The Fight for Revolutionary Unionism
After two intense years of organizing over 1,000 paraeducators—teaching assistants—into a brand-new union local in Denver, the hard work, engaged members, and the willingness to continue pushing for better working conditions quickly dissipated in a matter of three months.
When the organizers of this campaign achieved their initial purpose of creating a new union for unorganized workers, it was handed off to two directors in charge of helping these workers bargain their first-ever contract with the school board of their district. After months of deliberation and inactivity from these directors, the workers finally sat down with the district for their first negotiation session. Unbeknownst to the workers, the advice they had been given by these directors on how to achieve solid gains proved unsuccessful. Surely, begging, cooperation, and utter degradation of one's status as a worker would convince Human Resources to listen to their demands. Of course, such tactics were ineffectual and fruitless. The workers of this union have yet to see any material change, and the hope that this newly organized unit would break free from the union bureaucracy plaguing many other locals across the nation has faded.
We celebrated the incredible feat of organizing workers into a union, but were faced with the unfortunate reality that many of the campaign organizers could not foresee: the institutional limitations within unions and the dire consequences of disorganization, an unfounded political program, and imposing barriers that prevent workers from reaching anything beyond a certain level of "union consciousness." This has plagued not only this campaign but the entire history of the trade union movement in the United States. Since the inception of the working-class organization at the start of the Industrial Revolution, there has been a direct link between the "primitiveness" of the working-class movement and the ineffectiveness of its labor movement.
To earn a position in the labor movement as a Communist means using one's influence as an organizer in constant contact with the working class to push beyond the boundaries of winning fundamental fights like salary and benefits. This has been a struggle I have faced since becoming a staff organizer, and one that took me many months to comprehend fully.
To neglect this point of political and social power as organizers in unions is to betray and ignore one's political responsibility as a self-proclaimed Communist. It is to the detriment of the workers we organize that we withhold our education, our passion for revolution, and our extensive political knowledge simply because we assume the American working class is unready and too primitive to understand the history of the working-class fight against capitalism, the strength of collective labor power, and the unification of workers to achieve a complete transformation of society. Why limit our fight to a union contract? Why impose these limited expectations on workers, assuming they are unwilling to develop politically, and instead allow them to believe their conditions will only change through meek negotiations with those who bind them to wage labor? That is not the work of a Communist; it is the work of a careerist, an opportunist who cloaks themselves in progressive aesthetics while backing inaction and eclectic political ideas.
This is not to say we must reject all forms of trade union work. Because unions are the rudimentary organizations of the working class, Communists must strive to embed themselves in all forms of union action. Workers exercise the power of their labor through these organizations, but we cannot let that be the pinnacle of our work.
Revolution—the elimination of social classes and the destruction of exploitative and oppressive forces—can often feel like an insurmountable task. What does it mean to achieve state power, and how can the masses assume this challenge? Lenin, addressing this very question at the Third International Congress of the Comintern, put forth a resolution underlining how preparation for revolution should be done: the reorganization of workers into "workplace cells." Far beyond trade unions, this tactic is what made the Russian Revolution successful. The Communist Party members of Russia used all forms of grievances to organize workers, not for worker-boss negotiations but for the seizure of power by the proletariat. They "always showed the connection between the maltreatment of factories, and the rule of the autocracy... At the same time the autocracy was connected in the agitation of the party cells with the capitalist system, so that at the very beginning of the development of the labour movement established a connection between the economic struggle and the political."
The political struggle in the U.S. labor movement has entirely divorced the political from the economic, reducing it to winning bread-and-butter conditions in a union contract, and even then, often failing. Whether connecting labor power to international conflicts like the war in Palestine or domestic crises like the housing market, a labor stoppage of major industries under a general strike, led by the most advanced section of the working class under the guidance of a Marxist-Leninist party, utilizing workplace cells across industries, is the practical execution of workers' power. A Communist rejects vague, ungrounded feelings of wanting to be "liberated." Liberation is a science, not an emotion, and it will not be carried out by intellectuals disengaged from the masses—the very people whose labor is essential to ending capitalism. This applies to both labor organizers and social democrats outside the movement. We restrain ourselves when we reduce our work to polemics about what a transformed society could look like, rather than conquering it through scientific means.
Workers are ready, and there is no threshold they must meet to engage in politics within and outside their workplaces. When the labor movement understands this, revolutionary change can be materialized. To earn one's place as not just an organizer but a Communist who applies historical lessons means extinguishing the fear and prejudice that the American working class is unprepared to accept the Communist program. This prejudice reflects how ill-equipped the "communist" movement is and how the lessons of past Communist labor leaders have been buried alongside their unmarked graves. Until this changes, workers will remain on the defensive in the class war, the end of the world will come sooner than the end of capitalism, and we will have only ourselves to blame.
Savaş, Alpaslan. “The Backbone of Leninist Organization: Workplace Cells.” International Communist Review, Alpaslan Savaş, 1 Feb. 2022, www.iccr.gr/en/issue_article/The-backbone-of-Leninist-organization-workplace-cells/.