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﻿<title﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, Red Flags and Red Tape - Review﻿</title>﻿

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﻿<b﻿>﻿Red Flags and Red Tape

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by Branko Cacic﻿<br﻿>﻿

﻿<i﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, July - August 1999﻿</i>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

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﻿<font﻿ ﻿size="1"﻿>﻿Review of ﻿<i﻿>﻿Red Flags and Red Tape: The Making of a Labour Bureaucracy﻿</i>﻿ by Mark Leier (University of Toronto Press, 1995)﻿</font>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿


Why is there no socialism in North America? Part of the answer to this nagging question according to Mark Leier has to do with the labour bureaucracy. The objective of this book is to shed some light on our understanding of the origins and political significance of the bureaucratization of working class organizations. 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

Rather than subscribe to the "iron Law of oligarchy" put forward by Robert Michels, according to which all unions and socialist parties inevitably degenerate into oligarchy and reformism, Leier seeks a more complex account which builds upon an understanding of the relationship between class, culture, and ideology as both informing and being informed by an emergent labour bureaucracy. 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

This book traces the organizational and ideological development of the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council (VTLC) between its founding in 1889 through to 1910. The VTLC was soon to experience bureaucratization: centralization of decision-making at the top thus excluding the rank and file, the establishment of a labour press, the acquisition of property in the form of a union hall, and the hiring of full-time staff to meet functional and professional needs. This is not to say that these measures were deliberate and conscious efforts to construct a labour bureaucracy, but rather were adopted as the necessary means to strengthen the hand of the local labour movement. 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

Leier's analysis understands class as a dynamic process rather than a stationary thing. By rejecting the geological conception of class as something rigidly stratified, he is able to see the VTLC as an institution not of an homogeneous and inert working class but rather as an organization which largely represented the most privileged elements of the Vancouver working class skilled Anglo-Saxon male craft unionists. Moreover, the Vancouver unionists held to a view of class which was not Marxist but rather productivist and expressed a community of interest with all "producers", even small capital. The class consciousness of the VTLC leadership was to a large degree informed and limited by their sense of skill and social mobility as well as ethnic chauvinism, sexism and racism. 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

This political conservatism, however, was also an expression of a still marginal class fraction seeking to both consolidate and strengthen their fledgling organization by demonstrating their legitimacy to both capital and the state through acceptable behaviour. Strikes, for example, were considered to be a poor tactic as both employer and worker lost. At the same time it cannot be forgotten that even the most conservative trade union leaders led organizations that were created to fight employers. Their actions, Leier states, "have no meaning outside the boundaries of class and class struggle." 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

Unions are neither intrinsically conservative nor radical but instead are a distillation, at least to some degree, of the broader array of class forces and reflect the state of class struggle at any given time. The early history of the VTLC can only be understood in this context. 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

Especially significant is the development of formal rules and procedures which served to further remove the leaders from the rank and file. Knowledge of these practices and the ability to employ them within the forum of internal labour politics ensured that only those acquiring this knowledge and skill would be able to win access to the labour bureaucracy. It is no small matter that the exclusion of Asians, women and the unskilled from the mainstream of the labour movement further ensured the reproduction of this specific organizational culture. 

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Leier's most fundamental conclusion is that bureaucracy is reflective of a "fundamental belief in the inability of the masses to rule themselves." However, a large part of Leier's work argues against an overly deterministic view. Humans do write their own history, and organizations are a product of that process, even though the conditions may not be of their own choosing. That bureaucracy is a means of control from above cannot be denied but the VTLC case study offers a more ambiguous conclusion. With warts and all, workers did construct their own organization to win a better deal for other workers. 

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