Teamsters Mobilize members and former activists in Revolutionary Marxist Students Audrey Johnson and Lenni Myers assess the current UPS tentative agreement and outline a Marxist strategy for a Vote No campaign.
Introduction
We stand at a critical moment in the US labor movement. Over the past few years we have begun to see a revival of the labor movement, with militancy on the rise and an exciting series of new unionization efforts, from Starbucks to Amazon. All of this has come as we head into a major economic downturn and while the US ruling class is working hard to revive its domestic industrial base as competition with China heats up. We now stand at a potential inflection point in the labor movement, partially as a result of the ongoing contract struggle at UPS. With 340,000 workers covered, this is the largest private sector contract in the United States. Not to mention, this contract is between one of the US’ largest unions and perhaps the most important logistics corporation in the country, which moves 6% of US GDP.
All classes in society are defining their position in relationship to this important struggle. Throughout the negotiations, hedge fund managers, corporate investors, and other major stockholders in UPS were frantically calling the Teamsters’ leadership and UPS officials, urging them to make a deal and avert a strike. Numerous “progressive” bourgeois politicians made their rounds to the UPS hubs, donning their best “pro-worker” disguises and hoping that no one remembers how they stabbed the rail workers in the back last year. The Biden administration coordinated closely with the current International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) leadership to avert a potential strike with the 2024 elections looming, and knowing that their plans for reviving the domestic industrial base will require corrupt union leaders to keep the proletariat in check.
Meanwhile, workers at UPS were eager to see some significant gains, after having a sell-out contract foisted on them in 2018 because of a technicality. These workers have been fighting for a good contract, doing practice pickets, and rallying behind key demands like $25/hour for part-timers, elimination of the two-tier system for drivers, the installation of ACs in delivery vehicles, and more. However, they generally were not aware of or organized against the impending sell-out by the O’Brien-Zuckerman clique of the IBT leadership. Only the most active and militant elements amongst the UPS workers, weak and scattered though we are, were preparing for this situation. A series of forces outside of UPS had likewise been warning of this danger and trying to rally workers against it. In contrast, petty-bourgeois activists, including many who call themselves Marxists, have rallied behind pro-union slogans, but fail to see the divided nature of the labor movement, the way in which the agents of the bourgeoisie work within it, and how these misleaders of labor work to contain the working-class struggle within limits acceptable to the bourgeoisie.
Given the spotlight on this labor struggle, the Sean O’Brien and Fred Zuckerman leadership clique had to put on a show during negotiations to lull workers and supporters of the labor movement into a false sense of security. This meant using IBT media platforms to hype their supposed willingness to strike, and play up their supposedly militant organizing tactics. The negotiating team walked away from the negotiating table and did a rockstar-esque choreographed practice picket tour around the country, all while UPS executives had a series of meetings with shareholders. This was portrayed by O’Brien and co. as bringing the company to their knees. And yet, after just two weeks of this charade, the UPS and Teamster negotiating committees returned to the table and hashed out an entire tentative agreement (TA) within a few hours.
Following the release of the supposedly “historic” TA, many union members took to social media to express their confusion and discontent with the prospective contract. While Sean O’Brien and his allies have highlighted the elimination of 22.4s as a major victory against tier systems, it was basically a guaranteed win from the beginning, it did not in fact totally eliminate the two-tiered system for drivers, another tier system was added for part-time warehouse workers, and further divisions and stratifications were created among basically all classifications of UPS workers. Behind all the fanfare around this and a few other supposed “highlights” of the TA, other key demands have either been outright ignored, abandoned, or watered down significantly. The facade of militancy notwithstanding, there was likely always a plan to cut a quick deal with UPS, one which secured the interests of the capitalist class in this struggle. These capitalists have faith in Sean O’Brien as their kind of labor leader. Through the course of Rail, ABF, Yellow, and now UPS contract negotiations, O’Brien has proven that he can put on a good militant show, all the while being a true friend of the political and financial interests he pretends to fight.
Now that the TA has been agreed on the IBT negotiating committee and UPS, a series of forces have taken different stands. UPS CEO Carol Tomé has celebrated this contract as a supposed “win-win-win.” The Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) caucus and Labor Notes have been quick to endorse the TA, cheering it as a historic victory. So-called socialist organizations like the Party of Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) have also parroted O’Brien’s talking points and slandered critics of the TA. The Biden administration has commended both UPS and the IBT leadership for averting a strike. Bourgeois media outlets, echoing IBT leadership and UPS talking points, have cheered on this contract as a win for workers and business and hailed O’Brien’s leadership.1 Supposedly neutral independent media sources have come out to say we cannot “discount the wins”, while refusing to admit that their pseudo-neutrality, in denying the objective reality that TA is a sellout, plays into the hands of only one class: the capitalists. Many on the IBT payroll are either joining up in the aggressive Vote Yes campaign or remaining silent out of fear of stepping out of line and losing their jobs. Meanwhile the budding Vote No movement is facing attacks from all sides, including pseudo-Socialist groups, bourgeois media outlets, IBT leadership and Business Agents, and more.
In critical moments such as these, supposedly militant “labor leaders” reveal that their true interests lie with the ruling class. This presents us with a huge opportunity to show the proletariat that the O’Brien-Zuckerman clique are truly agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement. If done well, Marxists can wrest leadership of a section of the workers movement from the labor lieutenants of the capitalist class and shatter their facade of militancy. But, at this key inflection point the Marxist forces in the US are not currently prepared for this key task. Most “Marxists” are either deeply confused about what this TA represents, are hiding in the shadows and unwilling to take a stand, or are waging an oversimplified and reductionist attack against the union as a whole that can only be heard in the echo-chamber of their small groups.
Marxists must grapple with the fact that it is impossible to advance even an inch in arousing the proletariat (and by extension the broader non-proletarian masses) to wage revolutionary struggle if we obscure the objective situation and fail to differentiate between true militants, unreliable but necessary temporary allies, and reactionary labor leaders actively serving the interests of the capitalists. It will not matter how much we try to bring revolutionary ideas to the working class because we will, from the outset, have an incorrect assessment of class forces, and be unable to distinguish friend from enemy. If we actually want to engage in the UPS struggle in a way that helps us develop the proletarian revolutionary movement in this country, then we need to first and foremost develop a clear understanding of the different and contradictory class forces at play in this struggle, including within the Teamsters’ leadership and the rank-and-file—neither of which are undivided entities—as well as within the bourgeoisie. If we fail to do this, we will not only tail behind the masses, but actually walk in the opposite direction, following blindly the bad directions of the misleaders of labor as the advanced UPS workers try desperately to stop the sell-out contract that IBT leadership has agreed to.
In the coming years, we could see the revival of militant working-class struggle, increasingly led by Marxist forces. Yet, this outcome is far from guaranteed. The labor lieutenants of the capitalist class could drag the proletariat down another decade of dead ends and false starts by promoting policies aimed at “harmonizing class interests.” The direction of development of the labor movement will be determined by many factors out of our control. However, there are significant and favorable openings right now for Marxists to play a decisive role in the class struggle, develop our forces, fight for the heart and soul of these unions, and begin to wrest leadership of the labor movement away from the reactionary union leaders.
1. The Sellout TA
Shortly before the new TA was signed, Sean O’Brien appeared on MSNBC on a Sunday morning. He read robotically from a teleprompter, describing the contract struggle as the equivalent of “two guys fighting on the street corner.” This statement, delivered with flat affect and little emotion, was likely supposed to bolster his credentials as a relatable and militant labor leader. In reality, behind this poorly performed charade, we can see that what is being framed as a “street fight” is more akin to a WWE wrestling performance, with the basic outcome determined well in advance.
A key part of O’Brien and his supporters’ narrative is that the company folded to him because the negotiating committee demanded a “Last, Best, and Final Offer” (LBFO) and walked away from the table when UPS failed to deliver. But the plane tickets and hotel reservations from the negotiating committee tell a different story. They reveal that the committee always planned to come back to the table, and had a basic timeline in place when they walked away, all coordinated in advance with UPS. And so, the narrative of the greedy company folding before the threat of a militant strike is little more than a masquerade, meant to bolster O’Brien’s credibility and image as a tough and uncompromising labor leader. On top of this, it also aims to convince the membership that their practice pickets and strike preparations were “all worth it.” In reality, these practice pickets were meant to invest the membership in the struggle, while keeping everything well within acceptable limits.
A thorough examination of the details of the TA reveals that this is a bad contract.2 To begin, the gains that do exist and that are being portrayed as “big wins” have been vastly oversold and contain numerous loopholes. For example, O’Brien has cheered the elimination of forced overtime as a major victory, but this is far from the truth. First, forced overtime is only partially restricted for drivers, and only for those drivers who “opt-in” to Article 37 of the contract. But UPS can still force those drivers to consistently work OT for at least two of their scheduled days per week with total impunity: the TA only restricts UPS from “continually” compelling drivers to work OT three or more days a week, and the worst that happens if UPS violates that provision is that they have to pay a penalty. All other workers on the other hand can still be forced to work OT at any moment.
As was alluded to above, another example is the elimination of the 22.4 classification for drivers. This hated classification was actually proposed by the Hoffa regime (not UPS) in the 2018 contract negotiations. And it was clear heading into this contract that UPS was happy to eliminate this classification as it would cost them only roughly $140 million to do so, according to a Deutsche Bank analysis.3 The language in the TA also makes it clear that there will still be elements of a tier-system among the drivers in terms of scheduling: all former-22.4s will still have to work Tuesday-Saturday schedule, and any regular drivers hired after August 1st, 2019 can also be forced to work that schedule by UPS. So, while it is good that the wage tier no longer exists in this TA, this was not a “historic win” resulting from the supposed militancy of O’Brien and Zuckerman’s negotiating strategy. In fact, even before the IBT negotiating committee did their staged walk-out, UPS had already agreed to eliminate the 22.4s.4
Another supposed victory in this TA is the inclusion of ACs in new vehicles. The IBT leadership and the TDU have praised this portion of the TA to the sky. After the negotiating committee reached an agreement with UPS on “all non-economic issues” in June, TDU claimed that one-third of all package cars would get an AC.5 In reality, the total number of package cars with AC they actually commit to providing during the 5-year life of the contract is closer to one-fifth of the total (28,000 out of 125,000), and they only have to install them in vehicles purchased after January 1, 2024. This means that the vast majority of drivers of the approximately 125,000 vehicles already on the road will never get air conditioning. The company has promised that they will install two fans in all existing vehicles, but they made the same promise in the past contract and never delivered.
On the issue of wages for part-timers, a central demand of the workers, similar pittances are being hailed as historic victories. Throughout this struggle O’Brien and the IBT leadership talked about how UPS had these workers living in “part-time poverty.” These statements promoted the illusion that the leadership was going to fight for these part-timers, but this was just another act. Once it became clear that O’Brien and co. weren’t going to fight for a $25/hour base wage, TDU got in line, scrubbed the demand of $25/hour from their website, and lowered the bar to “north of $20/hour.” And now, they and others are cheering a base rate of $21/hour as a “huge victory for part-timers,” despite the fact that the base wage would be nearly $40 had it kept up with inflation since 1981, and $25 had it done so since the wage cut of 1982. In some parts of the country where warehouses don’t have company market rate adjustments (MRAs),6 the $21/hour represents a significant raise from the $15.50 they were making. But when the starting wage at Amazon is $19/hour or more, this raise hardly stands out as a “game changer.” In fact, the wage increases in this TA will hardly keep up with the official inflation rate (which is grossly understated after decades of statistical shenanigans). In addition, in locations where workers have received MRAs over the years that put them above $21, the contract still leaves room for UPS to eliminate their MRAs, thereby cutting their pay: Some who already receive around $25/hour with MRAs could be brought down to $21 so long as UPS argues that removing the MRA had “nothing to do” with implementing the new contract. What is worse, this contract actually re-introduces a 2-tier wage system for part timers which had actually been eliminated in the 2018 contract. As a result of this tier system for part timers, new hires will only reach a maximum of $23/hour during the life of the contract, which means by 2028 their wages would have effectively decreased to $19.84/hour in today’s money assuming a 3% inflation rate. Finally, adding insult to injury, catch up raises for long-time workers are capped at a meager $1.50/hour.
Lastly, affecting all classifications, this TA has some disturbing provisions when it comes to pensions. First of all, there are no Cost of Living Adjustments (COLAs) for pensions post-retirement. This means that pensions will not keep up with inflation. Most egregiously, the combined pension and healthcare hourly contribution increases in those regions (particularly the West) with solvent pension funds would be cut in half from their existing levels, ostensibly to shore up those pension funds which are insolvent.7 This only threatens the long-term viability of those healthier pensions while not actually doing much to rescue the insolvent ones.
From all of this it should be clear that O’Brien’s claim that this TA has “zero concessions” is a bold-faced lie. Many across the country are already drawing similar conclusions about the weakness of this TA. In this regard, these observations about the TA are nothing unique. But the truth of the matter is that the betrayal of the union leadership in this contract fight is about far more than just a bad TA. If we limit our analysis to this scope, then we can easily fall into the trap of trade-unionism. The TA is unquestionably bad, and Marxists should expose this and participate in the Vote No campaign against it. But, in order to do so as Marxists (and not as trade-unionists), we need to understand that this situation is about more than just the IBT leadership capitulating to a “greedy corporation.” Rather, this whole struggle is tied up in larger, complex dynamics and maneuvers by different sections of the ruling class as they seek to maintain their class dictatorship and gear up for greater competition with their global rivals. Seen in this light, it becomes clear that IBT leadership is not just capitulating to UPS, but to the entirety of the capitalist class.
2. IBT leadership aligning with the whole of bourgeoisie
“Every “minor” crisis that [any capitalist country] experiences discloses to us in miniature the elements, the rudiments, of the battles that will inevitably take place on a large scale during a big crisis. What else, for instance, is a strike if not a minor crisis of capitalist society? Was not the Prussian Minister for Internal Affairs, Herr von Puttkammer, right when he coined the famous phrase: “In every strike there lurks the hydra of revolution”? Does not the calling out of troops during strikes in all, even the most peaceful, the most “democratic”—save the mark—capitalist countries show how things will shape out in a really big crisis?” – Lenin, Lecture on the 1905 Revolution.
“For all his pugilistic statements, Mr. O’Brien remains an establishment figure who appears to prefer reaching a deal to going on strike, and he has subtly acted to make one less likely.”– Noam Scheiber, New York Times8
Capitalism is quite adept at concealing the exploitation inherent to it. For one, the wage form itself certainly conceals the exploitation of the worker. It promotes the illusion that workers are being paid for the time they work, instead of being paid the value of their labor-power. The boss/worker relationship also obscures the fact workers are exploited not only by their employer but by the entire capitalist class.9
In the context of UPS, we can see this in a few different ways. First of all, UPS itself is not “just” UPS. Carol Tomé, for example, is not only the CEO of UPS, but also on the board of Verizon. Norman Brothers, an Executive Vice President at UPS, is on the Board of the Atlanta Police Foundation (which, unsurprisingly, has been a strong supporter of Cop City). Brian Newman, UPS’s CFO, was formerly the Chief Strategy Officer of Pepsi. The UPS Board of Trustees has executives from or formerly at Heinz, IBM, Colgate-Palmolive, GE, Nike, the Federal Reserve, and other major corporations and bourgeois institutions. Additionally, as is the case with all major corporations, large institutional investors and finance capital firms have huge ownership stakes in UPS and likewise are the company’s major creditors. In the case of UPS, Blackrock and Vanguard are two of the major players.
In understanding that UPS workers are not only exploited by the UPS corporation, but by the entire capitalist class, we can begin to understand the vested interests that different sections of the ruling class have in this contract fight and in averting a strike. There are of course the more immediate actors who, through their more obvious economic stake in UPS, can be identified as having swayed the course of negotiations: those with controlling shareholding positions, like Blackrock, companies tied to the directors on the board of the company, such as Verizon, and the like. For instance, New York City comptroller Brad Lander, custodian of the New York City Retirement Systems which are major shareholders in UPS, came out with a public statement pressuring the company to concede to higher wages for part-timers and settle negotiations at the table.10 But it does not suffice to simply see the economic dimensions of the whole bourgeoisie’s stake in this struggle. The bourgeoisie’s most fundamental interest in this, and every manifestation of the class struggle, is to preserve the political conditions—its class dictatorship—of its exploitation and domination of the proletariat. And this means stomping out any potential major strikes that could spark an intensification of class struggle throughout the society as a whole. Therefore, it needs to be understood that the O’Brien-Zuckerman leadership is not simply capitulating to UPS with this TA, but are in fact aligning with the US capitalist class as a whole.
Behind all the bluster, O’Brien’s statements have actually been quite revealing of his class politics and the class interests that he serves. He has repeatedly promoted the reactionary theory of harmonizing the interests of labor and capital. For example, in his testimony before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions in March of this year, O’Brien stated, “Unions are good for workers, good for the economy and good for business. President Biden has been quite clear that his Administration is built on the principle that a strong America relies on strong unions.”11 He also said, “I work with billion dollar corporations like UPS and many others, the airline industry, and we collectively work together. Why? To create jobs but also to make their businesses as successful as possible, because if their business is successful, our members are going to be successful.”12
If this wasn’t enough, O’Brien also called Biden “the most pro-union president of our lifetime.”13 Biden applauded O’Brien for coming together with UPS to negotiate in “good faith” and reach “a tentative agreement today that will avoid a shutdown at UPS.” In other words, for appealing to the calls by all vested, ruling-class interests to avoid a strike, and thereby abandoning securing even the bare minimum demanded by UPS workers. It has since been revealed that the Biden administration was in “frequent communication with top union and company officials as the negotiations unfolded” and pushed hard for a deal.14 It seems that Biden and the Democrats were particularly worried about a potential strike with the economy going downhill and the 2024 election looming. They dared not risk direct executive or legislative intervention, and so they used backdoor channels to push O’Brien to take a deal as soon as possible.
These statements help to clarify, to any who may be confused, that O’Brien is not only objectively pro-capitalist, but also licks the boots of the Biden administration and promotes reactionary American imperialist propaganda about making “America strong.” There are countless other examples of O’Brien making similar statements. It is trivial to show that he is not an opponent of capitalism, but actually a supporter of capitalism and American imperialism. His servile chatter about how UPS “has the opportunity to shine as a corporation” shows that he is not promoting clarity among the working class, even about their basic contradictory interests with capital.15 Instead, he has been ceaselessly promoting the lie that if big corporations just “do the right thing” and give a few more crumbs to their workers, then everything will be alright. This is capitalist propaganda.
All of this, taken in conjunction with O’Brien’s other actions, such as selling out the rail workers last summer, should make it clear that he and others in his leadership clique are fundamentally subservient to the US capitalist class.
Such labor misleaders are only becoming more important for the US ruling class as it pursues a large-scale effort to shift production away from China, its major global rival against whom it is preparing to go to war “in the 2025-2032 timeframe,”16 and relatedly to adjust supply chains to make the US economy less dependent on imports from non-allied countries. Part of this entails reshoring production to revive the US’s industrial base, especially in areas such as lithium mining, battery production, energy, semiconductors, and other heavy industry.17 In his statements about this effort to reindustrialize the economy, Biden has made it clear that the capitalist class intends to have the business unions play a big role in these new industries.18 The hope is that these corrupt and bureaucratic unions can keep production regular, promote class-collaborationist policies, and prevent strikes from disrupting key industries, especially in wartime. This is far from unprecedented; in fact, the US capitalists have often used reactionary union leaders from Samuel Gompers to George Meany to keep the proletarian movement in check and enforce a no-strike policy during wartime.19
3. The “Marxists”
So where do different self-described Marxist forces stand in relation to the UPS struggle? Most have abandoned or ignored the basic lessons of Marxism that should guide and orient our participation in the class struggle. It is painfully obvious that many remain ignorant of what Lenin wrote over a century ago in “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder, about the need to work within reactionary unions while waging ruthless struggle against the reactionary leadership. As he put it,
This struggle [against reactionary leadership] must be waged ruthlessly, and it must unfailingly be brought—as we brought it—to a point when all the incorrigible leaders of opportunism and social-chauvinism are completely discredited and driven out of the trade unions… we are waging the struggle against the opportunist and social-chauvinist leaders in order to win the working class over to our side. It would be absurd to forget this most elementary and most self-evident truth. Yet it is this very absurdity that the German “Left” Communists perpetrate when, because of the reactionary and counter-revolutionary character of the trade union top leadership, they jump to the conclusion that…we must withdraw from the trade unions, refuse to work in them, and create new and artificial forms of labour organisation!20
And yet, in the present struggle at UPS, too many “Marxists” have been content to tail behind the reactionary leadership of Sean O’Brien, or convince themselves that participation in TDU (which has, in reality, ceased to be an oppositional force in IBT) is sufficient. Others, having likewise failed to understand the lessons of “Left-Wing” Communism and Marxism more broadly, operate as sectarian forces, unwilling and unable to comprehend the subtle work needed to undermine and expose the leadership of reactionary unions, or even the basics of how to work together with anyone outside their sects.
Let us begin with examining the latter, petty sectarians, as their infantile leftism is often easier to grasp, reflecting as it does, such a blatant and crass impetuosity. These forces are best exemplified by the Gonzaloist grouplet in UPS, which goes under the name “A New Day at UPS” and the Trotskyist sect the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) at the World Socialist Website (WSWS).21 These forces and others like them make some correct criticisms of the reactionary leadership, but they disregard the need for boring from within the existing unions. Their basic line is the formation of pure “rank and file committees” (or “New Day Committees” for the Gonzaloists), which they imagine will grow in size and strength until the whole trade union bureaucracy is smashed and replaced by their organizations.22
Their entire analysis is based on a non-dialectical conception of a homogenous rank-and-file opposed to a homogenous bureaucratic union leadership. They have no true understanding of the basic fact of dialectics that every unity is fraught with divisions, made of contradictions. Therefore, they have no sense of how to take advantage of contradictions within leadership to form tactical alliances or how to win over those rank-and-file UPS workers who do not yet see the issues with IBT leadership. The latter is particularly important as many UPS workers have a lot of union pride. These workers often feel that, while O’Brien and his leadership clique have made some mistakes in this contract, they still overall fight for the interests of the union members. Winning over these workers, or at least clarifying to a section of them that they should Vote No on the present TA, will require great subtlety which these impetuous sectarians lack entirely. Indeed, because of their insistence on isolating themselves within their “artificial” (as Lenin would have called them) forms of labor organization, they can’t even win over or collaborate with militant workers already convinced of the need to go on strike and who have been laying the groundwork for a No Vote on a sellout TA for months, such as Teamsters Mobilize.
They thus condemn themselves to remaining marginal and irrelevant forces in the current UPS struggle and in the US labor movement generally, despite their bluster and bombast. Therefore, these pseudo-Marxists remain isolated and rightly ridiculed by the majority of the US left. They pose little danger at present, as they have little influence.
The broader confusion, which is far more widespread and more dangerous, is opportunist tailing of the union leadership. Too many self-styled Marxists have abandoned—or have never truly taken up—the basic orientation of struggling against the reactionary union leadership. They have, instead, secured themselves a seat at the table with these phony militants in the O’Brien administration. Some have deluded themselves into thinking that Sean O’Brien is a real militant labor leader. Others such as DSA’s Levin have been leading forces in the rightward shift of TDU under the present IBT administration. And now, they either shamelessly join the IBT leadership in pushing a Vote Yes campaign and calling the sellout TA a “historic contract,” or they spinelessly adopt a “neutral” stance while awaiting the results of the vote.
These and other would-be Marxists have been hiding in the shadows of the union halls, waiting for the spontaneous emergence of the revolutionary zeal of the proletariat before they can take principled action. At best, they speak of revolution and socialism in a whisper, hoping to recruit a Teamster or two to their groups, but never daring to struggle against the leadership. This silence and complacency, this near total lack of criticism of the labor lieutenants of capital, is often justified because of the interest many have to move up within the union bureaucracy. Supposedly, once they do, they will quietly reform the union from within. The silence of these “Marxist” Teamsters is a reflection of their divided politics. However, the longer they persist in the practices themselves, the more they justify abdicating their responsibility as Marxists to struggle against reactionary union leadership, the more they will consolidate to a petty-bourgeois class position and outlook. This is the road to revisionism.
There are also many would-be Marxists outside Teamsters who make the absurd claim that it is not their place to get involved in “internal union politics.” This orientation is perhaps best exemplified by DSA’s statement that they stand with Teamsters “as they vote to accept or reject the TA.”23 In their eyes Marxists are not partisan fighters for the proletariat, but passive cheerleaders, whose role is to tell workers “you do you, and I’ll support you.” This and every other form of identity-political nonsense about “standing with workers whatever they decide” amounts to a blatant negation of Marxism’s most basic principles. The masses of UPS workers are divided between those who see with relatively greater clarity their objective class interest in advancing this struggle, those who are vacillating but can be won over, and those most backward elements who are staunch and rabid supporters of this TA and the IBT leadership broadly. It is a farcical joke to argue that Marxists should sit on the sidelines and forgo our essential duty to work with the most advanced workers in a given struggle to push it forward and win over the widest mass possible. We must instead throw ourselves into the thick of it, and adopt the orientation so well-articulated by Lenin in “Left-Wing” Communism:
If you want to help the “masses” and win the sympathy and support of the “masses”, you should not fear difficulties, or pinpricks, chicanery, insults and persecution from the “leaders” (who, being opportunists and social-chauvinists, are in most cases directly or indirectly connected with the bourgeoisie and the police), but must absolutely work wherever the masses are to be found. You must be capable of any sacrifice, of overcoming the greatest obstacles, in order to carry on agitation and propaganda systematically, perseveringly, persistently and patiently in those institutions, societies and associations—even the most reactionary—in which proletarian or semi-proletarian masses are to be found.24
4. TDU: A Moribund Testament to the Sterility of Economism
There are deep roots to the opportunist sins of ostensible “socialists” within the Teamsters, whose betrayal of the working class has reached their most vile proportions under this O’Brien-Zuckerman administration. In particular, the degeneration of TDU is not a sudden or new development. It is merely the logical outcome of the line, long-held by its founders and their political descendants, that it is necessary to hide the “boogeyman” of Marxist politics from the masses of workers (except, perhaps the most advanced) and that by developing the “militant trade union” movement, proletarian consciousness will arise spontaneously. The founders of TDU were members of the International Socialists (IS), a Trotskyist group which had its origins in a split from the Socialist Party in 1962. Perhaps the best known among them is Kim Moody (also a founder of Labor Notes), whose version of the “rank-and-file” strategy has become quite popular in recent years. While Moody and other former IS members claim to support Marxism, they in fact reject its fundamental tenets. For example, in his famous pamphlet, The Rank and File Strategy, Moody wrote:
Lenin’s most famous statement about the limits of trade union consciousness was in What is to Be Done? where he wrote, “the history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness …” Trade union consciousness was bourgeois conscious [sic] he argued later. Revolutionary socialist consciousness had to come from outside, from professional revolutionaries trained in socialist theory. Three years later in 1905 a trade union struggle grew into a mass strike movement and a revolutionary confrontation with Czarism. Lenin revised his view allowing for the “spontaneous” development of socialist consciousness. Yet, he knew that sections of the working class everywhere remained mired in reformism.25
It is, of course, wildly inaccurate to say that Lenin abandoned or revised his views on the limitations of trade union consciousness or that he began to believe in the “spontaneous development” (even if one puts spontaneous in quotes like Moody does) of socialist consciousness. This view is doubly absurd because the Bolsheviks, despite their small size, played a huge role in the labor movement (as well as in other struggles in Russian society) in the lead up to the 1905 Revolution, and worked tirelessly to raise the consciousness of the proletariat, in line with the conclusions that Lenin put forward in What is to Be Done?.sav Lenin’s writing from What is to Be Done?, through the 1905 Revolution,26 all the way to his death include countless examples of his continued polemics against the politics of spontaneity and trade-unionism.
Lenin’s point was that the working class cannot automatically, through trade union struggles, develop class consciousness, given the dominance of bourgeois ideology and inherent limitations of economic struggles. Therefore, Lenin argued, that it was not enough for Marxists to lead the trade union struggles, or even to simply clarify to the workers that the particular economic issues they face (e.g. low wages, harassment from managers, long hours, etc.) were the results of the general problem of capitalism and the class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Instead, he repeatedly emphasized that it is absolutely essential for Marxists to also carry on agitation and propaganda among the working-class about every outrage and injustice in society, and to do so from an explicitly Marxist perspective. Only in this way, Lenin noted, can the workers be trained to respond to every issue in the society from a Marxist perspective, and only thus can they develop true proletarian class consciousness.
Moody’s pamphlet, synthesizing the ideology that informed the IS’s organizing, instead conceives of the development of socialist consciousness in the following way:
Socialists can build transitional organizations and struggles that help to raise the class-consciousness of activist workers, in order to enlarge the layer of workers in the class who are open to socialist ideas. The existence of a strong current of active, class-conscious workers is a precondition for the development of a strong current of socialist workers — and a socialist party. We need to be, at the same time, bringing our socialist ideas directly to workers who are already ready to hear them, and also helping to create the struggles that produce more such workers.27
TDU and Labor Notes are precisely the kinds of “transitional organizations” Moody talks about. The limitations of this strategy can be seen in the way that it equates class-consciousness with being an active worker in the trade union struggle. Moody contrasts this, in turn, with being a socialist worker. In this extremely mechanical schema, the goal is to first develop the trade union struggle to a sufficient point and then bring Marxist ideas to the workers. Of course, the development of the trade union struggle does provide fertile ground for clarifying Marxism to a broader section of the workers. However, from this basic fact it in no way follows that Marxists must wait until the trade union movement has sufficiently developed to begin to train the broad masses of workers in how to understand the society as a whole, in all of its glaring injustices, from a Marxist perspective. This is a direct negation of the lessons of Leninism. Lenin, in his polemics against the Mensheviks and other economists ceaselessly emphasized the need to not delay the propagation of Marxist political exposures. In fact, he noted that only by providing the widest possible exposures would it be possible for the spontaneous workers’ movement to develop into a truly class conscious proletarian movement.
It is quite telling that the “socialists” who argue for hiding the supposed boogeyman of Marxist politics until the trade union movement is sufficiently developed are presently advocating capitulation to the bourgeoisie in the UPS struggle. At a historic moment in the US labor movement, a potential inflection point which could define the direction of development of the working-class struggle for years to come, the “socialists” leading TDU are frantically trying to quell the rising tide of militant outrage at this sell out contract. They are working to suppress the active elements of the working-class movement, those who are fighting for a better contract, on the grounds that it is not even yet time to advance the trade union struggle beyond the limits set by Biden’s loyal lapdog Sean O’Brien, let alone put larger Marxist ideas on the table and out in the open. Others in TDU are so deluded that they truly believe that, through their “organizing” and rallying behind the leadership of Sean O’Brien, they have already advanced the class struggle. They have completely failed to analyze O’Brien’s class position in this struggle and beyond.
Both of these deviations are egregious distortions of Marxism. It is simply an utter and fatal falsehood that Marxists must only bring socialist ideology to the few that are “ready” while leaving the rest to the uncontested domination of bourgeois ideology until that magical time in which they are “made ready” by the supposed spontaneous development of consciousness in the course of “struggles that produce such [‘socialist-ready’] workers”. Lenin specifically polemicized against this very view in What is to Be Done? and spelled out an actual and clear Marxist definition of what proletarian class consciousness is:
Working-class consciousness cannot be genuine political consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases of tyranny, oppression, violence, and abuse, no matter what class is affected — unless they are trained, moreover, to respond from a Social-Democratic point of view and no other. The consciousness of the working masses cannot be genuine class-consciousness, unless the workers learn, from concrete, and above all from topical, political facts and events to observe every other social class in all the manifestations of its intellectual, ethical, and political life; unless they learn to apply in practice the materialist analysis and the materialist estimate of all aspects of the life and activity of all classes, strata, and groups of the population. Those who concentrate the attention, observation, and consciousness of the working class exclusively, or even mainly, upon itself alone are not Social-Democrats; for the self-knowledge of the working class is indissolubly bound up, not solely with a fully clear theoretical understanding — or rather, not so much with the theoretical, as with the practical, understanding — of the relationships between all the various classes of modern society, acquired through the experience of political life. For this reason the conception of the economic struggle as the most widely applicable means of drawing the masses into the political movement, which our Economists preach, is so extremely harmful and reactionary in its practical significance. […]
Why do the Russian workers still manifest little revolutionary activity in response to the brutal treatment of the people by the police, the persecution of religious sects, the flogging of peasants, the outrageous censorship, the torture of soldiers, the persecution of the most innocent cultural undertakings, etc.? Is it because the “economic struggle” does not “stimulate” them to this, because such activity does not “promise palpable results”, because it produces little that is “positive”? To adopt such an opinion, we repeat, is merely to direct the charge where it does not belong, to blame the working masses for one’s own philistinism (or Bernsteinism). We must blame ourselves, our lagging behind the mass movement, for still being unable to organise sufficiently wide, striking, and rapid exposures of all the shameful outrages.28
What a contrast to the prattling condescension of IS and their line in TDU! Now, to be clear, there is absolutely the need for mass organizations that can unite broad strata of workers, not just the most class conscious. Trade unions themselves are examples of such organizations. At various moments, there is also a need for broad mass organizations within the unions dedicated to opposing the outrages of reactionary union leadership: for instance, the Save the Union movement within the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) during the late 1920s, which was led by communists and other militants in the Trade Union Education League (TUEL).29 The problem with TDU was not in and of itself that it aspired to be a broad oppositional organization within a reactionary trade union. The problem was with the IS’s conception of the role of Marxists within such organizations; their lack of understanding of how to relate the development of such organizations to the development of a narrower organization of the militant minority in the labor movement as well as an organization of Marxist revolutionaries; and their related mechanistic ideas about the role of these organizations in advancing socialist consciousness.
In particular, they neglected to prioritize uniting and organizing the advanced elements, the militant minority, around an unwavering program of class struggle against capital, even though these elements are precisely the ones capable of propelling and leading the broader masses in struggle as well as of raising the masses’ consciousness. And of course, as pseudo-Marxists, they utterly neglected the essential task of developing as many of those advanced elements as possible into Marxist professional revolutionaries. Instead the IS conceived of TDU as a way to bring together a broad section of workers without specifically uniting the advanced on the basis of an advanced program. Conceived in this way, TDU could, at best, only ever appeal to the lowest common denominator. The tasks of uniting the advanced for the struggle, and of raising the consciousness of the masses beyond the narrow horizon of trade-union reformism were forever deferred, as an inevitable result of this confused theory. In contrast to this approach, Marxists must be carrying out socialist “agitation and propaganda systematically, perseveringly, persistently and patiently” both in the unions broadly and in and through the oppositional militant organizations inside the unions they found and lead. As Lenin said,
The [Marxist’s] ideal should not be the trade union secretary, but the tribune of the people, who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects; who is able to generalise all these manifestations and produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation; who is able to take advantage of every event, however small, in order to set forth, before all, his socialist convictions and his democratic demands, in order to clarify for all and everyone the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat.30
It is worth noting that there were some important differences among the founders of TDU. In fact, in contrast to Moody’s explicit strategy of creating watered-down reform movements, a section of IS that split off into the short-lived Workers Power organization never desired to see TDU transform into a mere reform caucus focused on union elections and some rule changes in the bureaucracy,31 much less an all-out appendage of old guard reactionary leaders imposing a major sellout. This minority repeatedly polemicized against social-democracy, “transitional programs”, unprincipled alliances with “left” progressive trade union bureaucrats, etc.
But even this “left-wing” of TDU founders nevertheless adhered to the same incorrect ideas on consciousness espoused by Moody above, and by Hal Draper before him.32 In addition to these economist (and non-Leninist) ideas about the development of proletarian class consciousness, they also never grasped the need for a militant minority organization. Thus, they neglected the need to focus our efforts on the minority in the labor movement who grasp, at a minimum, that there can be no harmony of interests between the workers and the employers, that capitalism must be abolished, and that the unions need to be transformed into vehicles of class warfare against capital. They never tried to unite the most advanced and class-conscious fighters in the labor movement into an organization that would bore from within the existing unions, or even just within the Teamsters alone, and thereby rally the broad stratum of intermediate workers to fight against the labor lieutenants of the capitalist class.
Instead, they argued for a broad organization of the rank-and-file. They aimed to build an organization that appealed to the lowest common denominator of fleeting popular opinion in the union. Instead of working with the advanced to raise the consciousness of the intermediate and clarify to them the need to fight for more, they followed the same line as the majority of the IS, and argued for tailing the intermediate elements as a supposed method for raising class consciousness and advancing the trade union movement. And yet, as Lenin noted “all worship of the spontaneity of the working-class movement, all belittling of the role of “the conscious element”, of the role of [Marxist politics], means, quite independently of whether he who belittles that role desires it or not, a strengthening of the influence of bourgeois ideology upon the workers.”
The strengthening of bourgeois ideology over TDU and Teamster workers more broadly was an inevitable result of this economist line, common to both IS and the Workers Power organization. Lacking a clear Marxist line for how to organize militants within reactionary unions, the more radical of the “socialist” founders of TDU simply failed to do so. Much less did they grasp the overarching task of Marxist revolutionaries, beyond their tasks in the trade unions, is to organize the even smaller minority of professional revolutionaries with profound scientific knowledge of the society and Marxist theory. They were unable to see the need for the only type of organization capable of systematically elevating the consciousness of the working class beyond the limits of spontaneous development, a true Communist Party. It is only in solidifying the organization of these minorities, especially the proletarian party, that it is possible to methodically go amongst the wider masses of rank-and-file workers, bring them into the struggle both against the employers and the class-collaborationist trade union bureaucracy, and swell the ranks of the militants and of the professional revolutionaries. It is no wonder then that from the very onset, the Workers Power cadre were repeatedly defeated in struggles against their former comrades in IS who were pushing TDU in an increasingly bourgeois reformist direction. Even in 1981 they couldn’t even get TDU to allow mere discussion in its official newspaper of secondary boycotts as a tactic worth considering!
All of this being said, we should be clear that today TDU has degenerated even from the limited reformist (and non-Marxist) line it previously pursued. In the past they still promoted some basic reforms against the most blatant forms of corruption in the union, such as officials receiving multiple salaries. For that, TDU was often opposed tooth and nail by the most reactionary elements of union leadership. This included Sean O’Brien who in 2013 threatened TDU members in Rhode Island’s local 251 for going against the Hoffa-aligned leadership there.33 Yet, having from the onset put a bourgeois trade-unionist line in command when creating TDU, these “socialists” could only watch (or, worse yet, willingly join in) as TDU degenerated further to the point of cutting a deal with the very same Sean O’Brien in 2018, when he made his move against the Hoffa regime. In making this deal, TDU dropped a series of its longstanding demands including the one prohibiting union officials from collecting multiple salaries from the union. In short, they dropped their fight against even the most blatant forms of corruption!
To be clear, O’Brien maneuvered against Hoffa Jr. not because he was a genuine reformer, but because he saw an opportunity for personal gain in the situation. To make his bid for union president he had to appeal to workers who were frustrated by the decades of blatant corruption, mafia connections, and thuggery that the Teamsters leadership were known for. So, he supported a few progressive measures like opposing the 2018 contract and changing the union constitution to allow for a one member, one vote system. While these changes were good, O’Brien’s maneuvers meant that one of the old guard in Teamsters replaced Hoffa Jr. In effect, his election ensured continuity after the massive sellout and shady maneuvering by IBT leadership around the 2018 contract. Sadly, TDU leadership went along with this in their historic compromise with O’Brien. They thus helped to lend an air of legitimacy to his claims to be a reformer, and in exchange got themselves significantly more influence and control in the union.
All that said, a temporary tactical alliance with O’Brien to win a vote no campaign on the terrible 2018 contract could have made sense, so long as this would have been done alongside preparations for a future struggle against the IBT old guard aligned with O’Brien. However, since cutting their deal with O’Brien TDU has not only refused to criticize him, but has in fact repeatedly sung his praises and squashed criticism of him! So, instead of tactically aligning with this IBT old guard—who had repeatedly shown his true colors as a thuggish enforcer for Hoffa Jr.—TDU made a strategic alliance with O’Brien and is now tailing behind his bourgeois reactionary leadership and attacking workers who criticize him.
Given this blatant sell-out, many who previously pitted their hopes on TDU as a vehicle for change are beginning to question their prior assumptions. This was already happening to a degree before this terrible TA; the trend is only likely to intensify in the coming days and weeks. Genuine Marxists need to find ways to unite these forces to push for a Vote No campaign on the TA. We hope that those operating within TDU who are serious about Marxism will join up with the Vote No campaign and work to finally put into practice the lessons of revolutionary Marxism in trade-union work. In order to do this, we need to both build a real oppositional group of militants within Teamsters that actually wages the economic struggle of the workers against their employers and reactionary union leaders, while not conflating this task with the need to simultaneously develop the consciousness of the proletariat. Creating a real oppositional group can aid in the latter task, or not, depending on how well Marxists are able to carry out exposures of the class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and clarify to workers that the particular economic problems they face are a result of the more general problem of capitalist society.
The issue is that many in the UPS struggle who consider themselves Marxists still eclectically hold onto various illusions about the politics of spontaneity. While not everyone goes as far as the TDU founders and outright reject the lessons of Leninism, many apply them inconsistently, or understand them only partially. Some promote ideas around the “self-activity” of the working class, which is really just another name of spontaneity. Most fail to realize that in What is to Be Done? Lenin was not just critiquing those who outright argued that proletarian class consciousness would automatically and spontaneously develop from the trade union movement. He was also critiquing those who equivocated on this question, those who vacillated, on the one hand supporting Marxism, and on the other hand underrating the need to develop the consciousness of the proletariat. The latter is a nearly ubiquitous problem among self-described Marxists involved in the UPS struggle and the labor movement broadly.
For example, Lenin noted that “While fully recognizing the political struggle (better: the political desires and demands of the workers), which arises spontaneously from the working-class movement itself, [Rabocheye Mysl, a paper of the economists] absolutely refuses independently to work out a specifically Social-Democratic politics corresponding to the general tasks of socialism and to present-day conditions in Russia.” This is the task before us today. Workers, in the course of their economic struggle raise a series of demands that not only deal with wages and conditions, but even many larger topics, especially during times of crisis. This is elementary. But being elementary, it is also insufficient. In order to develop proletarian consciousness, we need to do much more than support these elementary and spontaneous struggles, we need to work out a plan for Marxist politics corresponding to the tasks in front of us in the US.
5: What are the tasks of Marxists in this moment?
We do not yet have a comprehensive plan of how to advance the struggle at UPS and build up a real Communist Party in this country. However, there are a few very clear tasks for Marxists in the present moment. First, Marxists in and outside of UPS must of course firmly and vocally stand against the TA, collaborate closely with those most active elements amongst the UPS workers in carrying out the Vote No campaign led by Teamsters Mobilize, and yes, provide leadership to this immediate struggle.
Our leadership of the revolutionary struggle of our class can be won only through the capable leadership of struggles for partial demands, through our ability to organize and lead the struggles of mass organizations of workers for partial demands. It is at best extremely doubtful whether any considerable number of workers will believe in our ability “to make a revolution” unless we can organize and lead the smaller but necessary struggles … in which we must be able to convince workers of the necessity of engaging in higher forms of struggle.34
Leadership, however, doesn’t mean jumping in front of the workers fighting to vote down the contract, waving a red flag and proclaiming ourselves leaders, as unfortunately some so-called Marxists are already doing. It instead means being amongst the workers, and using the lessons of Marxism to concentrate/synthesize the clearest ideas they already have into a correct political line for uniting all who can be united in the present struggle against the TA. This requires that we have a detailed understanding of the TA and how it affects all strata of UPS workers, as well as of the divisions amongst the workers and amongst the IBT officialdom. Providing leadership also means demonstrating to the workers, in practice, that we are the clearest, most class conscious, and best organized fighters for their interests, not only their short-term interests but also their ultimate interests in socialist revolution.
Instead of watering our politics down to the lowest common denominator, we must carry out agitation and propaganda during the Vote No campaign which shows how this particular struggle is a manifestation of the general and fundamental antagonism that the working class has with the whole bourgeoisie. We hope that the above analysis in section 2 of this essay (“IBT leadership aligning with the whole of bourgeoisie”) is helpful in this regard, but we must work to continually refine and deepen our understanding far beyond the analysis already offered here in order to effectively raise consciousness; after all, as Kautsky remarked (before he turned renegade), “socialist consciousness can only arise on the basis profound scientific knowledge” of both the class struggle in general and the concrete situations we find ourselves in.35
Out of this Vote No campaign, regardless of whether it is successful in voting down the contract and sparking a strike or not, we will have a unique opportunity to lay the groundwork for an organization of the militant minority within the Teamsters. Across UPS classifications, this contract has caused significant outrage, and the Vote No campaign is acting like a magnet for that minority of workers who grasp with relative clarity that the employers are in fundamental antagonism to the workers, and that the trade union struggle needs to be militantly waged on this class basis. At the same time, drivers across ABF and Yellow Freight, railroad workers under the Teamsters’ Rail Conference unions, and Sysco workers have all been sold out in the last year by the O’Brien leadership.
A well-waged Vote No for UPS will unquestionably inspire and bring out non-UPS Teamster militants, many of whom have already long recognized the need for some kind of replacement for TDU. The vicious attacks of IBT leadership and Business Agents on the campaign against this TA and the militants leading it are already providing ample exposures of the bankruptcy of this leadership. These reactionary attacks are having an impact on the intermediate stratum of UPS workers, opening their eyes to the fact that this TA is not all it was made out to be, and that union leadership has not truly fought for their best interests.
Meanwhile, the pseudo-Marxists at the head of TDU (often in organizations like FRSO and DSA) have similarly exposed themselves as sell-outs and class collaborationists. They have not only praised this sellout TA, but have attacked workers, organizations, and militants who have critiqued the TA and who are pushing for a Vote No campaign. The David Levins, Ken Paffs, and Sean Orrs of the labor movement,36 those pseudo-socialists, have increasingly revealed themselves to be the modern equivalent of the social-chauvinists who Lenin ridiculed in “Left-Wing” Communism. They have become our contemporary Bernsteins and Kautskys, or at least a farcical repetition of these agents of the bourgeoisie who cloaked their class politics in Marxist terminology. And just as Lenin noted, and as we quoted above, the struggle against these forces “must be waged ruthlessly, and it must unfailingly be brought […]to a point when all the incorrigible leaders of opportunism and social-chauvinism are completely discredited and driven out of the trade unions.”37 The present situation provides ample opportunity to expose these modern-day Bernsteinians and their anti-Marxist politics.
We must seize the time, agitate throughout the UPS contract fight on the need for an organization of the militant minority that can outlast this specific fight, and make a plan to found this organization. We must not fall into the trap of aiming for an organization of the undifferentiated “rank-and-file”, much less a reform organization, that aims for the widest possible membership. We already have the wide masses in front and around us, within the union itself. At this moment, what we need within the Teamsters (and in the labor movement more broadly) is to unite the minority of relatively class-conscious militants around an explicit program of class struggle against capital, so that this minority can carry out in more coordinated fashion the work of drawing in those broader masses into struggle. To be clear, there will most definitely be a need and a basis for wider forms of mass organization within the union and that aren’t just the union itself. For example, committees at the shop level, strike committees during strikes, and broad oppositional groups like the Save the Union movement in the UMWA cited earlier. We Marxists together with the organized militants must throw ourselves into those organizations and not hesitate to found them if/when it makes sense. But still we need the narrower organization of the militant minority to most effectively sustain wider organizations and tactical alliances.
One key task to bring this together will be the creation of a national newsletter. To avoid the mistakes made by IS in creating TDU (which despite all of its issues, did have a national newsletter), Marxists must use this organ to make larger political exposures that are clear to those without Marxist training, instead of simply propagating trade-union reformism. Out of these efforts in the Teamsters, we must likewise solidify a basic program of class struggle around which militants across the whole labor movement, not just the Teamsters, can unite. Here we should draw inspiration from the work of the Trade Union Education League (TUEL) in the 1920s in particular. We must as much as possible link up our work in the Teamsters with efforts of other militants and march towards founding a TUEL-like organization in the next few years, one that can work across all existing unions as well as amongst the vast mass of unorganized workers.
Beyond this, there is a need for the consolidation of genuine Marxists into an organization of professional revolutionaries and ultimately a Communist Party. This will take time and struggle, as we work to sum up the lessons of the international communist movement, analyze our present situation, and work out a line to advance towards socialist revolution in the US. Ultimately, the ability of Marxists to win influence in the labor movement and raise the consciousness of the proletariat is dependent on the creation of a true vanguard party. This means that urgent debates must be had, not only on how to advance the immediate struggles we are involved in such as the Vote No campaign at UPS, but also how to sum up the lessons of revolutionary history. This includes lessons from the movements of the 19th century, the socialist revolutions in Russia and China (and eventual restoration of capitalism in both the USSR and China), and the Cultural Revolution in China. Despite its later degeneration, we must also learn from the many key successes (and also the mistakes) of the CPUSA in the labor movement, in particular its experiences with the TUEL and the Trade Union Unity League (TUUL).
These are key tasks that we must urgently take up. Even in the present struggle, despite the openings that do exist, a crying need for a real vanguard party can be felt. As Lenin noted,
It is common knowledge that the masses are divided into classes, that the masses can be contrasted with classes only by contrasting the vast majority in general, regardless of division according to status in the social system of production, with categories holding a definite status in the social system of production; that as a rule and in most cases—at least in present-day civilised countries—classes are led by political parties; that political parties, as a general rule, are run by more or less stable groups composed of the most authoritative, influential and experienced members, who are elected to the most responsible positions, and are called leaders. All this is elementary.38
In order to advance towards a future classless, communist society, we must take steps in this direction here and now. The current moment presents us with numerous opportunities to advance on this path, provided we cast aside various bourgeois and petty-bourgeois illusions, break away from the sway of degenerate organizations like TDU (and related pseudo-socialist organizations which tail O’Brien), and chart an independent course forward for the class struggle.
- Though UAW’s Shawn Fain is no revolutionary, compare how bourgeois talking heads like CNBC’s Jim Cramer speak of him as compared to Sean O’Brien: https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1687122386364305408.
- Here we provide only an overview of the issues. For a more detailed analysis of the specifics of the contract, please visit https://static1.squarespace.com/static/63a9fa5735bf3658878c12cc/t/64c8e358b6f5a06ae411bf92/1690887000658/Changes+to+the+Contract%281%29+half+size.pdf as well as the TA itself: https://assets.nationbuilder.com/teamstersforademocraticunion/pages/12952/attachments/original/1690400438/UPS-Teamsters-Tentative-National-Master-Agreement_Blueline-072623_(2).pdf?1690400438.
- https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/07/03/teamsters-ups-strike-news-2023/70379614007/.
- https://twitter.com/upsurgepod/status/1672292094004584448?lang=en.
- https://www.tdu.org/ups_air_conditioning.
- MRAs are used by UPS to increase wages (sometimes for existing workers and sometimes for new hires) beyond what is stipulated in the contract to attract new hires and/or retain existing workers.
- https://youtu.be/zxyEzZokGes.
- Quoted in Joe Allen https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/07/28/what-happened-to-the-big-ups-strike/. Original: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/22/business/economy/ups-teamsters-strike.html.
- This is an inevitable result of the formation of the average rate of profit and cross-sectoral investment as an inherent part of expanded reproduction under capitalism. This dynamic is further intensified by the development of monopoly capitalism, where finance capital invests heavily in huge multi-national corporations.
- https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/letter-to-ups-ceo-carol-tome-about-extended-strike/.
- https://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/O%27Brien%20-%20WRITTEN%20help%20testimony.pdf, p. 17.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpsOGGaMmsw.
- https://youtu.be/9psr1HeHe3w.
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/07/25/ups-strike-deal-teamsters/.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTbrb61ZEPQ.
- https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/JOTA/journals/Volume-4_Issue-3/04-Reep_eng.pdf.
- https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/09/16/remarks-by-national-security-advisor-jake-sullivan-at-the-special-competitive-studies-project-global-emerging-technologies-summit/ and https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-foreign-policy-for-the-middle-class-manufacturing-trade-protectionism-jake-sullivan-donald-trump-8e6ab7a1.
- https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/07/20/fact-sheet-bidenomics-is-boosting-clean-energy-manufacturing-for-offshore-wind-and-creating-good-paying-american-union-jobs/ and https://www.politicususa.com/2022/02/05/biden-delivers-union-jobs-with-new-executive-order.html.
- See for instance chapter 9 of William Z. Foster’s book From Bryan to Stalin for examples of Gompers’ treachery in sabotaging the attempt to organize the unorganized steel industry and launch a strike at the end of WWI.
- https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch06.htm.
- https://newdayarchive.files.wordpress.com/2023/03/fourth-white-and-blue-modern-business-newsletter.pdf; https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/08/17/irfc-a17.html.
- In the case of SEP, they envision this happening across all unions in all countries in preparation for the global assault of the whole international working class against global capitalism and the elimination of nation states.
- https://www.dsausa.org/statements/standing-in-solidarity-with-ups-teamsters/.
- https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch06.htm.
- https://jacobin.com/2018/08/unions-socialists-rank-and-file-strategy-kim-moody.
- https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/sep/00b.htm.
- https://jacobin.com/2018/08/unions-socialists-rank-and-file-strategy-kim-moody.
- https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/iii.htm.
- See https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labor-unity/v2n03-w22-apr-1928-TUUL-labor-unity.pdf. It is worth noting that in 1928, the CPUSA/TUEL shifted course, dropped the effort to ‘save’ the UMWA, and founded a new independent union, the NMU. Though there was much positive about the Save the Union movement, we do think they should have shifted sooner towards forming a new union together in a broad united front with the droves of workers, militants, reformist officials, and even whole locals that were expelled/driven out of the UMWA. This new union however should probably not have become a ‘red’ union, as the NMU became, in order to preserve as long as possible that broad united front.
- https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/iii.htm.
- See articles on TDU in https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/atc/v01n01.pdf and https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/atc/v01n04.pdf.
- See the following article by Henry De Groot. Though we disagree with his Trotskyist positions, his essay is valuable for tracing the roots of the I.S.’ ideology and putting them in contrast to Lenin’s views. https://cosmonautmag.com/2023/07/in-defense-of-bolshevism-hal-draper-and-the-spectre-of-the-socialist-petty-bourgeoisie/.
- https://www.tdu.org/news_irb-charges-ibt-vp-sean-obrien-threatening-members.
- William F. Dunne, preface to Problems of Strike Strategy, https://www.marxists.org/history/international/profintern/strike_strategy/ch01.htm.
- https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ii.htm.
- To get a sense of the bourgeois politics of Orr, specifically, it is helpful to see how he slanders various groups promoting the Vote No campaign: https://twitter.com/SeanOrrMKE/status/1686395903282737152.
- https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch06.htm.
- https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch05.htm.