Unions, Democracy, and the Third Camp
Comparing Lessons from New Politics and Herman Benson
The decline of labor has been accompanied by an opportunity we have not seen in decades. A new generation of socialists, many of them members of Democratic Socialists of American, are enthusiastically discussing the role of the working class and unions in the fight for socialism. Making the best use of this development requires critically analyzing the past several decades of struggle among labor leftists about how a commitment to socialism “from below” might inform our union activity. In this article I try to frame and spur that debate by comparing the perspective of Herman Benson with material published by other contributors to