You can watch the panel via zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83867387323?pwd=R7ViAhVP5pqLL7QbdjXaU5q1me9Ggf.1

CUNY SLU Capstone Research topic overview

Merle Ratner

What is my research question?

My first hypothesis for a research question was: How can the left labor movement (and left labor leaders) develop a strategy for the left labor movement and win more power for the working class in the current conjuncture?

After doing an initial round of reading and consulting with Bill Fletcher, Jr. I have concluded that, while this topic would be a great subject for a book, it is far too broad for a capstone that must be written in one academic term.

I am working on narrowing the subject matter within the area of left labor strategy.  Bill suggested two topics:

• Explaining and deconstructing the successful, class struggle labor strategy of the NY Taxi Workers Alliance and drawing lessons from their strategy for a broader left labor strategy.
• Starting with a fundamental text on class struggle unionism – William Z Foster’s American Trade Unionism – assessing current left labor strategies against this model and drawing lessons for the development of left labor strategy. (Bill points out that Jane McAlevey also points to Foster’s book as the motherlode of class struggle unionism.)

I am also considering a third option:

• Stephanie Luce and a partner have started working on a project about labor and the fight against the rising right in the US, particularly focusing on the development of new education curricula to strengthen the ability of the labor movement to play a stronger role in this struggle.  I could possibly, with the authors’ agreement, reorient my capstone to relate the overall theme of left labor strategy to anti-right/fascist politics and education.

I am also thinking about other options in discussion with key labor left practitioners, a process which should be completed in the next two weeks.

I have talked with the leadership of the NY Taxi Workers Alliance and, while they are enthusiastic about my proposal, they don’t believe that they have sufficient bandwidth in the spring to devote the necessary time to such a project.  

NY Taxi Workers Alliance Director Bhairavi Desai has committed to take part in a panel discussion of left strategy as part of my project, as has Bill Fletcher, Jr.

I have reached out to Stephanie Luce several times, but she is still out of the country without phone access. I will send her an email asking when we can talk…

I am in the process of reading William Z Foster's magnum opus to assess whether it is a useful basis for a capstone.

I am working on pulling together a list of possible panelists for whatever focus I land on.

What is at stake?

The working class, particularly its Back and Brown sectors, those located at the less secure sectors of the working class and female workers, is key to defeating the MAGA right and building a stronger national left in the US that can win at ever higher levels to win governing and later state power. (I know I need to define terms for the audience–just shorthanding here.)

It is key because it is located at key chokepoints of the point of production (of goods and services) and reproduction (caregiving and care labor.)  Putting it bluntly, labor has the power to make capitalism stop operations if it unites around left class-struggle politics and organizing.

Labor has become more active and militant, from the Fight for 15 to the Amazon and Starbucks struggles and in logistics and vehicle production with the election of more left leadership in the UAW and Teamsters. And new areas of the information economies are now being organized for the first time.

Labor is also (or has the capacity to become more of) a driver of public opinion among key sectors of the working class.  At a time when the struggle against the MAGA white supremacist right is at an existential level, strategy for left labor is similarly urgent as a way to focus and develop this struggle.

Yet labor is still mainly dominated by either business unionism (e.g. the construction unions) and various forms of semi-social movement organizing (e.g. SEIU.) What I will call class conscious militant labor organizations are still relatively few (they include United Electrical, Chicago Teachers Union, UTLA (LA) and the NY Taxi Workers Alliance.)

In order for labor to play its pivotal role in the long term struggle for socialism and the shorter range struggle to non-reformist reforms and to defeat the far right, there must be developed a strategy that sets goals long range, develops a current conjunctural analysis of the capitalist system and forces and conditions, at least as they impact the labor movement.  This strategy can play a key role in strengthening the left in the labor movement, strengthen left labor organizations and develop the unity necessary to move together on pivotal issues that can produce victories.

This capstone is intended to sketch out one or more possible strategies for left labor in relation to whatever focus I choose above.

Literature review of existing left labor strategies/strategy proposals.

A section of the paper defining what strategy is and detailing my approach to strategy.

A brief attempt to provide some initial strategy thoughts, particularly re conjunctural analysis, primary contradiction in this period, etc.

A roundtable discussion with selected left labor theorists and organizers to look briefly at the conjunctural analysis and to sketch out one or more strategies for this period in the labor movement.

Write up or publish the videos of the roundtable(s)

Add a concluding section proposing what should be done next to implement recommendations.

Methodology section.

Rough initial bibliography

John Womack Jr. • Edited by Peter Olney and Glenn Perušek, Labor Power and Strategy

“In this fascinating and insightful dialogue, the distinguished historian John Womack and a set of veteran labor activists probe the most fundamental of questions: How do we organize the twenty-first-century working class and give it the power to transform world capitalism? Are workers with vital skills and strategic leverage the key to a labor resurgence, or should organizers wager upon a mobilization of working people whose relationship to the economy’s commanding heights is more diffuse? Or can we arrive at some dialectical symbiosis? Whatever the answer, this is the kind of constructively radical conversation essential to the rebirth of working-class power in our time."

Jason Koslowski, A Critique of the Rank-and-File Strategy

Bill Fletcher Jr. Jane McAlevey Peter Olney Stephanie Luce, A Good Day in Our Movement: Organizers Debate in ‘Labor Power and Strategy

Hamilton Nolan, A New Idea for New Union Organizing

Kim Moody, a Solidarity Working Paper (2000)

D.W. Livingstone, Class Leaders and ‘Tipping Point for Advanced Capitalism’

Joe Burns, Class Struggle Unionism

FRSO, Class Struggle on the Shop Floor – A Strategy for a New Generation of Socialists in the US

Jacobin/Center for Working Class Politics, Commonsense Solidarity – How a Working Class Coalition Can be Built and Maintained

Jane McAlevey, Everything Old Is New Again – Rebuilding the labor movement will take organizing, not just mobilizing

Jane McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy (no link)

Jane McAlevey, Rules To Win By: Power and Participation in Union Negotiations, (no link)

Bob Master, Hard Truths and Good Signs for Labor’s Role in Defending Democracy

Unpublished, Labor Movement Ecosystem Assessment

Unknown author, Notes on Class Struggle Unionism under Biden

William Z Foster, Organized Labor Faces the New World

William Z Foster, American Trade Unionism, Principles and Organization, Strategy and Tactics,  https://archive.org/details/americantradeunionism

William Z Foster, Trade Unions in America

Avery Wear, Syndicalism’s Legacy and Left Labor Strategy Today

Spectre Journal: Rank and File Strategy Series: [tba]

Bill Fletcher Jr., Toward the Development of Left Labor Strategy

Bill Fletcher Jr. and Fernando Gapasin, Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice, A new direction for labor by two of its leading activist intellectuals, (no link)

Tim Goulet, Unions and the rank and file strategy, Socialists in the labor movement

Joe Allen, What Happened to the Left in the U.S. Labor Movement?