geoghegan’s option is class-based suicide. Maisano, as we will demonstrate, doesn’t take it far enough.
Maisano also questions Geoghegan’s committed middle-class view of American labor history which seeks out “politicians and state managers” as the real movers and shakers of labor policies. Maisano takes Geoghegan to task and states correctly that it is “working-class self activity” which has been the main engine for labor’s victories. He rightly criticizes Geoghegan and his muse, the sociologist Frances Fox Pivens, for attempting to create splits within the Democratic Party through massive demonstrations by the working-class. It is important to denounce such a strategy because it views labor not as the agent for its own change, but as a pawn for the plans of the middle class. Strong, independent-minded and militant workers are needed in unions. And this is where the piece becomes truly interesting.
Maisano is correct that the self-activity of the working class is the prime mover in society, an idea which is central to working-class socialism. But what exactly does Maisano mean by this? He nods to the militant legacy of the workers fighting during New Deal America, yet a big part of that struggle involved protracted fights not only against the boss and the state, but also the union bureaucrats. This leadership is not interested in the self-activity of its own rank and file. The reason is simple: they are what the socialist trade unionist Daniel DeLeon once called the “labor lieutenants of capital”. They represent the interests of the status quo in the form of organized labor. Working class self-activity has many layers, and often the class struggle takes place against those who are in the union itself.
Working class self-activity does not end when workers clock out. The struggle for socialism is not economistic, meaning it’s not just related to job-specific issues like wages and pensions, but also concerns the whole of life under capitalism. Union bureaucrats are tied to capital, and as a result they encourage the rank and file to support Democratic or progressive candidates (Green Party, Working Families Party) for office. We can think of the union bureaucrats as mirrors of the Democratic Party. It is unfortunate that Maisano leaves the question of Party aside when he discusses the self-activity of the working class. While it is true that splitting the Democrats is not a goal working class militants should aspire to, there is a definite need to abandon middle-class politics altogether in order to reflect the political struggle. What if in addition to greater control over unions workers also had a corresponding socialist party they could control as well? This party could link different struggles of the working class and provide a theoretical perspective that fundamentally breaks with existing social perspectives, like those of the Democrats. Until then, there is little the labor movement can hope for in the current options of pro-capitalist parties.
Mid-Atlantic Revolutionary Socialists 