We need more than the union

Marx highlighted the weak spot of all trade unionism. What every worker must realise is that through trade union struggle we are not fighting the causes which is capitalism but only its symptoms. We are fighting against the effects of the system as Marx points out, and not against the system itself. What trade union struggles really do is to fight to improve the conditions of the working class within the framework of the capitalist system. They do not challenge capitalism itself. What all workers must understand is that their misery is due to exploitation carried on by the capitalist class. Trade unionism merely attempts to lessen this exploitation. It does not fight to end exploitation i.e. to end the capitalist system and replace it by socialism. This is the fatal limitation of trade union struggles.

The Socialist Party does not oppose trade union struggles nor do its members refuse to participate in them. 

As Marx wrote in 1881:

“..it is through the action of Trades Unions that the law of wages is enforced as against the employers, and that the workpeople of any well-organised trade are enabled to obtain, at least approximately, the full value of the working power which they hire to their employer; and that, with the help of State laws, the hours of labour are made at least not to exceed too much that maximum length beyond which the working power is prematurely exhausted. This, however, is the utmost Trades Unions, as at present organised, can hope to obtain...”

So trade unions are vitally essential to organise workers and help them to fight for their day to day demands. As long as the capitalist system exists, employers will always try to take back what they have been forced to concede. They will continually try to step up the exploitation of the working class in order to boost their profits. Until the workers get rid of the capitalist system itself, the cause of all the injustices they face, they will constantly have to take up their struggles over and over again.

Marx’s advice to the workers was:

“Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work,’ they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wages system’.” (Value, Price and Profit.)

For socialists this is a guide to action, to present the socialist solution, to raise the issue of socialism, to speak and act in terms of socialism and to fight for the socialist transformation of the economic, social and political system. The Socialist Party does not wish to “capture” the trade unions, nor to exploit them for the support of principles in which they do not believe or of men with whom they do not agree. Neither do we suggest that we should “fight” the unions as some Left Communists argue should happen. Nor do we adhere to the idea that we should create rival “socialist” trade union organisations to them as have the old Communist Party and Socialist Labour Party once did. Such efforts proved futile and only further weakened the power of existing unions. The Socialist Party has no interest in opposing, antagonising, or disrupting the trade unions.

What we wish to do is to inspire its members with a consciousness of the reality and magnitude of the class struggle in which, whether they will it or not, they are engaged. The fact is that unions are mass organisations which bring together workers of all political tendencies, including workers who are still under the domination of the prevalent status quo ideology and still have faith in the political parties of the capitalists. Despite this, unions have everything to gain from remaining united. Otherwise their battles will end up in defeat. 

Another name that Marx and Engels often used for a socialist society was “free association of producers”.  Simply describing a world without private property or wages system, however important these might be, misses the point. Marx’s basic conceptions was of universal human emancipation, of a way of living which he called "truly human". Communist society is based on the free association of all individuals who work together to produce the goods necessary for their collective well-being. All will work according to their capacities and their needs will be fully satisfied. Thus, individuals will no longer be governed by the division of labour and the divisions between city and countryside will disappear. The expropriation of the capitalists and the socialisation of the means of production will lead directly to the abolition of society based on class division . The abolition of classes will in turn lead to the withering away of the State, and its extinction, for the State is not, and can never be, anything other than the instrument of dictatorship of one class over others.