‘Middle Class’ decline mirrors fall of unions in one chart (US)

[Anonymous]

ALB wrote:

jondwhite wrote:

Weren't there SPGB members who argued unions could not increase wages beyond a certain value, instead only able to stop wages from falling below a certain value?

I don't know, but in the 1920s there were some members who argued that the trade-union struggle was not part of the class struggle but merely a "commodity struggle", which elicited this response in the Socialist Standard of the time:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1920s/1920/no-195-november-1920/commodity-struggle-or-class-struggleA similar position is taken up today by some "ultra-left" groups (quite a few in fact) who dismiss the wages struggles as merely variable capital trying to realise its value.

jondwhite wrote:

Also if the ICC believed unions were trying to reduce their own membership, this notion seems a bit far-fetched.

That was my caricature of their implacable anti-union position. They see unions as agents of the capitalist state and all permanent organisations formed by workers as unions, and they have argued that workers would be better off without them and should rely instead on ephemeral temporary strike committees.I imagine that they would interpret the graph as proof of the uselessness of unions and would find some convoluted way to attribute to the unions some responsibility for what it shows.

 Are you referring to the International Communist Current ( ICC or CCI ) ? If that is the one, they have changed their stand regarding workers union, and since they have made alliances with some Anarchist groups, they have also joint forces with some 'Syndicates" groups, known as the CN-AIT  

[Subhaditya]

jondwhite wrote:

What if there is mass unionization, can the workers organized stop wages falling as a proportion of profit?

I believe so, its why I think governments crack down on unions… to increase profits of industrialists by weakening the workers ability to coordinate with each other to push their interests.From what I heard USA govt never allowed strong trade unions to come up there. Twice they cracked down on workers movements aimed at mobilizing the workers by accusing them of being Soviet spies or sympathisers. First it happened after the First World War and again in the 1960s.Margaret Thatcher's crackdown on trade unions was aimed at increasing profits for businesses.Workers organized can definitely get themselves a better deal which is why capitalists are so opposed to workers organizing themselves doing things like forming trade unions.Like for forming laws… our politicians invariably go where the money is… its not much of a contest when one side has say workers or small businesses and the other has big businesses backing it.But if these people or even small businesses could organize themselves better and coordinate with each other to push their common interests they might even end up pooling enough money to challenge the money big business is offering to the politicians. The thing is it is not happening now as its hard for so many people to coordinate with each other and do things like pool money for lobbying or even know what is going on in parliament/senate etc. But something like a big trade union or a collection of unions getting together can do a far better job of it than people individually can.Who knows mass unionization might even lead to a socialist society coming up down the road.

[ALB]

jondwhite wrote:

What if there is mass unionisation, can the workers organised stop wages falling as a proportion of profit?

It's not quite clear what you mean by "wages as a proportion of profits" since wages are not a proportion of profits. Do you mean the ratio of wages to profits? Or do you mean wages as a proportion of newly added value (wages + profits)? Whichever, it's not something that unions can lastingly influence in any significant wayEssentially, all unions can do is ensure that their members get the full value of the labour power that they sell to their employer. In times of boom (particularly in a particular industry) they can push wages a little above this level. In times of slump, on the other hand, the most they can do is to stop real wages falling as much as they otherwise would.Even if they could of course there would still be exploitation, and employers would speed up the introduction of labour-saving machinery to push the rate of exploitation (profits divided by wages, expressed as a percentage) up again.

[Author]

Posts