Rev Left Radio - Vote No: UPS Struggle and Marxist Labor Organizing

Episode Date: August 22, 2023

Former Revolutionary Marxist Students, Audrey and Lenni, discuss their recent article on the Teamsters Mobilize Vote No campaign, the ways in which the Tentative Agreement and the Teamsters for a Democratic Union leadership betrays UPS workers and the entire working class, how opportunists misguide the workers in their struggle against their oppressors, and what the tasks of Marxist in the labor movement are today.   Find the article here: https://cosmonautmag.com/2023/08/the-ups-struggle-and-the-tasks-of-marxists-in-the-labor-movement/   Contact Audrey and Lenni by emailing them at: [e-mail]; [e-mail]   Check out Revolutionary Marxist Student's journal: https://marxiststudents.wordpress.com/red-horizon/   Read William Z. Foster's From Bryan to Stalin: https://www.bannedthought.net/USA/CPUSA/WZFoster/WZFoster-FromBryanToStalin-1937-OCR-sm1.pdf   Listen to Space Baby's "Vote No": https://open.spotify.com/album/1FNUwy7li7s6uiIEVyJmFC?si=JRSFH4FFQNmsKV8hvfYQWA

Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Which side are you on? United parcel service just takes and never gives The wage for all our work is not near enough to live in Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Which side are you on, which side are you on? Come all you PS teamsters, come whether young or old. It's time to join the struggle to vote down and be bold.

Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Oh, workers, can you stand it? Oh, won't you tell me. Now will you take this lousy deal or will you vote it down? Which side are you on?

Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Our union leaders said they wouldn't be the same but they worked with Biden and Tome deceived us with their games. Which side are you on? Which side are you on?

Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Three billion profits where does that come from? The boss of the CEO, make that lump sum. We're no dumb, dumb, city dumb. The workers in the warehouse make the money run. All the truck drivers in the heat are cold. Beat the heater, beat the stove.

The truck's burning up, no AC in the vehicle. Do you stand with your class? Their folk don't, folk know, don't let the moment pass. The work is right, right, right? We've learned from a history. We win through a struggle. We don't win from the sympathy. The same goals for the union sell out.

John Bryan, get the hell out. Fight and make you bail out. With leadership on a leash by UPS, the government of black rock thieves. We got a world to win. United, we are strong. Which side are you on? Yeah. Which side are you on?

Which side are you on? Vote No is a proletarian anthem, supporting the Teamsters brave enough to speak out against the sellout contract. It features two UPS workers who are tired of crushing UPS wages, pitiful UPS conditions, and sellout union leadership. It doesn't pull any punches in the struggle against those representing bourgeois interests, including the UPS shareholders, the corrupt Teamster leadership, and the Biden administration. We are in dire need of artists integrating with mass struggles to produce proletarian music and art. So, artists and workers, ask yourself, which side of our class struggle are you on?

You can find the song on any music platform under Space Baby Vote No. But let's go ahead. Today we have a really special episode. I'm really honored to be speaking with Audrey and Lenny tonight. We're going to be talking about, hey, they just had this incredible article that really spells out the left and the right opportunisms within the labor movement within this particular Teamsters fight, really like who the various class forces are within this particular struggle, why this is a complete betrayal and sellout of the UPS workers, and it's also

a betrayal of the working class in general, right? I'm not a UPS workers, but this fight that you all have laid out in this article is also my fight as well. And so you'll just do an incredible job. I'm really laying out really important questions. And also, at the very end, we want to spend a little bit time talking about really important concepts that we've gleaned from history, particularly the communists who were really active in the labor movement in the 1920s and 30s. But not to jump ahead. Let's go ahead and start from the beginning. Audrey and Lini, can you all go ahead and introduce yourselves? Tell us a little bit about who you are, where you're at in the UPS, and what you all have been up to.

Hi, I'm Lenny. I'm a part-timer at EPS Teamster at kind of as this contract struggle was heating up by an involved in a group called Teamsters Mobilize. They originated being a part-time organization, part-time or based organization, and they launched about no campaign after this contract was released. And I and Audrey got intimately involved with that. And I'm glad to be here talking about this article. And trying to engage in some pretty vibrant debate that should be happening right now about the position that Marxists or people who think that revolution makes sense to take in this moment in this particular contract struggle. And in general, you know, what should be the line of revolutionaries in the labor movement? My name is Audrey. I'm also a part-time UPS worker. also part of Teamsters Mobilize, as Lenny mentioned. And we both were previously involved with revolutionary Marxist students, RMS,

which is what it sounds like, a revolutionary Marxist student group, which takes seriously the study of Marxist theory, and then putting that actually into practice in organizing in student struggles, but also more broadly. And so Lenny and I have taken our study of Marxism, and particularly Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, to apply to our involvement in the labor movement. So, yeah, very excited to talk about these things today. Yeah, and RMS is an incredible student organization. I actually had the privilege of, that was my last interview with some of your old comrades over at RMS.

and actually politics and command did a phenomenal interview with them it's like it's like almost like twice as long i really encourage folks if you haven't checked out the work of revolutionary marks of students or those two episodes again on politics and command on mass struggle those comrades are really sharp so let's go ahead and move forward a little bit i want to talk a little bit about just like the general situation that we're in before we dive into the uPS fight what are some of the various factors that make the present moment a potential inflection point, right, a turning point here in the United States labor movement? Yes, there's a couple things, you know. There's been a relative uptick in labor activity.

We're still talking relatively low, but it is an uptick in unionization efforts, you know, Starbucks and Amazon campaign and restaurant workers. There's a lot of concentration of it amongst service workers, especially. that's going on right now. And then, you know, there is some strike activity going on, although at a low level. You see that with the riders. You see that with Starbucks workers. You see that with the teachers across the country nurses as well. On top of that, the situation in this country overall, the economy, with our ability to pay for quality of life, that's worsening year by year, but particularly in the past six months, it's just like waiting for the frickin' shoe to drop at this point. So there is a bit of restlessness that's building up

amongst people. And then within this past year, we're seeing these major contracts that are taking place. Railroad in the fall, UPS, which just happened, and the contract struggle we're in right now. You got the auto workers in the coming months. So there's a lot of a lot of eyes on on what's going on with these major contract struggles and these, you know, what would have been potential strikes. So for that reason, you know, it just puts into context like a little bit, the UPS contract in light of the overall society and some of the activity going on in the overall society. Yeah, I think something else worth mentioning here is the escalating conflict and contradiction between China and the United States, right?

The U.S. right now is trying to get its act together before waging a full-on war in these, you know, in the next, I think it's said, like, by 2025 to 2032, that's what I think the capitalist class has kind of put forth, is we need to get our productive forces together where we can actually defend ourselves a little bit from China. And so the U.S. capitalist class is trying to friend shore a lot of production. They're pulling a lot of production back. And they're bringing it to the most. unorganized and low-wage places like the South. You know, I live in North Carolina. We have less than 3% of the workforce is organized. So I think that's also something really interesting is that the United States knows that it can't defeat China economically, which has just played a very long game at undermining U.S. imperialism economically. And, you know, these two imperialist powers are vying for the entire world market. But the U.S. is going to invest heavily. into defense production. So I also think that is a pretty big aspect of what's happening in the present Union movement.

Yeah, I think as we see, like you mentioned, production being brought back to the U.S. and then also like Frenchoring in countries that the U.S. ruling class feels it's able to, you know, better control and rely on in interimperos conflict with China. I mean, what happens in the labor movement right now in the coming years is very important. And, I mean, we're going to get into this a bit later. But, you know, Biden recently said that all these industrial jobs coming back to the U.S. are going to be union jobs. So the capitalist class is going to want labor leaders who can keep a cap and squash class struggle.

Yeah, I agree. I think that context is very important in terms of this larger situation we find ourselves. in this struggle and in kind of understanding what is actually going on with why Sean O'Brien and the rest of leadership work to really, I mean, crush UPS workers' struggle in these contract negotiations. Yeah, thank you, Audrey. I think that really helps connect those pieces for us. So let's talk about the UPS Teamsters fight.

Can you give us a little bit of the context of this whole tentative agreement before we really get into the particular ways in which this tentative agreement? as you all spell out in the article is a sellout. It betrays the interests of the workers. Let's start off with really who the teams are and who's Sean O'Brien. How do we get to this whole tentative agreement, which was supposed to be a strike? Yeah, so I think even before that, I'll just say a few things about UPS. I mean, my guess is probably people have been seeing all the articles, breaking down some of the basic facts.

You know, UPS is obviously a major player in the U.S. and global economy. 6% of the U.S. GDP goes through UPS. And, you know, there was a possibility of us going on strike. And it would have been a major strike of 340,000 UPS Teamsters. Not all UPS workers are in the Teamsters, but there's 340,000 of us that are part of the Teamsters. There hasn't been a strike at UPS. since 1997. And a strike of this scale would have been, would have been a big thing. For some

overall context for UPS, I mean, UPS made huge windfall profits during the pandemic. You know, when kind of online shopping really skyrocketed. It was very, very hard for UPS workers. And the workforce is, you know, people generally have seen UPS package car drivers in the brown uniforms. There's also the feeder drivers who drive the trailers. And then there's also the inside workers, the vast majority of whom are part-time. So working in the warehouses, you know, moving the packages, unloading the trucks, loading the trucks, sorting the packages. And the part-timers, you know, and Lenny and I are both part-timers, make up about 60% of the workforce. So yeah, that's just a little bit of general background about UPS for anyone who

may not know, but maybe Lenny now could talk, okay, so what actually, what is the Teamsters Union, you know, what's some of the history of it and how did we get where we are? Yeah, for sure. The Teamsters, they're one of the largest unions in this country, representing, for the most part, logistics workers. Now, in order to understand this contract struggle and the current leadership of our union, I think it's important to just have like a little bit of background on this union and the leadership in the prior decades. The prior leadership was for the most part for a lot of decades under Hafa and Hafa Jr. That probably rings for a million to a lot of people. They were and, you know, a lot of the layers of leadership on the local levels that

stood for their regime were the more overtly reactionary kind of labor leaders, no sheet about it, nothing liberal about it, the types to just use the local funds as their personal piggy bank. Now, a lot of those contracts under those guys for UPS and a lot of other companies in the logistics industries and other industries under the Teamsters were just pretty overtly concessionary. As a result of that, there was a lot of opposition to these contracts. Despite the push for the vote no in 2018, which was successful in winning a majority, the effort got stomped out and the contract was pushed on to UPS workers. So there was a lot of outrage at that.

And Sean and Ryan, who's our current general president, for the most part, rode that wave of opposition into his current position. And he wrote it based off of this idea that he was going to be this new militant, kind of distinctly different from Hafe regime, wearing this progressive facade, promoting internal organizing. saying that he was going to win a strong contract for UPS and really from the get-go promising that and already making these claims of the need to strike and a strike threat. And so that was the situation that since he got elected in 2021 that UPSers were dealing with.

They were seeing this guy who came to power who was seemingly promising them that this. this union was really going to act as a fighting force and that in the UPS contract in specific there was going to be no concessions absolutely zero and that the membership would be the ones to decide they'd be the determining force in this and that we'd kick this company's ass and take him to the streets that's the kind of talk that we were really being exposed to and as it would turn out a lot of that was shown it was performance it was a a W.W.E. performance. We saw the theatrics play out. We saw it play out in negotiating table. These words of fighting the company, of really sticking it to them, this, done, the other.

At the end of the day, you know, even throughout the process of negotiations, but at the end of the day, when it came down to the contract and seeing that highlight page, it became overtly clear to many people that a lot of what was going on in negotiations, a lot of this hype around the contract, a lot of the hype around the strike was not just this credible strike threat, but was actually a whole lot of bluster to kind of hook us on this idea that this union is really turning into a fighting force, that this is really a progressive wave and that membership is actually the determining force in what's going on here. When in reality, the strings are being pulled behind the curtains. And our contract just told us all of that story, along with,

you know, it didn't take much to see the different comments that were being made by these different elements of the ruling class. You know, when you've got the company telling you that this is a win-win-win, when you've got Biden praising O'Brien and the company for their peaceful negotiations and effectively saying that this is a good example of the harmony between labor and capital. When you've got people like Nancy Pelosi, when you've got these different shareholders, all coming out from the four to recommend this contract with two thumbs up, it should make anyone in the membership question what this is really bad.

Yeah, so I mean, the basic timeline of it is that our five-year contract expired on July 31st. and a few months ago, the IBT leadership and UPS began national negotiations, they very quickly came to agreements on all non-economic issues. So, you know, things not related to pay and benefits, pensions. And then there was like this show, basically, of it being the negotiations being deadlocked, that, you know, UPS had offered some, insulting economic proposal, you know, very low wages for part-timers being one of the main things that the IVT leadership was saying they absolutely had to walk away from the table because of that.

But as Lenny said, it was really all theater. You know, actually, when they walked away from the table, it was pretty clear. They knew they were going to come back together. And as soon as they did on July 25th, literally they negotiated for a few hours and then came to a tentative agreement. And this was after weeks of the IBT leadership, Sean O'Brien, going around the country, making statements about being prepared to strike and pulverize the company and all this stuff. And right now, we're actually, so we're in the process of voting on this tentative contract. Voting ends on August 22nd.

And, you know, we're involved in the vote no campaign, obviously. But yeah, so that's just to like give a little more context maybe for people who aren't as well versed on the particulars of this situation at UPS. Yeah, that's really helpful. And as you all have named, right, the the international brotherhood of Teamsters leadership, the UPS shareholders and the Biden administration have been touting in unison that this tentative agreement is a win for everyone, right? Business and workers. So in what ways, you know, specifically does this UPS Teamsters agreement actually sell out and betray the interests of the UPS workers? There are several things that we could say about the issues in this contract and we could go on the length of this podcast talking about this. I think one thing I'll zero in on is just a thing of concessions. So if we define a concession as being something that is taken away out of the contract, the prior contract into this one, a protection that is lost, some gain that was made at one point

that's taken out, then that exists in this contract. Specifically, it exists for the drivers. There used to be a 25% cap on how many two, say, through Saturdays, Saturday schedules could be dished out to drivers. That 25% cap, when they eliminated this classification of drivers that are underpaid and overworked. They're called 224s. When they eliminated the language around them, they also eliminated this 25% cap. So now there's no longer a cap on the Tuesday through Saturday schedules. And in fact, the fact that there's going to be a section of workers, which are all going to be the previous 22-4 drivers

who are going to have to work Tuesday through Saturday, and all the previous drivers who weren't in that classification can work Monday through Friday with some minor exceptions here and there. That itself is creating and maintaining a division between drivers. That is a tier system. So we still see remnants of this tier system that they claim to eliminate. But anyway, so that's one concession based off of the definition of, you know, the definition of eliminating a gainer protection.

Now, if we consider concession to not just be this narrow thing of eliminating the direct language that was a gainer protection, but a concession to also mean the addition of language that creates further divisions, issues, and contradicts any existing protection that once existed, then, yeah, that exists too. we see it in the part-timer wages, for instance, for all the part-timers that are going to come in if this contract gets ratified, those part-timers are going to make significantly less raises over the course of five years in comparison to those of us who preceded the contract. And that's not a thing of seniority. I've heard that a lot of times. It's not a thing of seniority.

Don't tell me it's a thing of seniority. If someone comes in right before the contract, is ratified. And they make seniority right before then. They've got maybe a couple months on someone who comes in after the contract is ratified. And they're going to make three, four dollars, whatever it is more than that person who comes in after over the course of five years. That's not a thing of seniority. There's explicit raises for seniority. This is not that. This is a wage tier system. That's what this is. That's just one example of something that has been added that creates a further division that should be considered a concession. because prior to this contract, this division did not exist.

And I can name a series of those of things that have been added in that further weaken our workforce to create more divisions, et cetera, et cetera, and should be considered within that net of concessions. But overall, my point is just to say that this thing of zero concessions is not true. So those are some issues. I don't know if you want to take it over, Audrey. I know there's more to say. Yeah, I mean, the zero concessions thing.

almost everyone I've talked to can agree. That's just clearly a lie. Yeah, in addition to what Lenny mentioned, this contract allows for UPS to have seven-day operations. So, you know, to run operations on Sundays, which in order to, you know, be able to compete with Amazon, all they have to do is inform the union leadership 45 days in advance. There's also a huge issue with the pensions, where a lot of people's pensions are going to have reduced contributions into them. And so then that money is then being used to pay for these wage increases. That's an obvious concession. And yeah, that's a really major issue for people affected by that. That's happening out in the West in particular. And then on the issue of part-time wages, so yeah,

In addition to this new second tier for part-timers, if we just talk about part-time wages in general, before 1982, full-time and part-time workers inside the warehouses were paid the same. And then in 1982, there was a huge pay cut for the part-timers. So, you know, the introduction of this tier where part-time wages were slashed from $12 to $8. dollars. If that $8 had kept up with inflation to today, it'd be over $25. And so $25 as a minimum for part-time wages has been the demand being pushed by part-time workers, particularly out of the group Teamsters mobilized that Lenny and I have now been involved with for a few months, but which got started last year. And throughout the negotiations, but especially at

the end in those last few weeks before the tent of agreement came out, the IBT leadership said, oh, yeah, we know part-time workers have been sold out by previous union leadership, and so we are going to wage a strong fight to get part-time workers out of poverty, you know, and these part-time poverty wages. But throughout the negotiations, the only thing they said they were fighting for concretely was something north of $20. And, I mean, that can mean a lot of things. And in the end, what that meant was $21.

So $21 is going to be the starting pay for part-timers if this contract passes, which we think is just absolutely unacceptable, you know, with the cost of living that we have now across the country. And then just maybe briefly on a few other things that people may have seen in the news. Most people saw the fact that UPS drivers, package car drivers, often pass out and sometimes die. due to lack of AC, due to it being so hot in those trucks and having to work in them for 10, 12 hours a day. And so one of the main things that was praised about this tentative contract was, oh, well, there's going to be ACs in the vehicles. You know, this was a major demand of the workers, which that was a major demand of the workers, of the drivers, especially in these last few years. But the actual contract, tentative contract language, is that it's only for new vehicles

purchased after January 1st, 2024, and only like 28,000 throughout the life of the contract and only in those regions designated like the hottest zones of the country. So, I mean, we should have, you know, the union leadership should have been fighting for ACs and all the vehicles, not just a fraction of them, you know, at this rate, the vehicles would only all get AC in like 15 years. So I think it's just, it's really important to look at, especially those things which are being touted as like major victories by the IBT leadership, you know, the ACs and the vehicles are historic raises for part timers. Okay, well, look at the actual wages in this kind of contract compared to the cost of living. And I think, you know, we see that it's a very, very, very different

picture than what's being painted by the union leadership, by UPS, by the media. Last of the really interesting part, right, is that Teamsters leadership all over their presses and in the bourgeois media, they're talking about this historic win, this historic win that was won by the workers, and they really took the fight to UPS. And then you also have, you know, Biden saying, well, it's a win for everybody. You know, it's really good for business. It's really good for, or no, it's O'Brien. It's good for business.

It's good for the workers. But, Lenny, I think I really genuinely believe you, when you say that you're, you know, you could talk an entire podcast just on the concessions. The rolling back had one been one in the past, but also the betrayals of what demands were put forward up front. I know O'Brien, they campaigned on the $25 for the part-time workers, but that was clearly just a bullshit lie. I have my own experience in a union where we were at the airport

and they were rallying us up for a $15 fight. But, you know, just a few months in, we all realized, oh, they're shitting us. We weren't fighting for 15 the whole time. And even a lot of my coworkers, this is years ago. This is before the pandemic. My coworkers were saying, listen, 15's not enough. 20 wouldn't be enough. You know, we were talking about 27, 28.

That would have been something that we could live well and feed our families and not have so much anxiety and stress that the masses of workers do have in the U.S. But no, we were fighting so-called for 15. and that was also a lie. And I think that they've actually done something very similar in this, in this tentative agreement, as they said, okay, you know, we'll give you like 25, but over the next, like, what was it, like five, six years, you know, in the far distant future, which doesn't help us. It doesn't help us now. It doesn't pay our bills now.

And it just pushes us deeper into debt. So all great points. Lenny, did you want to say anything else? Yeah, I just wanted to make a few more points, not going too long, but. I just wanted to say that, you know, I support the fact that the majority of the two-tier system amongst drivers, you know, the elimination of the 22 for classification outside of the scheduling, was done. And I think that's the biggest thing that the union leadership right now can claim that was gained in this contract. But it's worth looking at, like, okay, you know, how much of a fight did this take? in the leaked economic proposal that was mentioned earlier, it was said by the company in that

low-ball economic proposal where they proposed $17 for part-timers, which would be a wage cut for many across the board because of the company raises that people are getting right now. They proposed that alongside eliminating the 22-4 classification. They proposed this in their first low-ball economic proposal. Deutsche Bank, I think it's mentioned in the article, came out to say that this was not even going to be much skin off the company's back. I could go to a whole thing about why that's the case, but I won't. It's all just to say that, look, I'm glad this is gone, but that didn't take much of a fight. And it's very clear, and the evidence lines up to say that.

And so I know that this contract isn't as bad as the past blatantly obvious Hoffa concessionary contract. But we need to look at it in all of its language, in all of its content, and evaluate, is this a good contract? And is this the product of a fight? And it is absolutely not. And now I want to get into just, you know, what is this contract a product of then? Yeah, in part, it was because it was weak in ways because our demands, the grassroots demands that were being raised up, like Article 40 changes to air workers getting a guarantee of 3.5,

and that didn't get addressed. the COLA and the pensions, which some guys went around the country and got thousands of signatures on their petition, and that did not get addressed. The 25 as a base wage for part-timers, and that did not get addressed. Of course, like, you know, some aspect of why this contract isn't so great is because our demands just legitimately were not being listened to and not hoisted up, although we were putting the effort into doing that, which really goes to contradict the claim that many people say that, like, this contract is the product of organizing. No, a lot of this grassroots organizing. did get shut out, even if it had some effect on putting some amount of pressure than in the large part it did. But what is it really a product of? You know, I think that the reason we have the contract we have right now is because a strike was averted. That's what happened. And there's a lot to get into and why the strike was averted. You know, if people try to make these claims that it's because the membership was prepared, we could have gotten them prepared. We could have done that. But there was a ghost practice of having these, you know, contract action teams, of having these

strike action readiness teams and these different things that were not being carried out across the country in any systematic way, practice pickets that got together at its highest point maybe a week before we got the contract. So there's a need to look really squarely at why was this strike averted. We've alluded to it a bit, but, you know, we really need to look at that to understand how this contract struggle plays into and, you know, fits into the overall class society and how the very fact that our strike was averted plays into the hands of the ruling class. Absolutely. Yeah, very well said. And thank you, you both for helping us actually understand the particular situation happening within this UPS Teamsters fight because I myself, you know,

not a UPS worker. I can get lost in the vote, no, vote yes. That's kind of like surface level. but what you all just brought to us really brought us down to the concrete material situation and the minute details are actually important if we're going to take the class struggle here in the U.S. really seriously. And so on that note, right, in capitalist society, there are class forces that are pit against one another. And here, you know, we have an example of the general class struggle manifesting itself within this particular fight. So UPS workers are not simply exploited by an individual employer, you know, or an individual boss alone. And I really do think that individualist like bourgeois ideology has just deceived so many workers into thinking that they are, you know, individual workers employed by individual bosses, right?

That's a, it's a myth, it's a narrative that we can kind of tell ourselves and we tell each other. Or if not individual workers, you know, they simply have an individual exploiter. just one bad person above us. But this is simply not the case under today's conditions of capitalism, imperialism, right? In which the productive capitalists and the financial capitalists are now one and the same. So UPS workers are not just exploited by UPS, you know, singularly, rather they are exploited by the entire capitalist class. How is this the case? How is it the case that IBT leadership is a line not just with?

with UPS, but with the entirety of the ruling capitalist class. Yeah, I think that this is a very important thing to discuss. Like, our contract fight does not, like, exist in a vacuum, separate from the rest of the society. You know, even if we just look at who are the capitalists behind UPS. So we go into more detail on some of these things in the article, but just to say a few things. So looking at just the CEO, Carol Tomey, I mean, she's a CEO of UPS, but she's also on the board of Verizon. I think she was previously on the board of the Federal Reserve. Norman Brothers, he's an exec VP at UPS.

He's on the board of the Atlanta Police Foundation, which not surprisingly is a strong supporter of Cop City. If you look at just the UPS Board of Trustees, you know, there's executives from Heinz, IBM, Colgate Palm Olive, GE, Nike, the Federal Reserve, many other major corporations and bourgeois institutions. Of course, also, there's the major shareholders and investors for UPS, BlackRock, and Vanguard are the two biggest. And in this whole timeline, during the contract negotiations, we saw, as Lenny mentioned earlier, various politicians, whether, you know, the federal government, the Biden administration, or even like the New York City Comptroller Brad Lander saying that there absolutely could not be a strike, you know, that, oh, we really, really hope

that UPS and the Teamsters can come to a happy agreement. And so I think also, like Lenny has mentioned, I mean, like we really needed to go on strike in order to even win back all the concessions that the union leadership gave up to the company in past decades. And I think the fact is, the ruling capitalist class didn't just want to do everything they could to stop a strike from happening because a strike would mean that we would have been able to actually get much, much more in a contract. But they also, I mean, there's a political aspect to it.

they did not want UPS workers, but also the rest of the working class, to actually see a large section of workers, a large section of just the unionized part of the working class, to actually go on strike, to actually wage a real, real struggle against capital in this situation. So, you know, we've talked about kind of the militant bluster bravado facade that O'Brien has had, in which, you know, the media has just constantly been repeating, saying, oh, wow, look, this is a real new labor leader at the Teamsters. But I think it's important to look actually in totality, like, what has he been saying? I mean, just through and through, he has been an explicit supporter of the capitalist system

of the reactionary idea that capital and labor can actually be harmonized, that they're There's no antagonism between capital and labor. And earlier this year, in front of the Senate, O'Brien said, unions are good for workers, good for the economy, and good for business. President Biden has been quite clear that his administration is built on the principle that a strong America relies on strong unions. And he also said, I work with billion-dollar corporations like UPS and many others. And we collectively work together.

Why? To create jobs, but also to make their businesses. as successful as possible, because if their business is successful, our members are going to be successful. You know, absolutely terrible. Yeah. Yeah. And he also, I mean, he's called Biden the most pro-union president of our lifetime.

I've seen that. Just like an incredible thing to say. I mean, just even if you look at the very, just at the one example of Biden pushing to make the, the rail strike last year. legal, which I mean, that did happen. Yeah, it's one thing for Biden to say that about himself. You know, he looks like a total, you know, idiot. But then, but to be a labor leader and to call Biden the most pro-union president in our lifetime, well, what a fool. Yeah. It's just, it's really actually quite clear. If you look at what O'Brien has been saying, O'Brien is clearly a supporter of the capitalist system. You know, he has made these statements about, you know, we're going to pulverize UPS and

and, you know, we're going to fight them. They should be right. This is a full contact sport. Although even in those statements, he's always said that basically a strike is like the worst possible thing. And it's the very, very, very last resort. And that we only would have struck because UPS would be striking itself. But at the same time, yeah, he said all these things about harmonizing the interests of

capital and labor. And, I mean, he's been like the kind of ideal labor leader for the capital's class for the Biden administration where they know that the kind of outwardly reactionary union leadership that Lenny was talking about earlier under Hoffa, you know, people aren't going to accept that. So they need a labor misleader like Sean O'Brien to be able to sell this idea of militancy to workers while still, you know, stabbing them in the back while selling them out to the capitalist class. So those are just a few examples of the things that O'Brien has said, which really reveal, actually, the fact that he throughout his entire tenure as the president

of the Teamsters has been working to sell out the workers. Was just while you're talking, thinking about this text called the principles of the T-UEL, Trade Union Educational League, which was started by this guy named William C. Foster. He was a communist and played a very prominent role in the labor and revolutionary movement in the 1920s and 30s. We'll talk about him more later, but he wrote this text. And in it, he's talking about the trade unions in America in his time. And he's talking about the fact that, you know, in Europe, the trade unions at the very bare minimum seem to understand that trade unions need to act independently within the political field, carry out independent activity. within the political field, independent of the capitalist class parties. But in America, the trade unions

are so backwards, they don't even seem to get that. And today we're seeing the same exact thing playing out here, where it's not like an inherently revolutionary principle for trade unions to act independently of these capitalist class parties within the political field to recognize that there is an antagonism there between workers, the larger ruling class, which is a consortium of not just bosses, but also the shareholders, the banks that make the interest, the landlords that make the rent, the whole, you know, slew of them that are involved in this social class of the, of the Bouchoese and the fact that there are a political party set up to promote those interests of the bourgeoisie that act as organs of it and that at the very least these trade unions

in Europe have seemed to grasp that there's a need to act independently of those and today we see the same thing playing out with America as it was in Foster's time when he's criticizing the backwardness of the trade unions in America where we have the trade unions or you know let's talk specifically to the Teamsters, I mean, so intimately linked up with the Democratic Party. Explicit funding opportunities are made to members to, you know, fork over the little money that they already make, especially if you're a part-timer at UPS, to go explicitly to campaigning Democratic politicians. You see it from that level, all the way up to these different comments that Audrey was talking about, these different backroom discussions that happen between Biden and O'Brien,

the back scratching, the elbow nudging, all the rest, and the grave influence that the state through Biden has on the struggles that are being carried out right now under the Teamsters. And so for that reason, because of the interest that the state has right now and keeping a cap on struggle as much as possible as I was talking about, you know, given the worst thing situation and, you know, us just waiting for a shoot of frickin drop for this recession to hit after seeing these banks collapse a couple months ago and seeing the reshoring that's happening now, seeing the potential for there to be a kind of escalating situation,

bubbling up outrage in the society, and the natural outcome of that, which has always looked like the heightening of class struggle. Biden and others in the ruling class outside of just Biden, rely on there to be trade union leaders who can keep a cap on class struggle as much as possible, as much as feasible, and to funnel more workers into these unions for the sake of being able to further keep their reach and their handle on the struggles that get carried out under those unions in periods of time like contract negotiations. So when Biden says, you know, these are all

me union jobs sounds great sounds good there's a lot of utility to be in a union and this is not me saying that you know we should go against that at all we do need to see how those words fit into the larger picture of the interests that biden and others have and yeah union jobs for what for the sake of being able to further have reach and some level of control over the struggles that do break out in these different industries as and you know in these different workplaces And so I think it's important that as Audrey is laid out pretty well, we really see this contract situation in light of the larger ruling class interests. We see the backwardsness of the position that is being taken right now of the class nature of the position of our union leadership as it is revealed through these many different links between them and these different elements in the ruling class. class and the agenda that is being pushed that can be exempled in the UPS contract struggle.

And, you know, the working class is not the only class that can learn from history. The Borgrazi learns from it as well. And I remember in the 20s, Gompers was vying to replace the company unions. You're saying that, you know, the AFL leaders, you know, they could work with capital better than capital could through their own company unions. And a lot of the Borgreau Z was like, well, thanks for that. offer, but, you know, we'll still do with our company unions. But that's how reactionary, you know, the AFL leaders were back then. And this is how pro-capitalist labor misleaders like Sean O'Brien

act as well today. But unfortunately, the misleaders are not only explicitly pro-capitalists, they also cloak themselves in the garments of Marxism and socialism. So we've talked about how Sean O'Brien is an exemplary labor leader for the interests, not of the workers, actually, but actually of our ruling capitalist class. And I do want to get to a little bit about the revisionist roots of the Team Search for Democratic Union, and then finally kind of reflect a little bit about some various potential tasks that Marxists might take up in the labor movement. But before we get there, you know, I do want to ask, you know, every so-called Marxist or socialist organization out there has taken a stance on the UPS fight, even if that stance,

is to pathetically wait and see. But can you tell us about the right opportunist and left sectarian errors? Various socialist organizations have taken up in relation to the leadership of Sean O'Brien? Yeah, absolutely. So before getting into what some of these errors are, I just wanted to share some of our basic approach as Marxists participating in the labor movement. We'll talk more about this later on, but just as a way to kind of introduce this. So Lenin wrote about the basic approach that Marxists should take in the labor movement over 100 years ago in his text, left-wing communism, left-wing is in quotes here, left-wing communism, an infantile disorder. So he wrote this in 1920,

And it was a text to clarify some of the key lessons of the Russian Revolution of the history of the Bolsheviks to communists around the world who were very inspired by the Russian Revolution, but who had some larger confusions about how the Bolsheviks had actually led the revolution and what was needed for communists around the world to do the same thing. So in this text, he discusses the key struggles against different groups, which were within the working class. movement who claimed to be Marxists, but were not, you know, they were in fact working in the interests of the bourgeoisie. And so I'm about to read a quote, which is from the chapter should revolutionaries work in reactionary trade unions, which we think is very important for all Marxists to read. So he says, this struggle against reactionary leadership must be waged ruthlessly, and it must unfailingly be brought as we brought it, to a point where all the incorrigible leaders of opportunism and social chauvinism

are completely discredited and driven out of the trade unions. We are waging the struggle against the opportunist and social chauvinist leaders in order to win the working class over to our side. It would be absurd to forget this most elementary and most self-evident truth. Yet it is this very absurdity that the German left communists perpetrate when because of the reactionary and counter-revolutionary character of the trade union top leadership, they jumped to the conclusion that we must withdraw from the trade unions, refuse to work in them, and create new and artificial forms of labor organization. Yeah, it's such a key quote.

And a simple way to put the kind of like principal lesson baked into this quote is to say that revolutionaries, you know, they can't flee the existing trade unions and instead they must and have to work tirelessly within them. Very plainly that, you know, if we want to make revolution, we have to join up with the largest sea of workers and work endlessly to direct these struggles along the very winding path towards overthrowing the society. And then the question is, where can the most organized sea of these workers be found? And that's in the trade unions. So we must go to the trade unions.

And yeah, that means that there will exist, you know, these different kind of reactionary trade union leaders that will work against us, try to undermine us and sell out the workers constantly as they already are doing. But that doesn't mean that we run away. You know, if we want to elevate these struggles of workers, we must take these reactionary leaders head on and push against their maneuvers to undermine class struggle. That's what he's getting at.

And it was really quite like a groundbreaking call by Lenin in this period of the 20s. One of the reasons, just looking at the American context in particular, was because a dominant trend going on amongst those who understood the need for the overthrow of capitalism was to leave the existing unions and instead create separate unions, a trend that was referring. to as dual unionism. And that culminated in the creation of, if people know it, the IWW, the industrial workers of the world. And the result of this dual unionist trend was, it had like, you know, a couple different ramifications, maybe like three that are some of the most important. For one, the most advanced workers, you know, these people that saw the need for the overthrow of capitalism,

these people that jolted life into the labor movement and were actively grappling with the need for revolution. They were isolated from the broader masses of organized workers. And although these militants, yeah, they were kind of confused in a number of different ways, their basic understanding of the need for the overthrow of the society was thus isolated from the widest swath of workers when they isolated themselves in these separate unions and fled the existing trade unions. And second, because of this isolation of these advanced workers, the workers that were in the trade unions that remain there were therefore left to the unions just being the control of uncontested misleadership of the most reactionary types of trade union leaders. And then what's more is that

these advanced workers were then actually undermining the ability to further concentrate the unorganized workers into labor organization by creating these competing unions that further disunited the working class. And so with all that being, said that gives us context for understanding like this leftism that we're seeing in groups like WSWS the Gonzalez you know their leftism it's not exactly the same thing as the old dual unionism we're talking about we're talking about the IWW but it certainly carries on some of its traditions and I would just say like that's leftism in quotes like not actual leftism yeah that's an that's important thing to point out but yeah so it's not exactly the same

thing, but it carries on some of the traditions of dual unionism, namely that, you know, instead of advocating for the creation of new unions explicitly, these leftists in quotes are getting union jobs, and then, and they're organizing in these union jobs, they're advocating that the existing unions just be discarded or dissolve, that they be destroyed from within. You know, I saw that the WSWS people even go as far as like running in union elections to grab positions to call for the demise of the union. It's pretty absurd stuff. And so in that being too, like this trend, while it is reminiscent of dual unionism in ways, is grossly more anti-union than the IWW ever was. Chase, you got something to said? Yeah, no question. And who is the WSWS for

listeners? So when I'm referring to WSWS, I'm referring to the words world socialist website. But I I believe there's a whole party behind it called the SEP. Yeah, the Socialist Equality Party. Yep. All right. Yeah, and if I could also make a comment about the Gonzaloist New Day, you know, one aspect of Gonzaloism is they also distort the Maoist conception of the United Front, right, and that they believe that the party should directly kind of command and control the United Front organization. And so you're absolutely right. it's not the early 20th century dual unionism, but, you know, they just refuse to work with

progressives. They refuse to work with any kind of left block. What they want to do is set up their red or their revolutionary stand within the union now. And what ultimately, what has happened and what will continue to happen is that they're just going to alienate themselves from the vast majority of folks. And one other thing about the left communist presently is that, you know, left communists today, you know, use imperialism also as an excuse to abandon the industrial proletariat and their day-to-day workplace struggles. And I think this is something I've been thinking about recently. I think it's

such an important thing for us to actually really start wrestling with and kind of return to some of the basic fundamentalism of Marxism. And if not entirely abandoning the workplace struggles, they may say that it's no longer principle, right? It's just simply one among many sites of struggle. and because of this area, then they end up ultimately, I think, just treating the proletariat as one class among many. So really grasping, you know, left-wing communism and infantile disorder is a really, really fundamental book, I think, as you all mentioned, for revolutionary communists to study and not dogmatically apply it, but to really grasp what lessons are still applicable and really, really important for us today. Yeah, most certainly. And you made a couple different points, but this point about, on one hand, the alienation that the Gonzalez and others will cause to themselves is completely no way true. And two, the fact that

there's been a rejection of Marxism that's most apparent in their strategy and also in their analysis and in their politics as you're getting at is very true as well. And that's actually what is leading to this alienation and isolation. I mean, just the rejection on a basic level of the understanding that everything is riddled with contradictions. Everything. And so that means that when we're talking about the working class, we are talking about not this homogenous body of the working class or of the rank and file. We're talking about there being divisions amongst people and same within the leadership. But instead of seeing these things, they rather say and treat all of leadership as parasitical bureaucrats that must be

opposed and distinctly kept in arm's length because otherwise their venom will spew all over. the peer rank and file. That's really how they talk about it. It's incredibly mechanical and it doesn't allow them to see the basic differences that exist amongst different union leaders that will be able to push forward the struggle. You know, if we're just focusing on this thing of, okay, the union leaders, you know, if you see the basic differences, you'll realize that there are different trade union leaders that in any given moment or for any sustained period of time will truly show that they have an interest in carrying forward the fight for workers. So in that vein, We have to work with different progressive labor leaders who have a desire and a willingness to push forward a given economic fight or progressive campaign.

You know, some of these may be more well-wavering elements than others. You know, there may be some that have a more intimate and hearted interest in pushing forward the fight for workers against capital and many more than just one instance and some that only can be united in one instance. But if we don't see this to be true, if we see all labor leaders and even organizers, they say, as these bureaucrats that have an antagonistic relationship, with workers, then these very small organizations that they're creating will only get as far as shouting into their own void about the need to advance the struggle and in reality not move an inch. And we see this as applied to the whole of the rank and file too, you know, like they're not going to be able to win over these workers that have a real love, strong faith for their unions. And they neither will win over the people that even have, you know, criticisms of the union leadership

because of their rabid ultra left line. And so these groups will just grow further and further to be isolated. And in contrast to that, I think, like, what Marxists really need to do is to develop the trade union movement along this path towards revolution, of course, in and through, in part, pushing these unions to be vehicles of real struggle. And the way to do that is through working within the unions, you know, not creating these artificial forms of organization that Lenin's talking about. and in and through that winning over not just the most advanced having these organizations

such as the military to be able to carry on the struggle but winning over the widest section of workers then being able to really point the labor movement in the direction of seeing the horizon of a new society of really being able to overthrow the existing society putting it on the path of revolution yeah and that did make me think of it's kind of like a general error like all struggle no unity and you know a rightest error would be like all unity right no struggle

but this is a very clear left error I think that the Gonzaloist line is taken and also makes me think of one thing from I think Lenin says in the tasks of the Russian social democrats where he's talking about the need to make alliances and

how alliances should be explicitly temporary right it's not that you're kind of of faking some people out. But we should be conscious in a very upfront that we're working with people who we disagree with and we should struggle over those things that need struggled over. But if you can't work with classes that aren't the proletariat or various sections of the proletariat or people in the union who don't think like you, you know, they're not Maoist. Then you're really going to be completely unable to organize the people in

any kind of struggle. Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. point. I think, you know, in our situation, so there's these kind of ultra-left, very small groups that really are quite isolated. But I think the thing we're seeing, which is much more common in this UPS struggle, but also more broadly in the labor movement, is supposed Marxists just tailing the IBT leadership. You know, different organizations like Frizo and PSL came out with statements pretty much immediately after the TA came out saying, this is an amazing historic victory. You know, the workers fought and they won and this is so great. You know, O'Brien really has ushered in this new era for the Teamsters. It's really like a fairly elementary thing like we

talked about earlier that our role as Marxists should be pushing forward, working class struggle. And this means, of course, struggling against the reactionary union leadership, not like getting a seat at the table with these phony militants in the O'Brien-Zuckerman administration. So on the one hand, there's these people and organizations who are saying that this is a historic victory. But there's also the DSA, which has taken this line of quote-unquote neutral stance of wait and see, like you said, Chase, wait and see what the rank and file votes and then we support the rank and file and whatever they vote for. There's no class neutral stand here. And people are saying that now is not the time to actually take a stand.

Now is not the time to criticize leadership. Now is not the time to talk about questions of revolution that we have to wait. We have to wait until there's a higher level of consciousness until there's a huge upsurge in UPS workers saying that they're going to vote this down, exposing the reactionary trade union leadership, and until that happens, their idea is that the role of Marxists is just to sit on the sidelines. But this is a total negation of the role of Marxists to be the most class-conscious fighters of the working class, to lead the working class, not to kind of quietly, meekly trail behind the working class, or to just become mouthpieces for the reactionary trade union leadership.

And in particular, since we wrote this article, we've gotten a little more of a sense of what's been going on within the DSA, which is that there's a very small minority of people who are saying that DSA should be supporting a no vote. That it's clear that this is a sellout contract and DSA as an ostensibly socialist organization should take a stand here.

I know there was a recent DSA convention where there's the election of a new NPC, new national leadership, which supposedly was going to be pushing DSA in a more progressive direction. But myself and others spoke on a Zoom call hosted by the Red Labor Caucus, and those who organized it said that none of these NPC members, some didn't respond, but none of them attended, to listen to us, you know, those who are UPS Teamsters pushing for a no vote, to hear what we had to say.

So I think, you know, there are people within DSA who are seeing, like, the bankruptcy of this line, of this, like, line of neutrality, of not taking a stand. And not just that, but there are people within the DSA who are kind of rabidly pushing the vote yes, going after people who are pushing vote no. Yeah, Audrey, I think that makes a lot of sense. And especially your point about this, you know, as you said at the beginning, this is a principal error of Marxists, right? The left error is very common, but it's really secondary compared to this primary error of tailing the masses. And really what's happening is that we're

not only just tailing the masses. The masses are being led by someone. If they're not being led by communists, it's the petty bourgeois or bourgeois forces, clearly in this example. And because all of our conceptions, all of our ideas, culture itself is stamped with the character of a class, as Lenin says in what is to be done, this is, this is, This is really an excellent example of the worshipping of spontaneity. And I tell folks all the time that if workers could spontaneously develop, not just class instinct, but genuine revolutionary class consciousness, it would have already happened. You know, it's 2023.

We wouldn't still be here. If the masses of workers without any kind of leadership, without any kind of organization would just spontaneously erupted to revolutionary communist consciousness, we'd already be in communism, but that's not historically how it's happened. So, you know, what is a communist? You know, really, we should really ask ourselves, what is a communist who doesn't lead? What is a communist who doesn't educate, right, who doesn't apply the mass line? The mass line's not the populist or the popular line. The mass line isn't, you know, whatever the people spontaneously say line. We really do need to take these lessons from history seriously in order to get out,

where we've been for the last hundred or so years. Yeah, absolutely. And just to say a little bit more about kind of this line of not taking a stand in this situation, it's like right now, I mean, really for the last three weeks since the tentative agreement came out and since people within Teamsters mobilize, but also more broadly, have been advocating and organizing for a no vote, you know, the IBT leadership on a, the international leadership as well as many, many local officials had been doing everything they can to smear and crush a no vote campaign. About a week after the tentative agreement came out, we'd already been organizing the no vote and the IBT Twitter account posted this graphic that it's a picture of Sean O'Brien and he says,

you know, if anyone is telling you that there are concessions in this contract, they're lying to you, they're selling you short, don't believe them. You know, at other points, the IBT leadership has said that people calling for a no vote are spreading misinformation. In the face of this, of the suppression of dissent amongst the workers pushing for a no vote, to say that, like, you can take some neutral stand, is obviously taking the stand of the IVT leadership. of UPS, of the government, and trying to push forward this contract, say that this is the very best we can get, and anyone who's saying otherwise is some kind of outside agitator,

I mean, that's something that's been thrown at us too. So, yeah, just to say that as well. Absolutely. Well, I really appreciate that, Audrey. You all write about the origins of the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, right, T.D.U. And how it was founded by the International Socialists, which was a Trotskyist organization that, of course, committed numerous rightist errors

similar to the ones we see plaguing socialists today. And one of the key points you make in the article is that these errors made by the international socialists and one of its leaders, Kim Moody, can be traced back to a revision of a basic lesson from Lenin's What Is To Be Done. Can you explain some of the lessons from what is to be done? that our readers should know in order to grasp the errors made by those that founded the

Teamsters for a Democratic Union? Yeah, so definitely would highly recommend people read what is to be done if they haven't yet. It was immensely clarifying for me. So, you know, like you said, Chase, if it was the case that the working class, just by virtue of being the working class, by being exploited, could spontaneously realize the necessity and actually how to wage revolution, then that would have happened already. But it hasn't. So one thing I think that we should talk about is what actually do we mean by class consciousness, by working class consciousness or Marxist consciousness? So London describes

this in depth. He says that the consciousness of the working masses cannot be genuine class consciousness unless the workers learn from concrete and above all from topical political facts and events to observe every other social class in all the manifestations of its intellectual, ethical, and political life, and to really understand, like, the entirety actually of the class society and of the role of the, you know, the unique role of the proletariat and its interest in leading socialist revolution and ultimately, you know, to lead, continue the revolutionary road to a communist class of society. And that's not a simple thing. That really requires a really scientific understanding of the whole of society. And this is not something

that can come about spontaneously through just union struggles. And why, I mean, Lenin says that the spontaneous development of the working class movement leads to its subordination to bourgeois ideology. For the spontaneous working class movement is trade unionism. And trade unionism means the ideological enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie. That is to say that the working class struggle should remain confined to just fights for reforms, just stronger contracts, better working conditions, you know, other reforms within the capitalist system. And this isn't so surprising because, you know, like he, Lenin also says, so why the reader will

ask, does the spontaneous movement, the movement along the line of least resistance, lead to the domination of bourgeois ideology for the simple reason that bourgeois ideology is far older in origin than socialist ideology that it is more fully developed and that it has at its disposal immeasurably more means of dissemination and the younger the socialist movement in any given country the more vigorously it must struggle against all attempts to entrench non-socialist ideology and the more resolutely the workers must be warned against the bad counselors who shout against, quote, overrating the conscious element. So when he's saying all these bad counselors, the economists who are shouting against overrating the conscious element, that's the trend which says that no need to actually talk about politics, to talk about Marxism, to make exposures of the larger class society. The most important thing is just to build up the trade union economic struggles. And I think, I mean, today, I mean, so Lenin is writing a

hundred years ago. And in our situation, bourgeois ideology is even more entrenched, especially in the U.S. And I think there's been so much of a loss of the revolutionary history of, I mean, around the world of class struggle, but especially in the U.S. of just basic lessons of actually what is the history of this country? What's the history of the Communist Party? And communist organizing in the labor movement in this country, especially in the 20s and 30s, there's even more widespread confusion, I think, about these basics of Marxism, of all these various revisionist trends, which really, I mean, they're not different shades of Marxism, you know, not just like kind of, oh, we can all walk a different path, but we eventually get to revolution. No, all of

these deviations and distortions of Marxism are not Marxist. And yeah, I think, I mean, we're seeing that there's a lot of broad confusion across the left, across those who consider themselves socialists and Marxists about this. But yeah, so these, I mean, there's a lot in what is to be done, but this is one of the key points, which is that working class consciousness, true proletarian consciousness will not arise from the spontaneous movement, that it has to be brought by Marxists to the spontaneous economic struggles, to struggles like the UPS contract struggle. And that actually has to be the main task of Marxists is to talk about issues that, you know, aren't even related to the economic struggle, but give a fuller picture of the necessity for

revolution. At the same time, I just want to emphasize, this doesn't mean that Marxists should just, you know, be kind of issuing all these slogans or making exposures but have no real participation or trying to lead in the economic struggle, it's very important that communists, Marxists are the strongest fighters in these economic struggles, for the working class, that we do everything we can to push things forward. Both of these things, I think, are very key. Yeah, those are absolutely really great points. And made me think of a section in Williams E. Foster's autobiography from Brian to Stalin where he talks about I mean I mean the dude worked first of all as a child worker right he was a child worker for many years of his adolescence and then he worked like

for like 30 years in dozens and dozens of jobs industrial jobs and he talked about how you know at different stages of his life he was participating in strikes he you know he he wanted to fight the bosses and yet he still had class instinct he was not yet at a developed stage to really have have developed class consciousness. And I think that's really important. I was on Instagram the other day, and I saw, you know, one of those big platforms talking about a group of workers organizing, and they were saying, you know, these workers have class consciousness.

And I thought to myself, well, actually, that's not necessarily the case, especially in the propaganda and the agitation that they were showing on their posters. It didn't, I didn't see any kind of, you know, serious level of class consciousness, but I did see class instinct. And I think that's really, really important for us to be able to, as you were saying, Audrey, distinguish between, you know, just the general acceptance among workers to say, actually bosses suck and what they're doing to me and my family and my loved ones sucks. But class consciousness requires a much more, as you well termed it, a scientific grasp of society, right? And the position of not just one's self individually, but one's class. you have to understand like really what a class is and your your class in that society and then the ideas and political aspirations of various classes in strata the class character of a state the necessity of social revolution the necessity of a working class dictatorship that transition you know to to transition to communism all these things and yeah i mean i'm i was talking to a worker the other day at loz and they said they uh they just got out of a job where they were working fucking 80 hour weeks and when you're working

80-hour weeks, you do not have time to make a scientific study of society, let alone history. And that is why you need a vanguard, an organization of revolutionaries. But really I appreciate what you've laid out for us. All right. So now that you've laid out one of these basic lessons from what is to be done, can you describe for us what Kim Moody of the International Socialists, who was also a founder of labor notes, was a about, right? His error in rejecting the need to develop genuine revolutionary class consciousness and the Marxist role in mass orgs and how this ideological error led to the political errors of Teamsters for a Democratic Union.

Yeah, yeah, no, certainly. I think everything that Audrey was saying really leads well into talking about Moody. So just to put us in Moody's kind of shoes in the rank and file strategy, What it's basically arguing is that first we need to develop a good trade union struggle. Then we can talk about socialism. So therefore, revolutionaries, socialists, they need to water down in their politics to trade unionism in order to first develop the trade union struggle. So what does this mean, you know, what kind of watered down politics? Well, promoting the politics of reforms, fighting for union democracy, building broad

organizations is the key thing for socialists to be doing. And this in turn means explicitly rejecting Lenin and all of the lessons that Audrey so well laid out. I mean, the key lesson advanced by Lenin and what has to be done is that Marxists need to make exposures of the wider society to workers, show them the millions of ways in which the organization of production and social classes in society are set up against the working class and thus clarify the need for its overthrow by the conscious acting body of the working class. You know, its vanguard party. But Moody instead, he just throws away this lesson and exchanges it for his preferred reading of what is to be done, which, you know, Moody would have us think really that Lenin instead said, you know, actually, it's consciousness thing. This is subordinated to spontaneity. In other words, that sections of the working class can grasp their objective role in waging revolution through waging class struggle purely. But as you were pointing out earlier, Chase, I mean, if this was possible, we would have already achieved revolution.

If this could spontaneously develop, this would have happened already. And, you know, to be fair, Lenin does talk about the fact that some building blocks of consciousness are able to spontaneously develop through class struggle. But in no way, shape, or form does Lenin argue or conclude that this thus means that the task of Marxists is to tail the spontaneous development of some of these elements of class consciousness, that can be developed through struggle, and then to also in the process of that of that taleism to actively water down their politics, waiting for some kind of, you know, spontaneous moment that will really never arise to come about where they can start talking about revolution. But this is what Moody would have us think is what Lenin was arguing, or what the task of socials should be, is what he's explicitly saying. And it's really no wonder that he's kind of trying to

smush this lesson lenin of delete that and it's really no wonder um that this is kind of the conclusion that he comes to of what the lenin concludes and what has to be done or a part of what he concludes because this really just fits perfectly into his whole schema that rejects the conscious element and instead proposes that socialists need to you know like quote unquote meet workers where they're at and base their entire organization and strategy upon the lowest common denominator of consciousness, which is just, you know, some version of trade union consciousness to fight for just workers to have some say in their unions, along with different progressive reforms here and there as well. So yeah, I mean, of course we need to fight for different reforms, but what really,

really matters is that these are linked up to the larger exposures that clarify the fight beyond the purview of the trade unions. But this Moody, of course, thinks is too much for the workers to handle. And so this very political line is what influenced the creation of TDU from its outset. Because Moody believed that revolutionary should focus on building broad organizations where their politics explicitly take a backseat, push for democratic reforms, and thus what we have today of TDU is the exact product of that, of socialists, blunting an organization of socialist theory, completely neglecting their role as socialists overall in the trade union movement, and thus opening the doors wide open to reform. And so it's no wonder that this

organization has its aims limited to promoting union democracy. It's for those very reasons for the political line that was directing the and guiding the organization of TDU from the beginning. Thank you. Yeah, I think that clarifies a lot for me. And especially, You know, when you think about the context of what is to be done, you know, Lenin wages a very important struggle before they can have the second Congress, which is really like the first Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. And what he saw and even done was to wage an ideological struggle against the economism that had really taken root amongst many of the Russian Social Democrats. And so this ideological error was leading to political errors, and then the political errors were leading to the organizational air. mass confusion. And I think this is also just another great example of, you know, yeah, you're going to build up an organization that really serves to re-enslave endlessly and eternally the masses

of workers or even particularly this, you know, the workers in this of the union, the Teamsters Union and the masses of UPS workers. If you don't have a solid grasp of the political analysis and then a step back farther from that if you reject the science of revolutionary theory. So thank you for clarifying all that for us. You know, this has been a wonderful conversation, Audrey and Lenny. You all are really energizing me right now. This is, I'm really encouraged by the work you all have done on the ground, but also just the theory that you've brought to us in the article and also in this conversation.

I've really appreciated our time together to wrap this up. at the very end of the article, you begin to touch on the important question of what are the tasks of the Marxists, presently in the Labor Amendment. Certainly. So we're recording this right now, and the contract fight is still well and alive, although coming down to its last days. When this comes out, it already will have been determined, whether this was a yes or no vote. you know if it is a no vote there still will be an opportunity to push things along but really you know the height of kind of the contract struggle and in regards to that the task for socialist for marxist was yesterday to take a stand in this contract struggle on the side of vote now you know there was an opening to stand on the side of pushing forward the class struggle and that's come and gone in some sense and it's amazing to me like somehow this really quite simple situation with this contract struggle, turned into something much murkier that many socialists saw is far too complex to understand and determine where they should stand.

And so for many of them, they don't take a stand at all. Or thus, as Audrey's talking about, I mean, in that vein, you're taking a stand with the loudest voices, the many forces of the ruling class pushing vote, yes. But in my eyes, it really wasn't a complicated situation. What is the issue with rejecting a contract to get more? question. None of these scare tactics that exist of, you know, we could lose it all are really based in reality. So in that sense, the solution was really simple, you know, a contract is given to workers and it's not good. The solution is to send it back to the table. And that's in spite of

some people thinking that it's the greatest contract they've ever seen. Yeah, that may be true, but that's a pretty low bar in relation to all the past Hafa concessionary contracts. So why not fight for more. And even if you, you know, very incorrectly saw this contract as dominantly being a product of rank and file organizing, well, why not fight for more? Most teamsters that don't have some personal skin in the negotiations game are really able to understand that argument to, you know, the argument to fight for more and can't really contest it. It's actually allowed me to flip many people's positions. When I'm talking about flipping people's positions, I'm talking about different workers I've come into contact with, not really many of these socialists,

but when it came to these socialists, you know, the socialists that claim to wear the principles of Marxism on their sleeves and, you know, really fight for the interests of workers, I think these socialists were the most wavering of all people in this contract struggle. And so in this vein, you know, one of them really mean things to learn for, I think, all these socialists that are listening who really want to take up Marxism is, is that moments such as this contract situation aren't moments to waver. They're not moments to be swayed by, you know, the overwhelming force and role that identity politics plays in our society where, you know, we're kind of swayed to and push to stand on the sidelines and say, you know, if I'm not a UPS worker, I can't say anything. These are not moments to paralyze our activity because, you know, we're afraid of the backlash or uncertain of who else will step out and be fearless in their stand.

And these aren't moments to shrug our shoulders and say, well, not everything about this contract was bad. So, you know, maybe we should just settle things here and get them next time. None of these positions, you know, suffice for those people who call themselves Marxists. This wavering position goes against the lessons of Marxism and the need for revolutioners to be determined and steeled forces playing, you know, like a leading role in struggles, such as the fight for a better contract or in any fight, you know. let's be real. This fight was relatively easy in comparison to the very difficult road ahead of us

for those of us that consider ourselves revolutionaries. If socialists are wavering now, when the matter is just in regards to like this simple vote, then this should all jolt us to the very grim reality that so long as socialism is ripped up its Marxist content, i.e. so long as it's not really socialism, you know, it's just social democracy falsely portrayed as socialism, will never be able to make revolution. And really, this is in part just because of our, I think, you know, low theoretical levels amongst the revolutionary camp, where those that want to take up revolutionary ideas are really being swayed into not actively and seriously studying Marxism and really putting that into practice. And so, and there's a lot of pulls against that in society. There's this huge, like,

anti-intellectualism wave that exists that says that actually Marxism is it's too academic you know we need to be doing the real struggle the real fight we need to be on the ground doing things in practice yeah that's great to have the attitude of organizing but when it's divorced from Marxist theory what do we get I mean if we divorce as Marxists the the organizing in action and and leadership we're trying to provide to the class struggle from Marxism we don't get anywhere near the road of being able to bring about revolution. We're not going to even be aimed somewhere near there. We'll be swayed by all the other tendencies in society that are tainted by bourgeois ideology if we're not really struggling to have a proletarian orientation. So we need to be studying theory

and applying it to our current conditions and in and through our participation in the trade union economic struggles. And it's great that, you know, I think that there are a lot of, you know, Marxists that understand we need to go into the working class movement and that this thing of organizing is important, but we need to link that up with theory. Absolutely need to link that up with theory. If we ever want to be able to make exposures to show people like, look, this thing of revolution is necessary. We need to be studying the past, studying how, you know, how to chart this path forward for ourselves, and studying and analyzing materially and scientifically the class society in which we exist in and showing how any given situation is tainted by that,

influenced by that, determined by that. And if we can't grasp that, then we're going to have no ability to show this to workers, thus making very tangible the reasons why we need to overthrow capitalism. So in conclusion, you know, we need to struggle to understand Marxism and deeply and to really relentlessly debate and discuss how to apply this thing in our current situation in any given situation. So anyone that understands that, you know, we should really all be talking and trying to connect and debate and discuss things very closely.

And then, you know, the aim of our study and our activity really should be ultimately, you know, for those that are Marxists, to the aim of being able to create a true vanguard of the working class, a party. And then for those, you know, for whatever reason under the sun, do think that there needs to be, you know, the struggle against capital and the abolition of capital in total,

but for whatever reason haven't reached the conclusion yet that we need to create a Vanguard party. You know, these people also need to be united. These, you know, this general pool of kind of revolutionary militants, we need to come together into organization in order to instill the labor movement with the objective of ending the wage system entirely and not just getting stuck in the hamster wheel of, you know, a fair day's wage for fair day's work. Those are just some points in conclusion, I think.

But I know, Audrey, I've talked with you a lot about this idea about the military. I don't know if you have any thoughts on this idea that you could share with listeners. Yeah, I think, I mean, in any situation, we should be looking at lessons from history. And we are communists in the United States trying to build up a revolutionary movement. We know that participating in and leading struggles within unions is important, and we don't have to reinvent the wheel here. I think we've talked about already on this episode that we've been studying the history of the Trade Union Educational League and of the CPUSA's role in leading that organization

of the militant minority, of all of those militants who existed in the labor, movement, who were struggling against the reactionary trade union leadership, who saw the basis for the abolition of capitalism and for that to really guide the trade union movement. And they saw there was a need to actually bring that together, all those people together in an organization. I mean, and we've seen what the effect is of not having an organization like that, which is that the IVT leadership in this UPS contract struggle has pushed this horrible sellout contract, and there wasn't a pre-existing organization of the militant minority within the

Teamsters, or more broadly in the labor movement, that doesn't exist now. So there's a desperate need for that, and I think there's a lot of questions as to how exactly to carry that out you know, at the time that the T-UEL was formed, there were thousands and thousands of labor militants who were steeled in struggle, who had been leading huge strikes and struggles very, very often in the face of suppression from the reactionary union leadership. That just doesn't exist today. You know, there's a very low level of class struggle and of class consciousness. this history of the working class struggle in our country has really been like erased, I think, from most people's minds and from, you know, the society more broadly. So I think it's not, you know, it's not realistic to say, okay, we can now get together the TUEL right now.

No, I think what's needed, like Lenny said, is for those, all those who are interested and see the need for this type of organization, We need to be talking about this. We need to talk through the different questions of how this could be carried out, need to study the history of organizations, you know, like the T-UEL, of communist organizing in the labor movement, historically, in other countries as well, and need to work together to figure out how do we apply these lessons as history to our present situation? How do we actually advance the existing economic struggles, whether it's for a contract or organizing, you know, unorganized workplaces, you know, unionizing Amazon, et cetera. So definitely, I mean, you know, we said it in the article, but we really want everyone who's interested in this, who sees the need for this, to please reach out to us to talk about this. At the same time, you know, like Lenny said, it's not enough just to have an organization of the militant minority to push forward the labor movement. We desperately, desperately need a real communist party in this country.

I just want to read a quote from Lenin, which we have in the article as well. So he says, it is common knowledge that the masses are divided into classes, that the masses can be contrasted with classes only by contrasting the vastness. majority in general, regardless of division according to status and the social system of production, with categories holding a definite status in the social system of production. That as a rule, and in most cases, at least in present day civilized countries, classes are led by political parties, that political parties as a general rule are run by more or less stable groups composed of the most authoritative, influential, and experienced members who are elected to the most responsible positions and are called leaders. All this is elementary. So, I mean, you know,

there's a desperate need for an organization of professional revolutionaries, which Lenin also talks about at length in what is to be done, of people who make it their life's work to actually advance the revolutionary struggle in the U.S. A party which can actually lead the working class, raise its consciousness, work with the most advanced section of the working class in order to win over the intermediate workers, to eventually win over the majority of the working class over to Marxism and to support revolution. You know, this is no simple thing. And the ruling class works tirelessly to stop this from happening.

So we need, we desperately need a real Communist Party in this country, and it doesn't exist. And we need to take, you know, those of us who see... See this need, need to take some steps to also be talking about that, which is a separate, I think, task from the formation of the militant minority organization, but of course it's related. Yeah, Audrey and Lenny, both of you all, very well said. And, you know, there's so much we could say about the Trade Union Education Link, about the C, I'm sorry, the Communist Party in the 1920s and 30s. I did want to clarify that. You said the Communist Party of the USA. It ain't the one today.

It's the incredible leadership and struggle that was waged in the 20s and 30s. Lots to be said there. For folks who are interested, if you're a little book nerd like myself, William Z. Foster's autobiography from Brian to Stalin can be found on banthot.net. I'll also try and get that in the show notes. It's a very important kind of introduction to the education and unity leagues that follows the education league. And also, Philip S. Foner's history of the labor movement in the United States. I think it's the volume nine. that is a great introduction to the Education League as well.

A very important history for us to really study, wrestle with, grasp, and thank you both for sharing. I absolutely agree. We need to really study and take seriously our study of revolutionary theory, as well as really consider what are the organizational tasks that we can develop here in the United States. So thank you very much. Now, before we get going, I did want to bring up that, you know, as you all had mentioned to me before we started, recording. You know, most of this, most of the response to the article has been positive, right? But you have also received some criticism that I thought was interesting, you know, suggesting that the analysis of the Teamsters leadership, the criticism of the various forms of opportunism,

and the call for, you know, militant workers to be united, you know, you receive criticism that all that's just a bunch of sectarian bullshit. So I'd like to give you all the opportunity. Can you respond to this criticism that the content of the article and the whole vision for this work in general is sectarian? Yeah, definitely. On a more basic level, Marxism is a science. It's not just kind of whatever we say it is. You know, it's a theory that is built on the sum total of class struggle. And there are foundational tenets of Marxism, like any science, that have been proven in practice, such as the need for revolution. the need for a communist party, et cetera. We need to be clear on Marxist theory to be able to do the difficult task of waging revolution.

As Lenin said, without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement. So if we see that there are those who are calling themselves Marxists, who are vulgarizing Marxism, who are revising Marxism, you know, in this situation, we're seeing people who are calling themselves Marxists

who are saying, just tail, just follow what the IBT leadership is saying. We have a responsibility to struggle against that class struggle and talking about the way forward is not a casual debate about oh you know we could do any one of these things um no this has real consequences we're talking about the need to wage a revolution to abolish capitalism to actually build a socialist society and then to across the world end up in a classless communist society That's not a simple thing. It's absolutely something that can be done, to be clear. But it's not a simple thing. And we're not going to get there by just kind of guesswork or by going down dead ends that we know our dead ends based on the study of Marxism, of revolutionary theory and history. So the only way that we're going to be able to advance the working class struggle in this country is to be very sharp with our debate and criticism, to have real struggle over what is Marxist theory. And then how do we

we apply to conditions, you know, our conditions right now in the United States, I think this kind of ideological struggle is absolutely necessary. And I think for this, we need to be having debates over, okay, what's the correct line to take in this economic struggle? But also, it's important, I think, that we have real debate and discussion of just more broadly revolutionary history of what happened with the revolutions in Russia and China, the eventual restoration of capitalism in the USSR and China, the cultural revolution, and then, you know, as we've been talking about mostly the history of the CPUSA and the labor movement, these are all crucial things for us to really understand. And in order to come to a higher level of clarity and unity

on these things, we have to, you know, we have to be able to talk about them. We have to be able to criticize people and organizations, when we see they are putting out revisionism, when they are putting out something that is not Marxism, that is actually against Marxism, and making people think, oh, that's what Marxism is. Marxism, I guess, is just kind of blindly following Sean and Brian. Yeah, definitely. You know, I think, unfortunately, liberal, visual ideology, you know, liberalism is a war. all. They have a really powerful stronghold on those that call themselves Marxists right now in

general in society. But, you know, like the Marxist camp at large is not, is definitely subject to that stronghold as well. I think the intense cancel culture going on in society is a manifestation of this for certain. And given this, it's really not so surprising that plummocks, such as what we've written, would be taken as being nothing better than a series of personal tax. You know, what's being discussed in the article aren't criticisms of like the personal unchanging defects of people in these different groups. Of course not. These are criticisms of line. And I can hope, I can only hope that those listening, some of which maybe those in disagree with us, some of which not, can understand that these criticisms are well within like

the spirit of Marxism. And that if we truly want to make revolution, we cannot just get by, you know, just doing our own things and each having relatively small groups that chart their own path forward based off of their own conclusions. You know, we need to identify the one correct path that will exist in any given situation and its correctness, which will be determined by, you know, the correctness of our theory, application of Marxist theory, understanding of that, understanding of the objective situation, and the outcome, given the outcome of the line and application. just like any science, you know, that's how we will test our theory and the line that we put into practice based off of that.

And that's what we need to do. And we need to all be engaged in, you know, those that call ourselves Marxists in that struggle to identify what is that correct path forward. And thus work to as Marxists develop as the vanguard of worker struggles, directing all activity towards the horizon of a new society. And we can't have that path forward if we can't identify the correctness of a given line and engage in sharp struggle in order to do that

and engage in demarcation of line in order to do that. Very sharp struggle over line and lines of demarcation were things that Lenin and all other revolutionaries have carried out in their times in order to be able to truly win over the vanguard to a truly proletarian line and away from all other tendencies that exists. This is the necessity of line struggle.

And criticizing all these other lines by all these different groups, yeah, it's definitely brought us under attack. And some people will never change their opinion that, you know, we shouldn't exercise strong criticism such as this. But my hope is that a few minds maybe have been changed, or possibly that a few people in agreement with this principle can come forward and dare to struggle with us. I think it should go without saying that we don't have all the answers.

And we're certainly looking for others that we can call comrades who want to uncover more about society, understand deeply Marxist theory, and care to march forward, carrying these principles high in the task of revolution at the forefront of our minds. And if that's you, you know, I think me and Audrey and even Chase could say, let's come together, you know.

And I'll end it with that. Yeah, just one final thing. I would say absolutely for those who, you know, already have studied some Marxist theory and consider themselves Marxist, please reach out. But also, if you've never studied Marxism, but what we're talking about is interesting to you. If you want to learn more, yeah, please reach out to us. You know, we want to talk with you and figure out how to go forward together. Absolutely. Yeah, I really appreciate you both. You know, I was in a study recently and someone raised the idea that they weren't a big fan of ideological struggle or this idea that some ideas are correct or incorrect. And it reminded me of the quote from Mao when he says, you know, in class society, listen, everyone lives as a member of a particular class. And every kind of thinking without exception is stamped with the brand of a class. So we have to really, you know, take this seriously, this question of are the ideas that we're putting? forward the ideas that are organizations that we're in putting forward who do they really serve

do they serve the working class do they serve the petty bourgeoisie or do they serve the bourgeoisie who really got to take these questions seriously because political questions are a matter of life and death which side are you on which side are you on which side are you on which side are you on Audrey Lennie, thank you so much for this. This has been an incredible conversation. We'll put both your emails in the show notes. You're both former members of RMS, so perhaps folks can find you all through RMS as well.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, certainly. Thank you so much for having us. I know we're both very ecstatic to be on the show and I've both listened to this in our past and current context. So it's really been an honor to speak here and to be able to put forward our ideas about this article. Yeah. You know, for me, I think especially studying this history of communists in the U.S. in the labor movement has just, I feel like, opened up my eyes and really given me clarity on the way forward for revolution in this country. And it's really exciting. Like Lenny said, it's really exciting to be talking about this.

Yeah, thanks. Thanks so much for having us on. All right. And with all that said, you know, Space Baby wants us to remember, right? Remember that we are in a dire need of artists integrating with mass struggles to produce proletarian music and art. So artists and workers, we must ask ourselves, right, which side of the class struggle are we on? Find Vote No by Space Baby. You know, you can find that on Spotify, all the music platforms out there. Let's definitely spread this proletarian anthem. The government of Black Rock Deef. We got a world to win.

United, we are strong. Which side are you on? Yeah. Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Thank you.

Thank you.