Marxism and trade unionism

Marxism and trade unions

This a six-part AWL education course. Its purpose is to give all members a solid grounding in some fundamental ideas about what trade unions are, and the role of socialists in unions and workplaces. We want every member to do this course – members currently active in unions, and those who will be union activists in future, or have past experiences to share. This collective knowledge and understanding will help make AWL even more effective and help develop our ideas. By all means also invite contacts. The six sessions are: 1. Our Fantasy Union 2. The Marxist Critique of Trade Unions 3. The...

Trotsky on trade union unity

Leon Trotsky wrote an article for the US Militant in 1931 on ‘The Question of Trade Union Unity’. The article is attached. The article is about the attitude of the French communist trade union federation (CGTU) towards the reformist trade union federation (CGT). Unlike in Britain, in several countries – including France – trade union federations have been (and still are) organised along political lines, rather than having one federation for all trade unions. Trotsky argues against those communists who don’t want to dirty their hands by uniting with reformists – and his argument is therefore...

The meaning of the mass strike

By Ed Maltby Discussion is growing in the British labour movement about shifting the public sector pensions battle from a string of “demonstration strikes”, with long gaps in between, to a more active and self-controlling battle. Elsewhere in Europe, working-class resistance is already developing beyond the stage of occasional set-piece one-day strikes. A debate from 1910 is relevant. It took place within the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), between Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Kautsky. The SPD was the largest of the European socialist parties of the time, with 720,000 members, cadres active...

The Clyde Workers' Committee, 1915

Brief extract from James Hinton, The First Shop Stewards' Movement (1973): The Clyde Workers’ Committee originated in the failure of the union Executives, or District Committees, to place themselves at the head of the militancy of a section of the Clydeside engineers. From the Fairfield’s case the more militant of the engineers learned that if the Munitions Act was to be opposed root and branch, it must be opposed by an organisation and leadership able to act independently of the official trade union structures. The February 1915 strike had taught them that this organisation, to be effective...

The Webbs on the development on the trade union bureaucracy

This brief extract from Beatrice and Sidney Webb's 'The History of Trade Unionism' (1894) describes how trade unions became controlled by professionals. We would not share the Webbs' approval of this development, but their description is illuminating! You can read the eBook here . Meanwhile the steady growth of national Unions, each with three to five thousand members, ever-increasing friendly benefits, and a weekly contribution per member which sometimes exceeded a shilling, involved a considerable development of Trade Union structure. The little clubs and local societies had been managed, in...

Rosa Luxemburg on the Trade Union Bureaucracy

Extract from Rosa Luxemburg: 'The Mass Strike, The Political Party and the Trade Unions', Section VIII. Need for United Action of Trade Unions and Social Democracy Here, Rosa Luxemburg is writing about the need for trade unions and the socialist (called at that time, 'social democratic') party, to act together, and against the idea of trade unions being politically neutral. This particular extract is also useful for considering the nature of the trade union bureaucracy. Click here for notes on 'The Mass Strike', and click here for the full text. The alleged antagonism between Social Democracy...

The origins of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty: the thirteen basic questions

The origins of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty: the thirteen questions (This is an expanded version of the text in Workers Liberty 3/26) The political tendency now organised as AWL originates from Workers’ Fight, a small Trotskyist group formed in 1966. Why, and how? Workers’ Fight came into existence as a distinct tendency in response to two linked “crises”. There was a prolonged crisis of British capitalist society, and of the labour movement which had grown so very powerful within it and yet was unable — despite a mass socialist sentiment in the trade unions — to overthrow capitalism and...

The 1984-5 Miners' Strike, the Miners Who Scabbed, and the Fate of the Pet Pig

In Thomas Hardy’s novel Jude the Obscure, there is a strange, affecting scene, in which the butchering of a hand-raised pig is described. It is told with great sympathy and empathy from the pig’s point of view. (Parables for Socialists-5) Reared close to the family, as was common in nineteen century England, the pig is well-treated, mothered like a pet and fed on tit-bits — all the better to fatten it up so that it could at the right moment be turned into as much pork and bacon as possible. The pig is happy and contented, not knowing his place in the human scheme of things. Then one day the...

§I — Leon Trotsky: Class, Union, and Party

The trade unions are not only the bedrock of the labour movement. With the Blairite hijacking of the Labour Party, which had been founded at the beginning of the 20th century by the trade unions and socialist organisations to fight for working class interests, the trade unions are pretty much all that’s left of the labour movement. Even though the number of trade unionists has fallen from its peak strength in the pre-Thatcher years, 25 years ago, it is still a very powerful movement. There are twice as many trade unionists in Britain now as there were in France in 1968, when the working class...

Origins of the trade union bureaucracy

Download PDF of this extract we published in 1996 , from Brian Pearce's pamphlet Some Past Rank and File Movements . A slightly less abridged extract below. Often in the labour movement the cry is heard: "If only our trade union and Labour Party leaders would fight for us the way the Tories fight for their side!" But they don't. Most trade union leaders behave like house-trained tabby cats towards the government and the bosses. Why? The Marxist answer is that the full-time trade union leaders form a distinct social layer — a middle class layer in fact. In the early years, workers who became...

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