The idea that workers in wealthy countries like the United States are part of a “labor aristocracy” bought off with the fruits of imperialism is nonsense. The best way to build a movement against US imperialism is to build the labor movement domestically.
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These are both excellent points. I'm a bit I'll at the moment and my vocabulary is failing me, but my basic idea is that the are some additional difficult realities we have to contend with.
For the first point, I agree that it's necessary to build ground-up unions in order to have a labor base of power. I would also say that there are many ways for those to fail as well and tons of organizer model unions are... in precarious situations. I'm talking about unions where only 1/100 or 1/1000 workers are doing anything for the union... in a union using the organizer model. The workers at these places still don't see the relevance of the union, even though there are socialists in leadership calling each other comrades and patting each other on the back. Basically... shit is even worse than most unions being top-down and run by class traitors.
For the second point, I'd say that I have at times had a similar belief. That the nascent class consciousness of "workers vs. the bosses" would be enough to build from. In my experience, it is not. You build from a radical core that can command respect - or just dictate from a position of power. That's the only lever that's really available in America, and it's why capitalists pull it to great effect with class traitors. This is because rank and file engagement is truly dismal. There is no fighting spirit, many folks don't even know they're in a union or what they'd vote for in one or do in one. So many people say, "this is so important, but I can't afford the dues". People making $90k say that.
The battle is much harder and deeper than that, and Lenin inherited a situation that was already much more radical and class conscious. He's not wrong, he just had different conditions. And he wonin the periphery, whereas movements in the imperial core failed, were murdered, were taken over be fascists, we're mollified with socdemery.
This isn't doomerposting. We just need to know where our fight is and what the prospects are. It is much more valuable for the socialist project to join a socialist org and recruit 2 people than to form a union. Not that the union formation can't be important and beautiful, but its capacity to build socialism is a delusion that will suck up your time and has dubious prospects without being much more disciplined, not unlike electoralism.
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