[Marxism] DeBoer draft intro #3

[Aroberts45 at aol.com]

John and Dave,

This is draft number three that has corrected a typo or two.

Bill

Introduction To HOW TO WIN STRIKES
By Bill Leumer

Harry DeBoer was born in 1903 in Crookston, MN.  In the early 1930s he began 
working in the coal yards in Minneapolis and became part of the initial 
organizing committee that led the famous Teamsters’ truckers strike in 1934.  DeBoer 
is credited with developing the cruising pickets, a tactic that successfully 
stopped scab trucks.  Other leaders, with whom DeBoer worked closely, included 
Carl Skoglund, Vincent R. Dunne, and Farrell Dobbs.  All were members of the 
Socialist Workers Party.

DeBoer remained true to his principles throughout his life, and in his later 
years counseled many young trade unionists on labor issues and strike 
strategy.  The following essay captures with crystal clarity the lessons that DeBoer 
and his revolutionary comrades learned from years of experience.  It serves as 
a beacon of light for the working class today in its struggle to abolish 
exploitation and establish a genuinely free society.

It is crucial to note that DeBoer’s strategical orientation stands directly 
opposed to the operating assumptions of today’s labor bureaucrats who simply 
accept capitalism as an unalterable given and strive to proceed within its 
restricted framework. As long as one believes that capitalism is the best of all 
possible economic systems, one is left with the dubious conclusion that what is 
good for the capitalists must thereby be good for the workers.  This so-called 
partnership between labor and the employers has spawned its own perverse 
logic:  If the capitalists must cut labor costs in order to remain competitive and 
stay in business, the workers must be prepared to accept concessions.  After 
all, a low paying job, the bureaucrats insist, is better than no job at all.  
Therefore, the position of the union officialdom boils down to this:  the 
interests of the workers must simply be subordinated to the interests of the 
employers who in turn are compelled to make what they deem are reasonable profits.

This basic operating assumption on the part of the labor bureaucrats is 
accompanied by the conviction that the capitalists are much more powerful than the 
workers.  After all, they control the vast amount of wealth in the country, 
not to mention both major political parties.  With this defeatist outlook, the 
union bureaucrats are convinced that virtually any attempt by workers to 
improve wages and working conditions will inevitably be doomed to failure.  Instead 
of leading struggles, they are content to funnel millions of union dollars to 
one of the two major political parties of the employers, namely the Democratic 
Party, a party that is entirely dedicated to the proposition that what is 
good for corporate America is good for the rest of us.

This entire strategical framework leads to a self-fulfilling prophesy:  
workers will surely lose every struggle as long as they are led by union officials 
who are convinced that winning is impossible and who advocate class 
collaboration with the employers.

But the consequences of this strategical orientation have been nothing short 
of disastrous for the working class.  With corporations searching for the 
cheapest labor on the planet, millions of jobs in the manufacturing sector have 
migrated overseas, leaving stranded workers with little choice but to take 
minimum wage jobs in the other sectors.  And those workers who have succeeded in 
clinging on to their jobs have nevertheless watched their standard of living 
veer into a nose dive.  In 1970, for example, the average CEO made 40 times as 
much as the average worker.  By 2000, they made 500 times as much.

But, as Karl Marx argued, these grim results were entirely predictable, given 
the nature of capitalism.  Every business, simply in order to survive, must 
maximize its profits.  If one capitalist succeeds in discovering a more 
efficient production process so that costs are reduced accordingly, then this saving 
can be used to reduce the price of the finished product.  Consumers will 
naturally prefer this product over the more expensive variety sold by the 
competitors so that the latter will soon find themselves without customers and out of 
business.  There is a simple moral to this story:  capitalists must place the 
highest priority on reducing production costs, which include the cost of 
labor.  Otherwise they cannot survive as capitalists because higher wages 
necessarily translate into lower profits.  Therefore, the alliance forged by the labor 
officialdom with the capitalists has only translated into their unrelenting 
demand on the working class to accept concessionary contracts in order to keep 
the capitalist in business.

Capitalists have clearly developed their own class struggle strategy:  they 
are resolved to keep labor costs to a minimum.  DeBoer’s essay was written with 
the idea in mind that workers need a class struggle strategy of their own, 
one that is based on the fact that the interests of the workers and the 
employers are diametrically opposed and that one must be prepared to fight for an 
increase in wages at the expense of profits.  This orientation proceeds from the 
conviction that an economic system that sacrifices the well-being of the vast 
majority of the population so that a small minority can reap enormous profits 
is unfit and unworthy of our allegiance.  It also embraces the simple point 
that capitalists cannot survive without workers, but workers can quite easily 
survive without capitalists and that the working class can thereby wield 
tremendous power when it acts in solidarity and with a united purpose.  This means 
that the working class must reject the dead-end approach of the current labor 
officialdom and forge a new leadership, one that is steeled in the conviction 
that a partnership between workers and their employers is impossible, that 
conflict is inevitable, and that the interests of the majority must take 
precedence.  Such a leadership would encourage mobilizing all the various components of 
the working class into a political movement that unites the whole working class 
and its allies in everyone’s common interests.  In the final analysis, this 
would necessarily take the form of a mass labor party.  If workers are to be 
victorious, a political struggle is required, first to win over the majority of 
working people to a class struggle perspective and then for workers to lead 
all those who are oppressed by the capitalist economic system in a common 
struggle for a socialist future where society will be governed by the majority in 
the interests of the majority.

If this sounds like a worthwhile struggle, then join the Workers 
International League (WIL) so we can build a socialist future together.