Draft:Rank-and-file strategy

The rank and file strategy is a socialist strategy of union organizing that entails socialists gaining employment in key industrial sectors as a means of developing the class consciousness of workers and building a broader socialist coalition through working class solidarity. The strategy has its roots in the organizing efforts of the United States International Socialists in the 1960s and 1970s. First described by labor writer and former International Socialist member Kim Moody in a 2000 pamphlet entitled The Rank and File Strategy: Building a Socialist Movement in the U.S, the strategy has since been adopted by the Democratic Socialists of America. The strategy has largely been employed in primary, secondary, and higher education unions in the United States in the 2010s and 2020s. The strategy has been criticized for its association with party politics and from a feminist perspective.

Definition
The rank and file strategy was first developed by labor writer Kim Moody in a pamphlet issued in 2000, entitled The Rank and File Strategy: Building a Socialist Movement in the U.S. The strategy has been described as "the idea ... that radicals should orient themselves toward the strata of worker activists, at the base of unions, who are most engaged in shop-floor militancy and resistance to management, rather than 'attempt to gain influence by sidling up to the incumbent bureaucracy or its alleged progressive wing.'"

Background and history
description of international socialist efforts

Usage
describe recent rank-and-file efforts

Criticism
from the left

feminist critique. - King article (also has good cites)

https://spectrejournal.com/the-rank-and-file-strategy-on-new-terrain/