The working class in society holds a special position. It has no property. It is a propertyless class—dependent upon the class which owns property—the land, the factories, mills, mines, railways, transport. But the land cannot give forth its fullness unless workers plough and sow and reap. The earth cannot deliver its mineral wealth unless workers dig it. Factories, mills, mines, railways, etc., cannot work unless workers are employed to make them serve their purpose in the transformation of nature’s wealth into social wealth. It is this fact which compels the owners of the means of producing wealth to employ labour. They need that labour or their ownership ceases to be of value.
Socialism is the name given to that form of society in which there is no such thing as a propertyless class, but in which the whole community own the means of production—the land, factories, mills, mines, transport and all the means whereby wealth is created and distributed to the community. It will be obvious at once that the basic principles of Socialist society are diametrically opposite to those of Capitalist society in which we live. Socialism stands for social or community property. Capitalism stands for private property. Socialism is a society without classes. Capitalism is divided into classes—the class owning property and the propertyless working class. We can easily understand, therefore, why the great majority of landlords, employers of labour, financiers and the like are opposed to socialism. Their very existence as the receivers of rent, interest and profit are at stake. They do not merely reject the theory of socialism, but actively and bitterly fight, in any way, the movement for socialism. Perhaps here and there an enlightened individual capitalist through moral and intellectual conviction is prepared to abandon the private property system and accept socialism, but the capitalist class as a class cannot. While it is to the individual and social interest of the propertyless class to fight against the private property system and for socialism. They do it every day, though as yet only a minority do it consciously for socialism. When trade unionists fight the employers on wages questions and the conditions of labour they are really fighting against consequences of the private property system. The existence of the private ownership of the means of production means also the private ownership of the things produced and their sale as commodities in competition one with another. Labour also is a commodity and those who sell their labour power, the members of the working class, manual and brain-worker alike, also compete like other commodities. Trade Unionism really represents in one sense an attempt to organise monopolies of labour power in order to break down the competition between the workers who in the labour market are commodities for sale and to establish monopoly prices for labour. The more Trade Unionism advances in this direction the more difficult it becomes for the Capitalists to make a profit. Hence the everlasting cry of the capitalists for “lower production costs” and its opposite, the workers’ struggle for higher wages and improved conditions. This is the fundamental contradiction of Capitalist economy—a struggle between the two classes, the propertied class and the propertyless—which is inevitable so long as the private ownership of the means of production exists.
From this socialists draw the conclusion that the class primarily interested in the change from private property to social property is the working class. The goal of socialism as the classless society has its starting point in the propertyless condition of the working class which is also precisely the starting point of trade unionism. The Trade Unions represent the first weapons of the working class in the struggle against capitalist interests; the Socialist’s goal represents the consummation of the struggle of the working class—its emancipation from the system which gives rise to that struggle. Socialist parties represent the growing consciousness of the working class of its independent interests and aims—in short, its approach to the socialist conclusions arising from a recognition of the class divisions in society and the conflict arising therefrom. What was in its first stage an unconscious class struggle of the workers becomes increasingly a conscious class struggle. Trade unionism and socialism have thus a common origin and the aim of socialism is only possible of achievement by the working class becoming victorious in the struggle against Capitalism. Why then is it that trade unionists are not always socialists?
Trade unions were not formed to fight for socialism. The workers built them to defend and improve their immediate conditions of employment, their wages, their hours of labour and so on. This is clearly revealed by the way in which the Trade Unions have grown. Trade unions limit their industrial activities to measures on behalf of particular sections of workers and they adopted the method of striking bargains with particular groups of employers. To this has been given the name collective bargaining, the setting up of agreements between employers’ associations and trade unions for limited objectives. It involves the acceptance of capitalism as a permanent form of society and the unions will have to take just what the capitalists can afford to give them. Trade union policy is exclusively confined to bargain making and not directed to the socialist aim of abolishing the economic system which gives rise to the struggle between workers and employers. This deal-making outlook over employment contracts is in command of the unions.
The Socialist Party is not anti-trade union. On the contrary, we are the most ardent advocates of trade unionism. Socialists want their fellow trade unionists to recognise the cause of the struggle their unions are compelled to wage, recognising the cause as rooted in the private ownership of the means of production and the propertyless conditions of the working class. Socialists want all the struggles of the unions to be co-ordinated so that behind every industrial dispute there will be available the appropriate power of the working class. Socialists want sectionalism to be superceded by a united working class to one end—the securing of the victory of the working class over the capitalists. This means that the trade unions should recognise that all the efforts of the working class must be directed to the goal of the conquest of political power. Their fight in the industrial field must be linked with the fight to obtain the transfer the ownership of the means of production and distribution from private hands to social ownership. The socialist wants the trade Unionists to be instruments of struggle for this power and this aim, and not used for the retarding of the workers’ struggle. Trade unions should become transformed into industrial unions, i.e. one union for each industry, for the longer the delay in such a transformation the greater the impediments in the way of the conquest of power. To hasten this development Socialists call for the organisation of the workers at “the point of production” in shop stewards and workshop shop-floor committees. It is there where the divisions between workers are most fatal; it is there where they can be most quickly overcome; “unity on the job” is the key to the development of the solidarity of the working class in the struggle against capitalism. And that solidarity is the basis of class action in politics. With such a democratically controlled organisations, guided by the spirit of the class struggle and the socialist purpose, the working class will be able to fight for that victory over capitalism and the establishment of socialism on which the permanent improvement in the conditions of the workers without question depends.
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