M-L-M Mayhem!

Now that my unit has egregiously ratified a shite contract and left us in a position, come next Monday, of either crossing the picket lines of our own union or getting fired, I feel it's time to reflect yet again on the phenomenon of "paper marxists."  By this I mean those marxist academics whose entire career is built on papers and books about marxist theory but who, in practice, are often the most rank opportunists.  And since it is ultimately practice that matters for marxism, and not just a fucking career built out of published papers and books, paper marxists are about as marxist as carob is chocolate.  Except that I like carob and I don't like these pseudo-marxists. Okay, maybe it's not entirely accurate to use the term "pseudo-marxist" here.  After all, I don't want to be accused of engaging in the "no true scotsman" fallacy (but screw all these random fallacies that are supposedly laws of proper thought!), so let me rephrase: thes

I never tire of quoting Marx's statement about historical events repeating first as tragedy and then as farce, particularly since it often applies to all of the ways in which we are haunted by history and, in this haunting, end up repeating the mistakes of the past.  Now that my union local is back on strike, that statement seems entirely appropriate: if my union's strike in 2008-2009 was the tragic repetition of its previous strike in 2001-2002, then the repetitions called forth by this year's strike have already been enough to place it on the road towards farce. My analysis of the 2008-2009 strike can be found here , here , here , and here .  Much of what was outlined there, particularly the limits of trade union consciousness and a university local, as well as the way line struggle in even these spaces emerges, still holds for the current strike.  There are, of course, differences this time around that make the event of 2008-2009, with all of its limits, far more radi

In numerous past posts I've discussed the limitations of the trade union movement in Canada and the need for communists to avoid a political strategy that is primarily based on trade unionism.  Based on discussions with friends and comrades, however, I feel that it is important to clarify the meaning of this position because it is often misunderstood, intentionally or unintentionally, as a form of anti-union ultra-leftism rather than an important strategic clarification.  The problem with trade unionism articulated by myself and the Maoist groups I support should not be conceived as a bland anti-unionism––or even some vague and anarchist rejection of "union bureaucracy"––but a critique of economism and, in this critique, an extension of Lenin's distinction between trade union and revolutionary consciousness. Having come from the trade union movement, and having spent years working as an anti-capitalist within a union, there is a part of me that cannot help but r

Recently, due to conversations in both internet forums and concrete life, I have been thinking again about the class position of the so-called intelligentsia ––academics, university students, artists, and other "mental labourers"––especially in the context of the centres of capitalism.  While I find the somewhat pernicious trend of leftwing anti-intellectualism extremely problematic, I have also found the inverse intellectual resignation troublesome.  It is one thing to argue that the intellectual life should be opened up to those who lack the privilege of access, but it is quite another to argue for the primacy of the privileged leftwing intellectual–– especially  when these intellectuals often defect to the bourgeois camp, or at the very least show no interest in agitating for revolution, time and time again. This topic concerns me because, obviously, I currently belong to this class of intellectual workers: I sell my labour in a casualized academic environment while wo

At various points in the blog I have discussed the tension surrounding using bourgeois rights in a non-bourgeois manner .  Moreover, I have argued that what are often misunderstood as "bourgeois rights"––that is, rights that capitalism gives its subjects out of the goodness of its heart––are actually not essential to capitalism and primarily exist under capitalism because of struggles against capitalism .  To paraphrase from memory a comment made by Jeff Noonan at Rethinking Marxism   2009 : capitalism's essential logic is antithetical to life and the only things that have made capitalism liveable exist because of anti-capitalist struggle. If capitalism is a system based on the logic of surplus-value (which includes accumulation, expansion, the subordination of use to exchange, economic alienation, militarism, and anything that means in a very simple and very crude sense profit over people ), then the only individual "human" rights that matter are those rights

Today I am skipping out of a giant march from my city's occupy site partially because, after yesterday and the march described in my previous post , I am not entirely interested in going to a march composed primarily of the trade union labour aristocracy, the usual left activist groups, police cooperation––all of the "family friendly" characteristics that have become commonplace in our demonstrations.  (Confession: I am also skipping the march because I have a bunch or reading to catch up on, the rest of my group isn't going, and today I am being lazy.)  This is not to say that I have a problem with "family friendly" marches, that I boycott them because I'm some sort of super radical who only wants marches where we might possibly fight the police: I am not some macho ultra-leftist who thinks the only people who should be on the street protesting are those who are able-bodied and without children––hell, as much as I hate the limits of these marches, I usu

The other day I attended, along with a small group of comrades, the local Canadian Union of Postal Workers [CUPW] solidarity rally in Toronto.  Due to my previous post , which was an analysis of my own union local's 2008-2009 strike, this rally possessed a synchronistic appropriateness, especially since some of the speakers mentioned that strike in their address to the CUPW workers.  The very same speeches performed by the union bureaucrats at this rally were presented, with marginal difference, at those solidarity rallies my local held in the strike days before we were ordered back to work. (For those who are unaware of Canadian politics, I should briefly mention that the workers of CUPW are on strike across Canada.  The employer wants to gut their Collective Agreement [this is a strike against concessions] and there is collusion between the employer and the Conservative federal government.) As I have discussed elsewhere on this blog , trade unions in the centres of capitalism

This is the fourth and final instalment of my analysis of the 2008-2009 Canadian Union of Public Employees [CUPE], local 3903's strike.  (The first part can be found here , the second here , and the third here .)  Again, I have posted this essay because the local (which is also my local) is in its next round of bargaining and hopefully this analysis will remind those involved (some of whom still read my blog) of the problems that disrupted the last round of bargaining.  Since history repeats itself sometimes as farce, this essay series is especially relevant due to the last GMM I attended: the usual suspects, many of whom openly embraced the "right-opportunist" political line of the last strike, attempted to disrupt the bargaining process (again with the same left-sounding language) by arguing for a dubious split in the executive body. I have delayed posting this final part because (surprise, surprise) most of my readers don't know or care about the labour struggle

This is the next part of an analysis of the Canadian Union of Public Employees [CUPE] local 3903 strike in 2008-2009.  The first part can be found here and the second part can be found here .  Although I am mainly posting this because CUPE 3903 is about to enter its next round of bargaining, and I know that my readership outside of Toronto (and maybe some within Toronto) may not be interested in the strike of a single local, as I noted before, I think the analysis is important because it examines how political line struggle manifests within unions, the limits of trade union consciousness, how to understand right and left lines in these contexts. Anyhow, after the following section there will be only one more concluding post in this series and I can get back to ranting about other things that my readership as a whole will find more interesting. (Again: apologies for the format.  In the first post of this series I tried to fix the formatting to resemble my usual posts and it took