Towards a Revolutionary Union Movement, Part 12: Autonomous

This is the twelfth part in a series analyzing revolutionary union strategy and tactics. Part one is linked below:

A revolutionary union movement must exemplify, in organizational form, the necessity for total proletarian independence from the employing class and their theatrical version of politics. When the rich donate to politicians, they expect to see a return on their investment in the form of legislation and policy-making favorable to their ghoulish interests. Meanwhile, business and labor-liberal unions direct hundreds of millions of dollars towards Democratic Party electoral campaigns that have completely failed to produce any substantive labor law reform like the fabled PRO Act. The ballot box can never be a route to liberation for the working class.

Electoral politics is fundamentally incompatible with working class forms of direct democracy that stretch back into the ancient past. Look to the history of the “Age of Revolutions” across the Atlantic World of the 18th and 19th Centuries; every time, the bourgeois so-called revolutionaries and the middle classes—embodying legalistic, representative types of democracy—betrayed the growing proletariat and smothered their expressions of radically direct democracy in their cradles. The most infamous examples come from the French Revolution, the June Days of the Revolutions of 1848, and the Bloody Week that crushed the Paris Commune of 1871. This process never stopped, the ruling class just improved their ability to co-opt and defang proletarian resistance—channeling it through their electoral parties and governmental mechanisms. On the other end come inadequate and difficult to enforce reforms that can be undone with every election cycle.

This criticism applies to all political parties, not just the Democrats. The Republican Party and other right wing parties are against the existence of unions entirely. Sean O’Brien made an absolute clown of himself addressing the Republican National Convention and pissed off much of the rank-and-file of his own union. But a revolutionary union movement must also assert its independence from any Labor or Socialist Parties. There is growing debate within the labor movement about how possible and useful building a Labor Party in the US would be. Unfortunately, the examples of Labor parties internationally should give us pause. These parties are usually dominated by middle class elements like doctors, lawyers, and other professionals with progressive politics but who are disconnected from working class people.

Socialist parties have similar pitfalls. An independent Labor of Socialist Party in the US might be a positive development overall, but it would be a waste of resources and energy for any revolutionary union to participate in its formation or maintenance. Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) began as a genuinely revolutionary project that, through its participation in parliamentary politics, morphed it into a moderate party. During the German Revolution of 1918, the SPD undermined the workers’ councils from the beginning. SPD leadership intentionally exploited the Revolutionary Shop Stewards’ unwillingness to seize the situation of dual power that had fallen into their lap. Eventually, they struck a deal with the far-right, funding and then unleashing the proto-fascist freikorps paramilitaries on the revolutionaries. Party officials viewed the far left as a greater threat than the far right. These recently discharged, semi-rogue WWI veterans came home from wreaking havoc in Eastern Europe to massacre workers and sailors. It’s a betrayal that has loomed large over world history. The record of other social democratic and socialist parties is not much better. That’s assuming the rise of a third party independent of the Democrats and Republicans is even possible in a government dominated by a two party system since 1800.

Revolutionary unions should not invest in Super PACs or endorse specific politicians or parties, all resources should go towards tangible workplace and community organizing. There is no compromise with the employing class, including the politicians. Obviously, individual workers within the revolutionary union movement can vote how they want and can participate in electorally focused groups in addition to the IWW. That principle of free association has to be respected. And we can’t ignore elections, either. Militants at the revolutionary edge of the labor movement have been planning responses to Project 2025, or a full blown coup if Trump loses. The Vermont AFL-CIO’s call for a general strike in 2020 provides important inspiration. So does the Amiens IWW’s consistent presence at rallies against fascism, for trans rights, and for feminist causes during the recent heated election cycle in France.

But a revolutionary union movement takes direct action to affect the political process, applying insurrectionary tactics like occupations, blockades, and other disruptions to business-as-usual. We have a lot to learn from rank-and-file public sector workers, especially teachers, on this front. Teacher unionists occupied multiple state capitol buildings during the 2018 Red for Ed School Strikes. Striking Portland, Oregon teachers blockaded a bridge during rush hour to pressure their local government to cave to their demands (it worked). 

Launching explicitly political strikes should be a priority of revolutionary unions once they have the strength and capacity to do so. The example of the German Revolution is useful to examine here, since its prelude featured three escalating political strikes by German workers—culminating in the birth of the workers’ councils positioned outside the official unions and political parties across many of its industrial bastions. Similar to the soviets in Russia, these served as independent bases of political power for the industrial working class. Even though the revolution failed to abolish capitalism, it overthrew the monarchy and postponed the ascendance of fascism in Germany for nearly fifteen years.

Proletarian independence does not just include our hostility towards the state, but also encompasses our relationship to the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC). According to the anthology The Revolution Will not be Funded, governments and corporations use the NPIC to pacify social movements, shift public money into private hands, launder the reputations of rich donors, and turn community organizing into so many (usually underpaid and exploitative) career tracks. Paying dues and devoting substantial energy to non-profits and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) means those resources, in part, go to enormous executive pay packages. It means time spent on a type of organization that is inherently unable to solve the problems it claims to address. 

That said, revolutionary unions can still openly discuss politics and comment on political affairs as an organization. The key is to reject all alliances with politicians, non-profits, NGOs, and political parties. Building working class power means organizing alongside folks we will have political and cultural disagreements with. Democracy entails acceptance and cooperation between people of all backgrounds who are willing to be in community with each other.

Here, a disagreement exists between those who currently call themselves revolutionary unionists, symbolized by the increasingly nasty split between the AIT-IWA and the CIT-ICL. Anarcho-syndicalists aligned with the AIT argue that revolutionary unions should be explicitly anarchist, while “anti-political” revolutionary unionists of the ICL emphasize the importance of maintaining an “anti-political” stance to avoid alienating workers with differing political belief systems. We see no reason for an irreparable break between these two positions. In its early years, the CNT formed a close bond with the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI), an organization that could articulate anarchist theory grounded in the workers movement, but left the CNT free to accept workers of other political persuasions. Revolutionary unions can effectively build their strength by allying with explicitly anarchist, communist, and socialist political organizations and unions that have similar-enough end goals—even as we remain prepared to break with them if they act to undermine our independence or the revolution.

There are also countless opportunities for productive partnerships with business and labor liberal unionists on a local, rank-and-file level. During the lead up to the 1919 Seattle General Strike, the IWW cooperated with radical AFL locals to form a Sailors’, Soldiers’, and Workingmen’s Council, “taking the Soviets of the Russian revolution as their model”. Workers’ councils in 1960s and 1970s Italy organized independent wildcat strikes that frequently eclipsed those initiated by the official unions. Today, more radical workers are involved in the labor movement than in many decades. We would be fools to turn our backs on them.

The IWW’s organizing strategy of “dual-carding” is a model worth replicating. Dual-carding describes organizing by IWW militants within established business and labor-liberal unions aimed at building rank-and-file worker power independent of union leadership. In our experience, dual-carding leads were already working at the unionized shop and are strong union supporters, but believe their workplace union is too bureaucratic or conservative. This allows these workers to take advantage of the larger treasuries of these unions without depending on leadership approval.

If our primary goal is to bring the proletariat to a situation of dual power, autonomy is key to achieving it. We must never relinquish independent proletarian power.

That’s the last of the characteristics of revolutionary unions we’ll be analyzing. Next week, we’ll present our broader strategic conclusions, including concrete next steps for aspiring revolutionary unionists.

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