Shaun Richman

January 19, 2009July 17, 2023

It’s Hard To Find a Soft Cadre

In Michael Harrington’s remarkable deathbed autobiography, “The Long-Distance Runner,” he describes attempting to pick up the pieces of the shattered Socialist Party and a movement split between “Old” and “New” Lefts. The Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee that he formed from his old wing of the party and the diaspora of unaffiliated socialists in the labor and feminist movements was structurally a “mass” organization (albeit, one with few illusions of attracting the masses to it) with a soft cadre at its center.

This terminology, Harrington notes, would be foreign to all but the .0001% of Americans who have spent any time in the organized sects of the left. A cadre are the people who give some internal coherence to an organization. The people who write and photocopy fliers, raise funds, sweep floors, attend meetings and caucus for votes, and so on and so forth. In a Leninist model, this cadre operates with a fairly tight discipline and a democratic centralist decision-making process. Translated to what my 14-year-old cousin would call “normal talk,” that means that the group has an internal debate, following which all members “toe the party line” and carry out the decision of the majority. It also means that no one can join the organization who is not vouched for by a member of the cadre. (Although we don’t use these terms in the context, political campaigns and union organizing campaigns follow similar principles.)

Harrington graduated from an arcane milieu of “anti-Communist, Leninist democratic sects.” Although DSOC (later, Democratic Socialists of America) took all comers, there was a soft cadre at its center – prominent intellectuals and labor leaders, as well as more anonymous volunteers – who nudged the broader organization towards its ecumenical bridge-building envisioned at its founding. One primary challenge, Harrington noted, is that each successive generation has less of a tradition of the movement and less ability to form a coherent cadre. The problem has obviously worsened in the two decades since Harrington published “The Long-Distance Runner.”

Harrington has the decency to note that the old Socialist Party died in a three-way split. Most scholars only deal with the two most prominent factions: Harrington’s and the majority Social Democrats who drifted towards the neoconservatism of Reagan and Bush. The third faction, which kept the name of the old party, provides little of scholarly interest. It is there that I cut my teeth politically. There is probably a paper to be written about the failed experiment of the new Socialist Party in attempting to recreate the mass-based party of yore without the benefit of an intellectual cadre, and, lately, without the benefit of a culture or tradition of the movement. Instead, each successive generation (a generation here being two or three years) joins the party cold after reading some inspiring speech of the long-dead Eugene Debs, and proceeds to engage in pointless faction fights over bureaucratic details (what is to be the name of the magazine, whom shall appoint the members of the International Commission) that are divorced from the actual politics of society.

We do need a socialist party, but first we need to rebuild the cadre for democratic socialism. The first step must be some kind of think tank, which can limit its membership to only the most serious and comradely of comrades, and pt out useful material (studies, statements, blogs, etc) that could find an audience in the greater number of Americans who consider themselves socialists but do not belong to any explicitly socialist organization. With a cohesive cadre and a modest audience, then, and only then, can we consider forming a new socialist formation that is open to any who would join it.

December 10, 2008July 17, 2023

Standing Up, Sitting Down

It figures that it would take the United Electrical Workers union to try to rally the fighting spirit in America’s battered working class with a sit-down strike at a shuttered factory in Illinois. The UE have a proud history of daring and desperate fighting stands that culminated in their expulsion from the Congress of Industrial Organizations early in the Cold War for refusing to purge their ranks of Communists. That fight resulted in the loss of over a hundred thousand members and the union’s relegation to the sidelines of the labor movement. The UE that survived those terrible fights of the 40’s and 50’s remained a leaner, meaner fighting machine; a union that prized democratic rank-and-file control, labor education, the long haul struggle and the value of a symbolic fight.

The tactic of the sit-down strike was expelled from the labor movement long before the Communists who perfected it. The great wave of sit-down strikes that formed the United Autoworkers, United Steelworkers and other mass production industrial unions of the CIO-era were contemporaneous with the legal fight over the constitutionality of a new law that enshrined labor’s legal right to organize. Many employers, declaring that the National Labor Relations Act overreached Congress’ authority to regulate interstate commerce, simply decided to ignore the law and continue to fire union activists in spite of government orders to recognize and negotiate with the duly-authorized unions they chose to represent them. The workers compelled the employers to recognize them and the unions they formed by taking control of the factories until the employers relented and began negotiating for good contracts.

The Supreme Court, in some respects, merely recognized the fact of this de-facto truce when they declared the NLRA constitutional in 1938, and ordered the reinstatement of all terminated union activists. However, the court attempted a balancing act by declaring that employees terminated for engaging in illegal activities in the course of their union activity were not entitled to reinstatement. Sit-downers – trespassers and thieves, all – could thus be fired for engaging in such a strike. Having won the legal right of a union recognition process in the NLRA, therefore, most unions abandoned the sit-down strike tactic and reached a tacit understanding with management that most employers respected until they resumed open warfare with the labor movement in the late 1970’s.

While management has spent the past thirty years firing union activists and shuttering factory gates as legitimate labor relations strategies, most unions have continued to respect the earlier understanding with management, to follow the rules of the National Labor Relations Act and to get their asses kicked. The UE has changed that, but, really, what did they have to lose?

What did they have to gain, you might be asking? Well, first of all, federal law requires a company to provide at least 60 days advance notice to its workers before closing a factory. Republic Windows only provided three. Fifty-seven days’ pay is not chump change when you’re facing unemployment. The UE’s contract with Republic further called for severance of a certain number of days paid for each year of service, which would provide a badly needed cushion to those workers at a time like this. And, finally, there’s the possibility that the layoffs and factory closing may not be necessary at all, that Republic may be preparing to open a new (non-union) factory, with new (non-union) employees a few states away.

By sit-downing in the factory the union has made it impossible for Republic to sell it. Would you buy a building that was infested with 200 angry union members? By focusing their wrath and the media glare on Bank of America, the bailed-out bank that initially refused Republic Windows the loan that would have kept it afloat, the union has harnessed the public rage over a $700 billion Congressional bail-out that has protected the interests of the rich investors who created this recession while screwing the rest of us. Desperate people who might otherwise have been portrayed as greedy union members are instead valorized as aggrieved community members.

Win or lose, the United Electrical Workers have provided a shining example of the potential of resistance to cut-backs in these lean times. I hope that my own union, which is formulating a public campaign to resist disinvestment in public spending, can galvanize the public with the fights we pick and the way we fight them.

November 29, 2008July 17, 2023

Belle and the Beeb

With the departure of Isobel Campbell and a turn towards straight-forward power pop, Belle and Sebstian morphed into a new band earlier in the decade. This was not a totally unwelcome development, as the genre is desperately in need of a savior and the band’s “Dear Catastrophe Waitress” and “The Life Pursuit” were two of the best releases in recent years. And, yet, we lost a delightfully idiosyncratic voice in the old B&S. Matador Records reminds of of what was lost in their recent releases of Belle’s sloppy seconds (to paint a vulgar picture).

2006’s sprawling collection of odds and sods, “Push Barman To Open Old Wounds,” consisted of more highlights than some of the band’s official LPs and paved the way for their new collection of BBC sessions. Most bands take advantage of the Beeb’s generous compensation package to pad their numbers and add back-up session players. Belle and Sebastian, already known for the expansive sound of their rock-n-roll chamber music choose an oddly pared down sound on these tracks, as if to prove they could take their music out of the studio and on the road. The collection includes four songs from 2001 that mark the transition from their earlier twee period to the later power pop years. Alas, they are no great revelation.

“The BBC Sessions” comes packaged as a two-disc set, although a sticker on the cover warns that the second disc, a live Belfast concert recording from 2001, is a “limited edition.” In front of a live audience, the band seems to come alive in ways John Peel could only dream of. You’d feel pretty good too if you could get a stadium of fans to sing along about “a girl next door who’s famous for showing her chest.” Covers include the Beatles, Velvet Underground and local heroes Thin Lizzy, whose “The Boys Are Back In Town” is a clear highlight, but in Belfast that’s a bit like singing the “Star Spangled Banner” and being surprised that people stand and remove their caps.

November 8, 2008July 17, 2023

Musings From the Campaign Trail

I first noticed Barack Obama on the campaign trail for the New Hampshire primary. He annoyed the shit out of me. Granted, I was dispatched there by my union to campaign for Hillary Clinton. Neither of them would ever get my vote, but at least Hillary had a track record. You knew what you were getting with her. With Obama, a very eloquent and inspiring (to everyone but me) speaker, he was so vague that it seemed supporters projected onto him what they wanted to hear. After all, what does “Change” mean? Reagan was a change from Carter. Lenin was a change from the czar. The Good and Fruities with the jelly bean center were a change from the Good and Fruities with the licorice center.

Obama’s zombie teenage hordes of supporters really annoyed me. Were they excited about politics that looked like a Hollywood movie? It’s one thing to work like hell for his election once he was the Democratic nominee, but what made him so special in a pack of candidates who all essentially stood for the same issues? Was it that he had not been in politics long enough to disappoint yet?

Like any good organizer, I got competitive. I lustily counter-booed the Obama kids who made a fiasco out of the NH Dems’ annual dinner by booing Hillary during her speech and rushing the stage during Obama’s speech like there was a mosh pit up there or something. I’m not sure what that proved except that Obama’s campaign bought more tickets to the ball than the other candidates (and that Hillary should have followed John Edwards’ lead by boycotting the event). I cheerfully teased the inexperienced Obama canvassers and tore down every door hanger I found. (The rental agency where I returned the car must have been confused by the trunk full of Hillary lawn signs and the back seat full of crumpled Obama flyers.) Of course, Hillary won, forcing the protracted primary fight between her and Obama. She simply had the better ground operation (if I do say so myself).

After New Hampshire, I got a break from campaigning until the final two months of the general election. Up until the last minute, I expected the Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory as usual, and didn’t breath a sigh of relief until around 10:30 on Election night. In the final estimation, the Obama campaign was a modern marvel. It was an extraordinarily well-run campaign with almost no missteps or gaffes, that consistently put together a powerful ground operation, that really harnessed the power of the internet for spreading talking points, recruiting volunteers and, obviously, impressive fundraising.

The McCain campaign, on the other hand, was inept in ways that I thought were impossible in the modern political era. Like, aren’t Vice Presidential candidates supposed to undergo deep background searches? Shouldn’t a campaign worker check out “an average voter” before the candidate name checks him in a debate? In its own odd way, the McCain is an inspiration. The office politics and back-biting, the hare-brained schemes, poor communications and lousy marketing. This was a campaign staff that reminds all of us of the ridiculous offices where we have worked. Where the Obama campaign reinforces that hoary old notion that anyone can grow up to be President, the McCain campaign encourages us that truly anyone can run for President.

But this week belongs to the American people in a way that politics rarely does. If we had a real socialist movement in this country, the Obama campaign is what we would have called a real popular front-type of campaign. We were organizing across broad swaths of the public, from the center to the left, from the labor movement, to the pro-choice and civil rights movement to the peace movement to defeat the extreme reaction of the modern Republican party to elect our first black president. The spontaneous celebrations that broke out across the country and the very real and deserved pride of African-Americans is an inspiration. We are in a unique historical moment. Socialists should respect this moment, and we should respect Obama for what he currently represents, even if we suspect he will ultimately be a disappointment. We need a November 5th movement in this country to keep pressure on the President to pursue a more progressive agenda. But we should take care to be a loyal opposition for the time being.