Printed below is an excerpt from the "Afterword" of Teamster Bureaucracy by Farrell Dobbs, one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for September. Copyright © 1977 by Pathfinder Press, reprinted by permission. Subheadings are by the Militant.

BY FARRELL DOBBS  
Basic to a rise in the workers’ class consciousness is understanding that a fundamental change must take place in the role of the trade unions, which constitute the existing form of mass organization among the workers in this country. These broad instruments of struggle must be turned away from reliance upon so-called friends among the capitalist politicians. They must break off the self-defeating collaboration with the bosses’ government, that has been imposed by bureaucratic misleaders.

The unions must be transformed into mechanisms for independent and militant action by the workers all along the line. Restrictions on the right to strike must be vigorously opposed and freedom to exercise that right firmly asserted. Internal union democracy must be established so that all questions can be decided on the basis of majority rule. Then, and only then, will organized labor manage to bring its full weight to bear in confrontations with the employers at the industrial level.

Whenever conflicts of significant magnitude erupt within industry today, the government intervenes on the employers’ side; and this interference is bound to intensify as capitalist decay gets worse. From this it follows that trade union action alone will prove less and less capable of resolving the workers’ problems, even on a limited basis. Objectively, industrial conflicts will assume more and more a political character, and even the most powerfully organized workers will be faced with an increasingly urgent need to act on the new and higher plane of politics.

Therefore, efforts to build an effective left wing in the trade unions will run into insurmountable obstacles unless the workers move toward resolving the problem of political action. A vigorous campaign must be conducted to break the labor movement from subordination to capitalist politics and to launch an independent labor political organization. This campaign will have to focus initially on educational propaganda for a change in labor’s political course, but it should not be conducted in an abstract, routine manner. Ample opportunity will be found to concretize the propaganda by drawing the lessons of setbacks caused by the misuse of labor’s inherent political strength. This can lay the basis for an advance, as soon as it becomes realistic, to an agitational campaign designed to convince the ranks of the urgency of forming a labor party.

In the process of creating their own mass party, based upon and controlled by the trade unions, the organized workers can draw unorganized, unemployed, and undocumented sections of their class into a broad political alliance. Labor will then be in a position to act both in a more unified manner and through advanced forms of struggle.  
 
Political demands on the capitalists
The workers will learn to generalize their needs, as a class, and to address their demands on a political basis to the capitalists, as a class. Political confrontation of that kind--for example, the nationalization of a given industry under workers’ control--will raise labor action as a whole to a higher plane and at the same time impart new vigor to the continuing trade union struggles. Increased militancy within industry will serve, in turn, to reinforce activity in the political sphere. In that way interacting processes will develop through which the workers will attain greater class consciousness, more complete solidarity, and, hence, mounting ability to outfight the bosses.

Before unity of the exploited masses can be attained, however, still another of organized labor’s existing policies must be thoroughly reversed. The labor movement must champion and give unqualified support to the demands of the Blacks, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Indians, and other oppressed national minorities, and of women and youth.

As Leon Trotsky insisted in discussions during the 1930s, the American workers must learn to act politically and to think socially if they are to attain the class consciousness and solidarity needed to defeat the exploiters. This is the opposite of the narrow class-collaborationist course pursued by the labor bureaucracy and the privileged layers they reflect. Thus, as a matter of principle, the trade union movement must use its power to actively fight for such progressive demands as affirmative action programs against racial and sexual discrimination on the job, in the union, in hiring, housing, health care, and education; the right to abortion and child care; busing and bilingual, bicultural education; the right to a free college education for all youth.

If unconditional backing of that kind is given, the labor movement will be helping itself in a double sense. The strengthening of anticapitalist struggles on other fronts will make it harder for the employing class to concentrate its fire on the trade unions. The greater the scope of mass confrontations with the bosses’ government, the more effectively will labor be able to involve its natural allies in the development of independent political action on a massive scale. This was true in the 1930s and it is even truer today, when women, oppressed nationalities, and workers under twenty have become the majority of the American work force and a substantial component of the union movement....

History shows that, as mass resistance to the capitalist exploiters grows, they will supplement the government’s repressive role with extralegal forms of attack on those in rebellion. Some aspects of that trend have already become a familiar part of industrial and social struggles in this country: use of hired thugs and vigilantes against strikers, for instance, and of Ku Klux Klan-type terrorism against oppressed nationalities. Those are only forerunners of even harsher measures to come as the social crisis gets more acute. The most diabolical of the extralegal onslaughts will take the form of a fascist movement--heavily financed by monopoly capital--which will try to smash the trade unions and other protective organizations of the oppressed masses.

In looking for means of defense against such assaults, it would be fatal to rely on the bosses’ government, no matter how liberal its face. Capitalist politicians in public office are themselves tools of the ruling class, which instigates the legal and extralegal violence used to keep the masses in line.

Therefore, these Democrats and Republicans will do nothing effective that cuts across the needs of their masters, which means they can be expected to shield and abet the repressive forces--surreptitiously, if not openly.

If those who become targets of capitalist violence are to protect themselves, they must prepare for self-defense, as required at each new stage of the class struggle. It is the duty of the trade unions, especially, to show initiative in this respect, and all potential victims of extralegal attacks should be drawn into a united defense movement on the broadest possible scale.

At every juncture in the unfolding social conflicts, the workers and their allies need guidance from a revolutionary socialist party. That is the reason for the existence of the Socialist Workers Party. Its scientific analysis of the class struggle provides in fullest measure the political consciousness and program that the anticapitalist movement must have. Therefore, it is uniquely qualified to shape the basic proposals, broad strategy, and tactical steps required for the most effective mass action.

In the course of events, increasing numbers of militants who come to recognize those facts will be ready to join in building such a party on an expanding scale, as they did in Minneapolis during the 1930s. As members of the revolutionary party, they will learn fundamentals involved in the fight against capitalist exploitation as well as lessons of past class struggles on a world-historical scale. Through that education they will become better equipped to apply valid principles in today’s conflicts. Their capacity will become enhanced to exert helpful influence within the broad mass movement in ways that will add to its efficiency in action, to its prospects for ultimate victory.

Such growth in the numerical strength and influential role of the revolutionary socialist party is, in the last analysis, decisive for the acquisition of supreme power in the United States by the workers and their allies; for only that kind of politically advanced formation, geared for combat in a scientific way, can lead the masses successfully in defeating the capitalists and their repressive apparatus.

It will then be possible to assume governmental power through assertion of majority rule, after which economic and social relations can be reorganized on a rational basis. An enlightened society can be constructed along socialist lines, in which there will be peace, freedom, equality, and security for all.

As the Teamster story demonstrates, the principal lesson for labor militants to derive from the Minneapolis experience is not that, under an adverse relationship of forces, the workers can be overcome; but that, with proper leadership, they can overcome.  
 
 
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