1As the writing of these memoirs is being finalized, Trump is further developing his multi-faceted plan to overturn November’s elections. Should he succeed, all democratic rights are at risk. Almost all the capitalist media is issuing daily updates and warnings. The silence of the union leadership and the socialist left is more thunderous than ever. It confirms all the conclusions I draw from my experiences as outlined below.

how we understand and respond to such an event is conditioned by our understanding of what led up to it. My hope is that these memoirs of the last 80 years will help develop such an understanding.

In a completely different era, although not that long before I was born, the US working class rose up. That was the period of the 1930s, during the sit-down strikes, when workers built the industrial unions. There were three main tendencies that expressed themselves in those struggles: One was open defiance of the law. Another was a struggle towards political independence through workers building their own political party, a mass working class or labor party. The third was for international working class solidarity and socialism. I encountered the survival of those tendencies when I first started down the road of political activism in the early 1960s.

There were several factors that countered these tendencies. First and foremost was the power of US capitalism that emerged after WW II. That power enabled a softening of class relations. That helped consolidate in power the dominant leadership of the working class — the union leadership — which was committed to accommodating themselves and the unions to capitalism. Also, although it may not be in the consciousness of today’s generations, the Russian Revolution had a powerful impact on the workers movement of that day. The turn of Soviet society ever deeper into bureaucratism and repression helped weaken any tendencies towards socialism.

A war developed which was determined to stamp out all the best traditions of the 1930s. That war was not only carried out by the capitalist class. The union leadership was central to the success of that war. They carried out what is now an 80-year war against those traditions. In part it was a propaganda war, but it was also far more than that: It involved a vicious battle against all those union members who sought to keep those traditions alive both in words and in practice. Some of those members tried to do so unconsciously and some tried to do so consciously. It didn’t matter. Those who weren’t demoralized or simply bought off were subverted, ostracized, red-baited, blackballed, expelled from unions, and physically assaulted. Some were even murdered.

The union leadership’s war against those traditions enabled them to impose even more conservative, pro-capitalist policies. Lying at the very core, the center of their policies is the so-called “team concept.” This is the idea that the unions and the unionized employers are on the same team and the unions must help the employers make a profit. Together, we are competing with workers on the other team. This includes competing against workers in other countries as well as against non-union workers and employers in the U.S. That is the view, and in reality, this means that union members must compete with workers who aren’t in the union for who can make a more assured profit for their employer. This contradicts the very purpose of the union, which is to lessen or eliminate this competition.

The team concept goes hand in hand with the absolute insistence that the unions must not challenge labor law anytime and any place. Starting in the 1970s, these two policies together left the unions unable to successfully deal with the attacks on the unions and on the US working class in general. All of this plus other factors, including the intensification of the globalization of capitalism, has led to an absolute crisis of the working class. The most reactionary aspects of US culture have stepped into the void created by the crushing of those powerful traditions of the 1930s. This aspect of U.S culture includes selfishness and greed, anti-intellectualism plus white and male supremacy and general bigotry, nationalism, and religious mysticism. This is what working class support for Trump represents. This is very far from all that exists in the U.S. working class, but socialists and even those who simply believe in international working class solidarity in general do themselves no favor if they are unwilling to recognize the seriousness of this crisis.

Tens of millions of U.S. workers have not been swept up in MAGA. But the overwhelming majority of workers who are not MAGAites feel so overwhelmed that they believe there is nothing they can do but survive and maybe vote every two years at best.

The moral and political collapse of the socialist movement has been a factor in that feeling of being overwhelmed. After all, there is no real reason to organize to struggle against the domination of the conservative, and cowardly, union bureaucracy if all one is after is a few more dollars on the paycheck. In that case, one is better advised to spend one’s time studying and investing in the stock market or, for the younger generations, becoming a social media “influencer.” The bang for the buck is much better! The only reason would be if one sees the unions and the workers movement in general as central to the struggle to transform society as a whole.

Adding to these tendencies within the working class is the fact that the overwhelming majority of the socialist movement has retreated into its own echo chamber. In one of those fascinating ironies of history, they have capitulated to the union bureaucracy while most socialists simultaneously have abandoned the principle of international working class solidarity by apologizing for if not outright defending the fascist connected Putin and his henchmen (Xi, Assad, the Iranian regime, etc.) Almost all those socialists who did not adopt a Putinized version of “socialism” adapted to those who did. They were unwilling to fully expose the Putinist lefts’ complicity with not only Russian imperialism, but with outright fascism. Their unwillingness to do so is due to their insistence on maintaining ties with and trying to work together with the Putinized left. Those on the left who have not swallowed the Putin kool aid are also unwilling to step outside the left echo chamber.

Politics is the struggle for power, and power attracts. As the working class movement declined, the attractive power of the capitalist class increased. It is like a gravitational pull. As the gravitational pull of the working class decreased, the gravitational pull of the capitalist class was felt ever more strongly. The soft left felt this pull through the union bureaucracy, which ever more strongly plays the role that Daniel DeLeon described as the “labor lieutenants of capital.” The soft left also felt the pull of the various NGOs — the nonprofiteers they could be called — who are funded by the capitalist class and their representatives. Another wing of the left — the sectarian ultra left — felt the increasing pull of the representatives of Russian or Chinese capitalists. The inhabitants of the left echo chamber to one extent or another tried to balance between the attractive power of one or another capitalist power and the increasingly distant memory of their socialist past. Like in the case of a car speeding down the road, that distant past becomes ever smaller in the rear view mirror, until it disappears entirely.

The retreat into socialists’ own little echo chamber has gone hand in hand with the crisis of the working class. A renewed, healthy socialist movement, dedicated to international working class solidarity in practice, not just words, will not arise from this echo chamber. It will arise from the ashes of the echo chamber, but for that to happen, a renewed working class movement must develop. The two will go hand in hand.

That is the premise, the essence, of my memoirs. The reason I am able to express this story is that I experienced this war first hand and lived to tell the tale. I not only survived physically, I survived politically, and “spiritually” one might say. A powerful factor that enabled my political survival was my journey into revolutionary socialist politics. That is what enabled me to understand — to become conscious of what was happening in the world around me. I was drawn to revolutionary socialism based on my years of struggle to help my fellow union members organize to transform our union. I never abandoned that basis, but the socialist movement did, if it ever based itself on it in the first place. Connecting revolutionary politics with my base in the working class  is what enabled me not only to survive politically; it also enabled me to resist the capitulation of all wings of the socialist movement. The emphasis of how that resistance was carried out had to change as the conditions changed, but the essence remained to this day.

Just as with every other human being who has ever walked on the planet, the great historical events expressed themselves through my personal life — not only what I did but also how I thought about things. Because of the unique situation of my early years, that history was expressed differently through me, but sometimes it is the unusual that helps us most in understanding the usual. Hopefully that will be the case here. Hopefully, these memoirs will help others understand how these developments affected and were expressed in their lives and how they too as workers can help change history. It is desperately needed now more than ever in the 300,000 year history of our species.

World history and my life
You might question how an 80 year old revolutionary working class socialist can claim that he was “born” that way. The answer is that according to my mother, the first thing I did when I emerged into this world was piss on the doctor. Then, for my next six or seven years, I refused in principle to learn to read. I didn’t know what it was or how, but I knew somebody was trying to trick me. These set the pattern for my life — “born to rebel”!

Of course, I’m being somewhat humorous here. Nobody is “born” to rebel, and certainly not born to be a revolutionary working class socialist. To adopt that path one needs a particular set of circumstances. Everybody who has ever lived is shaped by the era in which they grew up and who and what was around them. That includes me, of course.

My story corrects a major misunderstanding about U.S. labor history: In 1981, President Reagan broke the air traffic controllers strike and destroyed their union, PATCO. Most labor historians, retired union members and others who bother to think about it believe that that marked the onset of the union busting that swept across the country. They are mistaken. In fact, the union busting started in the construction industry nearly ten years earlier. This question is important because the destruction of the power of the unions lies at the heart of US politics today. That includes the consciousness that has driven tens of millions of blue collar workers into the MAGA movement.

Another common misconception is that this near collapse of the unions was purely a product of the attacks by the capitalist class. In fact, the disastrous policies of the union leadership played a huge role both then and now.

 I was there. I joined the carpenters union in 1970 and was actively involved not only in the struggle against the employers’ union busting; I was at the center of the struggle against the failed policies of the union leadership. The carpenters union and the building trades weren’t the only ones. In the 1970s and ‘80s there was a whole little crowd of radicals — socialists, Communists, anarchists and other misfits — who tried to struggle for a stronger union response to this incoming tide. I was one of them, but with this difference: 

Most socialists and other union activists I knew went on to become professionals of some kind or went into business or became university professors, or joined the union bureaucracy or something like that. In other words, they left the working class if they ever were in it in the first place. Others just simply gave up.  I became a construction worker (a carpenter) and worked at the trade from 1970 to 2007 (with an 8 year break to be a “professional revolutionary”). Then I retired before my knees gave out completely, but I remain active as a working class socialist to this day. 

I came of age and became socially conscious during the period of the movement against the Vietnam war and the civil rights movement and I participated somewhat in both of those. I was an active member of the carpenters union and the union movement in general for 30 years, always in opposition to the union bureaucracy. I played an essential role in building and maintaining an opposition caucus for all those years, and as a result of that, I was elected recording secretary in my local for three terms in the face of the united opposition of the entire union bureaucracy. Eventually, I was expelled for life from the union for leading the great 1999 San Francisco Bay Area Carpenters wildcat strike. I was closely involved in the socialist movement from around 1982 onwards. I have also read fairly extensively on the history of the US labor movement and on the history of socialism. Those are my qualifications for telling what I hope will be a politically useful story. 

Along the way, I said and did some things I regret, and I didn’t say and do some things I wish I had. But I never tried to use the movement for my own personal advancement, I never lost my sense of curiosity or adventure, and I never distanced myself from the working class nor abandoned the struggle for international working class solidarity. That’s more than a lot of people who claim to be socialists can say…..

Conclusion
Clarity and working class power. Working class power and clarity. The two go hand in hand. Hopefully at some point before it’s too late a working class movement for power over our lives as workers will arise. At this time in my life, and living in the situation in which I find myself, I can’t do much to create such a movement. If I am still around, I will join and help such a movement to whatever extent nature (my age) allows me to. Meanwhile, I continue to do what I can to provide clarity. That is the purpose of these memoirs.

 

Full contents of memoirs:

Introduction

My Life and World History

1950s–60s
Background
Early racial and political family dynamics
Blueberry Cove and early environmentalism
First experiences with police brutality
Events that helped shape my views: NYC public education struggles
March on Washington
The South
High School Students
“New Left” and SDS
Theory of permanent, or uninterrupted, revolution
Traditions of the 1930s start to fade
Move to California

1970s
Joining the Carpenters Union
Political discussion group & Maoism v. the Spartacist League
Black Panther Party
The old socialist history
1973 semi-wildcat strike
Carpenters union leadership and membership
“Union democracy”
End of the post war boom
My struggle against the idea of helping “our” contractors compete
On the job
Non union construction comes to Oakland
Racism on the job

1980s
Reagan
Labor Party Coalition
The CWI supporters in the United States
International Struggles
Liverpool
Poll Tax
Nicaragua and Guerillaism
My International Involvement
Political work here in the United States
One Example TDU
Split in the CWI
Capitalist Restoration in the Soviet Union

1990s
Mexico
Campaign Against Domestic Violence and Theresa Cruz
Richard Mellor for Oakland City Council
“Fired” as a Full Timer
Back to Work with my Tools
1999 Carpenters Wildcat Strike and my expulsion from the union
Further events in the Carpenters Union
World Events of the 90s
Visit to the Pakistan Labour Party

2000s
ILCW
Longshore Contract Struggle of 2002
Grocery Workers Strike of 2003–4
The Break Up with my Old Comrades
I visit Venezuela
IWW 

2010s
Arab Spring and Egypt
Occupy Oakland
Socialist elected to Seattle City Council
Ferguson
Observing, Reporting and Analyzing
Syria
Bernie Sanders
Donald Trump
The Role of the Republican and Democratic Parties
Workers International Network
Jeremy Corbyn and Brexit
Roy Singham
My First Experiences on Joining DSA
Trump
Political Activism at Laney Community College
Carpenters Struggle — NYC
Carpenters Struggle — Seattle 

2020s
Visit to Chile
Covid
2020 Presidential Election
Iran Erupts
Israel
Oakland Politics
I Run for Oakland Mayor
Russia Attacks Ukraine
Ukraine Socialist Solidarity Campaign
“Fascist Ideas on the Left”
AGMR Conference
Ukraine Solidarity Network
Gaza, Israel, and Oct. 7, 2023
Trump Returns!
Crisis in the Working Class
Socialist Movement Confines Itself to its own Echo Chamber
Ukraine Socialist Solidarity Campaign
The nature of this period
Trump and MAGA return to power
“‘Striketober’ and its results
Syria and fall of Assad
Kurdistan
US-Israeli war on Iran
From the neo-conservatives to Obama and back
The Looming crisis and DSA

Conclusion