This blog is a POV Leninist-Trotskyist blog I created. I am a sympathizer for the International Bolshevik Tendency (IBT) (www.bolshevik.org). To be clear I am a sympathizer and not a member. This blog does not represent the IBT in any official capacity. I also don't claim to be neutral or impartial.
In a previous article I wrote about how the bureaucrats running the Hospital Employees Union organized the "staff" at mental health housing were organized and the that residents (many of whom are Proletarian, all of whom are Plebeian) were disenfranchised.
I however made what I now consider to be a fundamental error. I assumed that the staff were working class. The fact is the Proletariat do manual labour and produce commodities, unlike the staff at mental health housing. The staff primary function isn't white collar work either. In fact their job is to police the activities of residents in the group homes.
Marxist define the state as armed bodies of men (people would be more politically correct) and other forces of coercion. And the "staff" at mental health housing by their job description are coercive. They are, I think it is correct to say part of the state apparatus. This being the case they have no place in unions and it is a crime that the labour bureaucracy would organize these people. Especially when it involved disenfranchises actual Proletarians. It truly speaks to the labour bureaucracy's utter bankruptcy.
The labour bureacracy organizes a ton of people who they shouldn't. They organize cops and security guards who break strikes. They organize prison guards who terrorizes workers and oppressed people who have been thrown in jail. They organize foremen who police workers on the job. Recently, the Canadian Auto Workers started organizing priests. Just as cops who police the ghettos (and break strikes) and foremen who police the shop floor shouldn't be in unions, "staff" in mental health housing don't belong in unions.
It is the job of revolutionaries Trotskyists to form a disciplined Leninist vanguard which would serve as a class struggle leadership for workers (whether organized or unorganized). Such a leadership would fight tooth and nail to purge the unions of mental health housing "staff", priests, cops, security guards, prison guards, foremen and other anti-working class elements along with the labour bureaucrats who organize them.
