Most people join a trade union for a practical reason: to get some protection
at work from arbitrary decisions by their employer over pay, hours of work,
promotion, safety and working conditions generally.
Some do so in the same sort of way as they might take out an insurance policy
or join the AA. Others are more committed and take advantage of the structures
most unions have that allow some degree of membership participation. They see
unions as a collective way of getting a better deal for themselves and their
work colleagues. Others take a broader view; they see unions as a collective
way of getting a better deal not just for those in their own workplace but for
all those in similar workplaces, be it a coal mine, a car factory, a hospital,
a school, a local council, or a government department.
The next step up is to see unions as a way of improving the position of the
whole class of wage and salary workers under capitalism. This is the highest
degree of what Lenin called “trade union consciousness” which,
writing in 1903, he described as “the conviction that it is necessary to
combine in unions, fight the employers and strive to compel the government to
pass necessary labour legislation, etc” (Lenin was wrong on most things,
but not on this).
There is nothing revolutionary about trade unionism, even at the highest level
of trade union consciousness. It's only about trying to get a better deal for
yourself, your work colleagues and perhaps for all wage and salary workers
within capitalism. There is nothing wrong with that in itself and socialists,
who do want to replace capitalism with socialism, as wage and salary workers
ourselves also join unions to try to get some protection from—and to fight
against—employers. But clearly trade unionism by itself is quite
inadequate.
Trade union party
A hundred or so years ago in Britain active trade unionists recognised this and
proposed what to them seemed the next step: to sponsor a political party that,
once it got into parliament, would “strive to compel the government to
pass necessary labour legislation, etc”. Hence was born the Labour Party,
which in 2006 will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of its first MPs. In
this sense, the Labour Party was originally an expression of trade union
consciousness on the political field, an attempt to get a better deal for wage
and salary workers within capitalism by political means.
Some who called themselves “socialists” welcomed this development; in
fact it was they who had actively worked for it. But our predecessors in the
Socialist Party (we go back to 1904) took a different position: a political
party to further the interests of the whole class of wage and salary workers
was indeed necessary but not one whose main aim would be to “strive to
compel government's to pass necessary labour legislation, etc”. What was
needed was a workers party that would have as its only aim the replacement of
capitalism, its class ownership and its production for profit by socialism and
its common ownership, democratic control and production to satisfy people's
needs. In short, a socialist party not a “Labour” party. It is for
this reason that we have always opposed the Labour Party and that the unions
should have any links with it.
What are they thinking now?
Now, a hundred years later, there can be absolutely no doubt who was right and
who was wrong. The Labour Party still exists but it is no longer a trade union
party as it was when it was first set up. In fact, the first step away from
this was taken as long ago as 1918 when Labour adopted a new constitution and a
new aim: not simply to compel governments to pass laws to protect workers
within capitalism, but to itself form a government that would pass such laws
and that, if re-elected again and again, would pass more and more of them so
that eventually capitalism would have been gradually transformed step by step
into socialism.
This was a new doctrine that was distinct from trade unionism: reformism, or
the view that capitalism could be gradually transformed into socialism by MPs
passing reform measures. Trade unionism never had this pretension. It does not
aim at trying to replace capitalism, but only at protecting workers within
capitalism against the constant pressures from employers. As it happens,
generally speaking, unions have not fared too badly in pursuing this more
modest aim, even though they have done – and can do – little more
than follow labour market and productivity trends, pushing up wages when
there's a labour shortage and applying the brake a bit or negotiating
redundancy terms when there's a slump – and even though, at times,
especially under past Labour governments, trade union leaders have put the
interests of “the country” (i.e. the profits of capitalist
employers) before those of their members and been rewarded for so doing with
knighthoods and seats in the House of Lords.
But hopes that the Labour Party would be able to gradually reform capitalism
into socialism have been completely shattered. Today nobody thinks that Labour
has anything to do with socialism and nobody joins the Labour Party with the
aim of furthering the cause of socialism (however understood, or
misunderstood). Instead of Labour governments gradually transforming capitalism
into socialism, the opposite happened. The experience of governing capitalism
(in 1924, in 1929, in 1945, in 1964 and in the 1970s) gradually transformed
Labour into the open party of capitalism and proud friend of the City and
Business that it is today.
Labour management of capitalism
There was a certain logic and inevitability about this. Capitalism, being based
on the exploitation of wage labour for profit, can never be made to work in the
interest of the class of wage and salary workers. Even though political
pressure can sometimes extract a few, precarious concessions from capitalists,
capitalism can only function as the profit-making system that it is, in the
interest of the one class in society that lives off profits, the class of
capitalist employers and owners. So, all governments, whatever their original
intentions, have to give priority to profit-making over pro-worker reforms.
Once you've had one experience of being in government you've already begun to
learn this, but once you've been in government five or six times, as Labour
has, then this lesson has really sunk in. Pressures begin to build up to drop
the pretence of wanting to change society into socialism; in fact, even of
wanting to change existing mixed private and state capitalism into full-scale
state capitalism (everything nationalised) which was what Labour used to be
committed to on paper and which those who took it seriously imagined was the
same thing as socialism. This point of view began to be expressed in the Labour
Party as early as the 1950s but did not finally triumph until the 1990s under
Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson.
Trade union leaders and activists have been rather slow to realise this. There
was evidence from the time of the first Labour governments of 1924 and 1929
that Labour in government was not and could not be a party furthering the
interests of wage and salary workers within capitalism, which is what they
wanted it to be (see the Fifty Years Ago column in this issue for how the
ruling class viewed the Labour Party at this time). They entertained the
illusion that, if only they exerted enough pressure on Labour, from inside and
from outside, it could still become the political arm of the trade union
movement. It seems that it is only now that it has at last dawned on them that
Labour is not only not a party seeking to further the aims of socialism but
that it is not even a party pursuing the same aims as the unions of protecting
the immediate interests of wage and salary workers against employers within
capitalism.
Back to 1900?
So, what conclusions are they drawing from this? Some, such as Arthur Scargill,
have given up on Labour and are seeking to . . . form another Labour party on
the same basis as a hundred years ago, despite the evident failure of the whole
idea of a “Labour” party as a trade union party. Predictably,
Scargill is followed in this by the 57 varieties of Trotskyism who, true to
form, are trying to jump onto a moving bandwagon (even if this particular one
is moving back in time) pretending that they too want to re-create “Old
Labour”.
Others, such as the Labour MPs and trade union leaders who met at the TUC's
Congress House in London on 20 July for a conference on “After New
Labour”, still think, believe it or not, that there is some chance of
recapturing Labour for the unions. They still imagine Labour can be transformed
back into (in the words of an Australian union leader where a similar debate is
going on, for the same reasons) being “advocates of working people
dedicated to a fair society”. But there is absolutely no chance of
transforming Labour back into such a reformist party, even if it were
desirable. Which it isn't, since reformism as the attempt to reform capitalism
into becoming a “fair society” was a mistaken tactic anyway as the
whole history of the 20
th
century has shown. There is nothing fair about capitalism and never can be.
The most these trade unionists have done is to cut back on their payments to
Labour, so, apparently, provoking the biggest financial crisis in Labour's
history. Good, we're not shedding any tears about that. If we had our way, the
unions would give no money at all to the Labour Party. In fact, even today
nothing obliges a union member to pay towards supporting Labour; they can opt
out of paying the “political levy” as Socialist Party members of
unions do.
So the 20
th
century proved to be a dead-end for the working-class movement. But the
mistake made a hundred years ago was not to try to move beyond pure-and-simple
trade unionism to a workers' political party but over the nature of that party.
Political action is indeed necessary if capitalism is to be got rid of and, for
this, a political party is needed but a real socialist party not a
“Labour” party.
