Flint's Revolutionary Traditions-1936-37: The Way To Win Today

Corporate America is on the offensive on all fronts. Abroad (Iraq plus) they are militarily trying to seize all the oil, gas and wealth they can and to expand the bases they already have in 85 countries. Their aim is to destroy their rivals and keep down the international working class. US working people who are economically conscripted into the armed forces are being sacrificed to this offensive. So are the economic living standards of US working people as half the US tax income is spent on the US military.

Here at home the US corporations and their profit addicted capitalist system are on the offensive against their own working class, which they see as the main enemy. Their aim is, as Bush and his cronies have said, is to take back all the gains working people won in the 1930's and the 1960's. The owners of the corporations are serious about this. They intend to take the US working class back to the conditions of the early 1930's.

The task facing the US and world working class is to halt and throw back this capitalist offensive and to open up a new working class offensive of our own. Our task is to change the world balance of forces in our favor and from this, move forward to change the world's economy to where it is owned and controlled by us and in our interests.

The corporate offensive will face enormous convulsions and struggles of the international working class. Of this there can be no doubt. Here in the US the working class will fight. However, the most important issue is; will we win. To have the best chance of winning we need to have more than just some general rhetoric, just some talk about a general alliance or just some protests. We need to build a new working class movement with new consciousness and a new layer of fighters in the leadership.

Wages, conditions, health care, the environment, rents, mortgages, civil rights, democratic rights; the corporate offensive is present on all fronts. The task is to identify these attacks on all these fronts and then to explain that they are part of the corporate offensive, part of the offensive of the US capitalist system. The task is to explain that the day-to-day increased hardships of life are caused by the increased offensive of capitalism and its corrupt system. The task is to help people think in terms of the system of capitalism and how it is the source of the problem and how it must be replaced. The task is to help peoples' consciousness change, help people to think more in terms of the system itself and how the capitalist class rules and is responsible for the running of the system. The task is to help people to think more in class terms.

But we cannot just start there and leave it there. We cannot just talk and make speeches or even organize protests. We have to start by taking up where the corporate offensive hits people's lives and we have to organize to prevent
these attacks being successful. We have to fight. We activists have to show we are able and prepared to fight effectively. Where people are being fired, where people are being evicted, where people are being denied health care, where environments are being destroyed and so on, we must stop thinking that at best we can protest these attacks. We must break from the protest or complaining way of thinking. We must organize on the basis of defeating these attacks. That is organizing on the basis of a "direct action fight to win strategy."

What does this mean? People being fired, people being evicted, and the environment being destroyed. Corporations and people make the decisions to make these things happen. These corporations and these people have to be identified and it has to be explained that they are organizing this offensive. From this, tactics have to
be worked out, not to protest but to stop these attacks. Not to protest, but to disrupt, not to protest but to halt.

For example: Delphi has people in management, they have a CEO and they have shareholders. These people and where they live can be easily identified. They can then be exposed by going to where they live, to the clubs and restaurants they frequent, to the gas stations and stores they shop in, to the Unions which supply workers to keep their power and water and sewage and garbage systems going. We can also go to the churches they attend, and at all these it can be explained that these people are making decisions that are destroying peoples lives. And the call can be made for the total boycott of all these people. Do not serve them or converse with them in any way. This is not too hard to do. Identify and put the pressure on the human element of Delphi's corporate structural power.

It is in the plant and workplace where the real power of the working class is concentrated. Successful action can also be organized there. The main problem at this moment is that there is not yet a complete conviction that things
are as bad as they are and there is still a belief among many workers that in some way the union leadership will get some sort of a deal which will not be as bad as it has been predicted and which most workers will be able to live with. Or if there is not this belief there is the feeling that nothing can be done.

I believe that the main task for activists and the Soldiers of Solidarity in particular is the building of in-plant committees based on the "direct action fight to win" strategy. This strategy can take the form of work to rule or sit
in which ever seems best. But outside walking the picket lines should be seen as a very weak tactic. The building of the in-plant committees can be linked up with in-plant committees in other parts of the country, in other countries and throughout the auto and auto supply industry as a whole and internationally. The international link up of in-plant committees and opposition committees in the union locals can be the network, which can lead the successful "direct action fight to win" struggle worldwide.

These task of these in-plant committees would be to explain to the workers in the plant the need to be ready for, to prepare for, the all out struggle. This would be done through meetings, discussions, flyers, and small preparatory actions, taking into account the degree of repression in the plant and the balance of forces. The example and
lessons and revolutionary tradition of Flint 1936/37 should be discussed and understood by all the workers in the plants and the entire working class population in the area. The task of the in-plant committees should also be to organize the work to rule or the sit in which ever was decided upon. It would be to explain that just as in 1936/37, it was the movement from below of the rank and file worker organized in rank and file committees that beat the bosses and built the unions and won the wages and benefits which are now threatened. The rank and file worker can lead the struggle again today.

This "direct action fight to win" strategy is also the way forward in other areas where the corporate offensive is striking. Recently more than 200 families in Alameda California were told their section 8 vouchers would be withdrawn. They were threatened with homelessness. They organized with the help of other activists, occupied the Mayors office, went to her home and neighborhood and disrupted the 4th of July parade and other disruptive actions. They made clear they were not going to accept being kicked out of their homes. The head of the local hosing authority went to the federal government and suddenly "found" almost one million dollars and the section 8 vouchers were continued and 200 families continue to have a home.

Every struggle such as this, every "direct action fight to win" struggle, gives new experiences to new workers and activists. It builds new fighting leaderships. The task is to link these together. To link together all these struggles and "direct action fight to win" committees in the workplace and in the neighborhoods. This is what happened in the early 1930's when from 1929 to 1933 the working class went through one terrible defeat after another but within this the unemployed committees and housing committees and workplace committees were fighting back, and in this way new fighters were emerging, learning lessons, drawing conclusions and moving increasingly to "direct action fight to win" tactics.

This led to increasing numbers of workers being trained in struggle and drawing the conclusion that corporate control of their lives and the capitalist system had to go. In 1934 the great mass general strikes and citywide uprisings of Minneapolis, Toledo and San Francisco broke the back of the corporate offensive. It opened the road to the split in the leadership of the AFL, the formation of the CIO and the gains of the 1930's. This great movement of the US working class was led by these activists. Many of them were members of one anti capitalist organization or another. Our "direct action fight to win" tactics of today can similarly build a new layer of anti capitalist activists and open up the road for a new offensive of working people.

Of course we need to draw another lesson from the 1930's. While we made all these gains, capitalism still ruled, the corporations were still privately owned; profit was still the dominating force in society. So now we are faced with losing what we won in the 1930's. As long as the privately owned corporations run society, working people will always only be sources of profit for them. Our "fight to win direct action" tactics must lead to the building of a new worker's movement, which would include a new fighting union movement, a new workers political party which would fight to take the major corporations into public ownership and run them under workers management and control. This way we could end the rule of the corporations and their corrupt capitalist system and make possible a new world based on the needs of all and a democratic and sustainable economic system.