Trade union

Wholesaler of the sale of labor power, originally created by the workers themselves to defend their working conditions within a framework of class conciliation and of affirmation of their own existence within the institutions of the national state. With the monopolistic development of national capital and the universalization of state capitalism, the trade union is recognized as one more monopolist and, like all of them, absorbed into the structures of the national state.

Origins and development

Trade unions are by no means the first organizations of the working class, nor the inventors of the strike. The first modern forms of workers' struggle through strikes appeared in the 16th century in France and in the 17th century in Spain, organized through confraternities and brotherhoods of wage earners within the artisan regime. These were later replaced, first by "mutual societies" and then by "resistance funds", the direct forerunner of the trade union.

Modern trade unions were born from 1860 onwards out of a fraction of the proletariat still mostly tied to artisanal production, in a setting of small-scale production in which the tendency towards class conciliation, characteristic of the still weak proletariat of the small workshop, was reinforced by the general conditions that rising capitalism made possible: sustained wage improvements (as productivity soared) and the conquest of an autonomous space for the representation and organization of the class.

Within this framework the big unions would train and oil their function as "wholesalers" of labor power, improving not only the immediate conditions of the workers but also equalizing the conditions of competition among capitalists and evening out the rate of profit between the different sectors (uses of capital) more effectively than individual competition among workers could.

The first trade union did not appear until 1864. Any idea of class struggle was foreign to it, since, on the contrary, it presented itself as proposing to reconcile the interests of workers and employers. Tolain himself [a member of the First International] assigned it no other goal. It must also be noted that the trade union movement was by no means started by the most exploited layers of the working class -the nascent industrial proletariat- but rather by workers belonging to the artisan trades.

It therefore directly reflects the specific needs and ideological tendencies of those layers of workers. While the shoemakers and the typographers, artisans par excellence, created their unions in 1864 and 1867 respectively, the miners, who constituted the most heavily exploited proletariat, did not create their first union until 1876 in the Loire (in 1882 in the Nord and the Pas-de-Calais), and in textiles, where working conditions were particularly appalling, the need for a union was not felt until 1877.

Where, then, did this ferment of minds come from at a time when socialist ideas (and anarchist ideas, which would only later become differentiated) were spreading throughout the working class of the big cities, when the most exploited workers so plainly shunned union organization while those with a better standard of living sought it out?

First of all, we must recall that the first unions created by workers in the artisan trades were merely bodies of conciliation, not of class struggle. They would become so only some time later. Moreover, they represented the form of organization best suited to trades that, spread over many workshops, brought together a fairly small number of workers of the same craft. It was the best means of grouping workers of the same trade scattered across the workshops of one city, of giving them a cohesion that the very conditions of their work tended to prevent.

It should also be remembered that the artisan character of a trade often means that employers and workers work side by side and lead the same kind of life. Even if the employer's economic situation is far superior to the worker's, the human contact he frequently maintains with the latter prevents the appearance of the chasm that separates workers and employers in big industry. Between employers and workers in the artisan trades there also persists a minimum of craft familiarity, completely absent from, and inconceivable in, big industry.

All these reasons combined, most of the time, to induce conciliation rather than struggle... The situation of workers in the textile and mining branches (to take them as examples) was entirely different. Among the miners as among the textile workers, great masses of workers of various occupations were crowded together in factories and pits, subjected to inhuman working conditions.

If workers in artisan enterprises were the first to organize in order to discuss their interests with the employers, those in big industry, subjected to the most relentless pressure of capital, were the first to perceive what irreducibly opposed them to the employers, to rebel against the situation imposed on them, to practice direct action, to claim their right to life arms in hand; the first, in short, to orient themselves towards social revolution.

The revolt of the Lyon "canuts" [silk workers] in 1831, as well as the miners' strike of 1844, shows this clearly. While between 1830 and 1845 the typographers, for instance, do not appear even once on a list of the trades that received the greatest number of convictions, the miners appear three times (the mining industry was then in full development) and the textile workers almost every year.

The inescapable conclusion is that the workers of big industry attached no interest whatsoever to a form of organization that offered them conciliation (which they sensed to be impossible) between opposing classes. They came to it only later and, so to speak, grudgingly, since their very situation pushed them towards forms of open struggle against the employers that the union did not take into account, at least at first. In fact, the workers of big industry joined union organization only from the moment it inscribed principles of class struggle at the head of its statutes.

It was they, moreover, who would lead the most violent struggles over demands between 1880 and 1914. With this concession to their aspirations, they resigned themselves to joining the union, but for several other reasons as well. First, because no other form of organization was conceivable at the time. Furthermore, the prospect of a broad, progressive development of capitalism then lay ahead, hence the need to tighten the cohesion of the working class in order to wrest from the employers more satisfactory conditions of existence, which would better prepare the workers to launch the final assault on property.

From its very beginnings, the union appeared to the workers of big industry as a mere stopgap. It was nevertheless acceptable at the time because of the artisan survivals that industry still contained. It was a positive solution in that period of continuous development of the capitalist economy, accompanied by a constant growth of freedom and culture. Its recognition by the State, and through it the recognition of the right of association and of the press, was a considerable gain.

Nevertheless, even when trade unionism adopted the principle of class struggle, it never set itself, in its daily combat, the overthrow of society; on the contrary, it confined itself to grouping workers for the defense of their economic interests within capitalist society.

At times this defense takes the form of a fierce struggle, but it never carries the purpose, either implicit or explicit, of transforming the workers' condition through revolution. None of the struggles of the period, not even the most violent, aimed at such an objective. At most, the union glimpses, for an indeterminate future -which from then on takes on the meaning of the carrot dangled before the donkey- the abolition of the employers and of wage labor, and consequently of the capitalist society that engenders them. But it will never undertake any action in that direction.

Benjamin Péret, "The Unions and the Class Struggle" in "The Unions against the Revolution", 1954

Trade unions, monopolism and state capitalism

With the development of imperialism and the entry of capitalism into its phase of decadence, the unions gradually move from being wholesalers to being monopolists of labor power. In exactly the same way as the coal and steel cartels -the first unions of capitalists- their relationship with bank capital and the state consolidates a new form of organization of the bourgeoisie in the face of the new conditions that national capital undergoes: state capitalism.

They are in the process of passing from the "free" competition between the supply of and the demand for labor power to the phase of the regimentation of supply by demand, that is, of the working class by monopoly or state capital, an exclusive monopoly. [...] They are as far from being modifiable in a revolutionary direction as any other estate of exploitative society. In its image, they use the working class for their own particular ends, while men will never find a way of adapting them to their revolutionary requirements; they can only destroy them.

G. Munis in "The Unions against the Revolution", 1960

The transition would become visible in the evolution of the Second International: the reformist and opportunist tendency was at every moment supported and driven forward by the social-democratic union bureaucracy, culminating in the enthusiastic defense of the state, the call to regimentation and enlistment in the army and, finally, the denial of the most basic internationalism, the true class boundary.

In the period preceding the First World War, the union leaders were not the legitimate representatives of the working class, except insofar as they had to assume that role in order to increase their credit with the capitalist State.

At the decisive moment, when they had to choose between risking a position already acquired by calling on the masses to reject the war and the regime that engendered it, and strengthening that position, they chose the second term of the alternative, opting for the regime, and placed themselves at the service of capitalism. This was not the case in France alone, since the union leaders of the countries involved in the war adopted the same attitude everywhere. If the union leaders betrayed, is it not because the very structure of the union and its place in society made that betrayal possible from the outset, and then inevitable in 1914?

Benjamin Péret, "The Unions and the Class Struggle" in "The Unions against the Revolution", 1954

The 1905 revolution, however, had brought forth new forms and means of class struggle that would prove as opposed to the unions as they were fundamental to the whole revolutionary wave opened in 1917: the mass strike and the workers' committees and councils. These new means:

The factory committees or councils, democratically elected by the workers in the workplaces, whose members, under the immediate and constant control of those who elected them, are recallable at any moment. Such committees are obviously a direct emanation of the will of the masses in motion and facilitate their development. That is why, as soon as they appear, even in the provisional form of strike committees, they come into conflict both with the union leaders, whose power they threaten, and with the employers. Both feel equally threatened, and in the same way, so much so that the union leaders generally intercede between employers and workers to bring the strike to an end.

I am convinced that no worker who has taken part in a strike committee will contradict me, above all with regard to the strikes of recent years. Moreover, it is only natural that this should be so. Since strike committees represent a new organ of struggle, the most democratic one conceivable, it tends, consciously or not, to replace the union, which in such a case defends its acquired privileges by trying to restrict the powers granted to the strike committee. Imagine, then, the hostility of the unions towards a permanent committee, called by the very logic of things to subordinate and supplant them!

G. Munis, "The Factory Committees, Engine of the Social Revolution" in "The Unions against the Revolution", 1960

Why do the unions "betray"?

The state capitalism under which we live leaves the workers, and what they call our "legitimate demands", a very narrow space: the negotiation, mediated by the unions and their works councils, of the price of our hour of labor, company by company and sector by sector. A negotiation that all parties -unions, employers and the state- accept as subordinated to the existence of profits.

From the very start, "complying with the collective agreement" -that is, with the law- and securing a "workload" for the companies headed the demands raised by the unions. It is an old story, already familiar to the Navantia workers in Cádiz. It hammers home the idea that "the workers' well-being depends on the company's results": the old formula drilled in by the unions for years in the form "we can't ask the company for what it can't give".

Can the unions have a leadership different from the famous corporatist union bureaucracy?

The business of the unions is not to help struggles develop. Therefore it is not the business of their leaders either. Their business is to broker the sale of labor power, aspiring to turn the organization of which they are professional cadres into one more monopolist within the great game of capitals that determines prices and wages.

Getting paid for organizing labor power in production is exactly what the manager of any company does. The salaried manager is the characteristic form of the corporate bourgeoisie under the state capitalism in which we live. What can we expect from the corporate... union bourgeoisie?

In this way, the unions actually abort the organization of the workers by corporatizing them, channeling the will and the need to fight onto a terrain that in reality simply organizes the labor market, not the struggle for the universal needs of the workers. As in the market, in the union the whole range of possibilities boils down to the outcome of supply and demand in a rigged game.

In other words, neither as an organization nor as a body of cadres and full-time officials can they set themselves the goal of really extending the struggle, the only way it can win. They have long been part of the state; indeed, fundamental pieces of the state capitalism through which the bourgeoisie organizes its own rule. Pieces that are neither more nor less contradictory than any others.

That is why the whole union experience of the last century cannot be anything but demoralizing: because the unions are no longer tools for organizing the workers as a class. And without class organization there can be nothing but atomization -however coordinated- and demoralization.

Why do the unions replace strike assemblies with information meetings and secret ballots?

What gives strength to every strike, small or large, as to any class struggle, is that it materializes, even if only potentially, a collective subject. A subject far more powerful than any mere sum of individuals whose level of commitment and cohesion nobody knows. If the assembly decides so, we all go on strike; if not, however much we believe it necessary, we will have to accept it and keep fighting to convince our fellow workers.

Yet we see more and more often that the unions call us out on strike without even first convening an assembly or, when they do, reducing it to an information meeting. The result is strikes that are not even strikes of a workforce, but of individuals; that is why their turnout is expressed in percentages: "60% of the workforce joined the strike", they tell us, as if it were a success. But if the majority wanted to strike, why not discuss it in an assembly and all go out together?

The point is that if the assembly calls the strike, the assembly decides, and it also decides who represents it. The same assembly that calls and leads the strike elects a strike committee and changes its composition whenever it sees fit. What is more, the assembly is sovereign and may well choose -this is the way forward- to include on an equal footing temporary workers and those employed by subcontractors. In other words, the assembly, when it really is one, tends to constitute a broader base than the one the works council, regularly elected from among union candidates in compliance with labor legislation, claims to represent.

That is the heart of the whole matter: who holds sovereignty, the workers or the works councils; the bodies we give ourselves, which tend to include everyone, or the bodies imposed by law, which make us choose among the unions.

Assemblies atomized workplace by workplace, and works councils self-appointed as (false) strike committees, mean subordinating the organization of the strike to the unions and their goals, the first of which is the profitability of the company.

Their "ideal" model is to present the strike as an individual right, limited to following the unions or not. This turns the strike into the opposite of a class affirmation, and therefore of anything useful for satisfying our needs. The strike thus becomes an exercise of citizenship, isolating us, atomizing us and, as in any market or parliament, reducing our sovereignty to choosing among the options offered to us by the institutions of state capitalism.

Accepting the union disorganization of the struggle therefore means limiting negotiation to a closed-door carve-up with the employers, in which both "management teams" set prices and conditions through an analysis of the company's situation.

Every workers' struggle that gets anywhere is an exercise in centralism around the strike assembly. Everything else means breaking the workers apart, setting them against one another and provoking a demoralization that sterilizes the path to new struggles.

A soft but no less insidious version of the same union citizenism is the imposition of secret ballots in assemblies. Isolated before the ballot box, we stand alone before the company and the unions, that is, before the power of capital and the state. That is why they remind us to vote thinking of our own... which is never the collective, but the anguish of not making it to the end of the month and being left alone if the strike goes on.

By contrast, when we discuss openly and vote by show of hands, face to face, shoulder to shoulder with our fellow workers, the vote itself is a bond of commitment and a display of courage. Assemblies organized in this way allow decisions to be made not only according to numbers, but according to the commitment and spirit of their members. And the strike committees they elect cease to be representatives of the unions before the workers and become true delegations of the workers before capital.

Why is "combative" unionism no better?

"Combative unionism", supposedly "radical", adds to the old union playbook new roads to disaster under the cloak of a false courage and indignation.

Although the "combative unions" do not sit at the negotiating table, they generally do nothing to turn workplace information meetings into general strike assemblies. Their fight is with the "major" unions, over grabbing representation.

Their distinctive role is to derail the "radicalism" of the most committed workers away from the fight for a real strike assembly and onto the sterile terrain of letting off steam in the street with the police, which the media love so much as a way of trying to isolate struggles.

But that is only the first move. When the big unions force a "settlement", instead of opposing to the capitulation the unity of the assembly -which they helped to abort- the "combative unions" separate the most combative workers from the rest, forget about the general assembly and lead them into a lonely, sterile strike that only serves to isolate and demoralize them in the face of the "lack of response" from their fellow workers.

That is, when the mobilization technique of "left-wing unionism" does not consist from the very first moment in keeping the workers on the move and dispersed. Plenty of pickets, plenty of road blockades and mobilizations segmented by category and trade. Anything to avoid calling open assemblies so that the extension of the struggles becomes real and the workers in struggle come together.

This is what we see, taken to the extreme, in the piquetero movements exalted by the Trotskyist-Stalinist left tradition in Argentina, which presents pickets and road blockades as an example to follow in the struggle to win better conditions. Nothing could be more destructive. With these methods they disperse and weaken our class, which can only assert itself in the factories, the schools, the hospitals and the neighborhoods through sovereign assemblies, electing its own representatives and taking coordinated steps.