It is a very positive development to see the idea of rank-and-file union work so widely discussed by DSA members, in Jacobin and elsewhere. As part of this discussion, Luke Elliott-Negri recently wrote on Jacobin that the “rank-and-file strategy” described by both Barry Eidlin and myself in the 2000 Solidarity pamphlet “The Rank-And-File Strategy” was not a strategy at all, but simply one tactic socialists can deploy in their union work.

As presented in the 2000 Solidarity pamphlet, the strategy involved in rank-and-file union work referred to two aspects of socialist political work that are too long-range in nature to be reduced simply to one of a number of tactics. At the same time, there is an important theoretical and practical thread that connects rank-and-file union and workplace work with a Marxist approach to political work generally: the centrality of independent, working-class self-activity and self-organization that is the political DNA of Marxism and “socialism from below.”

Socialists are enthusiastic supporters of organized labor and unions, which play a central role in advancing the interests and conditions of the working class. They are, as Marx and Engels argued, the “natural organizations” of the working class, schools of workers’ democracy, an expression of the class struggle itself. At the same time, we recognize that unions as they have evolved are complex and contradictory institutions. The elements of democracy and combat with capital cannot be taken for granted. It is in this context that the rank-and-file strategy is relevant.