Workers Assemblies

Brian Kelly recognizes the huge limitations of Black-white solidarity and the enduring racial prejudice among white workers, even in the case of the UMW’s strikes in Birmingham, 1908/1920. His work stands out, however, at providing evidence of the deliberate and relentless efforts on the part of the mine owners to pit workers against each other, to instill racial prejudice among them and to enhance the rivalry between Black and non-Black workers.

Under mounting pressure of the State governor and accusations of “racial subversion,” the UMW denied any attempt to equalize pay and conditions between Black and white workers. “[T]he main beneficiaries of and the principal force in maintaining Black oppression in the Birmingham district were its major steel, iron, and coal employers.”

The two main takeaways of Kelly’s work are that (1) capital is a major force in maintaining, and no doubt the main beneficiaries of, the oppression of racial minorities; and (2) there is the potential for interracial joint struggles on the grounds of common material interests.

It has been almost a year since the factory shut-down after management called for renovations. Since then, workers have seen the factory dismantled bit by bit and labourers laid off while others are coerced to leave as plans to turn the factory grounds into a tourism development have devastated the livelihood of the company’s dedicated workforce. The source of the workers’ distress began in 2004 when the 50 year-old factory, then public, was privatised and sold to the Americana Group, a Kuwaiti food and beverage manufacturer and international franchise operator. A Kharafi Group consortium led by Americana acquired 95 per cent of the company, with the rest of the shares going to private investors.

“We are now calling for the operation of this factory. Of course before the revolution, we were not able to speak out and if we did Central Security would have rounded us up. In light of what has happened – after the Intifada – all we ask is that we begin operating our factory again; nothing more”, Hussein states.

For more than a year their lives have been turned upside down, but in the wake of the Egyptian Intifada and as revolutionary fervour sweeps through the country’s labour force, this community of factory workers has decided to make their voices heard. In the spirit of Tahrir, the workers have vowed not to leave until their demands are met; some promise to bring their families.

The question of how a socialist society would operate raised a horrible, dystopian image in this student’s mind. Such libertarian fears of a totalitarian state imposing socialism by force, even to the point of annihilation, on an unwilling people, who are presumed to be capitalist by nature, are all too common. This brings to mind Fredric Jameson’s comment: “Someone once said that it is easier [for most people in today’s society] to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.”2

This prohibition on critically assessing capitalism begins in the economics departments and business schools of our universities where, with but a few exceptions, it is easier to find an advocate of the immediate colonization of Mars than it is to find a scholar engaged in genuine radical criticism of capitalism. This critical dearth extends to our news media, which have a documented track record of promoting the profit system, and a keen distaste for those that advocate radical change. It reaches all of us in one form or another. Anyone who wishes to participate in civic life quickly grasps that being tagged as anti-free market (or socialist) is a near-certain way to guarantee one’s status as a political outcast. To criticize the system is to criticize the nation and “democracy.”

n John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, an enraged Okie tenant farmer, a victim of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, wants to know, as he is being removed from his farm by the bank, whom he can shoot. The tractor driver who comes to demolish his house says it would do no good for the farmer to shoot him, since he’s just an ordinary working stiff doing his job and would be quickly replaced by another. When the farmer counters that he will then shoot the person who gave the order, the tractor driver replies that this too would be useless, since that individual is simply a bank employee. “Well, there’s a president of the bank,” continues the farmer. “There’s a board of directors. I’ll fill up the magazine of the rifle and go into the bank.” The driver said, “Fellow was telling me the bank gets orders from the East. The orders were, ‘Make the land show profit or we’ll close up.’” “But where does it stop? Who can we shoot? I don’t aim to starve to death before I kill the man that’s starving me.” “I don’t know. Maybe there’s nobody to shoot. Maybe the thing isn’t men at all. Maybe, like you said, the property’s doing it. Anyway I told you my orders.” “I got to figure,” the tenant said. “We all got to figure. There’s some way to stop this. It’s not like lightning or earthquakes. We’ve got a bad thing made by men, and by God that’s something we can change.” The tenant sat in his doorway, and the driver thundered his engine and started off….The iron guard rail bit into the house-corner, crumbled the wall, and wrenched the little house from its foundation so that it fell sideways crushed like a bug….The tractor cut a straight line on, and the air and the ground vibrated with its thunder. The tenant man stared after it, his rifle in his hand. His wife was beside him, and the quiet children behind. And all of them stared after the tractor.3

Our approach was motivated by the inability of the labour and social justice movements, as well as opposition political parties, to develop an effective response to ongoing attacks against working-class living standards.  It was evident that a fresh organizational approach based on new strategies, new alignments, and new objectives was needed -- an approach that came to be dubbed Workers Assemblies.

The trade unions were, and still are, mired in concessions, wage freezes, and other kinds of compromises with employers, and a politics of tailing after the social democratic NDP, which was going nowhere -- hence the lack of a real fight-back against the crisis.

A June 2010 article by Robert McChesney and John Bellamy Foster discusses the weak state of progressive forces in the United States and their inability to translate significant support for their political positions into commensurate political influence.