Reply #8: Direct action gets the goods! [View All]

[Aries]

Now it's time for U.S. workers (and media) to learn that!

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http://www.boondocksnet.com/editions/marot/marot20.html

American Labor Unions
By Helen Marot

Chapter 20
Direct Action

Is the antithesis of political action but not necessarily opposed to it
-- Comparative value as a labor weapon
-- Object of direct action
-- Present advocacy opportune.

Direct action is not necessarily opposed to political action, although the term originated in the desire to distinguish between organized labor's efforts to secure its objects by more direct methods than political representation.

It arose out of labor's disappointment in the efforts it had expended politically. Labor had found that its representatives sitting in state councils rife with the doctrines and influences of a capitalist society, gradually lost the point of view of those whom they were there to represent.

It found also that political action, delegating, as it does of necessity, all action to representatives, offered the mass of the workers little if any opportunity for experience or initiative in the solution of their own problems. Direct actionists claim that the object of the labor movement is to minimize the delegation of power and to increase the power of the mass of the workers, individually and collectively. The plaint of labor is, in fact, that one group of people has assumed the direction and management of affairs of another group, that capital manages and speaks for labor, with a consequent weakness to labor of unused or enslaved powers.

Labor can only learn to do by doing, is the idea back of direct action. Representation gives labor no exercise and no opportunities to develop.