Bullshit and Lies; Another Response to Liz Wheeler and the YAF

 https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/margaret/FMfcgxwLttDLTpPZdKWzFChcxTnCfklg?projector=1

The above is a link to the Liz Wheeler's rather poorly thought out diatribe on socialism. Liz says she has five questions about Socialism and Democratic Socialists of America, and I'm writing this response because Liz said right wingers should ask these five questions to their "liberal" friends.

So, here it goes:

Question One: "What is the difference between Democratic Socialism and "regular old" socialism?

First, all socialism is democratic socialism. Democratic Socialists of America has included the word, "democratic" because DSA talks about socialism in terms of extending democracy into sectors of society that are currently anything but democratic. 

Right now, that extension of democracy would include the economy, where people and workers democratically decide what is to be produced and how it would be produced. 

Consider the current reality: 

When any of us walk into work, we are not entering a democratic institution. One acts according to policies and production arrangements that are designed by owners. You have no say in how you work and what you make belongs to bosses, not you or your co-workers. 

Every "socialism" I know of finds the current arrangements of work to be entirely unsatisfactory. In truth, the current arrangement involves employees being stressed to the maximum, monitored, and pushed, all in the interests of maximizing profits for bosses and investors. As socialists, we want these relationships of economic exploitation to end; we can. as a society, do a lot better. 

There are other institutions we'd want to change. For instance, education, where the two most important groups of people involved, the students and teachers, have absolutely no say over what is taught  and what real education looks like in the classroom. The current situation in schools is highly "un-democratic" and results in kid-to-worker factories, or, even worse, school-to-prison pipelines. 

Question 2: "Where has socialism worked? Venezuela - no antibiotics, Cuba - rusty surgical instruments, elites fly to other countries for medical care." 

Lets talk about Venezuela and Cuba. Both countries have been thoroughly hounded by the USA and its allies for decades. USA sanctions have have blocked all normal economic relationships with the rest of the world. What Cuba and Venezuela have been reduced to is cash economics (in US dollars) where everything imported needs to be paid for, cash up front. Exports for both countries are subject political interference as the US and allies seek to block Cuba and Venezuela's access to export markets. Any nation, capitalist or socialist, would eventually collapse if they had to live within the restrictions Cuba and Venezuela have to live under.

Here's some facts to consider. Cuban doctors and nurses are all over South and Central America. Mexico has Cuban doctors and nurses, and these doctors and nurses are where they are to help, not make a pile of money.

My daughter is a nurse. While training, she spent a six weeks on a practicum in Nicaragua on the Mesquito Coast. The doctors were Cuban, they were highly competent, although medical supplies were lacking (keep in mind, Nicaragua is now and has been a capitalist country for the last 30 years. So why, in a capitalist country, are antibiotics, anesthetics, surgical equipment so lacking? I know the answer to this, bet Liz doesn't).

Consider too that a number of 9/11 responders who went to Cuba for burn treatments that don't exist in the USA. Stalin lived to be a ripe old man, he never went outside the USSR for medical treatment because he didn't have to. Soviet health care worked for every one, and Chinese health care works for every one. too I'd rather be sick in Vietnam than the USA because in the USA, the care you get is only what your insurance carrier will pay for, and personally, I'm not covered under a "cadillac" health care plan; I think I'd be treated better if I was Vietnamese.

Question Three: "Who pays for socialist programs?"

The funny thing about Liz's rant is that she's got a fetish about money, as does the capitalist class. 

Somehow or another, Liz, and capitalist friends have this idea that money builds everything. As if thousands and billions of dollar bills march into the factory gates and push endless buttons, lug the weights, and operate the machinery that makes everything go: a happy collection of George Washingtons, folded into little origami people,  smiling as they walk through the office, factory, hospital, or whatnot.

Of course, such an economics as Liz suggests are just silly. Everything that has ever been built is built by people. Simply put, the Pyramids weren't built by Pharaoh, they were built by thousands of slaves. Rome wasn't built by the Emperors, it was built by slaves. The aristocrats, secular and spiritual, didn't build the Medieval period. It was peasants and a three field crop rotation system that built the Medieval period. And capitalists didn't build the modern mass production economy; that duty fell to workers of every occupation. 

In truth, capitalists produce nothing. Instead, capitalists are adept at expropriating (i.e. stealing) all that is produced and turning it into private profit.

Basically, us socialists aren't talking about taxing or purchasing "socialism" from capitalists. Socialism, if it ever exists again, will be built by society as a whole. It's the collective power of laboring people that would build such a world and manage it too. 

Socialism really has no use for capitalists at all. Capitalists take what workers make and turn it into their own personal profits; who needs them? We don't tax capitalists because we want their money; we tax capitalists, and want to tax them drastically in order to get rid of the whole class.

Question Four: "What will stop Democratic Socialism from turning into socialism?"

Jeez, this question sounds a lot like the question, "when did you stop beating your wife?" The question is not an honest question; its nothing but a cheap, rhetorical word trick and I'm not biting.

If you've noticed from the above, democracy and socialism are complementary concepts; they go hand-in-hand for us socialists. This idea that democracy and socialism are contradictory is your idea, and comes from your idea of "big" government as it exists now in the USA, which of course is a government that is avowedly capitalist at every level and to its core. The proof of this is the number of corporate lobbyists who fill the halls of every legislative office building in America.

Question Five: "Why would we want socialism here? 100 million people have been killed by socialist regimes."

"100 million people have been killed by socialist regimes."

I'm quite dubious about Liz Wheeler's numbers and how she counts her "100 million". But yes, socialist regimes have made some pretty brutal mistakes in the not so long history of real, existing socialism. In my mind, the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia and Hungary were brutal, wrong, and impeded the free development of socialism, for instance.

Honestly too, elections in the USSR and the Socialist Bloc were a joke aimed at giving the ruling Party the chance to engage in a few days of self congratulation.

However, the Socialist Bloc demonstrated a different kind of democracy.

In the late 1940s, early 1950s, both East Germany and Yugoslavia attempted to collectivize agriculture. Farmers didn't react well to collectivization, and thus, East Germany and Yugoslavia abandoned collectivization efforts after an year or two. Instead, East Germany and Yugoslavia moved towards a co-op system where farmers retained their personal land ownership but worked with other farmers to increase farm productivity while the state supplied farm equipment and machinery.

East German farmers seemed to like their system. After the re-unification of Germany in 1990-91, East German farmers petitioned the West German power brokers to be allowed to keep their agricultural co-ops. The West German power brokers said, "no". I know why the West German/re-unified German government rejected the co-ops. Bet Liz and the Right Wing don't.

But let's also talk about capitalism's body count.

Slavery, from 1500 AD, up through the 19th century was a 100% capitalist institution. In all that 400 years, slavery was the labor source for the production of cash crops to be sold in Europe's commodity markets.

From 1900 to 1930, roughly half a million workers were killed at work in the US.

I bet Liz is counting the Russian Civil War of 1918 through 1922 in her "100 million" total? Let's talk about the Russian Civil War.

The Russian Civil War caused the death of 1.5 million combatants, and 8 million civilian deaths. This civil war turned into a blood bath because Britain supported, including with troops and airplanes, Monarchist General Yudenich's White army and in Northern Russian. The Czechs and French did the same in regard to General Wrangel's White Army in Ukraine and western Russia. and the US had troops out in support of Admiral Kolchak's White Army in Siberia. 

The strategy of Britain, France and the US was best summed up by Winston Churchill when he said, we want.."to strangle the baby in its crib". Churchill wasn't interested in saving Russia, he was interested in saving his own sorry class in Great Britain.  

I'd be glad to take ownership of our socialist mistakes. But I expect the Right to take responsibility for it's capitalist history as well.

"Why would we want socialism here?"

Here's why DSA, a mess of other socialists, and millions of non-political, non-activists people are interested in socialism in the United States.

Right now, the median income for a family of four, is around $68,000 per year. This means that 50% of US households live on 68K or less, and 50% of households earn 68K or more.

At 68K a year, a family has a roof over their head, most likely. But it's not an easy life. A family of four, at 68K, is probably up to its neck in debt. The loss of one income would be a disaster for such a family. If the kids are going to college, it's going to have to be paid for in loans; thus more debt.

Imagine what life is like on a household income of 40K, or 30K a year? Here, a $400 maintenance bill to fix the car will cause months of economic dislocation in the household. That is if the maintenance job can be paid for in the first place.

By the way, a significant part of the population pays over 50% of their income towards housing alone. 

Meanwhile, ILO and World Health Organization announced last week that 745,000 die per year due to over-work. The focus of US COVID policy, and state policies has been to get people and economies working again (the profit chain), at the cost of around 400,000 additional US lives. Also, the WHO, a couple of years ago listed "burnout" as an official occupational disease. People bust their butts in America every day, just for the right to survive until next month.

Its also worth mentioning US "essential" workers have learned over the last year that "essential" means "disposable".

Given the above, I have a question for Liz and the Right Wing. The question is this: "If capitalism is so great, how come it has resulted in the immiseration of hundreds of millions of people over the last 40 years?"

Finally, Liz and the Right Wing have a view of socialist life that's just plain wrong.

First, the bread lines Liz mentioned? Yeah, lines existed. The type of lines that Liz mentioned though, could have happened after the collapse of the USSR. I read a story a couple of years ago about two sisters who had to share one pair of shoes for years. But this was after the USSR collapsed and was under the care of the IMF, World Bank, the US, UK and Germany's shock doctrine.

I don't know piles about life in socialist Europe. The country I'm most familiar with is East Germany.

In East Germany, it was routine for workers to take time away from work tasks to head over to the enterprise's food store. Usually, co-workers would ask this worker to pick up an item for them as well. If anybody had to wait in line at the food shop, or plant pharmacy, it was 100% on the clock. Try walking off the job and going to the store on the clock in the US; you'd probably be fired.

East German workers, and I suspect Eastern Bloc, and workers in the USSR didn't work like workers in the US or capitalist Europe.  In East Germany, it was almost impossible to be fired. Victor Grossman, author of, From Harvard to Karl Marx Allee, said you'd have to "hit your boss over the head with a crow bar, or report to work  drunk for four weeks in a row" to be fired, and even then the plant's union would have to sign off on the discharge.

In East Germany, economic planning agencies would decide what the factory is going to produce. After that, how the commodity was produced was up to the workers and the union. Unions were 100% accountable to its workers.

Workers in the East didn't have the kind of job stresses that we take for granted in the capitalist West. Nobody was afraid to be fired. Workers decided the speed of production; nobody in the East would have put up with the kind of production speeds ups, monitoring of worker productivity, and brutal supervisors always pushing, like US and European workers put up with every day. After all, it's a workers' state!

The East Germans introduced a course in elementary schools titled, "How to take care of your pet". East German teachers thought that a sense of empathy was a valuable social skill. When my daughter was a little kid, we had an East German story book. It was a sweet story, and the theme was that everything living deserves to be loved.

Or, how about  Social Democratic Denmark? I read a story from a  young American woman who took an internship with a Danish company. This woman worked like an American. She said at work late into the evening. She worked weekends, and she thought all this was good; that's how you get ahead she thought!

After a while, her boss told her she was missing a life. The work week was 37 hours and her boss told her to go home when her 37 hours were done. He told her that her grinding away at work was not healthy, and that she was leading a highly unbalanced life. In sort of socialist Scandinavia, the philosophy of doing your work well, and then forgetting about work after you've done your weekly hours is dominant and written into the culture.

So, yeah, I'd love to be living in a socialist USA! My back wouldn't hurt as much as it does if I had worked in a socialist USA. My stress levels from work and trying to survive wouldn't have anywhere near the stress levels and anxiety that is so much a part of working in a capitalist USA.

There's something else the Right Wing and Liz should know. There's no "secret socialist blueprint". "In regard to socialism and revolution, "one size does not fit all". Every socialist revolution (peaceful or not) has found its own way, consistent with its own history, culture and politics.

As for the USA, American socialists don't exist outside of American history and culture. We actually live quite happily within the our own culture, politics and history. The idea that American socialists would "impose" a borrowed system from the USSR, Vietnam, East Germany or China is pathetically laughable. The Right should actually read our socialist press in the USA if they want to know what socialists are thinking and what a socialist agenda might look like.

In a normal political world, I'd challenge Liz and the Right to a debate. I'd win, hands down, because I understand the importance of facts, and because I know a lot more than Liz Wheeler and the Right will ever know from their narrow, authoritarian, and vengeful rage version of politics.

But the debate isn't going to happen. The problem is that for Liz Wheeler and the Right Wing, a debate is Marjorie Taylor-Greene yelling taunts and threats through AOC's mail slot. With its blanket denial of fact, its reliance on guns and the noose, Liz Wheeler and the Right Wing are the greatest threat to the American Republic in its 245 year history. 

    

Full Support For The Striking Warrior Met Coal Mine Workers!

About 1000 mine workers in Alabama have been on strike since April. They are women and men, Black and white, young and older. The mines they work in are about 45 minutes from Bessemer and have been the focus of union organizing and struggle for more than 100 years, I think. These are gaseous metal coal mines.

You can read and hear more about the strike here:https://umwa.org/take-action/united-we-stand/ 

If you have a few dollars to spare, please join me in contributing to the strike fund. The details are here: https://umwa.org/support-umwa-miners-on-strike-at-warrior-met/.

Please feel good about forwarding this to others who can assist. And please feel good about putting in a note with your contribution expressing solidarity from wherever you are.

Salem, Oregon DSA Statement On The May, 2021 Salem-Keizer School Board Election

Salem Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) rejoices in the victory of the four progressive Salem-Keizer School Board candidates. We believe that the slate won because of their honesty and integrity and their grasp of the issues that most concern people of color and working-class people in Keizer and Salem. They were able to inspire people to vote for change and begin breaking the hold of the most reactionary forces on our schools. This is a victory for people of color, youth, and working-class people. Salem DSA was a part of the coalition that supported these candidates. We were at the doors in working-class neighborhoods, on the phones, and with the unions through the campaign.

This is the beginning, not the finish line. The four newly-elected School Board Directors will need our help. They will need our advice and our support, and they should be able to count on our ability to mobilize for positive change.

The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) will provide large sums of money for our schools, and every working-class person, every union, the youth, and all people of color in our communities have a direct interest in how that money will be appropriated. There should be no contradictions between what people of color, youth, our unions, and all working-class people want as this funding becomes available. We can win an equitable and productive distribution of this money and then demand more and better from the state, the federal government, and the corporations. Our on-going struggle for racial justice in the schools must continue and must win over forces that have not yet fully committed to the fight. The unions representing classified school staff and teachers now have a new opening to help lead the fight for change. Solidarity is always a two-way street, and it is in everyone’s interest to see that we all advance together.

This win opens the door to future wins. We can build from the School Board races to wins for socialists and progressives in 2022, we can win health care for all, we can win a Green New Deal, we can put Trumpism away, we can oppose imperialism and win, and we absolutely must win passage of the PRO Act and all of the fights for equitable distribution of ARPA funds and an end to deportations and violence against people of color and LGBTQIA+ people. Every victory creates another.

The struggle continues!

Responding to Liz Wheeler

Liz Wheeler has challenged the Left and liberals to respond to her five attack points on democratic socialism. 

Wheeler uses lots of quick-shot soundbites while we write lots of books and do long and defensive blog posts and podcasts. For all of our good work we don't get very far. People are busy, the bosses and capitalists have the advantages, we function in a system that divides people and forces us to compete with one another, and capitalism brings out the worst in people for a time as the system falls apart. I'm going to try to respond to Wheeler's attack as she presents it. This will not take longer to read than it will to listen to Wheeler's tired attack. 

One: For us at Oregon Socialist Renewal the "Democratic" in "Democratic Socialism" is there as a point of emphasis. Socialism is democratic in the sense that it extends democracy and working-class power into every area of life. "Democratic Socialism" also refers to a specific tradition in the socialist movement, and one that we have mixed reactions to.

Socialism is NOT "government giving away lots of free stuff" and "government taking over the means of production and distribution." Socialism IS people collectively mobilizing through their workers' and peoples' government and through other democratic means to take power over their lives and their working and living conditions.

Two: Socialism has been the only answer to exploitative and ruinous capitalism, and it has been attempted most often in colonized, people-of-color-majority, and capitalist-plundered and war-ravaged countries. These countries and peoples take up their struggles for socialism with distinct disadvantages: the U.S., other imperialist powers, and multinational corporations squeeze them and make them bleed. And socialism can take generations to develop, with forward and backward movements, just as any other system develops. Revolution is not a straight line and socialists are not magicians who can pull utopia from a hat---and we do not say that we are.

Where has capitalism worked? In what capitalist countries are workers not exploited? Which capitalist powers cede power nonviolently and democratically? Which capitalist countries do not lurch from crisis to crisis or from war to war? Which capitalist countries have not had their breadlines and unemployment lines? 

Three: The wealthy should indeed pay a fair share in taxes, or more, and if we can use taxes to lower their numbers and rid ourselves of them then we should. They don't create wealth or value, and they suck an incredible amount of resources from society. But taxation is not our whole policy. We're about creating a democratic economy that provides for the people and restores the environment, an economy that works for us and is under direct social control. Wheeler & Company are moving in the opposite direction and are okay with drowning us all if their profit-driven boat floats.

Four: Socialism is not about "big government" and "the government" giving orders. If society goes through the work of building new democratic social institutions, committing to restoring the environment, planning where our resources will and won't go, committing to racial and gender justice, and ensuring that everyone has rights and a voice and all that is needed to live then the nature and purpose of government changes. Each one of us may have less stuff, and less junk will be produced, but all of us will have what we need within reason. No society, including capitalism, is static. Our question for Wheeler & Company: what stops capitalism from moving from a system of free enterprise and inequalities to fascism?

Five: Not everyone in Wheeler's room wants fairness---probably no one in that room does, in fact. The idea that taking care of one another means stealing from someone is only logical under capitalism, but it skips over a key point: the capitalists make their wealth through the thefts of time, labor, land, and the national sovereignty of colonized and oppressed peoples, and through gendered and racialized oppression and the destruction of our environment. Still, there is something in Wheeler's argument that's correct in a sense. If we do have to "steal" from someone to help one another then let's do that by expropriating the wealth of those who have taken our labor, land, resources, and rights. Socialism is about building society based on the democratic understandings that an injury to one is an injury to all and that power should flow from each of us as we are able to those who do productive labor in order that all of us should be free and provided for without exploitation. 

How We Struck the Flint Red Cross for Six Week, Cleaned Their Clock, and Had Lots of Fun! Part 2

 In union slang, the Flint Red Cross, was a "hot shop". Hot shops tend to be smaller workplaces, as little as 10 or 12 folks, maybe around 100 or so workers at maximum. To union organizers, a hot shop seems to happen out of thin air, and are seen as workers' reactions to things deeply internal within the employer and its workers. The "hot shop" breakout might happen because the bosses are brutal, or have lost all credibility with with the workers through a longstanding series of lies and broken promises. Sometimes instead, it's the poor wages and maybe a history of wage theft. Often it's a matter of all of the above and then some more too. 

A "hot shop" happens when one or two of the workers decide that they've have enough of the boss' s behavior, and they pick up the phone and call a union.

Personally, I didn't like "hot shop" organizing. "Hot shops" meant that the workers had had enough of the bosses; but what the workers were really asking for was to be rescued by the union, which is not the same thing as forming a union.

For instance, when I was leaving Ithaca, NY in 2019, I did a little picketing with the Painters and Allied Trades Union, Local 11 who had organized a rather large non-profit providing housing services to poor people. The Painters organized the workers and got the workers a first contract, and then a second contract. 

However, as the second contract expired, a de-certification petition had been filed by a few anti-union members of the bargaining unit (with the bosses' help of course). Management had enough "showing of interest" to get a de-certification election on the board.

Meanwhile, few workers took part in supporting the union; either through internal activity, or walking the picket line (informational picket; not a strike). Local 11's organizers were having a hard time communicating with bargaining unit union members. The union leadership inside the non-profit had lost credibility (through years of being ineffective); and things were pretty bleak.

The problem was this. After organizing and obtaining a couple of  contracts, the Painters Union Local 11 figured the workers could take it from there. From Painters Local 11's point of view, workers now had all the necessary tools provided through the contract and labor law, and that would be enough for the workers to run their own show.

The Painters Union was wrong. The tools were not enough. In spite of being a union shop, with recognized stewards and a good grievance procedure, in spite of the union including a large majority of workers within the company itself, the workers within the bargaining unit continued to let the employer govern as if there was no union at all.

By the time the de-certification petition had been filed, the non-profit's management had re-written their job classifications and moved a substantial number of important positions to non-union, outside-the-bargaining unit positions. Stewards and workers never protested, never confronted their bosses, and let the damages mount.

Painters. Local 11 organizers felt terrible. I spent a number of hours walking the picket line with Local 11's organizing director, a real good and dedicated unionist named Travis. Travis felt terrible about what had happened. He need not have felt so guilty. It was an honest mistake. The problem was that Local 11 never figured on the amount of hand holding, and the amount of support, that would be necessary to teach modern non-profit workers from within a union bargaining unit, how to  actually becoming a functional and organic union.

I do believe the Painters Union and pro-union workers prevailed in the end. It took a pile of Unfair Labor Practice charges filed by Local 11, and a community campaign aimed at pressuring so called "progressive" members of the non-profit's board (this campaign was run by the Tompkins County Workers' Center and local 11). But there was never any real fight back by the non-profit's union workers.

I remember another "hot shop" I worked on when with I was with OPEIU. It was a small credit union with maybe 12 to 15 workers. On the last night of bargaining, the woman who had made the original call to the union told me, "If I was out of work, I'd cross a picket line to keep my kids fed, and I wouldn't feel bad about it"; I felt like stepping outside and slitting my wrists. 

The difference between the Flint Red Cross workers, and "hot shop" workers (and indeed many longer term union workplaces) in my mind comes down to this: The Flint Red Cross workers knew they needed to have a union, and that they needed to act like a union, in order to get what they needed.

I'm stealing a quote here from Ralph Chaplin's, "Solidarity Forever". But Flint Red Cross workers understood Chaplin's opening lines from the start:

"When the union's inspiration through the workers blood shall run 
  there can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun". 

Many union bargaining teams will focus on constructing neat, logical arguments as to why they should have better wages, or better safety conditions, or whatever. Thus, the effort becomes one of convincing the employer, through logical appeals and and moral arguments, to be a better employer. 

The problem in modern bargaining comes down to the fact that employers generally don'r care if they're logical, nice or morally responsible. Thus, collective bargaining becomes collective begging, and what's missing is that the union neither tries, or wants to even think about using its inherent power towards achieving what workers need and want.

To my mind, the difference between Flint Red Cross workers and most 1970s through 2020 collective bargaining episodes is simply this: the Flint Red Cross strike happened in Flint!

Flint, simply was a union town and a UAW town. Even in 1993-1994, Flint remained a union town. In truth, by 1993, the UAW had been having its butt kicked for the last decade and a half. By 1993, thousands and thousands of autoworkers had been laid off with no hope of return, the parts subsidiary operations (like "Delco", and "Delphi") were gone to the South or Mexico. Auto workers themselves were working five to six 12 hour shifts per week under break-neck conditions; it was not a happy time for auto workers.

Yet Flint still remembered the 1937 GM sit down strike, when the power of the workers broke GM's power and forced GM to recognize the UAW. 

In 1993, there were a few participants of the 1937 strike still around. There were a lot more children of the strikers still around, and even more grandchildren. Everybody in Flint remembered the 37 sit down strike, and people in Flint were still proud of what they did in 1937.

The Flint Red Cross strikers very much remembered the 1937 sit down strike. While many union organizers would describe the Flint Red Cross as a "hot shop"; a spontaneous revolt of the Red Cross workers, it was in truth anything but. 

In reality, the Flint Red Cross strike had a history that was 57 years old by 1994. Everything the Flint Red Cross workers did in 1994 was seen through the prism of 1937 Flint. This was where Gary, the management attorney, went all wrong. Gary read Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal, didn't know his local history, the power of culture, and didn't listen to the workers. As a result, Gary deeply believed that the Red Cross workers would never strike, because that's what Forbes said.

On the other hand, the Flint Red Cross workers had the attitude that if it could be done in  1937, it could be done in 1994 as well. This is the power of a history and culture. If you can imagine winning, you probably can win!

Some thoughts on the Amazon organizing drive in Alabama, and the PRO Act

When the Amazon Bessemer election results were released, the fact that struck me the most was that around 2,600 workers never cast a ballot. It may very well be that Amazon was able to "disappear" a lot of workers' ballots, but I can't imagine Amazon made 2,600 ballots disappear. 

I don't know what went on in the Bessemer, Amazon warehouse. The union; the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU), filed something like 24 Unfair Labor Practice charges against Amazon, and an NLRB hearing will be held soon to adjudicate the ULPs. Once the hearings are complete and decisions rendered, we'll all know a lot more about what happened in the warehouse, and maybe have a better idea as to what happened to 2,600 ballots. 

My theory? The vast majority of the 2,600 missing ballots were simply never cast. 

Consider this: Amazon workers are people, just like everybody else. They have things that matter in their lives, and things that don't matter too. My guess is that there were thousands of Amazon workers who just didn't see the union vote as really pertaining to their lives, or didn't see the union vote as important enough to take a stand.  

Obviously, the Bessemer warehouse was a very tense place throughout the union organizing drive. Pro-union workers wanted to talk, Amazon made it clear that it didn't want workers to talk at all, on or off the job. Meanwhile, Amazon had the anti-union propaganda machine blaring on a constant 24/7 basis throughout the organizing drive, and bosses was probably watching all their employees.

Unless an Amazon worker is really committed to the union and know's what they want, the atmosphere at work is going to put a real premium on workers' taking a kind of "duck and cover" approach, aimed at surviving the organizing drive. The "duck and cover" approach is amplified to an even greater extent when supervisors query workers on how they will vote in the union election (even though such queries are patently illegal). This "duck and cover" approach was probably the survival philosophy behind a lot of "no union" votes too.  

The above is not a judgement or criticism of the workers; it's just the way things are and the way things can go in an organizing drive.

There's no doubt that the Amazon-RWDSU vote was a defeat. The RWSDU made a number of crucial mistakes in their strategic approach to the organizing drive. If you want to know more about the RWDSU, and a pretty long list of strategic and tactical mistakes, you can read union organizer, Jane McAlevey's interview here:

 (https://jacobinmag.com/2021/05/amazon-bessemer-union-campaign-rwdsu-jane-mcalevey). 

But this article is not about critiquing the RWDSU; it is about something different.

The Bessemer Amazon organizing drive was indeed a defeat; but it was not a loss.

If you take a long range look at the Bessemer organizing drive, it's worth noting that there are now about 1,700 workers who voted "yes" in the union drive. These are the 1,700 odd workers who stood firm, in spite of the pressure from Amazon, it's endless mandatory anti-union meetings, the constant surveillance by supervisors, and always, the threat of being fired.

These 1,700 workers are now tempered and hardened. They've been through the worst and held firm. There's probably another couple of thousand workers who voted "no", or didn't vote at all who will be thinking about the drive for a long time to come. 

Additionally, there are workers looking at organizing across Amazon America. They now know what Amazon is likely to throw at them, and will have a much better chance of countering Amazon from what they've learned through the Bessemer organizing drive. All of these factors need to be placed in the "gains" column if one wants an honest assessment of the Bessemer drive and is also looking towards the future.

And then, there's the PRO Act.

Honestly, I don't think workers and unions will get the PRO Act (Protecting the Right to Organize Act), at least not in the foreseeable future. The margins in the Congress are just too thin to get something like the PRO Act voted through. There aren't the numbers in the Senate to overcome an inevitable filibuster., Just to dampen expectations even more, though Joe Manchin has signed onto the PRO Act, I have doubts that he'll set aside the inevitable filibuster in order to pass the PRO Act. He's that kind of guy.

A lot of Leftists, especially Leftists who are for Labor, but not part of Labor, have placed a great deal of hope in the Bessemer Union drive and passage of the PRO Act. 

With both these events, the non-Labor Left is looking for a magic bullet; the "Great Pumpkin" event that will  change Labor's fortunes on a dime, leading to the organization of millions and millions of workers and entry into a new age of broad sunny uplands.

The problem is that the RWDSU would have needed a divine miracle to win the Bessemer vote, and the PRO Act, in order to pass, will require a miracle as well. 

The truth is that workers and unions won't get the PRO Act until bosses and their corporations are willing to accept the PRO Act as an acceptable alternative to the endless chaos of strikes and other worker actions aimed at disrupting industrial production and the global economy. This is how and why The National Labor Relations Act, passed in 1935, and I'm afraid, this is the only recipe that will get us the PRO Act.

I'm seriously suggesting that unions, workers and the Left take the long view when it comes to workers in unions. Consider these facts and comparisons over the long haul of American labor history: 

The first mass strike in the United States was the Great Railroad Strike of 1873. It took 60 years from this seminal event to the passage of the NLR Act of 1935. 

In that 60 years, there were innumerable coal strikes conducted by workers from the United Mine Workers, Western Federation of Miners, and the IWW. These strikes were brutal. At Blair Mountain, coal miners were bombed by the Army Air Corp. In the eastern Colorado coal fields strike of 1927, striking IWW coal miners were gunned down by National Guard troops and a host of the owners' private security armies. 

There were textile workers strikes such as the "Bread and Roses" strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912. The "Bread and Roses" strike is famous throughout the world.  

And how about the Homestead Steel strike of the 1892? 

Or the Pullman Car strike of 1894. How about the McKees Rock strike of 1909? 

Let's not forget the Seattle General Strike of 1919. Or the TUUL (Trade Union Unity League) organizing drives that happened throughout the South in the late 1920s and early 1930s. 

Or the IWW strikes throughout the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest and the South. 

The 1937 Sit-Down strike didn't just happen out of thin air either. The Communist Party: the Socialist Party; the IWW; AJ Muste and  a Christian socialist oriented set of labor unions; all were actively organizing auto workers in Detroit and Ohio since at least the mid 1920s, (Note: AJ Muste was a Congregationalist Minister and the leader of the 1931 Toledo, Ohio, Autolite strike).

Preceding events to the 1937 Sit Down strike were the 1931 Autolite strike and the 1932 Hunger March where unemployed auto workers were met with armed resistance from law enforcement resulting in four deaths and a host of injuries. 

And of course, Auto workers in Detroit were very aware of what was happening in other industries. For instance, the 1934 ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union) strike and Portland, Oregon general strike where the ILWU was able to effectively strike every port on the west coast.

In that long list of strikes above, there are very few victories. The 1934 west coast longshore strike was a victory. To this day, the ILWU controls the labor process at every port on the west coast. The 1937 sit-down strike was a victory too. The roof is in the fact that the UAW exists to this day.

In the above list of strikes, Lawrence, Massachusetts was a half-win. Wages rose but the IWW was not able to build a lasting organization of textile workers. Same goes for the Mckees Rock strike of 1909.

Most everything else listed falls in the category of defeats, if you measure a defeat based on what the workers demanded versus what was achieved. 

But none of the listed strikes were losses. In defeat after defeat, every time, workers came back stronger, ranks deeper, resolve greater. Every defeat had the effect of deepening class consciousness across the working class.

So, why would it be different now? As I look at it, we'll be defeated, and defeated again, over and over again, until we win. 

A lot of Leftists out there are thinking we're a lot stronger than we really are; thus the crushed and despairing emotions when the struggle of the moment fails.

The key here is to not fixate on the struggle at hand, betting everything we have in the hope that this time, the "Great Pumpkin" will rise. It's really all about momentum, and building momentum is really what labor organizing is all about. 

Let's start with where we're at right now. The fact of the matter is that most American unions are weak, and most American workers are weak too. Both would gain a lot if unions and workers' organizations got off the internet and stopped waiting for the next "hot shop" call. 

Instead, maybe unions should start setting up permanent store fronts and become a part of the community they're trying to organize? Maybe all of us in the working class movement should start thinking in terms of talking to workers of all stripes every day; more community hot lines; more workers' drop-in centers; more education and accessible discussion of why it matters to be a class-conscious worker and what it will really take to start winning the fight against the bosses? This might be the kind of stuff that builds the kind of momentum necessary in order to win.