Will Lehman’s UAW presidential campaign: a poison pill
WSWS/SEP’s anti-Trotskyist trade union policy
In mid-November the ballots of 900,000 workers and pensioners of the United Autoworkers (UAW) will be tallied to elect a new president. This will be the first time in the UAW’s history that its members get a chance to directly elect their leader—previously voting was restricted to hand-picked delegates at the union’s carefully scripted conventions. The election is part of a settlement reached between the UAW and the US Justice Department after a five-year investigation of corruption. The deal subjects the union to six years of supervision by a court-appointed monitor empowered to vet new staff hires and candidates for office.
The Justice Department charged 11 senior bureaucrats with embezzlement, bribery and cover-ups. Two former presidents, Gary Jones and Dennis Williams, stole more than $1.5 million in union dues and also took $3.5 million in bribes from Fiat Chrysler executives in exchange for expanding the tier system (under which new hires are paid less for performing the same work); permitting the company to hire temporary workers with no rights; and lengthening the workday. The concessions at Fiat Chrysler became a pattern for UAW contracts at General Motors (GM) and Ford.
The sorry state of the UAW today is a far cry from its origins as a militant industrial union. At its 1936 convention 17 percent of the delegates were from Toledo, where Trotskyist militants had led successful strikes at Auto-Lite in 1934 and Chevrolet in 1935—the first strike that GM failed to smash. The militant Flint, Michigan sit-down strike in 1936-37, which became known as the “Gettysburg of the CIO,”[i] saw strikers beat off several attempts by police to remove them from the occupied plants. This victory, which forced GM to recognize the UAW, marked a turning point for industrial unionism in America. One of the strike’s chief organizers was a 23-year-old Trotskyist, Genora (Johnson) Dollinger, who led the Women’s Emergency Brigade in front-line battles against cops. She later recalled the workers’ situation prior to the union’s victory:
“Flint was a General Motors town—lock, stock and barrel! If you drove past one of the huge GM plants in Flint, you could see workers sitting on the front lawns along the side of the plant just waiting for a foreman to come to the door and call them in. And maybe they’d work them for an hour or maybe for a day, and that was it. But workers were so desperate that they would come and sit every day on that lawn in the hopes of being called in and possibly getting a permanent job. That’s how poor these General Motors workers really were, at least the ones in hopes of getting a job at GM.”
In 1937, a year after the Flint breakthrough, UAW organizer Roy Reuther saluted the heroic role played by Dollinger’s Brigade:
“Greetings and congratulations to the new officers and to the members of the Women’s Auxiliary and the Women’s Emergency Brigade. The automobile workers of Flint and America owe you a debt of gratitude for the part you played in the winning of The Big Strike and in building our International Union. You are truly crusaders in this new American Labor Movement, and your fighting spirit an inspiration to all workers!”
Roy’s brother Walter, a vicious anti-Communist, took advantage of the Red Scare hysteria that swept America in the late 1940s to marginalize the union’s previously influential and unruly left wing. By 1949 Reuther’s “Administration Caucus,” having effectively neutered its leftist opposition, abandoned many of the militant traditions that had established the union. The UAW, once known for its lively internal political life, was gradually subordinated to Reuther’s bureaucratic machine which conciliated the auto giants, surrendering hard-fought gains in exchange for cementing its position atop the union. Automatic cost of living adjustments were given up; wage hikes were linked to increased productivity; and shop-floor union control of working conditions was abandoned, while “no strike” and “company security” clauses were inserted into contracts that were extended to as many as five years from the previous norm of a year or two.
For 70 years the “Administration Caucus” packed union conventions with delegates prepared to rubber-stamp the policies of the ossified ruling clique and endorse whatever leadership slate it put forward. The record of how these bureaucrats enriched themselves at the expense of the rank and file by eviscerating this once powerful union stands as a searing indictment of pro-capitalist “business unionism.” The brazen Administration Caucus crooks richly deserved to be stripped of their ill-gotten assets and be thrown out of office. But revolutionaries categorically oppose any intervention of the capitalist state into the affairs of the workers’ movement. The bourgeois state is not a neutral arbiter but rather an instrument of the ruling-class exploiters whose interests are antithetical to those of working people. While Marxists are implacably opposed to the corrupt, pro-imperialist union bureaucracy because it operates as an agency of the bourgeoisie within the workers’ movement, as a matter of principle, we reject any intervention by the bosses’ state into the affairs of the unions. It is the responsibility of the working class to clean its own house.
This policy was once widely adhered to within the American trade-union movement. When state authorities sought to use corruption in the International Longshoreman’s Association on the East Coast as a pretext for gutting the union hiring hall, the ranks resisted:
“The fight against racketeering in the port of New York even gave rise, in September 1955, to a general strike of longshoreman on the Atlantic coast to protest the intrusion of the New York State Commission of Inquiry. Here public morality found itself in open contradiction with the imperatives of the class struggle. The commission’s objective was to deprive the union of control of hiring, which was the most precious conquest. The refusal to give work permits to 600 longshoremen because of their criminal records, the elimination of one of the most popular union leaders, MacLoughlin, and the blunders about the income and private lives of longshoremen, lit the fuse. The port workers made it a point of honor to remain loyal to their leaders.”
—Daniel Guérin, 100 Years of Labor in the USA, London, 1979
Why we can’t support Will Lehman for UAW president
We are living in a period when the disparity between the forces of the organized left and the willingness of tens of millions of workers around the world to engage in militant struggle, including within the advanced capitalist countries, has never been more acute. In the American imperialist citadel, the traditional mechanisms of social control have largely broken down as has the capacity of the ruling class to sort out its internal differences. The immense, palpable anxiety gripping the West European working class was recently noted by the New York Times (21 October) which observed that, “strikes and protests over the rising cost of living proliferate, ushering in a period of social and labor unrest not seen since at least the 1970s.”
In America we have witnessed a series of local outbreaks of spontaneous struggle and signs of a revival of militance within sectors of the working class, but as yet there have been few expressions within the trade-union movement. The current elections underway in the UAW where Will Lehman, a 34-year-old Mack Trucks worker from Pennsylvania, is running for the presidency as an open supporter of the ostensibly Trotskyist Socialist Equality Party (SEP—publisher of the widely-read World Socialist Web Site [WSWS]) is among the highest-profile leftist initiatives undertaken within the American union movement for decades. Lehman’s campaign has sought to tap into the seething anger among US autoworkers at decades of continuous decline in wages, job security and working conditions.
In a statement after being nominated, Lehman declared:
“My campaign is about building a rank-and-file movement of workers in the UAW to fight for what we need, not what the corporations and UAW bureaucrats say is possible. We need massive wage increases to make up for decades of concessions; cost-of-living adjustments to meet soaring inflation; full pensions and high-quality health care for workers and retirees; the restoration of the eight-hour day and an end to grinding schedules and forced overtime; and so much more.
“I direct this appeal to all sections of the working class. The UAW bureaucrats view young workers making poverty level wages the same way the old AFL viewed industrial workers: as ‘garbage on labor’s doorstep.’ But they have the same contempt for older workers who have seen their pay stagnate for decades, and for retirees who they won’t even allow to run in the election.
“My campaign is not aimed at replacing one bureaucrat with another. We can’t fight for what we need without organizing ourselves.
“This means rank-and-file committees in every workplace to place power where it belongs, with workers on the shop floor. It means establishing real unity among all workers in the UAW by breaking out of the isolation imposed by Solidarity House.”
—wsws.org, 29 July 2022
There is no question that autoworkers need to oust the pro-capitalist bureaucracy of Solidarity House in favor of a new leadership with militant politics. Rank-and-file committees, led by people prepared to consistently pursue vigorous, class-struggle tactics on the shop floor, could play a valuable role in raising the political consciousness of the ranks and, over time, create a mass base for revolutionary ideas. Factory committees can play a critical role in conducting struggles in particular enterprises—but to counterpose them to the principle of industrial unionism (in auto or any other sector) given the present situation of the American working class, is seriously mistaken.
Most of Lehman’s criticisms of the UAW tops are essentially correct and his proposals regarding pay, hours and working conditions make sense. His campaign could easily be mistaken for an attempt by a committed socialist to turn the UAW once again into an agency of struggle against the bosses. But, as a supporter of the politics of the SEP/WSWS, he is an advocate of dismantling the UAW—not reorienting it in a socialist direction. If he was indeed campaigning to clean up the UAW and renew it as a defensive weapon against the auto magnates, we would certainly advise workers to vote for him, while reserving the right to point out any significant deficiencies or omissions in his program. But we cannot support Lehman’s candidacy because, as a WSWS supporter, he is opposed to the very existence of the UAW (along with other unions).
In 2018, as the extent of corruption in the UAW came to light, the WSWS observed:
“Such, in fact, is the nature of the trade unions today. They are not workers’ organizations, but labor contractors in the service of the companies and the state. The corruption scandal gripping the UAW is an expression of this basic reality. It is not a question, therefore, of simply removing the offending individuals in an attempt to cure an otherwise healthy organization. The actions of these individuals are only the manifestation of the reactionary nature of the organization itself.
“Autoworkers need to build new organizations, rank-and-file factory committees democratically controlled by the workers.”
—wsws.org, 7 February 2018 (emphasis added)
This policy dates from the early 1990s, when SEP supremo David North declared that trade unions had degenerated into purely capitalist institutions inimically opposed to the interests of the working class. This was first codified in “The Globalization of Capitalist Production and the International Tasks of the Working Class,” a 1993 statement by the Workers League (the SEP’s forerunner) which rejected any prospect of ever breaking the grip of the bureaucracy strangling the American union movement:
“The Workers League does not ignore the unions or the workers in them. We do not hold the workers responsible for the reactionary character of the organizations within which they are trapped. Wherever it is possible, the party intervenes in these unions (as it would even in fascist-controlled unions) with the aim of mobilizing the workers on the basis of a revolutionary program. But the essential premise for revolutionary activity inside these organizations is theoretical clarity on the character of the AFL-CIO (and its associated unions) and brutal honesty in explaining the unpleasant facts to the workers.
“The Workers League rejects entirely the idea that the AFL-CIO, as the organizational expression of the interests of the labor bureaucracy, can be ‘captured’ and turned into an instrument of revolutionary struggle….”
—cited in “Globalization and the trade unions”, wsws.org
The SEP/WSWS regards the trade-union movement as simply an agency of the capitalist class:
“The unification of the AFL-CIO in 1955 was based on a repudiation of workers’ militancy, vicious anticommunism and the subordination of the working class [to] the Democratic Party. This created the conditions for the transformation of the union apparatus in the late 1970s and 1980s into direct instruments of corporate management.”
—wsws.org, 31 July 2022
According to the SEP, this qualitative transformation was not restricted to the US but rather occurred “all over the world in the same period”:
“But the [US Teamsters] union’s shift, beginning in the 1970s, towards open collaboration with management was not due simply to the endemic corruption and gangsterism of the bureaucracy, which had existed for decades. Indeed, the conversion of the unions into an arm of management has been a universal experience in the unions all over the world over the same period.”
—wsws.org, 28 November 2019
The SEP’s claim that unions now operate as “an arm of management” in every country (except, apparently, Sri Lanka, where several SEP co-thinkers have leading positions in the Central Bank Employees Union)[ii] represents an overt repudiation of a key tenet of revolutionary socialism.[iii]
IWA-RFC: not even a Potemkin village
The SEP’s 2022 Congress passed a resolution (unanimously of course) proclaiming the launch of a new “democratic organ of international working-class struggle,” ludicrously promoted as a replacement for the entire global network of trade unions:
“1. The Socialist Equality Party (US) resolves to actively and systematically build the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), the democratic organ of international working-class struggle in the 21st century.
“2. The IWA-RFC was founded at the initiative of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) on May Day 2021. In its founding statement, the ICFI resolved that the IWA-RFC would fight ‘to develop a global counter offensive of the working class’…. The founding document outlined the IWA-RFC’s historic task: to unite all the heterogeneous layers and sections of the international working class, coordinate its struggles on a world scale, and direct the tremendous social power of the modern world proletariat against the corporations and the capitalist system.”
—wsws.org, 17 August 2022
The IWA-RFC supposedly already exists in the US as an interconnected string of workplace committees:
“6. The Socialist Equality Party (US) has actively intervened in these [workers] struggles to encourage the democratic self-organization of the working class against the corporate-union alliance. Through its interventions, the party has facilitated the establishment of a network of rank-and-file committees linking workers together both within and between workplaces and industries. The committees that have been established among teachers, health care workers, autoworkers, oil and gas workers, rail workers, Amazon workers, bus drivers and other sections of the working class have become a critical vehicle for organizing and politically educating the American working class as it enters into struggle on a mass scale.”
Thus far the SEP has not, to our knowledge, identified any practical IWA-RFC initiatives undertaken anywhere, much less anything remotely resembling actual “organizing.” There is no information about where the ethereal IWA-RFC is headquartered, or how it is staffed and structured, or who is leading it. The only thing the phantom IWA-RFC appears to have is a name.
Although the WSWS has been actively monitoring the rising tide of class conflict and reporting on many strikes across the US, there is no indication to date of SEP supporters leading any actual struggles, even very small-scale ones. Nor is there evidence that they have played much of a role in any of the major strikes they have reported on. Outside of the Lehman campaign, the SEP/WSWS interventions seem to have chiefly involved literary coverage of developments, so it is hardly surprising that the IWA-RFC is essentially a hypothetical construct. It does not even qualify, at this point, as a “Potemkin Village,” which typically involves vastly exaggerating the dimensions of an existing structure—a better analogy for the IWA-RFC would be “emperor’s clothes,” an entirely imaginary creation that those within the ambit of the sovereign must pretend are real.
This has not prevented the SEP, in its Congress resolution, from bombastically declaring the IWA-RFC to be an existing, flesh and blood, “rank-and-file alliance” that is serving as a “critical vehicle” for “organizing and politically educating the American working class.” It seems that North and his coterie regard both “rank-and-file” SEP members and WSWS readers as little better than credulous idiots, as it is quite obvious from their own reports that there are no actual, operating “rank-and-file” committees anywhere. The IWA-RFC is a fantasy that chiefly functions as a means of promoting illusions about the SEP’s mass influence.
If any actual rank-and-file committees were to somehow miraculously materialize and affiliate with the IWA-RFC they would presumably be expected to accept directions from SEP higher-ups, rather than set their own priorities. Comrade North has yet to reveal how he expects rank-and-file committees in various units of a particular company, or those spread across different companies in a single country as well as internationally, to coordinate their activities. Would the decisions taken by the myriad IWA-RFC units all be unanimous (like all those reported from the SEP’s 2022 convention)? These sorts of questions would need to be answered, if the IWA-RFC is going to amount to much more than its various predecessors. One of these, the WSWS Autoworkers Newsletter, which seems to have been discreetly mothballed in 2020, once claimed to be “assisting autoworkers in the building of a network of interconnected rank-and-file committees, connected with educators, Amazon workers, and workers in other key sections of industry.”
Perhaps one day a few years back Will Lehman set out on his political journey by ticking the box in the newsletter that read: “I want to be contacted by the SEP or the WSWS, and receive email updates from the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter.” If he did, it was a rare success story for the Northites as he is today their highest profile working-class public figure.
‘The WSWS…is not anti-union’
While the (unstated) objective of the Lehman campaign is to build support for replacing the existing structures of the UAW with the notional IWA-RFC, the SEP leadership has been a bit reticent about spelling this out, presumably because they know how ridiculous it would sound to any sensible worker. Lehman’s campaign has instead focused on the venality of the Administration Caucus and the need for autoworkers to have a leadership that is prepared to fight. Lehman’s frequent references to the potential for rank-and-file committees in each auto plant to replace the existing union leadership have been kept pretty algebraic and have not, to our knowledge, included any mention of the phantom IWA-RFC.
In attempting to intersect workers engaged in struggle against their employers the SEP has undoubtedly discovered that militants are generally not receptive to its blanket hostility to trade unions. In order to get a hearing, the WSWS has sometimes attempted to obscure its actual position. For example, in August the SEP replied as follows to criticism of “their clear anti-union stance” by a reader identified as “Union Nurse”:
“Finally, the position of the WSWS on the contract fight of Michigan Medicine nurses—as well as every struggle by unionized workers—is not ‘anti-union.’ We are not against unions. We are opposed to the pro-corporate organizations, unions in name only, which the union bureaucracies control.
“These official labor organizations have been transformed into an apparatus of unaccountable bureaucrats who serve as industrial police for the corporate elite to suppress the struggles of workers. In return, they receive a share of the profits from the exploitation of the workers.”
—wsws.org, 31 July 2022
It seems very unlikely that “Union Nurse” was impressed by this kind of doubletalk. The WSWS is not “against unions” in the abstract but just happens to consider all existing unions, including the one representing the Michigan Medicine nurses, to be “pro-corporate” entities whose only function is to serve as the “industrial police of the corporate elite.” The WSWS editors sagely advised Union Nurse to set up a “rank-and-file committee” in order to circumvent the resistance of the union bureaucrats:
“It is imperative that nurses take matters into their own hands, call for a strike vote, draw up a list of demands and set a deadline for a walkout if these demands are not met….
“As we have insisted throughout the Michigan Medicine contract struggle, the way forward requires the formation of a nurses’ rank-and-file committee that is democratically elected and connected with the growing movement of workers in every industry to go on the offensive and reverse the concessionary trend of the past four decades.
“Such committees are being established among health care workers, auto workers, educators, retail and logistics workers in Michigan, across the country and internationally.
“The WSWS Health Care Workers Newsletter will do all in our power to assist Michigan Medicine nurses in forming a rank-and-file committee. Michigan Medicine nurses and health care workers can contact us here.”
—Ibid.
There is of course no reason to believe that “such committees are being established” in Michigan (or anywhere else), but the WSWS claim to have exerted some real influence on the course of the struggle from outside the union seems more credible:
“However, when it became clear that the nurses would not accept the rotten deal being prepared behind closed doors in negotiations with management—with Michigan Medicine refusing even to negotiate patient/staff ratios—the union was forced to hold a strike vote at the end of August.
“The fact that the union had to hold a work stoppage vote was in large measure due to the campaign of the World Socialist Web Site and the WSWS Health Care Workers Newsletter, which published dozens of articles and statements that were distributed to nurses and circulated on social media exposing the refusal of the MNA-UMPNC [Michigan Nurses Association-University of Michigan Professional Nurse Council] to organize a strike.”
—wsws.org, 12 October 2022
Sensible WSWS readers can only conclude that, contrary to the strictures of the SEP tops, the existing trade unions, (or at least the nurses’ union in Michigan), are not, unlike every other major institution in American society, owned and controlled by the capitalist rulers. This is why the pressure of the ranks compelled the union leaders to hold a strike vote and threaten to walk out.
It seems likely that an organized nucleus of militants within the union agitating to strike might well have mobilized sufficient support to overcome the resistance of the union bureaucrats, whose essential function, as Daniel DeLeon observed over a century ago, is to act as the “labor lieutenants of capital.” Such an initiative, by setting an example for workers in other sectors, would be infinitely more likely to lay the basis for forging a new, combative leadership for American workers than empty talk about non-existent rank-and-file committees.
The SEP leadership is well aware that the existing trade unions cannot simply be ignored—many workers consider that, while flawed, their unions still offer some protection. Will Lehman’s campaign for UAW president is an implicit acknowledgement that despite a precipitous decline, the union movement retains the residual loyalty of millions of workers. Lehman’s campaign has generally avoided characterizing the UAW as simply an agency of the capitalists and instead focused on the failure of the corrupt bureaucracy to defend its members from the ever more aggressive demands of the auto companies.
In an online debate on 22 September featuring Lehman and four other candidates, a worker submitted a question for Shawn Fain, a long-time bureaucrat, about how his promise of “No concessions, no tiers!” could be achieved. Fain replied that it is always difficult to wring concessions from the bosses but recalled that his grandfather participated in a 110-day strike against Chrysler in 1950 that eventually forced the company to grant pensions to retirees. (47:30)
Instead of picking up on this to call for a return to the militant tactics that had built the UAW and won victories in the past, Lehman dismissed the idea that the union could turn things around, saying only, “my appeal is not to some kind of bureaucratic method, my appeal is to the international working class being united in rank-and-file committees and coordinating actions internationally.” This wooden counterposition of abstract internationalism and hypothetical committees ignored the UAW’s history of winning major gains through aggressive strike action (which out-bureaucrats like Fain would only initiate in response to enormous pressure from below). Lehman followed up with the observation that corporations operate globally, but “the UAW cannot unify workers internationally.” UAW members following the debate could only conclude that he has no program for leading the union, apart from a mantra about rank-and-file committees as a universal panacea.
This impression is confirmed later in the discussion (1:52:10) when Lehman is asked: “You’re running for president of the UAW as an independent without a slate….If you are elected UAW president, how will you work with that bureaucracy and with the international executive board? How will you be able to work with the many locals in what you say is ‘a union in name only’?” Lehman responded: “I don’t intend to work with any of them. My pivot the entire time has been to workers on the factory floor forming rank-and-file committees and making decisions for ourselves.” A candidate for union president who refuses to consider cooperating with any other union officials on anything can hardly expect to be taken seriously. Lehman must have realized that he would sound even more ridiculous (and be inviting a lot of questions for which there are no good answers) had he attempted to pitch David North’s IWA-RFC hobby horse as an actual alternative to the UAW’s existing local union structure.
WSWS union policy—a poison pill
In 2021, the SEP/WSWS opposed attempts by Amazon’s warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU):
“Many Bessemer workers may hope that bringing in the RWDSU will strengthen them against this corporate giant. But they should ask themselves: If this was an organization that genuinely represented and fought for workers, why would it be getting the support of President Biden—a longtime shill of big business—and other Democratic politicians, who, no less than the Republicans, protect the interests of big business?”
—wsws.org, 15 March 2021
The SEP’s opposition to attempts by Amazon workers to get organized in response to the brutal exploitation of their bosses is scandalous. The fact that the Democratic politicians posture as “friends of labor” to get votes does not mean that wages, job security and working conditions cannot be bettered by collective action. Historically it is simply a fact that those areas of the US with higher rates of union organization have also generally had higher living standards. The reason that corporate bosses in America invest heavily in resisting unionization is because an organized workforce is capable of wresting concessions from employers and cutting into profits.
In 2022, when Amazon workers in Staten Island, New York enthusiastically voted to form their own independent union, the SEP warned them about stepping into a “trap,” absurdly intoning that “Amazon workers must organize themselves”:
“A real struggle by the working class requires a fight against these outlived organizations. Workers at JFK8 [an Amazon warehouse] did not vote for the ALU [Amazon Labor Union] in order to give Smalls [Chris Smalls, the leader of the unionization drive] a platform to rub elbows with well-heeled officials and establish a new generation of union bureaucrats. To safeguard their interests, Amazon workers must organize themselves to defeat this attempt to prepare a new trap for them and defend their own independent initiative.
“A successful struggle requires that Amazon workers appeal not to the AFL-CIO but to their brothers and sisters in the international working class, who are also fighting against low wages and brutal working conditions. This requires the formation of an independent rank-and-file committee of Amazon workers at Staten Island, controlled by the workers themselves and not by aspiring bureaucrats.”
—wsws.org, 27 April 2022
The Amazon workers paid no attention to the SEP’s advice and voted to unionize. The WSWS/SEP’s denunciation of this initiative shows that North & Co. are hostile to unionization in principle, for reasons which, while best known to themselves, doubtless involve an element of prestige politics. Having decreed that all unions in every country around the world (with the apparent exception of Sri Lanka) are reactionary tools of the bosses, the Northites can hardly make an exception for the ALU, because that would imply that their earlier world-historic pronouncements were mistaken.
We do not doubt that Will Lehman is a serious militant whose genuine outrage at the collusion between the UAW brass and the auto bosses led him to embrace the dead-end of the SEP’s imaginary “rank-and-file” networks, rather than attempting to forge a new leadership within the UAW based on militant, class-struggle politics. The Northites complain bitterly that Lehman’s campaign has been ignored by virtually the entire left, which unanimously applauded the breakthrough of the Amazon Labor Union on Staten Island:
“Lehman’s campaign will face fierce opposition from all those within the apparatus who stand to lose their jobs and salaries when the workers take back power. For this reason, not a single member of the Democratic Socialists of America nominated Lehman at the convention and not a single pseudo-left publication has written about his campaign. These individuals and tendencies represent the same affluent upper-middle class to which the union executives themselves belong.
“A rebellion is brewing in the working class on a global scale, exacerbated by the pandemic and US imperialist war provocations against Russia and China. The coming rebellion will find political expression through the building of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-file Committees (IWA-RFC), an international network of worker-controlled, democratic organizations aimed at breaking the isolation imposed by the national trade unions. Through the IWA-RFC, the working class can and will launch a global fight against the global corporations and the governments that serve their interests, and trigger an international counteroffensive against decades of social counterrevolution.”
—wsws.org, 11 August 2022
We are happy to break the silence surrounding Lehman’s initiative—it has certainly created enough ripples in the UAW to warrant attention. But his campaign does not deserve any political support from socialists: despite Will Lehman’s subjective intentions and the justified anger of the autoworkers who are prepared to vote for him, the WSWS/SEP position on the trade unions is fundamentally reactionary, as their recent opposition to attempts by Amazon workers to organize demonstrates.
The WSWS article cited above complaining about Lehman’s candidacy being ignored projects the IWA-RFC as the inevitable “political expression” of the rising tide of global class struggle. Yet Lehman’s campaign appears to have carefully avoided any mention of the imaginary literary construct featured so prominently by the WSWS. Presumably this was to avoid losing support from class-conscious militants capable of recognizing that dumping their unions in favor of the ethereal IWA-RFC amounts to a “poison pill” for the workers’ movement. Trotskyists in the trade unions must defend and extend the gains won by previous generations of militants, while struggling to create alternative leadership formations committed to breaking the grip of the pro-capitalist bureaucrats and transforming the mass organizations of the working class into instruments of revolutionary class struggle. Nothing fundamental has changed in this regard since 1940 when Leon Trotsky wrote:
“The matter at issue [trade union policy] is essentially the struggle for influence over the working class. Every organization, every party, every faction which permits itself an ultimatistic position in relation to the trade union, i.e., in essence turns its back upon the working class, merely because of displeasure with its organizations, every such organization is destined to perish. And it must be said it deserves to perish.”
Endnotes
[i] Art Preis, Labor’s Giant Step
[ii] A recently published critique of the SEP/WSWS by a disgruntled former supporter noted that:
“While the ICFI has renounced the struggle to build or attain leadership in unions in every other country, members of the Sri Lankan SEP have for decades captured leading positions within the Sri Lankan Central Bank Employees Union (CBEU).”
—https://icfi1953.blogspot.com/p/internationalism-and-icfi-gatekeeping.html?m=1
The author aptly cites Trotsky’s comment in his 1930 “Open Letter to the Italian Left Communists,” that:
“…you cannot possibly hold the view that the revolutionary principles which are good for the whole world are no good for [a particular country], or vice versa.”
A good point for which there can be no politically coherent response.
[iii] We have previously pointed out the absurdity of the Northites’ denunciations of the trade unions, as well as their distance from Leon Trotsky’s insistence on the importance of revolutionaries struggling to win political influence within the mass organizations of the working class. See:
—“‘Globalization’ and the Unions”, bolsheviktendency.org
—“The Class Nature of the Unions – SEP: Defeatist and Confusionist”, bolsheviktendency.org
