tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33431390.post8053327542719369548..comments2024-03-26T11:07:03.496-04:00Comments on Ed Notes Online: Lois Weiner on the Survival of Unions and Why Chicago TU is Differented notes onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15018047869059226777noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33431390.post-54767924313358031862013-07-13T12:23:18.136-04:002013-07-13T12:23:18.136-04:00There might be more to Herman Benson and the Assoc...There might be more to Herman Benson and the Association for Union Democracy's favorable view of the UFT than meets the eye.<br /><br />Mr. Benson was for many years a Shachtmanite, a follower of US Trotskyite leader Max Shactman.<br /><br />Albert Shanker was close to the Shactmanites in the early 1950's, when he was involved with the then Schactmanite-controlled Student League for Industrial Democarcy at Columbia. Schachtman's wife was later to be Shanker's secretary at the UFT.<br /><br />His group eventually morphed into Social Democrats USA, which tried to provide a "left/liberal" cover for US empire. The group had a particularly egregious period as essentially a US foreign policy cheerleading front during the Reagan era, when Central America became a proxy battleground in the Cold War, and the US maintained support for the Nicaraguan Contras and murderous regimes in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.<br /><br />Shactman was a compulsive schemer whose followers for decades would affiliate with larger Left organizations, for the purpose of recruiting and hopefully taking them over. For example, his followers were able to successfully able to take over the youth affiliate of the Socialist Party. He later became a slavish follower of George Many and the Cold War-era AFL-CIO, and numerous followers of his became AFT staffers.<br /><br />Aside from sharing Cold War orthodoxies, Shanker and Schactman shared a similar background in their decades-long opposition to the CP, and with their commitment to institutional control by a Big Man.<br /><br />Herman Benson may have been correct that the UFT is more democratic than most unions - though, again, the political genealogy of the players suggests a more complicated picture - and if so, Heaven help us all.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com