Exploring Trade Unions (Part 2)

More than Militancy

It is important to build the solidarity in common struggle against the source of our troubles, the capitalist system of wage slavery. In ‘Wages, Price and Profit’ Marx insisted that if workers were to abandon their battles around wages and working conditions, then “they would be degraded to one level mass of broken wretches past salvation ... By cowardly giving way in their everyday conflict with capital, they would certainly disqualify themselves for the initiating of any larger movement.”
But these battles are not ends in themselves. In the very next paragraph Marx also warned against exaggerating the importance of such battles and becoming “exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never-ending encroachments of capital...”
Thus while this struggle is necessary if the proletariat is to resist everyday attacks and still more to develop its fitness for revolutionary combat, such struggle is not itself revolutionary struggle. Moreover, unless the economic struggle is linked to building a consciously revolutionary movement–unless, as Marx puts it, it is waged not from the view of “fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work” but under the banner of “abolition of the wages system”– then such struggle turns into its opposite, from a blow against the employers to a treadmill for the worker.

The trade union, as one socialist put it, is the arm the worker instinctively raises to ward off the blows of capital. It is an instinctive defensive response and, no matter how passive or militant, as long as the workers’ struggle is confined to such a narrow framework the trade union struggle can only perfect the chains that bind labour to capital. No matter how extensive the rank and file participation, no matter how democratic, the fact remains that the militant rank and file unionism are still striving for better terms and conditions within the framework of wage-slavery. While it is, of course, preferable that the trade unions be under rank and file control rather than run by a bureaucratic clique, that the workers themselves decide issues of wages, benefits, strikes, and compromises rather than having these things decided over their heads, and that the workers be able to appoint their own officials rather than being subject to appointments from the top, it should not be forgotten that such reforms will still reflect the workers’reformist aspirations  as the open collaboration of trade union leaders. While it is the task of socialists to show that even the most ‘revolutionary’ trade unionism cannot break the chains of wage-slavery, some activists will argue that if only the rust was removed and the chains were made a bit longer it will somehow be easier for workers to wear and bear them.

 As socialists it is our task to explain that the root of the problem is not corrupt leadership, not their anti-democratic manipulations, nor their behind-closed-door compromises and sell-outs, not the lack of palpable lasting results, not the integration of the unions into the state apparatus, not the lack of strike calls for resistance, and not even the restriction of the right to strike or any other curtailment of  ‘labour rights’ but the wages system itself. The problem is the entire system and not some particular injustice within it. We should not confuse the much needed struggle for trade union democracy with the struggle for socialism. Union reforms within the class struggle are a by-product of our real work of explaining the need for socialist democracy. It is not the task of the Socialist Party to adopt slogans of “class struggle trade unionism” or whatever passes at the time for radical posturing. It is the duty of socialists to show that this, too, is still only trade unionist striving to strike a better deal with the employers; that this, too, remains a form of  enslavement of labour by capital and that this, too,  can in no way resolve the workers’ fundamental interests. Militant trade unionism, no matter how much one may embellish it,represents the workers’ interests only within the framework of winning better terms for the sale of labour-power. But it is a starting point in educating our fellow worker to question of the  legitimacy of that sale.

In a strike there is always a  tendency to put forward only a militant trade unionist position, fighting hard for a victory in the strike, but failing to educate the workers about the character of the capitalist system and the need for socialism. We seem reluctant to explain that the fight for better wages or piecemeal reforms perpetuates this corrupt capitalist system that enslaves the vast majority. We need to say that our fight is not only for economic demands in a  particular factory or industry but  to abolish the entire system of wage slavery. We’ve got to combine and fight against this whole capitalist system together. Creating a socialist world, where people live from birth to death never having to suffer under the chains of wage slavery is what all workers should be fighting for.

How ousting the union bureaucrats and putting in their stead “good honest union militants” will advance the workers’ struggle for the requisite political power remains a mystery. How it will be possible for workers to understand that even the most militant trade unionism is still not enough, because it is still the acceptance of capitalist economics, remains unknown. It should go without saying that socialists struggle to expose the corrupt labour autocrats. But socialists are not at all satisfied or content to oust dishonest trade unionists and replace them with honest trade unionists. What we want at the head of the trade unions are not “honest union militants” but dedicated socialist workers. We do not want ‘democratic’ wage-slavery or even the workers to ‘aspire for fighting unions’ to get a better deal under wage-slavery. We want, first and foremost, an end to wage-slavery, and this cannot be accomplished by presenting trade union militancy as a panacea for all the workers’ woes.

We are often offered an analysis put forward usually by Trotskyists that the big union fat cats act as a brake on the working class militancy but it is exacly the the role of the union bureaucray to “see fit” to tie the workers to the trade union struggle alone. It is precisely the role of such bureaucrats to preach class peace and the steady ‘improvement’ of the workers’ conditions. It is precisely the function of such full-time officials to attempt to rally the masses of workers behind themselves. To accuse them of being traitors to the cause assumes that at one time they did not represent such policies of compromise and co-operation with management. One cannot, after all, betray something one has never upheld. But regardless, the working class is entirely capable, by its own efforts and without the assistance of the Socialist Party, of not only exposing but dislodging top trade union bureaucrats. Those bureaucrats may be replaced by militant trade unionists, but this in itself does not at all mark any transformation of the trade union movement. The militant trade unionists may fight to the end for the workers’ immediate interests, may rely upon and rally the rank and file to long and bitter strike battles, may be entirely above-board in their negotiations, may repeatedly break the barriers of legality, and so on. But however impressive this may be, the fact remains that such militant struggle still operates entirely within the bounds of capitalist relations and does not threaten the foundations of capitalist exploitation.  Too many Leftists possess a hazy conception that militancy plus militancy and screaming at the top of their lungs for a general strike is bound to lead to something. To what, they are not at all sure. We all too often hear inflated claims for the general strike from those who will argue that this one massive onslaught will knock the ruling class from their throne with an act of blind faith in the miracle-working power of direct-action. Despite its talk of ‘linking’ the militant trade union struggle to ‘socialism’, all that they accomplish is to perhaps gain for themselves the benefit of a few seats at the top table in the union bureaucracy and make their own deals with the employers. We have witnessed it over and over.

The left-wing militants conclude that every trade unionist struggle for a 'just’ demand  is part and parcel of the struggle for socialism. This will of course come as a surprise to many workers who, while struggling for a pay rise, will suddenly discover that they are actually struggling to capture the state machine and overthrow his employer. But workers know well enough that a trade union struggle, even if it involves the government and so assumes a certian political character, is still only a trade union struggle, and that after all is said and done they’ll be punching in their time dockets tomorrow as usual despite some left-wing party hack who comes along declaring that trade unionist politics equals the struggle for socialism. The fact that the workers may, on their own, militantly resist the onslaught of capital, or wage a struggle to influence the government on their behalf, does not mean that such struggles are socialist struggles. A  trade unionist is content  to influence the affairs of state, not to capture the State.

“It is not the name of an organization nor its preamble, but the degree of working class knowledge possessed by its membership that determines whether or not it is a revolutionary body.... It is true that the act of voting in favour of an industrial as against the craft form of organization denotes an advance in the understanding of the commodity nature of labour power, but it does not by any means imply a knowledge of the necessity of the social revolution." Jack Kavanagh, One Big Union