/edu/ - Education

>Are workers unions easily incorporated by capitalism and reduced to mild reformism which just keeps capitalism alive?
Only up to a point. There are limits to this, which are becoming apparent in the more developed capitalist countries.
Once you are unable to meet labor's demands or to pervert unions for capital's interests, things start to get spicy.
>Why then is there such a large support from radlibs here for unions when they do not have any real revolutionary potential by themselves?
Why is there such support for reading books or arming the workers when neither of those have reveolutionary potential by themselves?
Because revolutionary potential is a confluence of multiple factors, among them being the level of organization of the working class(es) to which unions are a major contributor.
>What's a better alternative, or actual revolutionary unions?
Don't think in terms of "alternatives" here. Life is not a video game where you pick the based option and things work out.
What should happen is that the tools that currently exist are put to their best use (and building up unions is an important step in most of the world at this time), and reconfiguring existing tools into more suitable ones (radicalizing and militarizing unions) and/or building necessary tools that don't yet exist (various types of communist and workers' organizations that are nonexistent, gutted, meaningless, or phony diversions).

>>18032
>Because revolutionary potential is a confluence of multiple factors, among them being the level of organization of the working class(es) to which unions are a major contributor

Well Camatte was covering how the proletarian identity is reflexively given a privileged position by communists automatically. The problem with workers unions under capitalism they are very easy to subvert the real negating power they have. You toss a few disgruntled workers a few extra dollars per hour and they are satisfied with the current state of society as is. They are in a domesticated to accept scraps rather than continuing to use the discontent to undermine capitalism. Namely that their end goals are to just earn more and better working conditions under capitalism and not really to overthrow it in any way

>>18032
>reconfiguring existing tools into more suitable ones (radicalizing and militarizing unions)
How would this happen? And how would you get to a point where normie unions are accepting of this shift?

>>18033
This kind of thing only works if the proles lack the class consciousness to understand that they can get a lot more for themselves and others if they don't just accept those small bribes. That's why it's a confluence of multiple factors. In this case the combination of organized workers and theoretical understanding acts as a defense against this kind of subversion. Which is why part of the task is to make the unions more radical and more literate. It's not enough to have greater organization (which means greater command of workers' already-existing power) – you also need sufficient understanding to wield that power effectively.
>They are in a domesticated to accept scraps rather than continuing to use the discontent to undermine capitalism.
Only so long as the scraps are sufficient to sustain a reasonable quality of life, which is quickly no longer the case in the imperial core thanks to neoliberalism, which is a consequence of both a progressing "corruption" of the bourgeois state away from more rational economics toward narrow, short term profitability and a natural tendency of the system as the rate of profit falls.

>>18034
Depends on the scenario. Ideally you'd have union leadership pushing for that since that would be most efficient and effective. Alternatively you could form a revolutionary faction within a union that starts with something as simple as hosting reading groups focused on labor organizing history and tactics, because that's of very direct interest to the union as a whole and would be a lot more likely to spread within it. The more the union membership understands of theory the more effective it will be, and the greater the incentive to read more. If a union is operating in that mode it is already "doing Marxism" in the philosophical sense of applying materialist theory and praxis. From there it's not as hard as you might think to introduce communism.