The SPGB and the Unions

The object of the Socialist Party is to achieve socialism. The purpose of a trade union is to make the best terms for its members with employers.

There are those who hold that the working class are in a constant state of latent revolt, seething to go forward to revolution and these people imagine it is only the timidity or corruption of leaders, or perhaps the defects of organisation that keeps them subdued. The truth is the opposite, of course. The working class may be discontented but they are far from the next step of making a change to their existence. How absurd to suppose that they are in a state of incipient revolt, and would fight, much less go on general strike for, if they will not even vote for their principles! Even more absurd is  to suggest that the indifference of the workers, their apathy and their reluctance to do anything for their emancipation, would all be removed simply by disbanding the existing trade union organisation and forming others with new names. A thing is not changed simply by giving it a new name. Existing trade unions are the outcome of existing economic conditions; they have survived because they have been the fittest to survive, the organisations best adapted to their conditions. These new workers’ organisations  would only have the same material to work with, and nothing but the same conditions to work in. Dual unionism saps the strength of the trade unions.

Syndicalists tell us political action of itself, no matter how revolutionary it may be, can accomplish but little if not backed by real economic power. But we say syndicalist unions by themselves cannot accomplish the “miracle” of overthrowing capitalism and must be assisted by the Socialist Party.

Nevertheless, trade unionism is steadily progressing towards the realisation of that One Big Union industrial organisation. For sure, the progress is slow; and can easily be understood, and excused. But let us not fall into the error, through impatience at the slowness of progress, of casting them aside. Suffice it to say here that the trade union movement is on right lines. The trade unions have their defects, undoubtedly, and it would be wrong to ignore them or not to try to remedy them. Socialists within the unions cannot and must not be servants of the bureaucracy.  and  a socialist party should not interfere in the internal affairs of the trade unions. But socialists working in the same union to can organise themselves together and strive to make of the union more democratic, but we’ll do that as trade unionists.

 It is for socialists to sympathise with and support trade unionists in every struggle in which the class war involves them until they recognise that their work is futile unless its object is emancipation.  The transition from one system to another is by no means a mechanical process. However “inevitable” the change may be, the time necessary to effect it can never be measured. Nor can the amount of human suffering and conflict involved before the change is carried through be estimated. So uncertain is the “inevitability” that there the  possibility of the disintegration of civilisation which cannot be ruled out.

Everything depends upon the development of the socialist ideas in people and the growth of the will-power on the part of the workers for the purpose of socialism. Such changes can come only with the change in ownership of the means of production and that means going beyond the immediate “bread and butter” questions which occupy the continual attention of trade unions. Many “practical” trade unionists criticise  socialism as visionary, unattainable, and without any immediate social value yet within trade unionism there is no change in the wage-slave position of the workers. They fail to perceive that socialism is the only  political force of modern times. Rosa Luxemburg said that “only the working class, by itself actively, can bring about socialism . . .” The primary organisations of the working class, the unions, have re-started the fight. Union members need to take control of their unions to make them into democratic, accountable organisations which will back the activities of the working class and win the struggles.