Non-Yank with a question for Yankie comrades.
I've recently been going back over Lenin's writings, in particular What is to Be Done?:
We have said that there could not have been Social Democratic consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e. the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation etc
What do USAmerican Marxists think the current correct organisational strategies are, given the particular conditions of the US? What are the limits of activity within trade-unions, compared to other countries?
i think the recent federal blocking of a rail strike & subsequent everything going spectacularly wrong on the railroads is illustrative. that is to say the US doesn't really have trade-unions. all the tools available have been systematically stripped from unions starting with Taft-Hartley up through current neoliberal governments. its much worse than it appears---we often see picket lines but these are not allowed to legally perform any of the functions of a picket line, except public shame & speech. we observe in the rail affair that striking is a right revoked at the pleasure of the capitalist government. previous experiences like the air-traffic-control strike demonstrated this as well.
when im feeling hopeful i like to think that the failures of current union structures will revitalize a more militant component---especially with new waves of unionization, new blood in old ones & new unions altogether, but americans ever prove a newtonian marvel in their capacity to not meet force with force
Strikes these days aren't strikes, they're the same ineffectual protests that libs do.
That's because the militant unions were all killed or mass arrested in the early 20th century, then what examples remain have been actively sabotaged the moment they become more than two guys in a basement. The domesticated, declawed and neutered unions are all that is allowed to exist.