Category: Trade Unions

The SEP’s politics are hopelessly contradictory. On the one hand, the SEP labels the unions “anti-working class” organizations and claims that “the trade unions cannot be reformed.” They tell workers to abandon the unions, even calling for workers to vote “no” in unionization campaigns. Yet on the other hand, they utilized a UAW presidential election to spread revolutionary slogans and recruit to their group. They pitched this campaign as an opposition to the bureaucratic apparatus, but if they were consistent, their campaign slogan would have read: “Elect our presidential candidate in order to… dissolve the union!” If the SEP had bothered to build up rank and file cells and caucuses, there could have been a solid basis for their campaign, but instead it was run as a one-off that was not taken seriously by most of the rank and file. Recently, without acknowledging a change in their position, they have subtly shifted their language: “Only to the extent that power is wrested from the hands of the bureaucracy and transferred to workers on the shop floor can the unions be revived as instruments of the class struggle.” So which is it? Can the unions be revived as instruments of class struggle or can’t they?