PHILOSOPHY OF TRADE UNION RIGHTS * MARXISM

Marxism and trade unionism

JOHN KELLY, Birkbeck College, University of London

The International Centre for Trade Union Rights

http://www.ictur.org

Moderators Note:  This article is taken from the latest
issue of the " International Union Rights Journal" in
which the IUR examines the history of ideas in the
search for a philosophy of trade union rights 
Access this edition free, online, "The philosophy of trade 
union rights"


One impact of the financial crisis that began in
2007-08 was to revive interest in Marxist ideas: sales
of the three volumes of Marx's Capital were given a
boost; Capital reading groups were started up; and
accessible introductions to Marxist political economy
such as David Harvey's A Companion to Marx's Capital
became best-sellers. This resurgence of interest in
Marxism raises many interesting questions for trade
unionists. First, what do Marxists have to say about
the activities and potential of the trade union
movement around the world? Second, how much influence
do Marxist ideas themselves have within the trade union
movement? And third, if the Marxist political project -
the abolition of capitalism - requires a coalition of
trade unions and leftist parties, what is the current
state of those parties?

Classical Marxists on trade unionism

Marx and Engels observed at first hand the emergence of
the British trade union movement, from the middle of
the nineteenth century through the partial legalisation
of unions in the 1870s and the emergence of the New
Unionism in the late 1880s. They noted dramatic shifts
in the objectives and organisation of the unions and
changes in the willingness of some employers and
governments to come to terms with union activity. Not
surprisingly their assessments of the political
significance of trade unionism displayed equally
dramatic shifts: the revolutionary optimism about
collective organisation, so prominent in the 1840s
writings, gave way to a more nuanced and critical
appreciation of the conservatism of the craft unionism
then emerging in Britain and other parts of Europe. It
was Lenin who crystallised what became known as the
'pessimistic' view of trade unionism when he argued in
1902 that trade unions, by themselves, could develop
amongst workers only a limited, trade union
consciousness. The hallmarks of this world view were
the beliefs that workers had to organise collectively
in order to bargain with the employer and that they
required political representation in legislatures in
order to pass favourable legislation. Whatever the
value of such collective bargaining and political
activity, it did not generally pose any threat to the
capitalist system of production itself, a view also
shared by Gramsci. Trade union leaders themselves were
largely content to pursue collective bargaining and
political representation and so for Lenin (and even
more so for Trotsky) the newly emerging trade union
bureaucracy was regarded as a potentially serious
obstacle to revolutionary activity. The radical Marxist
project, the abolition of capitalism and its
replacement with a planned, socialist economy and
society, required a disciplined and centralised
revolutionary political party to coordinate and lead a
revolutionary struggle against the capitalist state.

The record of trade unionism

Broadly speaking, the Leninist appraisal of the
limitations of trade unionism (at least from a Marxist
perspective) has been amply confirmed by their
subsequent development through the twentieth and into
the twentyfirst century. Trade unions have emerged in
almost every country in the world and have almost
invariably sought to engage in three major forms of
activity: collective bargaining with employers;
individual representation of workers in disciplinary
hearings, labour courts and other, similar
institutions; and political representation of workers'
interests in legislatures. Some trade unions are
affiliated to, or supportive of, political parties but
these links include not only Social Democratic and
Communist parties but also Christian Democratic
parties.

It might be objected that a number of trade unions have
played key roles over the years in more radical,
potentially revolutionary struggles, whether in Brazil
in the 1970s, South Korea and South Africa in the
1980s, or Egypt in 2011. Moreover trade unions have
occasionally transcended the limitations of isolated,
industry strikes against a single employer or group of
employers by organising overtly political, general
strikes directed against government policy: in Sweden
1902 for universal suffrage; Belgium 1960-61 in protest
at state-imposed wage controls; France 1968 against a
range of government policies; and in several West
European countries in the 1990s and 2000s against
pension reforms and austerity policies. Neither of
these claims stands up much scrutiny. The Brazilian,
South Korean and South African strikes were not
revolutionary struggles in any interesting sense of
that word: they were broad coalitions demanding freedom
of assembly, a free press, free political parties and
free elections; in short, liberal democracy not
socialism. As for general strikes, these are a
recurrent feature of capitalist societies and their
typical focus on a very specific issue means they do
not ordinarily pose any threat to the continuation of
capitalism per se.

Marxist ideas within the trade union movement

It is certainly the case that Marxist activists
belonging to Communist or Trotskyist political
organisations are frequently active in trade unions in
many countries. Most commonly their influence can be
seen in three areas of union activity: the construction
of ambitious, rather than moderate, demands in
collective bargaining; the promotion of strike action
as a way of enforcing those demands and of building
solidarity and class consciousness; and the affiliation
of trade unions to a range of social and political
movements and campaigns as a way of politicising trade
union goals and activity. However it has to be said
that oftentimes there is little specifically Marxist
about much of this activity. The trigger for collective
action by trade unions is normally a strong sense of
injustice that probably owes far more to diffuse
notions of 'fairness' than to Marxist ideas about
exploitation. For instance, many rank and file trade
unionists in the UK took part in the massive 30
November public sector pensions strike because of a
powerful sense of injustice about the betrayal of
government promises to protect their pensions. Marxist
activists continue to play prominent roles in these
unions, encouraging workers to vote for, and then
participate in the 30 November strike; but many more
non-Marxist activists did the same.

Perhaps the most enduring legacy of Marxist ideas
within the trade union movement is the Lenin-Trotsky
view of the trade union bureaucracy as a conservative
and potentially treacherous social force that should
neither be trusted nor relied upon. This attitude gives
rise to a significant amount of factional activity
within trade unions and undoubtedly generates sharp
debate within branches, regions and conferences, but
whether its net effect is to strengthen or weaken trade
unions is simply not clear. Marx himself of course
wrote very little about trade unions and trade unionism
and is rightly famous for his critical analysis of the
capitalist economy. It is therefore to the influence of
his political economy that we now turn.

Marx's analysis of capitalism

For Marx the capitalist system is driven by profit.
Each capitalist hires and exploits labour in order to
produce goods and services whose value when sold
exceeds the total costs of production thereby
generating the capitalist's profit. As new goods and
services are created, both old and new firms will be
attracted to the fresh opportunities for making profit.
In this competitive struggle one of the most common
ways in which firms try to secure an advantage over
their rivals and increase their own profits is to cut
workers' wages. The competitive scramble for profits
and the relentless downward pressure on wages leads
sooner or later to the most characteristic feature of
the capitalist system: periodic crises of
overproduction marked by mass unemployment and the
destruction of many firms. To restore the conditions
for further profit-making, firms in recession typically
engage in further wage reductions triggering a vicious
circle of falling tax revenues, cuts in public
spending, falls in consumption and further falls in
output. For Marx the only effective and enduring
solution to the wasteful, destructive and anarchic
character of capitalism was its overthrow and
replacement by socialist planning.

There are still trade union movements in various parts
of the world who adhere to this view and who espouse
the creation of a post-capitalist, socialist society as
one of their principal objectives. Equally there are
many trade unions who will endorse Marx' criticisms of
the waste and irrationality of the capitalist system
and the destructive consequences of the profit motive
following its introduction into public services. Yet
long before the demise of the Soviet Union and the
disintegration of almost all of the communist parties
in the advanced capitalist world, many trade unions had
already embraced the policy prescriptions of an equally
famous but non- Marxist economist, John Maynard Keynes.
His response to the irrationality of capitalist crises
was to argue that governments should borrow and spend
their way out of recessions by paying people to work on
public projects, thereby increasing demand and
consumption, boosting production and increasing tax
revenues. Even in non-crisis periods government policy
should be directed towards the maintenance of full
employment. This Keynesian policy, or variants of it,
lay at the heart of much trade union economic policy
for most of the 'Golden Age of Capitalism', from the
mid-1940s until the late 1970s. Yet by underpinning
trade union power such policies sometimes led to high
levels of price inflation and to the erosion of
corporate profitability. The neo-liberal response to
these problems is by now well known and its own
problems in turn have led many in the labour movement
to see a fresh opportunity for the resurgence of
Marxist ideas.

Yet if Marxist ideas are enjoying something of a
renaissance amongst intellectuals, the same cannot be
said for the trade union movement. The main trade union
alternatives to the savage austerity policies now being
pursued throughout the advanced capitalist world owe
far more to Keynes than to Marx: increased government
borrowing, public works programmes, heavier taxes on
the rich and the protection of household incomes. Calls
for increased public ownership and economic planning
are largely absent from union programmes and public
debates. If we turn our attention to the far left
parties that have become more prominent around Western
Europe in recent years - the Left Bloc in Portugal, the
New Anti-Capitalist Party in France or Die Linke in
Germany for example - it is clear that a number of
these organisations have been strongly influenced by
Marxist ideas in their policies, programmes and
language. As a result they have often presented voters
with a clear challenge to austerity policies yet their
votes in recent elections have rarely exceeded 10 per
cent. In contrast, racist far right parties have often
polled two or three times as well as the far left in
these same elections. If we take two of the most recent
elections in Western Europe, the Socialist parties that
were implementing austerity policies in Portugal and
Spain lost heavily not to the anti-austerity far left
but to the pro-austerity conservatives. Finally if we
consider the anti-capitalist movements that have risen
to prominence in recent years, such as Occupy Wall
Street or the Spanish indignados, it appears that in
organisational structures, forms of action and contempt
for mainstream political institutions, they are far
more indebted to anarchism than to Marxism.

Conclusion

The period of economic recession that began in 2007-08
should have been an opportunity for Marxist ideas to
reacquire some purchase within trade union movements
around the world and to help unions challenge the
austerity policies that are being pursued almost
everywhere. Events have not quite turned out as many
had hoped or expected although Marx himself might not
have been surprised. He did after all once offer the
rather pessimistic insight that in every epoch, the
ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class.

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