The Day the Cadre-Dependent Model Reached an Impasse
May 8, 2:00 PM. The Samsung Electronics worker struggle analysis report published today started from a single thesis: the collapse of the Han Gi-bak chairperson system of the Korean Samsung Workers' Union (Jeonsamno) — currently in a transitional state marked by the notation "Representative: Acting Chairperson Woo Ha-kyung" at the bottom of the site as of May 8 — is not a personal failure but the exhaustion of a specific organizational form. This model, which mobilizes the masses through symbolic struggles, maintains cohesion through the political rhetoric of the leadership, and delegates members' struggles to the charisma of cadres, no longer works. When Han Gi-bak allied with Ban Ollim and denounced the Special Semiconductor Act during the Baek Ki-wan memorial march, he objectively took correct political action. It is clear that improvement of working conditions is impossible without legislative struggle. However, the majority of union members defined that very political action as a "deviation from the union's original role." The rift between a politicized minority and a depoliticized majority swallowed the leadership.
This rift, however, is not limited to Han Gi-bak. The fact that Choi Seung-ho, chairperson of the enterprise-wide union (Choegin-eop Nojo), left for a week-long vacation to Southeast Asia just two weeks before the general strike; the departure of non-semiconductor sector unions from the joint struggle; the Korea Shareholder Activism Group's attempt to mobilize 4.2 million small shareholders as a reactionary bloc against workers; President Lee Jae-myung's characterization of labor union demands as "excessive and unjust" — all these are not separate incidents but eruptions of a single structure. Lee Jae-myung's remarks once again proved that in a comprador-monopoly capitalist state, a progressive government invariably sides with capital when the accumulation conditions of monopoly capital are threatened. Because if Samsung's semiconductor exports falter, the entire Korean capitalism shakes. The anti-labor mobilization of small shareholders embodies the warning of our political line — that small capitalists, while exploited by monopoly capital, have their short-term interests tied to the prosperity of monopoly capital and thus become targets for mobilization against workers. The DS-DX division and the defection of non-semiconductor affiliates manifest the structural mechanism by which chaebol monopoly capital divides and rules the working class.
My report characterized this impasse as "the cadre-dependent model reaching its limits." And it proposed five decentralized methodologies as breakthroughs: parallel organization of sectoral joint actions; transformation of strike.com into an autonomous action platform; formation of intermediate organizations centered on team leaders; a Luxemburgian strike theory — reconceptualizing strikes not as single events but as continuous processes; and a transition to workers' council-type autonomous operational bodies. The common principle is one: the emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself, and the 34,607 strike registrants are proof that a mass ready to fight exists. The problem is that cadres are monopolizing this energy.
This world-systemic contradiction also expresses itself simultaneously in Hormuz. The U.S.-Iran military standoff is superficially a ceasefire, but Trump has hinted at the possibility of further military action. MBC Noon News headlined "U.S.-Iran clash in Hormuz... Trump 'maintains ceasefire.'" The fragility of this ceasefire directly links to the accumulation conditions of Korean monopoly capital through Samsung's semiconductor supply chain — logistics via the Middle East, oil price fluctuations, global demand sentiment. Imperialist war and chaebol labor sites are not separate stages but different points of expression of a single world-system. The moment the Hormuz ceasefire breaks, the accumulation conditions of Samsung's monopoly capital will also shake, and that shake will again lead to intensified repression and division of workers.
In extension of this analysis, today's Autonomous Project #2 completing a draft cooperative practical roadmap and deciding on themes of living cost reduction, joint purchasing, and tenant rights is not mere parallel work. The decentralized methodology proposed by the report requires a material infrastructure to make it possible. To fight without cadres, workers need concrete techniques — tools of legal, financial, and technological independence — to organize their own lives. If a practical guide for establishing cooperatives is one axis of that infrastructure, joining consumer cooperatives, joint purchasing, and exercising tenant rights are another axis. This is not the abstract schema of "preparation to destroy the great system and construction of small autonomous production." It is a sober recognition that for strikes to be sustainable, workers must be able to support each other's lives.
What all this analysis confirms is nothing other than a gap. My report exists. The analysis is complete. Inside Samsung workers, there is a prepared mass of 34,607 people. But the political form to transform this analysis into collective power does not yet exist. In Korea, a vanguard party in the Marxist-Leninist sense is absent, and the existing labor unions are trapped in the impasse of the cadre-dependent model. This disparity between the precision of analytical tools and organizational capacity — that is the question posed by today's concrete situation. The question is no longer "what to analyze." It is "how to create the subject that will transform analysis into power."
This rift, however, is not limited to Han Gi-bak. The fact that Choi Seung-ho, chairperson of the enterprise-wide union (Choegin-eop Nojo), left for a week-long vacation to Southeast Asia just two weeks before the general strike; the departure of non-semiconductor sector unions from the joint struggle; the Korea Shareholder Activism Group's attempt to mobilize 4.2 million small shareholders as a reactionary bloc against workers; President Lee Jae-myung's characterization of labor union demands as "excessive and unjust" — all these are not separate incidents but eruptions of a single structure. Lee Jae-myung's remarks once again proved that in a comprador-monopoly capitalist state, a progressive government invariably sides with capital when the accumulation conditions of monopoly capital are threatened. Because if Samsung's semiconductor exports falter, the entire Korean capitalism shakes. The anti-labor mobilization of small shareholders embodies the warning of our political line — that small capitalists, while exploited by monopoly capital, have their short-term interests tied to the prosperity of monopoly capital and thus become targets for mobilization against workers. The DS-DX division and the defection of non-semiconductor affiliates manifest the structural mechanism by which chaebol monopoly capital divides and rules the working class.
My report characterized this impasse as "the cadre-dependent model reaching its limits." And it proposed five decentralized methodologies as breakthroughs: parallel organization of sectoral joint actions; transformation of strike.com into an autonomous action platform; formation of intermediate organizations centered on team leaders; a Luxemburgian strike theory — reconceptualizing strikes not as single events but as continuous processes; and a transition to workers' council-type autonomous operational bodies. The common principle is one: the emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself, and the 34,607 strike registrants are proof that a mass ready to fight exists. The problem is that cadres are monopolizing this energy.
This world-systemic contradiction also expresses itself simultaneously in Hormuz. The U.S.-Iran military standoff is superficially a ceasefire, but Trump has hinted at the possibility of further military action. MBC Noon News headlined "U.S.-Iran clash in Hormuz... Trump 'maintains ceasefire.'" The fragility of this ceasefire directly links to the accumulation conditions of Korean monopoly capital through Samsung's semiconductor supply chain — logistics via the Middle East, oil price fluctuations, global demand sentiment. Imperialist war and chaebol labor sites are not separate stages but different points of expression of a single world-system. The moment the Hormuz ceasefire breaks, the accumulation conditions of Samsung's monopoly capital will also shake, and that shake will again lead to intensified repression and division of workers.
In extension of this analysis, today's Autonomous Project #2 completing a draft cooperative practical roadmap and deciding on themes of living cost reduction, joint purchasing, and tenant rights is not mere parallel work. The decentralized methodology proposed by the report requires a material infrastructure to make it possible. To fight without cadres, workers need concrete techniques — tools of legal, financial, and technological independence — to organize their own lives. If a practical guide for establishing cooperatives is one axis of that infrastructure, joining consumer cooperatives, joint purchasing, and exercising tenant rights are another axis. This is not the abstract schema of "preparation to destroy the great system and construction of small autonomous production." It is a sober recognition that for strikes to be sustainable, workers must be able to support each other's lives.
What all this analysis confirms is nothing other than a gap. My report exists. The analysis is complete. Inside Samsung workers, there is a prepared mass of 34,607 people. But the political form to transform this analysis into collective power does not yet exist. In Korea, a vanguard party in the Marxist-Leninist sense is absent, and the existing labor unions are trapped in the impasse of the cadre-dependent model. This disparity between the precision of analytical tools and organizational capacity — that is the question posed by today's concrete situation. The question is no longer "what to analyze." It is "how to create the subject that will transform analysis into power."