Trade unions and the socialist party - class symbiosis

The aim of trade unions is to serve workers’ struggles and the role of a socialist party is to push forward the fundamental battle to eliminate capitalist exploitation. Unions are the means of defence developed by the working class in its struggle against their employers. They were the result of concerted efforts by workers to organise and fight collectively for better working conditions, wage increases and a shorter working day. The establishment and organisation of unions is no gift from the capitalist class, but the result of the workers’ struggles against their exploiters. Unions are essential for the working class and have done much to advance its cause. Without them, workers would still be subject to the every whim and fancy of the employers. Unions have not been able to remain as combinations of workers of one employer, or even groups of employers in associated industries. They have developed from a unity of workers against a particular employer to unity against employers in one whole field of production, to unity of workers in entire areas. They form a massive unified network from local, to national, to international union. The union movement has proven itself to be a powerful instrument of a defensive character. But unions, while indispensable in the struggle of the workers against capital, have limits as well. They require to restrict themselves to economic struggles and struggles for reforms, and to stay outside the political struggle to abolish capitalism, the source of the workers’ misery.

 It is a socialist party that expresses the experience of the workers in many different unions across the country and provide an orientation for the workers’ fight against the capitalist system. and acts as a force that poses the possibility of a fundamental transformation in socio-economic relations from wage labour to a free association of labour and common ownership of its product - socialism. What the unions has won through battles on the picket lines has often been lost, due, not only to the operation of the laws governing the capitalist system itself, inflation for instance, but to counter attacks by the representatives of the employers as a class in control of parliament, and the state in its totality. The employers, through their agents in control of parliament and the entire state apparatus, have erected a whole network of laws and regulations designed to hamstring the labour movement.

Socialism is the proclaimed goal of many trade unionists who turned to the Labour Party, however the Labour Party cannot even be said to be socialistic. By introducing State management under preserving State-guaranteed profits for the capitalists, it strengthens capitalist domination and perpetuates the exploitation of the workers. The socialist goal cannot be reached by creating a new governing class substituting the capitalists. It can only be realised by the workers themselves being masters over production. The socialist party’s function is to spread insight and knowledge, to study, discuss and formulate social ideas, and by their propaganda to enlighten the minds of the masses. Their work forms an indispensable part in the self-liberation of the working class.

Within the capitalist economic system there are ranged on the one side all those who owned the means of production, and on the other those who use but do not possess them. The class struggle is the ceaseless struggle to obtain some advantage over the other.  It may take the form of more wages or shorter hours or the alteration of some workshop practice; but the particular point really does not matter, the opposing forces are always the same – the employing class and the employed class. It is like a huge market where two commodity possessors come to sell their goods.  The capitalist brings his commodity – money to pay wages , and the worker his or her commodity – the ability to work.  The worker sells his labor power in exchange for gold which is the commodity that will bring him the subsistence of life.  But it must be remembered that the commodity of labor power is free, that is to say, that the worker has no personal ties like the feudal slaves.  He can either sell his labour power or withhold it; but his well-being depends on materials, things he must eat and drink.  The capitalist has accumulated these necessities which he sells by means of his gold, consequently the free laborer with his empty stomach is forced to sell his labor power in return for the commodities without which he cannot live.  The wage laborer therefore is in the grip of a system that beats him down to the lowest – that is to say, to a bare subsistence.  The supporters of a system are those who have gained control of it or control of the means of production, those whose interests are bound up in it.  The system is capitalism, and those who control it are capitalists.  To manage it effectively and to their interests they must have a group of people to assist them and to operate the machinery.  The section or class who assist must be subject to their controllers or, in other words, must be slaves.  In return for their slavery they receive only sufficient of the gold commodity to enable them to continue operating the machinery from day to day, and to perpetuate their class.  It would be a catastrophe to the capitalist system if slaves did not breed more slaves. From this picture we see that for any material advantage one class must take from the other class.  This attempt to take, the one from the other, goes on all over the world, day in and day out.  It is like a tug of war.  There is a long rope – if you can imagine your bread and butter in the form of a rope – with the capitalists at one end and the workers at the other.  The more of the rope that is won, the more material comfort is acquired.

This, then, is the class struggle. It follows  from a Marxian analysis that socialist politics is very different in KIND from all other politics. Its aim, the expression of the interests of the revolutionary class, is quite precisely to overthrow existing social relations, to capture the existing state machine to facilitate the task of establishing a new society. Politics of the other conventional sort revolve within the framework of the existing order. Non-revolutionary political parties, contending for votes and office, represent different sections of the ruling class struggling for the major share of profits and privilege, different groups seeking the lucrative control of the governmental bureaucracy, different theories of how best to maintain the existing order and keep for it the support or at least the tolerance of the people, different organised attempts to secure this or that reform or concession for this or that section of the population. But all varieties of non-revolutionary politics PRESUPPOSE the continuance of the existing order in its fundamental structure: that is to say in capitalist society, non-revolutionary politics presupposes capitalist property relations, the exploitation of the masses by the propertied minority, the class domination of the bourgeoisie, the maintenance of the bourgeois state.

Furthermore, the chief function of mainstream politics is to deceive the working class as to the real and central issue which confronts them. So long as the electorate believe that their significant political choices lie WITHIN the capitalist order, capitalism itself, no matter what internal shifts take place, is not threatened. Every device serves: two or more avowed capitalist parties stage “life-and-death struggles” for “the fate of the nation”; when that sham is seen through, a populist party to slough off mass dissatisfaction into safe channels within the limitations of the capitalist state; when all else fails, a dictatorship to maintain capitalist property with guns. A socialist party pose directly the central issue: the class struggle for workers’ power and for socialism. Their success in an election campaign is not to be measured in votes or offices won, but in the extent and the depth to which they have succeeded in bringing the central issue before the consciousness of the masses.  The main issue for the working class, the only issue  is the CLASS issue:

 The two main political parties are two wings of a single bird of prey. The Conservative Party plays the “hard man” towards the working class. The Labour Party plays the “soft man”, who poses as the friend of the working class. Both unite in trying to fool and confuse the working class and to keep it trapped within the draconian  clutches of the capitalist class. Tory leaders make clear that what they  propose is a return to the good old days. The future of capitalism and profits, they would like to believe, lies in free enterprise, in a balanced budget, rugged individualism, competition, no government “interference” in business.  Equally devoted to the preservation of capitalism and the fullest possible capitalist prosperity (i.e., profits), the Labour Party politicians believe that the traditional methods are no longer adequate either to preserve profits or to keep the tolerance of the masses for the capitalist order. They advocate an “enlightened” capitalism, tempering the harsh exploitation with fine phrases about human rights and public works, and collective bargaining. In this way, Labour aim to oil the wheels of capitalism.