In spite of negotiations, a railroad strike remains possible. As feminists, we must support it.
By: Norah Valderrama
In the early hours of Sept. 15, the possibility of a nationwide railroad strike loomed over the United States. Rail companies, in preparation for such a tempestuous event, began to act accordingly. Trips were canceled, long-distance lines closed, and prices hiked. Agriculture, completely dependent on freight, also began to brace for impact.
One day later, however, the strike had been officially called off. The unions and management walked out of the negotiating room, hand in hand, smiling with delight. In the late hours of the night, Biden and the Democrats popped-open a bottle of luxury French wine, each bubble a trembling sigh of relief. Meanwhile, the railroad workers looked on from the sidelines. From every worker's home, a common sentiment echoed: The strike is still on! Hands become anxiously ready to let their voice be heard. With each passing day, a negative vote on the deal across the unions becomes more likely — and with it, the renewed possibility of a strike.
Before all else, the glaring dissonance between the will of the unions and that of the workers they claim to represent must be properly examined. As common sense has it, the role of the union is one and one alone: to protect, defend, and advance the interests of the workers it represents. Certainly, the 19th century unions which first sprung up in response to the harrowing conditions in European and American factories followed said mantra.
Nevertheless, especially with the increasingly better working conditions found across the developed countries, unions in general have tended towards the opposite direction — their spirit, consumed by mediocrity, careerism, and opportunism, became fundamentally reactionary. Their leadership, whether well-intentioned or not, became myopic. For them, there is nothing except their most immediate goals — and of course, said goals must be watered down to ensure the approval of management!
This is exactly what happened on September 15th. After a week of negotiations between the unions — representing about 115,000 workers — and management, including a lengthy call with President Biden himself, a tentative deal was reached. Described by CNNBusiness as a rotund success for "workers, railroads, and the economy" — not to mention, for a nail-bittingly nervous Democratic party soon to face the Midterms — it includes an immediate 14.1% wage rise, some unpaid sick days, and other minor benefits. Nevertheless, the main grievances — that is, a lack of contracts, scheduling, and fairness (railroad workers are on call 24/7, often unable to see family for months, and labor under a strict policy of zero sick days, paid or unpaid) — remain fundamentally unaddressed.
For Biden, the deal represented a new way of doing things. In his own words, it showed that "unions and management can work together for the benefit of everyone," further expressing optimism for similar action in the future.[1] For the workers, however, this deal is merely an embellishment of the same old melody. Thus far, only two unions — representing around 10% of the affected labor force — have ratified the agreement. For the rest, trouble lies ahead. As Reuters reports, two other unions in particular, representing about 60,000 workers, will have to fight an uphill battle to ensure their constituency agrees to the terms of the deal. Among their workers, dissent — and principally, anger — abounds.
The scenario unfolding before us reignites a centuries-old debate: is the union revolutionary? And if so, is it enough? The truth is more nuanced than a simple yes or no. As explained — and proven! — above, modern unions have become increasingly distanced from the working class nucleus from which they first arose. Today, full of incorrect leadership holding erroneous — if not downright damaging — lines, they have largely sided with incrementalist 'progress.' In doing so, they have left behind the Red Line: the heightening of tensions, growth of the popular protest, and struggle for the mass organization of a new type.[2]
The reasons for siding with incremental reform are crystal clear: leading a union, a legal activist organization, or any other 'movement' with ties to the old state has become a lucrative career — a decent living which guarantees a comfortable, upper-class, aristocratic existence. See, for instance, Dennis Pierce,[3] President of the Brotherhood Of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, who earns a gross income of $304,324 a year.[4] To the average petty-bourgeois opportunist, such future prospects are infinitely more appetizing than the Red alternative: to live under constant threat and surveillance, reviled by the "respectable" academics and intellectuals, smeared as nothing but, at best, a malicious disruptor — in short, to become an enemy of the ruling classes.
But is the general 'progress' brought upon by these types and their 'leadership' not 'good enough'? What is the harm in supporting incrementalist measures "in the meantime?" Mariátegui explains:
"It is necessary to give the vanguardist proletariat not only a realistic sense of history, but also, a heroic will of creativity and action. Neither the wish of bettering nor the hunger for welfare are enough. The [historical] defeats and failures of the European proletariat has its origin in the mediocre positivism used by the cowardly union bureaucrats and bland parliamentarians to cultivate a sanchopanzist [5] mentality and a lazy spirit in the workers. A proletariat without any ideals beyond higher wages and less hours will never be capable of great historical enterprise."[6]
And just like the cowardly union bureaucrats and bland parliamentarians of yore, the worker-selling unions and spavined state administrators of today have pushed the workers — whom they claim to represent so dearly! — towards the same dead end.
Nevertheless, there are some things to keep in mind. Firstly, the above is not to say that tensions between the left-unions and the old state do not exist. Union-Busting is still alive and well, even against relatively moderate unionizing efforts. See, for example, Starbucks' aggressive actions in response to the recent efforts to unionize amongst its workers — most of whom are well-intentioned, or at the very least, not seeking a career as a bourgeois activist. As everything, this is yet another contradiction contained within the realities of the modern union and the political landscape it operates under. How these contradictions will resolve in the future — that is, whether any of the left-unions will adopt (or are adopting!) the Red Line, or whether they will become reactionary and in service of the exploiting classes — is to be seen. There upon lies an urgent task.
Secondly, none of what has been said implies that collaborationist right-unions, no matter how reactionary, lack any concrete usefulness. Such ultra-leftist positions are not only childish — they're wrong. As Lenin argues:
"To refuse to work in the reactionary trade unions means leaving the insufficiently developed or backward masses of workers under the influence of the reactionary leaders, the agents of the bourgeoisie, the labor aristocrats, or “workers who have become completely bourgeois”[7]... 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."[8]
Only one question, brought up by this article's title — not to mention, its publication in Spare Rib, a feminist magazine — remains unaddressed: Where do the feminists fall into all of this?
Feminists are wrongly characterized as concerning ourselves only with the terrain of female emancipation. It is true that feminism, definitionally, is the ideology and political programme for the liberation of the female sex-class through the end of sexism. Nevertheless, such ideology and programme on its own becomes hollow and misdirected. That is, feminism cannot stand by itself. To be a feminist, one must also be an anti-capitalist — more precisely, one must be a socialist.[9][10] Why? Because all currently-existing oppressions have their genesis in the existence of class. Women's oppression cannot be understood in abstract — otherwise, one is destined to fall into one-sidedness and superficiality.[11]
How can one possibly understand why women are still confined to the domestic sphere in much of the world without understanding the mechanisms of capital accumulation and capitalist production? How can one comprehend the subservient role of women in ancient societies without understanding the consolidation of private property and its impacts on primitive agriculture and social organization? How can one grasp the cultural oppression still experienced by women in developed countries without understanding how culture is merely a reflection of people's relationships to production?
This article is not an attempt to explain this historical relationship. Much has been written on the subject,[12] and to delve into it would distract from the matter at hand. Rather, it is an attempt to underline the clear reason why all feminists must support a railroad strike: because we musn't think of them as separate, independent struggles. The success of the railroad workers would also represent a great leap in possibilities for the feminist movement — that is, for the mass movement across the United States as a whole. Any growth in consciousness opens up the possibility for greater consciousness across all areas of social struggle. And in struggle, organizations of the new type are forged. The germs of shining futures sprout from every corner of the country.
We must not think of these matters in inactive terms. Nothing is guaranteed. There is no inevitable destiny. The linkage between the struggles of workers and women — united by their common genesis, ab ovo [13] — will not be apparent in the mass movement, much less in the popular consciousness, unless the feminists become active participants in said movement. Isolation and complacency only play into the hands of the enemy. For all of us who call ourselves feminists, incorporation into the growing movement, into the masses and their struggles, is the first step in the long historic task ahead. May we let our actions speak for themselves.
***
October 18th, 2022.
Almost a month after this article was first drafted, some new developments have transpired. The Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes, the third largest rail union in the nation, has rejected Biden's tentative agreement, as anticipated. This has put many bourgeois analysts on edge, and a strike once more appears to rise over the horizon. The two largest unions, which have yet to vote, will be the deciding factor. Within the rank-and-file, conversations of defying protocol and initiating a strike, even without the vote, continue to grow. The popular protest threatens to overflow. The bourgeoisie shiver and tremble. All across the nation, the railroad workers now realize they hold political power in their hardened, laborious hands.
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1. The late George Jackson, holding high a fist of futures, would observe: "if one were forced for the sake of clarity to define [fascism] in a word simple enough for all to understand, that word would be ‘reform.’"
2. The Red Union is, in essence, a front in service of the masses, under the close leadership and direction of the mass organization of a new type.
3. Mr. Pierce himself did not come from a particularly academic, petty-bourgeois background, having risen through the rank-and-file towards his current position in the union. Nevertheless, that fact does not erase his current reality as a labor-aristocrat [see 7.], and as such, as someone whose interests now align with the dominant classes.
4. This figure puts Mr. Pierce squarely in the 96th income percentile for all Americans. It would be unnecessary to mention this, save for the fact that Ivy Leaguers tend to have highly skewed perceptions of wealth and income.
5. Referencing Sancho Panza from Cervantes' Quixote: the realist, yet mediocre so-called "voice of reason."
6. José C. Mariátegui. (1917). "Message to the Workers' Congress." Translated from the original Spanish text.
7. Quoting 1858 correspondence between Engels and Marx, concerning the social position occupied by British workers
8. V.I. Lenin. (1920). Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder. "Should Revolutionaries Work in Reactionary Trade Unions?"
9. This distinction should be unnecessary, but thanks to the way in which "anti-capitalist" has been appropriated by liberal academics and those seeking to introduce bourgeois elements into genuine socialism, it must be made.
10. And, in the same vein, to be a genuine socialist, one must be a feminist.
11. For all of their brilliance and clairvoyance, this is the principal fault of the old-guard of American radical feminists. In placing the struggle between sexes as the motor of history, they have ignored the larger struggle that moves it: the struggle between classes.
12. For a concise explanation of how sex-based oppression has developed throughout history, See "The Principles of Feminism," published in the Summer edition.
13. From the very beginning, literally "from the egg."
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