Introduction

A couple people from the Revolutionary Marxist Students thought it would be smart to undertake a sectarian attack on the UPSers, and none other than the labor-liberal Cosmonaut published it. Whether or not they genuinely believed their condescending diatribe was a legitimate application of Marxism is irrelevant. What was the actual outcome? Was the fighting capacity of the UPS workers enhanced by this? Were we given solutions to any of the major issues facing the UPSers? Not at all. In fact, all that has been demonstrated is the authors’ own ignorance and ideological confusion.

If this were solely a case of a couple of rogue students having DSA orbiters publish an ignorant rant under the guise of “theory”, it would not merit a response. But the authors have distinguished themselves both by the breadth and the depth of their ignorance. We have been given a real cornucopia of horrible ideas and flawed argumentation, and more importantly, the authors have condensed down the prevailing revisionist outlook on the labor movement into a single article. Therefore, it makes sense to seriously pick apart their article, especially for those non-Teamsters who have no real grounding in this debate. Will revolutionary theory be a summation of the most important lessons and general principles of the workers’ movement, or will it be pompous sloganeering used to obscure opportunism? That is the real question posed by the Cosmonaut article, and its clear the authors are in the latter camp.

An Unscientific Theory

The main issue that the authors take with New Day’s practice is that we “disregard the need for boring from within the existing unions”. The immediate question is, whose need are we talking about? The only needs New Day recognizes are the needs of the proletarians and oppressed nations, and in particular, the needs of the UPSers. We do not recognize “needs” dictated to us by long-dead activists. So the argument from authority can be disregarded out of hand. Even so, there are some serious flaws with this theory. For one, it is so vague as to include our activity within the IBT. Are we not “boring from within” by making contract proposals to the IBT, participating in bargaining unit votes, filing grievances, and actively informing our coworkers about such things and encouraging them to participate in the same way we do? Secondly, what victories can boring from within claim over the last half-century? What goal is this meant to serve and what evidence is there that it can achieve that goal? I was under the impression that communists wanted revolutionary industrial unions, not jobs in bourgeois trade unions. Are we supposed to ignore the fact that “boring from within” was promoted by William “Zigzag” Foster, a trusted ally of Samuel Gompers (a fact mentioned in “From Bryan to Stalin”) who helped liquidate the communist shop-floor organizations? Thirdly, and most important, what are the criteria for “boring from within” and do they apply to the IBT? If “boring from within” is meant to be a universal theory, then that is just reformism. Presumably, there are institutions that “boring from within” applies to and some, for example police departments, that it simply does not apply to. But then why oppose boring from within police departments while promoting boring from within a police union like the IBT? What is the line for reforming an organization and not–should we bore from within CPUSA or DSA? This is how “boring from within” strengthens opportunism, by covering up this absolutely critical question about the class nature of institutions. Nobody should take the proletarian nature of an organization for granted, especially trade unions and especially trade unions founded by labor racketeers, and especially under a bourgeois dictatorship. Simply having proletarians within an organization means nothing: there are proletarians everywhere, some of them even support Republicans and Democrats. Should we “bore from within” them too? And if not, then why “bore from within” what is essentially a Democrat front organization?

Allegedly, the fundamental issue with our outlook is that it “is based on a non-dialectical conception of a homogenous rank-and-file opposed to a homogenous bureaucratic union leadership. They have no true understanding of the basic fact of dialectics that every unity is fraught with divisions, made of contradictions.” Of course, the authors provide no citation for this claim of “homogeneity”. This is because nowhere in New Day has such a claim been made. In fact, the March 2023 edition, which is listed as a source in the Cosmonaut article, even states, “Teamsters divides UPSers into different job classifications: inventing arbitrary pay scales and encouraging squabbles over the easiest jobs/routes. […] Basically every task in the company has multiple people working on it, all with different pay rates and benefits. We do not have room here to go into detail regarding their political efforts at splitting…” The May 2023 edition even pointed out that there are divisions in the union bureaucracy, namely, “Every time without fail, not just at UPS, the IBT proclaims for itself the sole right to lead the workers, then does nothing and takes advantage of the ensuing confusion and demoralization to ram through concessions. (And every time, there are a handful of aspiring ‘reformist’ officials ready to exploit this for their own gain!)” The problem is not that the bureaucracy is homogenous or heterogenous. The problem is that the bureaucracy is constituted not on the basis of organizing the collective strength of the UPSers but on the basis of collaboration with the government to loot them. Regardless, it is dishonest to claim we have a “homogenous” view of the rank-and-file and the bureaucracy when we have pointed out the huge material divisions among the UPSers as well as the perpetual internal struggle of the bureaucracy for a redivision of the loot. Hilariously, the Cosmonaut article itself refers to the IBT leadership monolithically a dozen times: “Meanwhile the budding Vote No movement is facing attacks from all sides, including pseudo-Socialist groups, bourgeois media outlets, IBT leadership and Business Agents, and more.”

As for the little lecture on contradiction, the authors forgot that, “There are many contradictions in the process of development of a complex thing, and one of them is necessarily the principal contradiction whose existence and development determine or influence the existence and development of the other contradictions.” [Mao, “On Contradiction”] Their thinking is not dialectical, it is eclectic. It combines Marxist terminology with liberal labor politics. Their attitude towards the IBT was described by Lenin in “Once Again on the Trade Unions,” “His [Bukharin] theoretical attitude is: ‘on the one hand, and on the other’, ‘the one and the other’. That is eclecticism.” On the one hand, we see, “IBT leadership aligning with the whole of bourgeoisie,” and on the other hand, “take advantage of contradictions within leadership to form tactical alliances.” On the one hand, “break away from the sway of degenerate organizations like TDU (and related pseudo-socialist organizations which tail O’Brien), and chart an independent course forward for the class struggle,” and on the other hand, New Day is chastised for doing exactly that instead of “boring from within”. Is it not clear that the talk of dialectics and contradiction is really just an attempt to cover up an internally inconsistent worldview that swings between two absolutely exclusive poles?

There is a principal contradiction in the IBT. It is this: it is legally the steward of the UPS workers, negotiating contracts on our behalf and deducting obligatory dues from our wages, as well as representing us in grievance panels, arbitration, and in court, but objectively, it does not represent our class interests. Legally, it represents us; politically and economically, it objectively does not. This is absolutely fundamental. To think there are “materialists”, “Marxists”, and “Maoists” who cannot wrap their head around this elementary fact is just sad. There is a secondary contradiction, which TDU was supposedly working towards resolving, and that is the lack of internal union democracy. New Day takes the principal contradiction as its theoretical foundation. This secondary contradiction and its development heavily informs our day-to-day work. The IBT is not a democratic organization, whether this is measured by participation or its adopted policy. Therefore, it makes no sense to engage with it on a “democratic” basis. If the IBT was a legitimate trade union that had a strong shop floor presence, strong participation from the members, and any level of transparency and openness in its conduct and elections, perhaps New Day would be a caucus or educational group. But it does not and we aren’t. The problem with “boring from within” is it sweeps both of these contradictions under the rug, it completely erases the question of the union’s legitimacy, which by no means can be taken for granted. In fact, any union collaborating with the NLRB should be viewed as suspect automatically. The stated mission of the NLRB is to prevent disruption of commerce: an NLRB certification can only mean that a union is trusted by the government not to strike. If a union won’t strike, then it has given up the main tool for securing concessions and consequently cannot be trusted to safeguard its members’ interests in general. (We could go on about other aspects of these contradictions, for instance, the fact that the IBT “owns” our job bids and benefits which creates the illusion that they are giving us these things. People are alienated because they have to choose between their objective political-economic interests and the meager crumbs distributed by the IBT. But this is beside the point.)

Such is the authors’ theoretical rigor, which boils down to dogmatically repeating a decades-old slogan and waffling back and forth on the IBT.

Real and Fake Sectarianism

Undialectical thinking is not the only charge leveled against New Day: “Others, having likewise failed to understand the lessons of ‘Left-Wing’ Communism and Marxism more broadly, operate as sectarian forces, unwilling and unable to comprehend the subtle work needed to undermine and expose the leadership of reactionary unions, or even the basics of how to work together with anyone outside their sects.” But what are the facts?

First of all, the most damning piece of evidence against this claim is the article itself. Did the authors ever propose a common plan of action to New Day? No, they did not. Did Teamsters Mobilize, the group they identify with, ever make such a proposal? No, it did not. The authors’ sole contact with New Day was crying about us in Cosmonaut. (To our knowledge, at least.) The authors really told on themselves by using the March 2023 edition as their source for New Day. The whole point of that edition was exposing the fraudulent “unity” sloganeering of the IBT and openly called for UPSers to develop their own strike demands for the purposes of building up a strike platform that would have the broadest possible appeal. Quite strange, then, that we would be reproached for “sectarianism”.

That point is even stranger when you take into account the authors’ description of New Day as “Gonzaloite”, “marginal and irrelevant forces”, “rightly ridiculed by the majority of the US left”, and even a “danger”. It sounds like it is the authors who are opposed to working with us, and not the other way around. Was it a slip of the tongue that New Day, a group composed exclusively of class-conscious UPS proletarians, was described as a “danger”, while the IBT officialdom which unanimously endorsed the sellout agreement is praised for its “militant minority”?

There is not a single quotation or example of sectarianism by New Day in the Cosmonaut article. New Day is called Gonzaloite, which would be funny if it weren’t reactionary. By calling New Day Gonzaloite, the authors are openly identifying themselves with the fascist government that Gonzalo led the charge against. It’s dishonest, too, since New Day has never attached any political criteria to the New Day Committees. Is whining about “Gonzaloites” not sectarianism in its own right? Even if the authors are correct “theoretically”, then that would mean the New Dayers are deeply misguided UPSers—in which case, wouldn’t insulting us in Cosmonaut be “impetuous” “sectarian” activity? Furthermore, since when is “the US left” the arbiter of truth and class struggle? Is the US left not composed of “marginal and irrelevant forces” waddling behind the bourgeoisie? They undeniably are—the authors even admit as much when they say, “The Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) caucus and Labor Notes have been quick to endorse the TA, cheering it as a historic victory. So-called socialist organizations like the Party of Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) have also parroted O’Brien’s talking points and slandered critics of the TA.” Is this not subjectivism on the part of Cosmonaut, judging us not according to how our claims measure up to reality (read the September 2023 edition for a full accounting of this) but by the feelings of “the US left”?

Actually, their use of Gonzaloite is even stupider than this. It just shows how steeped in anticommunism these people are, that they literally can’t conceive of the possibility that the “Gonzaloites” have integrated with the masses better than they have. It’s unthinkable that some UPSers, after witnessing dozens of so-called “Marxist” fraud groups try to profit off their struggle and the failure of TDU reformism, arrived at Maoism, and not the narrow-minded “Maoism” of the intellectuals but the revolutionary theories developed by the workers and peasants in the oppressed nations. It’s equally unthinkable that some Maoists recognized the correctness of New Day’s line and joined the UPS rank and file in order to carry it out. No, this possibility is absolutely excluded a priori. No way could New Day be the consequence of years of Marxist study and years and years of struggling at UPS. The 2018 contract, the events of the pandemic (especially the memorandum of understanding, Hoffa Jr joining Trump’s committee to reopen the economy, the fact that we were making less than unemployment paid while dealing with insane working conditions), the victory of TDU and the ascension of O’Brien, all this combined with some of the “rank and file” carrying out a thorough study of Marxist economics, philosophy, and history, as well as the history of the IBT itself (especially its origins in racketeering and its beginning at UPS as a company union and its transformation into a state union via the Wagner Act, RICO intervention, Independent Review Board, etc), all this contributed to the creation of an organization dedicated to building up the collective strength of the UPS proletarians. The IBT is objectively not an organization through which the UPSers can advance their class interests and it is outright hostile to organizing any sort of collective struggle. Economic and political action is an impossibility within the limits set by the IBT, and consequently UPSers (not just the New Dayers) are breaking with them. These are the basic facts that the borers and the liberals simply “forget” but which are absolutely fundamental to the “Gonzaloites”.

So much for the allegations of “sectarianism”. The authors gesture towards uniting in a party, but this too rings hollow. Perhaps they thought they could outflank New Day from the left by calling for a Communist Party. But they were wrong. The issue is not whether New Day or Teamsters Mobilize will be recognized by the communists. The issue is whether or not the so-called communists will be able to break with the bourgeois labor movement. New Day will never go in for a party that accepts promoters/representatives of the bourgeois state unions in its ranks and such a party would be rejected out of hand by the UPS proletarians. Contrary to what people think, UPSers aren’t stupid: we know when we are being swindled. (It must be noted that O’Brien actually got less votes than Hoffa Jr had in the election before him, which shows how little the “grassroots” actually cared for the O’Brien–TDU fraud.) And a communist party that waffles on opportunism in the labor movement like the authors do would not be a communist party, it would be a joke. It’s hard to tell if this portion was actually meant to be a joke, since Cosmonaut as a publication does nothing but try to put a “scientific” “Marxist” gloss on a faction (Marxist Unity Group) of a faction (Democratic Socialists of America) of the Democratic Party.

The fact that there are “communists” who can’t tell the difference between an organization of proletarians and an organization of racketeers who willingly collaborate with the Democrats and intelligence agencies is downright pathetic. These people are not “the vanguard”, they are barnacles clinging to the sinking ship that is the IBT. It is the job of the communists to organize a functioning and antirevisionist party, not the UPSers. So don’t bother lecturing us about independent class politics and the need for a party while arguing against independent class politics in the labor movement. That’s the whole point of the article, isn’t it? To chastise the minority of UPSers who have decided to organize outside the clutches of the bourgeois labor movement? The need for communists to struggle against tailism and liquidationism is replaced by the “need to bore from within”, and from there, it is only logical to resort to petty-bourgeois condescension against the workers. Unfortunately for the authors, this condescension takes on the appearance of a delusional rant once we take into account the actual facts.

Avoiding the Facts

So far, we have seen how the authors floundered on theory and tried to cover this with baseless accusations against New Day. Their last hope is in broad statements about the “tasks” of the UPSers—do they have a strong vision for the future or solid practical work to show in spite of everything?

The authors say, “The tasks of uniting the advanced for the struggle, and of raising the consciousness of the masses beyond the narrow horizon of trade-union reformism were forever deferred [by the founders of TDU], as an inevitable result of this confused theory. In contrast to this approach, Marxists must be carrying out socialist ‘agitation and propaganda systematically, perseveringly, persistently and patiently’ both in the unions broadly and in and through the oppositional militant organizations inside the unions they found and lead. […] We must seize the time, agitate throughout the UPS contract fight on the need for an organization of the militant minority that can outlast this specific fight, and make a plan to found this organization. We must not fall into the trap of aiming for an organization of the undifferentiated “rank-and-file”, much less a reform organization, that aims for the widest possible membership. We already have the wide masses in front and around us, within the union itself. At this moment, what we need within the Teamsters (and in the labor movement more broadly) is to unite the minority of relatively class-conscious militants around an explicit program of class struggle against capital, so that this minority can carry out in more coordinated fashion the work of drawing in those broader masses into struggle. […] First, Marxists in and outside of UPS must of course firmly and vocally stand against the TA, collaborate closely with those most active elements amongst the UPS workers in carrying out the Vote No campaign led by Teamsters Mobilize, and yes, provide leadership to this immediate struggle. […] We Marxists together with the organized militants must throw ourselves into those organizations and not hesitate to found them if/when it makes sense. But still we need the narrower organization of the militant minority to most effectively sustain wider organizations and tactical alliances. One key task to bring this together will be the creation of a national newsletter.”

This all sounds great. But how much of it has actually been put into practice? The authors complain about New Day and the WSWS, but both organizations already made regular newsletters for UPSers before the article was even published. (New Day at UPS existed a full year ahead of the Cosmonaut article.) Both organizations “firmly and vocally” opposed the TA. New Day had an edition specifically dedicated to analyzing the TA and another edition after that explaining its significance and the wider process that led to it and the problems going forward in implementing it. I think its reasonable to say the New Dayers were “those most active amongst the UPS workers in carrying out the Vote No campaign.” Where is the authors’ national newsletter? Teamsters Mobilize not only has no newsletter, their last public statement was in late August. Is New Day not an “organization of the militant minority that can outlast this specific fight” and have the authors not frankly admitted they are yet to “make a plan to found this organization”? It would seem as though New Day is more effective at carrying out the authors’ tasks than the authors.

There is one strange turn of phrase that serves to cover up the fact that there was no national strike organized at UPS. The authors say, “Out of this Vote No campaign, regardless of whether it is successful in voting down the contract and sparking a strike [?] or not, we will have a unique opportunity to lay the groundwork for an organization of the militant minority within the Teamsters.” What is meant by this line about sparking a strike? It is a well-known fact that the IBT did absolutely no preparation for a strike beyond the practice pickets which included only a tiny minority of UPSers, mainly drivers, stewards and those close to the bureaucracy. The reality is no strike platform was developed and no vote was held for a strike, only a vote to “authorize” the unelected negotiating committee to call one. (The ballots even said on them to vote yes if you don’t want to strike, such is the backwards logic of the IBT bureaucracy: vote yes on strike authorization to prevent a strike by intimidating the company into meeting our demands–what these demands were, we have no idea since negotiations were held in secret.) So are they promoting the lie that the IBT was strike-ready? Or are they claiming TM was ready to lead a strike in the event of a no vote? Unironically, New Day and the WSWS were the only organizations that took seriously the possibility of a strike and the inevitability of the IBT’s betrayal. To our knowledge, New Day was the only organization that made a strike program and recruited strike lieutenants with the goal of either seizing leadership in the event of an “authorized” strike or leading a regional wildcat if the UPSers were ready to undertake such an effort. The fact that the vast majority of UPSers were not ready to undertake such an effort is a consequence of people like the authors, who claim to want to “organize” UPSers but actually eschew the most fundamental tasks of labor organizing.

Think about how silly it is for the authors to complain about the sellout while also misrepresenting the only people who were organizing against it before it even happened. The IBT never organized a strike, that’s just a fact. It’s also a fact that New Day at UPS organized dozens of strike lieutenants at multiple buildings behind an actual concrete strike program. We didn’t follow through on it because it would have been easily isolated and defeated, and New Day self-criticized for not making it clear beforehand under what conditions it could be pulled off successfully. What was TM doing this whole time? They “organized” a webinar with a VP of the IBT. More recently they proposed a resolution to TDU calling for a ceasefire in Gaza which was defeated. (As if Israel would cease firing on the Palestinians, and as if Palestinians should ceasefire in their national liberation struggle!) New Day exposed the sham contract process as it unfolded and tried to organize an alternative. TM did neither of these things and now a couple of them are crying about New Day to cover up their own ineptitude. (Not at all unlike a particular Trotskyist group which “demanded” $21/hour for part timers at a building where the MRA was already above that. When a New Dayer told them this was a blatant concessionary program, and explained that they should stop parroting the lie that the IBT/O’Brien were somehow changed, they wouldn’t listen, and one of them even took up a secretarial position in the local, then after the fact, they cynically claimed the contract rate of $21/hour was a sellout! And guess which org they went on to support–none other than TM!)

Let us not forget too that Cosmonaut directly contributed to the current state of the Teamsters union. They continue to promote the DSA’s “rank-and-file strategy” which is the strategy of recruiting new bureaucrats from among the workers and has consistently promoted the left wing of TDU instead of pointing out the faulty basis and consistent opportunist theory at the heart of TDU and the “rank-and-file strategy”. Consider the following from the ‘Marxist Unity Group Labor Strategy Position Paper’—the editor-in-chief of Cosmonaut is in MUG and so presumably this is their editorial line: “As it currently stands, DSA’s labor work is both extremely impressive [?] and wholly inadequate to the monumental task before us. MUG can and will play a key role in changing this. Our comrades in DSA labor circles are doing outstanding work, [?] and it is without question that we can cooperate amicably to bolster our organization’s ability to lead the American labor movement into an unprecedented period of militancy and success. […] This question is far more important than debates over the rank and file strategy, which on the whole has been a resounding success. [?] Solidarity efforts with organizers in Starbucks and Amazon have flourished, EWOC has done commendable work in organizing the unorganized, and DSA has earned a reputation for being valuable allies on the picket line. [I guess we are just pretending DSA electeds didn’t vote to ban the potential rail workers’ strike?] Our focus now should be working to strengthen and deepen the rank and file strategy by politicizing our labor work.” The authors complain about, “Others such as DSA’s Levin have been leading forces in the rightward shift of TDU under the present IBT administration. And now, they either shamelessly join the IBT leadership in pushing a Vote Yes campaign and calling the sellout TA a ‘historic contract,’ or they spinelessly adopt a ‘neutral’ stance while awaiting the results of the vote.” Yet they are publishing this in Cosmonaut which claims DSA is doing “outstanding work” in the labor movement. Whether the authors admit it or not, they have objectively entered the camp of the “left” wing of the DSA, an organization which tails the state union bureaucrats. They have taken up the task of defending DSA’s left flank by attacking those organizations which have in reality broke off from the ideas the authors say in theory should be broken off from.

Who is guiding Teamsters Mobilize and who guides New Day? This is an extremely uncomfortable question for the authors. The fact is, Teamsters Mobilize is made up of the various left-wingers hovering on the fringe of the IBT bureaucracy. It is made up of the people who failed to combat opportunism. So it should be no mystery as to why they are inventing new reasons or digging up old ones (“boring from within”) to justify going along with opportunism. (They haven’t released any public statements, but the Teamsters Mobilize Twitter account continues to promote Shaun Fain for some reason—I guess they are flitting from one prominent opportunist to the next.) New Day, on the other hand, is made up of people who are excluded from the IBT (which is the majority of UPSers) and have been opposed to opportunism for years. These are the facts which the authors cannot come to grips with. New Day was correct in all its claims leading up to the TA while Teamsters Mobilize simply seized on popular opposition after its announcement.

Editing Lenin

This is a minor point, but the authors dishonestly represent Lenin throughout their work. They say Lenin would have called New Day “artificial”. In reality, Lenin fought tirelessly against the line of “organic” trade union struggle. Consider the following passage from What Is To Be Done, which was partially quoted in the Cosmonaut article:

“Secondly, in the very first literary expression of Economism we observe the exceedingly curious phenomenon — highly characteristic for an understanding of all the differences prevailing among present-day Social Democrats — that the adherents of the ‘labour movement pure and simple’, worshippers of the closest ‘organic’ contacts (Rabocheye Dyelo’s term) with the proletarian struggle, opponents of any non-worker intelligentsia (even a socialist intelligentsia), are compelled, in order to defend their positions, to resort to the arguments of the bourgeois ‘pure trade-unionists’. This shows that from the very outset Rabochaya Mysl began — unconsciously — to implement the programme of the Credo. [Here is where the quote begins in the Cosmonaut article!] This shows (something Rabocheye Dyelo cannot grasp) that all worship of the spontaneity of the working class movement, all belittling of the role of ‘the conscious element’, of the role of Social-Democracy, means, quite independently of whether he who belittles that role desires it or not, a strengthening of the influence of bourgeois ideology upon the workers.”

Not being content to twist Lenin’s What Is To Be Done, they also pretend that Left-Wing Communism argues against New Day. To those “communists” who think Lenin’s Left-Wing Communism somehow justifies their tailing the state union bureaucrats, I ask: where in LWC does Lenin say the struggle against the bourgeois trade union leaders must be waged on their terms? Where does it say not to form fractions or shop floor organizations? The answer is nowhere. I already described how New Day participates in the IBT and why we participate to the limited extent that we do. What did Lenin actually say in Left-Wing Communism on the trade unions? The tasks of communists in the trade unions and the mistakes of the “lefts” were this:

“They [the trade unions] call for a determined struggle against the Mensheviks, who still have a certain though very small following to whom they teach all kinds of counter-revolutionary machinations, ranging from an ideological defence of (bourgeois) democracy and the preaching that the trade unions should be ‘independent’ (independent of proletarian state power!) to sabotage of proletarian discipline, etc., etc. […] If you want to help the ‘masses’ and win the sympathy and support of the ‘masses’, you should not fear difficulties, or pinpricks, chicanery, insults and persecution from the ‘leaders’ (who, being opportunists and social-chauvinists, are in most cases directly or indirectly connected with the bourgeoisie and the police), but must absolutely work wherever the masses are to be found. You must be capable of any sacrifice, of overcoming the greatest obstacles, in order to carry on agitation and propaganda systematically, perseveringly, persistently and patiently in those institutions, societies and associations—even the most reactionary—in which proletarian or semi-proletarian masses are to be found. […] These facts make crystal clear something that is confirmed by thousands of other symptoms, namely, that class-consciousness and the desire for organisation are growing among the proletarian masses, among the rank and file, among the backward elements. Millions of workers in Great Britain, France and Germany are for the first time passing from a complete lack of organisation to the elementary, lowest, simplest, and (to those still thoroughly imbued with bourgeois-democratic prejudices) most easily comprehensible form of organisation, namely, the trade unions; yet the revolutionary but imprudent Left Communists stand by, crying out ‘the masses’, ‘the masses!’ but refusing to work within the trade unions, on the pretext that they are “reactionary”, and invent a brand-new, immaculate little ‘Workers’ Union’, which is guiltless of bourgeois-democratic prejudices and innocent of craft or narrow-minded craft-union sins, a union which, they claim, will be (!) a broad organisation. ‘Recognition of the Soviet system and the dictatorship’ will be the only (!) condition of membership.”

Does New Day have any such political conditions for membership? No, it does not. At the same time, UPSers self-select themselves because of New Day’s principled opposition to the ruling parties and its explicit criticism of the state unionist practice of shoveling dues money into Democratic Party coffers. Does New Day “avoid the masses”, does it “fear persecution from the leaders”? On the contrary, it is the IBT that avoids the masses and it is the reformists who cringe before the IBT leaders while New Day “established contacts with the masses, were able to carry on their agitation, and succeeded in wresting workers from the influence of Zubatov’s [we might say O’Brien’s] agents.”

Conclusion

Strawman after strawman of New Day, dishonestly edited Lenin quotes, mindless sloganeering: this is the theoretical contribution offered to the UPSers by the “Revolutionary” “Marxist” students. What conclusion can I offer? The Cosmonaut article put forward nothing new. It amounts to a lot of liberal waffling with some Lenin sprinkled throughout. The only real purpose of it was to attack those workers who are trying to advance in spite of the betrayal of the IBT and the circular thinking of the wannabe-IBT-reformers.

People–and not just from New Day–have been threatened directly and outright attacked by IBT goons just for trying to participate in an organization that they pay dues to and which claims to represent them and makes agreements on their behalf. Are the violent IBT thugs the “militant minority” the Cosmonaut authors have in mind, because the term certainly applies! The fact is that the worst of the IBT objectively benefits from idiotic screeds such as the one published in Cosmonaut. It legitimizes their organization and slanders their enemies. Perhaps some people think I’ve been too harsh towards the Cosmonaut authors, but I would say this is not harshness, harshness is UPS’ treatment of its employees which the IBT directly contributes to and is responsible for, and harshness is how the IBT treats anyone who threatens the nice little cash cow they have set up for themselves at UPS. You can join with New Day or not, but don’t act like you’re taking some genius, revolutionary stance when you’re literally repeating the politics and exact words of a Roosevelt Democrat and just saying, “The IBT should be better but we can’t go too far!” We work at UPS, this is how we make a living, we have had absurd and downright cruel burdens placed onto us, and every time we try to shake off the IBT, which does nothing but ride on our backs, there are idiot liberals there to “tsk tsk”, and it is downright maddening. The fact that some UPSers are still on board with the IBT is very unfortunate, and it is also unfortunate that some liberals have convinced themselves they are “Marxists” or even “Maoists”. Only through patient and methodical work towards principled unity among UPSers and among Maoists, and ideally with close collaboration between the two, can the immense potential power of the UPS workers be brought down on their enemies. The only conclusion really is that the pseudo intellectuals are still hard at work prettifying the gangsterite Teamsters. In fact, Daniel de Léon already wrote this conclusion for me over a century ago:

“The general feature of the ‘Intellectual’ is superficiality, coupled, of course, with the usual accompaniment of vanity and conceit—the features that the sage had in mind when he declared that ‘a little learning puffeth up.’ Unschooled in the prime requirement for knowledge – the art of thinking—the ‘Intellectual’ equips himself with scraps of learning, and, decked with these ill-fitting feathers, he forthwith sets himself up as a perambulating lump of wisdom. Of course, he is twisted on every important practical question and revels only in abstractions; of course, he bumps up at every step against facts that, ‘Intellectual’ though be calls himself, he lacks the intellect to comprehend; and, as a natural consequence of all this, he slowly acquires an instinctive, if not involuntary aversion for whatever requires exact knowledge, and a malignant hatred for those before whom, being of superior calibre than himself, his ‘genius’ feels rebuked. […] The ‘Intellectual’ can not grasp the importance of Unionism. It is a case of material interests and moral and mental make-up combining. For bona fide Unionism the ‘Intellectual’ has the feeling that a scalded cat has for water; to bogus Unionism he takes like a duck does to a mill-pond;—in short, the question of Unionism is a test that assays the ‘Intellectual’ and proves him dross.”

The intellectuals—in this case, students—are simply incapable of distinguishing between trade union struggle and trade union grifting. Having utterly failed in this respect, the intellectuals lash out at the people who are actually capable of differentiating between right and wrong in the trade union movement. They can only repeat stale (and irrelevant) slogans to justify continuing down the incorrect road and are utterly incapable of self-criticism or honest collaboration. Even amid cries of sectarianism, the authors put forward no actionable proposal for united struggle. The fact remains that the New Dayers are more than willing to fight alongside workers organized into other groups. (And in my opinion, a boycott of the 2024 general election would be an excellent place to start uniting all the disparate labor and tenant organizing groups. But I have no idea if TM would support such a thing since they seem stuck in the swamp of labor-liberal politics.) Anyone in TM who is unhappy with the labor-liberalism of the Cosmonaut writers should take up the practice of shop-floor organizing, stop tailing the reactionary labor bureaucrats, and consider actually reading New Day instead of the gross slanders of the labor liberals, and adopt what is correct. The only hope for the labor movement in the US is in organizing and agitating among workers on the shop floor, outside the traditional state union channels (i.e. the steward system, labor-management collaboration system, etc.), not within them. Anyone disputing this fact plays an objectively reactionary role in the labor movement by leading the workers back into the arms of the capitalist state, to their inevitable surrender and defeat.