I spent 10 minutes trying to come up with a witty take but there's too much going on here :agony-acid:

  • RNAi [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    China bad because independent trade unions are illegal. What's the excuse?

    • Huldra [they/them, it/its]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Historically independent unions and other such groups are extremely vulnerable/open to interference and foreign funding to distrupt the country and try to spur on color revolutions.

      • RNAi [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        4 years ago

        I get it, and I see it in my country as well. But we gotta find a better alternative cuz when the approved union sells you out to your bosses and or whoever is in government that sucks. The dude was a gig worker, and gig work fucking sucks.

        • Huldra [they/them, it/its]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Yeah its an incredibly shitty situation and I hope it gets better, I don't know enough about internal stuff like this but I really hope gig work is one of those things that gets cracked down on soon.

      • LeninWalksTheWorld [any]
        ·
        4 years ago

        even though it was terrible and they got hella CIA help. I have to say those Poles did a pretty amazing job organizing one big union and getting like all of society behind it. I read some anarchist papers coming out of Solidarność printing presses and stuff, and they were extolling just how amazing it was that the whole Polish working class was pulling together. Bakers were still making bread and handing it off to Solidarność truck drivers to deliver to the longshoremen, so that everyone could stay fed even though everyone was on strike. Of course that was all just to turn poland into the EU's fascist backwater so it loses some charm now.

        • RNAi [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          4 years ago

          I once met a dude with a socialist pfp whose parents were heavily involved in Solidarnosc and then deeply ashamed, but he also told me his grandparents were nobles. lol

          • LeninWalksTheWorld [any]
            ·
            4 years ago

            Well by a point in Polish history like a quarter of the country were nobles. They had a very democratic type of nobility, was pretty unique.

            • RNAi [he/him]
              ·
              4 years ago

              a very democratic type of nobility

              wut

              • LeninWalksTheWorld [any]
                ·
                edit-2
                4 years ago

                like all the nobles in the country got together in a big chamber and voted on stuff. The king was very very weak. Eventually just one noble could veto anything so literally nothing got done after a certain point. Poor people were kept out and serfs were still treated like shit but since the requirements to be considered a noble were so loose a lot of middle class merchant types snuck in too. Poland would later be one of the hotbeds of republican revolution during the Napoleonic wars.

                • RNAi [he/him]
                  ·
                  4 years ago

                  Interesting, totally no idea about the Napoleon part.

    • LeninWalksTheWorld [any]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      people like to whip this one out at Sankara fans as well. In a command economy (or economies with a lot of planning eg china) you need to integrate the actual workers into the plan through the state trade unions. Having uniform workplace rules and regulations is important in preventing disputes and abuse. Europe basically does this with sectoral bargaining and bribing all the union officials. The only reason to make a independent trade union in that case is to cause trouble, which I mean you can if you want but the state is going to try to stop you. Our glorious American union system only exists because America got away with just shooting the trade unionists. Some of Boris Yeltsin's core supporters were coal miners in an independent trade union.

      • Chapo_is_Red [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        4 years ago

        Another example: truckers (backed by the CIA) striking against Allende

      • CptKrkIsClmbngThMntn [any]
        ·
        4 years ago

        The only reason to make a independent trade union in that case is to cause trouble

        Uhhh... what about to bargain for a better deal? You can't pretend that having a command economy simply addresses all legitimate worker grievances.

        • SpookyVanguard64 [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Uhhh… what about to bargain for a better deal?

          Ideally yes, that would be their function. However, imperialism has made this incredibly hard to carry out in practice since any time an independent trade union has popped up in a socialist country, the CIA has swooped in pretty quickly to try and use said trade union as a weapon to cripple or destroy the socialist system. Others have already brought this up, but Poland and Chile are the two biggest examples of places where this has happened.

          If we get to a point where socialism in the dominant world system and there's no longer the threat of capitalist imperialism being able to destroy it, then I don't see a reason why independent trade unions couldn't be allowed to exist. But until we get to that point, independent trade unions are going to be used as a weapon by capitalists against socialism, just as socialists use them as a weapon against capitalism. So for now, any competent socialist government is going to suppress them, while hopefully also addressing the grievances that would cause workers to try and form independent trade unions in the first place.