What is the purpose of trade union organization and what are the tasks of communists within the trade unions? In this series of articles published in The Call, we examine these questions, summing up a Marxist-Leninist view of the trade union question.
Unions first arose out of the spontaneous battles of working people to defend themselves from the abuses and oppressive conditions imposed by the very system of wage labor. The rise of capitalism brought an increasingly greater concentration of industrial production in factories and mills, with ownership concentrated in the hands of a small class of capitalists.
Stripped of any means of survival other than the sale of their labor power; workers were forced to compete against each other, thereby enabling profit-hungry capitalists to drive down wages and force long hours and inhuman conditions on the masses of people.
In this situation of virtual enslavement, workers were bound to resist. In the days of the industrial revolution, this resistance tended to take the form of smashing the very machines which seemed to be the immediate cause of their enslavement and impoverishment. In the course of these spontaneous outbreaks and through their own experience, workers soon learned that their most effective weapon against the combined power of capital was to combine their own resources, to unite the working people in one craft or one factory so theycould exact better conditions for work and also better terms for the sale of their labor power. Workers began to form various societies, organizations and common funds for mutual protection.
From the earliest struggles in the 19th century, organized labor demonstrated its power in sharp strike battles and broad international movements like the struggle for the eight-hour day.
In the United States, the rising trade union movement emerged through difficult but victorious battles against a ruling class determined to crush it. From the early 1800s, when unions like the cigar makers in Tampa and the shoemakers in Philadelphia were first formed and early labor federations like the Knights of Labor first developed, the U.S. working class made advances.
In 1886, these organizations played a leading role in mobilizing tens of thousands of workers and supporters to fight for the eight-hour day at the famous May Day demonstration in Chicago’s Haymarket Square. This event became a landmark in the struggle of the working class internationally, as did the fight of women garment workers in the Lower East Side of New York, which led to the development of International Women’s Day on March 8.
In these and other battles, like the great Pullman strike of 1894, revolutionary-minded and socialist leaders like Eugene V. Debs linked the fight for the immediate demands of the working class to the fight against capitalism, showing in this way the potential of the unions in organizing and leading these fights.
In drawing together workers and teaching them through struggle the need for solidarity and unity against the onslaught of the capitalists, unions served as centers for organizing the working class as a whole. They were schools that provided an elementary class training, demonstrating to workers the necessity of subordinating individual interests to those of a larger section of the class, of putting solidarity above competition in order to advance the interests of all working people.
Even when the unions were in their earliest stage of development, carrying out guerrilla war against different employers, Karl Marx recognized the enormous potential of the unions far beyond the fight against day-to-day abuses. In “Wages, Price and Profit,” written in 1865, Marx warned that workers should not be “exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerrilla fights.” The trade unions failed as centers of the working-class struggle, he noted, when they limited themselves to fighting only the effects of the capitalist system, “instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wage system.”
The introduction of socialist thought into the labor movement began to transform the character of the trade unions and the trade union movement by consciously diverting it from the path along which it had developed spontaneously. The spontaneous movement would never make “a complete break” with the capitalist system, and as Lenin emphasized, the spontaneous movement alone meant “a strengthening of influence of bourgeois ideology upon the workers.”
At the same time, however, the spontaneous struggles of the workers were a training ground, teaching the workers to unite and also teaching them who their enemies were. In “On Strikes,” for example, Lenin stressed how “every strike strengthens and develops in the workers the understanding that the government is their enemy and that the working class must prepare itself to struggle against the government for the people’s rights.” But while strikes and other battles make the unions schools for training workers to fight the capitalists, the unions have even greater tasks to fulfill.
In addition to their original tasks in defending workers, the trade unions, as Marx pointed out, “must learn how to act consciously as focal points for organizing the working class in the greater interests of its complete emancipation.” In supporting every social and political movement directed towards this aim, the unions “must convince the whole world that they are not fighting to further their narrow personal interests, but to free millions of oppressed people.”
In the fight to turn the unions into weapons in the class struggle, the early revolutionaries had to do battle not only against the capitalists but also against opportunist trends which emerged within the workers’ movement. These opportunists from the right and the “left” denied the revolutionary role of the unions.
In the “Critique of the Gotha Program,” Marx exposed the reactionary character of the Lassalleans, who preached a brand of reformism. They called for change through reliance on parliamentary reforms, for a peaceful transition to socialism, and separated the economic struggle from the political. These opportunists opposed revolution and viewed the trade unions as an appendage of the Lassallean reformist political party.
Marx and Engels and later Lenin waged struggle against anarcho-syndicalism, another opportunist trend that grew strong at the turn of the century, particularly in France. Proponents of anarcho-syndicalism held that the unions were the only form of proletarian organization the workers needed and that capitalism could be overthrown through a general strike. The anarcho-syndicalists denied the necessity of the struggle for political power and the need to build an independent political party of the working class to lead that struggle.
From the founding of the earliest unions to the present, the capitalists waged a vicious battle to block them, to crush them before they could spread. They passed laws, jailed and killed organizers and leaders and sent out police, the army, guards and goon squads to massacre and intimidate the growing workers’ movement.
But the workers’ movement was too strong and persistent; the workers, faced with the brutalities of capitalist exploitation, were bound to resist and fight back at whatever cost.
So, in addition to repression, the capitalists saw the need to appease the workers, to buy off some faithful adherents to serve as agents in the ranks of the workers’ movement. They began not only to accept trade unions but to promote trade unionism and reformism in order to channel workers into the limited struggles for better wages and better conditions within the context of preserving capitalism.
Marx and Engels noted in analyzing the labor movement in England in the late 19th century the development of a “bourgeoisified” stratum of workers. Due to Britain’s large colonial empire, which produced great profits for the British capitalists, “this most bourgeois of all nations,” they pointed out, is trying to create “a bourgeois proletariat.”
The ability of the capitalists to buy off an upper stratum of workers was directly related to the rise of imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. Through the export of capital, particularly to nations of the third world, the monopoly capitalists began to earn profits far and above the already large profits gained through the exploitation of workers in their own country. This was possible because labor was cheaper and less organized in the oppressed nations of the third world.
“Imperialism,” Lenin wrote in Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, “means the partition of the world, and the exploitation of other countries ... (It) means high monopoly profits for a handful of very rich countries.” Lenin went on to show how these huge profits, these superprofits, were used to create “privileged sections” among the workers, ”to detach them from the broad masses of the proletariat.”
This small upper stratum or “labor aristocracy” distinguishes itself from the working class as a whole ”in their mode of life, in the size of their earnings and in their entire outlook.” They are, Lenin stressed, “the principal social (not military) prop of the bourgeoisie. For they are the real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement, the labor lieutenants of the capitalist class, real channels of reformism and chauvinism.”
Lenin’s teachings on the development of imperialism and the labor aristocracy apply to the growth of U.S. imperialism. As superprofits were extracted from their colonies and neo-colonies, the U.S. monopolists were able to bribe a stratum of the working class – the labor aristocracy. The labor aristocracy is made up of a small privileged section of the working class, mainly white skilled workers in the craft unions, and full-time union bureaucrats.
To represent the interests of capital, U.S. monopoly capitalists promoted the development of a large trade union bureaucracy which was based on the labor aristocracy. Today the U.S. trade union bureaucracy is controlled by a handful of top bureaucrats who earn fat salaries, have a wide variety of privileges, expense accounts, and government and industry posts. As Lenin pointed out, these are some of the thousand threads which tie these misleaders to the capitalist system. Under their rule, the unions in this country have been turned into flabby, bureaucratic and class-collaborationist organizations.
Whereas unions arose to build and strengthen unity among workers against the capitalists, these labor lieutenants have only promoted divisions, particularly along national and sex lines. These misleaders serve the interests of capital, through the suppression of the workers’ movement and, in particular, by keeping that movement tied to reformism and trade unionism.
Joining the reformist trade union bureaucrats in sabotaging the workers’ movement is the revisionist Communist Party (CPUSA). Once the proud vanguard of the U.S. working-class movement, the CP has degenerated into a thoroughly revisionist party. It is a counter-revolutionary party that uses the banner of socialism and its past reputation to gain access to the rank and file in order to attack the working-class struggle and chain it to capitalism. Because these scabs pose as communists, they are most dangerous agents of imperialism in the working-class movement.
In order to establish themselves in positions in the trade union bureaucracy, the revisionists form alliances with liberal and social-democratic trade union misleaders. While they preach the same brand of class collaborationism as these reformist bureaucrats, they also serve as a fifth column for the Soviet Union, promoting their phony “detente” line.
Although today the revisionist party occupies few of the leading positions in the trade union bureaucracy, their strength is growing, as they appeal to the more militant and radicalized sections of the working class. Also, they are among the most rabid anti-communists, as they themselves have demonstrated by their increased attacks against the Marxist-Leninists in the labor movement. In these attacks, their true social-fascist character has come through.
In order for the unions to advance the genuine interests of the working class, they must break completely with the labor aristocracy, and the reformist and revisionist misleaders. “No preparation of the proletariat for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie is possible,” Lenin wrote, “unless an immediate systematic, extensive and open struggle is waged against this stratum (labor aristocracy).” At the same time, Lenin showed the struggle against this stratum must be linked to the battle against spontaneity, to the fight for conscious Marxist-Leninist leadership of the workers’ movement.
Lenin targeted in particular the opportunist idea promoted by the opportunists in his time that the unions could be “neutral” organizations. Lenin stressed that only under the leadership of the communist party and by maintaining close contact with it can the trade unions advance the struggle of the working masses and break with opportunism.
Today this is certainly true. The unions are presently bound hand and foot to the imperialist class and bourgeois ideology through the labor aristocracy, especially through the reformist and revisionist trade union bureaucrats. The most immediate and pressing task is to build a genuine communist party that will be able to guide the struggle in the unions and provide Marxist-Leninist leadership in the battle to oust these opportunists.
It is crucial in this struggle to unite the broad masses of workers, taking into account the different levels of consciousness and political activity among them. Many dedicated fighters and leaders of the day-to-day struggles are trade unionists and not revolutionaries. They want the unions to be strong, fighting centers to represent the workers’ interests. While their outlook may be limited by trade unionist ideology, they have nothing fundamental in common with the labor misleaders and should never be lumped together with the chief bureaucrats in the trade union movement.
It is the task of communists to introduce revolutionary ideas and win these workers to support revolution and the party. It is important to develop their initiative and leadership in the course of struggle and study. Sectarian errors towards the masses of workers will only isolate the communists rather than the labor bureaucrats and limit the influence and leadership of the party.
The new communist party that we are presently building will be made up of the finest working-class fighters of all nationalities. It will be based firmly in the industrial proletariat, rooted through factory nuclei in all major industries and unions, especially the large mills and plants. Through communist agitation and propaganda, the party will win the advanced workers to its ranks, spreading the influence of communist ideas and strengthening the leadership of the communist party among the broad masses.
Under the leadership of the new party, the unions will be forged into powerful weapons to advance the struggle for proletarian revolution and for socialism. Once the working class has seized power and established its rule, the unions will become a school for communism. Under the leadership of the party, the unions will serve as a school for winning the broad masses of workers to actively participate in the construction of socialism, to study Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, and to prepare the groundwork for building a classless, communist society.