{"id":302,"date":"2019-01-16T22:09:58","date_gmt":"2019-01-16T22:09:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsm.prolerat.org\/?page_id=302"},"modified":"2019-01-16T22:09:58","modified_gmt":"2019-01-16T22:09:58","slug":"socialist-industrial-unions","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/socialist-industrial-unions\/","title":{"rendered":"Socialist Industrial Unions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Craft, or trade, unions represent a single craft or trade. In \ncontrast, industrial unions represent all workers in a specific \nindustry, or with a specific employer. Socialist Industrial Unions \n(SIUs) are industrial unions, representing entire industries, with the \nstated aim of creating a socialist society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>SIU supporters claim that it is necessary to seize the means of \nproduction directly: to occupy the places of production. SIU members and\n supporters, even within a single organization, have varying opinions on\n the feasibility and desirability of the parliamentary approach (taking \npower through democratic elections).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whether or not the parliamentary route is to be taken, SIU supporters\n hold that the SIU structure will be the administrative structure of \nsocialism. Recently some have started taking the position that it is \njust a suggestion of how society might be administered, but it still \nfigures prominently in their current literature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This structure is hierarchical, with the basic unit being the \nworkplace council where decisions for that specific workplace are \ndemocratically made. The next level might be regional, then &#8220;national&#8221;, \nand finally a council for the whole of society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Relatively recently, some SIU supporters have seen the need to add \nsome sort of &#8220;community&#8221; representation, using a similar structure and \n&#8220;joining&#8221; with the workplace side in a single council for the whole of \nsociety. There are probably several different approaches to the exact \nsetup of this structure but there does not seem to be any significant \ndisagreements, just slight differences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Although hierarchical, the structure is seen as bottom up, not top \ndown. In other words the &#8220;whole of society&#8221; council would coordinate the\n decisions of the other councils, <em>not<\/em> impose its own will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What&#8217;s wrong with the SIU approach?\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Propagates the belief that economic power is superior to political power.\nSIUs exist to capture the places of production from the capitalist \nclass. The claim is that the economic power of the capitalist class \nwould prevent the political decision of the vast majority of workers \nfrom being carried out, and that therefore there must be an organization\n to take control of the workplaces from the capitalist class.\nMost people today believe that the working class has control of \nsociety through the mechanisms of political democracy, such as voting \nfor national governments. The working class outnumbers the capitalist \nclass by 10 or 20 to one, so on the surface this seems reasonable. If \nthe working class has control of society, and it is still oppressed (it \nis), it seems reasonable to conclude that economic power is superior to \npolitical power.\nScratching the surface of this belief reveals its flaw. The working \nclass does not use its political power to make society function in the \ninterests of the working class. Instead the working class votes, \nunwittingly, to continue capitalism, and thereby maintain its own \noppression.\nIt is the political power of the state which enforces that \noppression. The state\u2014the agency of political power\u2014can, and does, \nexpropriate property, or transfer it to capitalists for their direct \ncontrol. It can, and does when necessary, use violent force to protect \nthe interests of the capitalist class. That force is used against other \ncapitalists, and against the working class. The courts, police and \nmilitary all respond to political power, not economic power. It is \nbeyond the scope of this article to show that even in places where \ncorruption of the police is widespread, political power still controls \nthem.\nWhen the vast majority of the working class is socialist, so will be \nthe police and military whose members are working class. At that time, \nthe socialist working class will use its political power to capture the \nstate. When the state, in its last action as the state, transfers legal \nownership of the means of production to the people of the world as a \nwhole, the <em>economic<\/em> power of the capitalists will have been extinguished by the <em>political<\/em> power of the working class.\nThe capitalists could do nothing, with their economic power, to \nprevent expropriation. The fear that they could keep the working class \nout of the factories etc. is completely unfounded. How could they? \nRemember that the working class outnumbers them 10 or 20 to one. Also \nremember that the military and police (all working class, and mostly \nsocialist) will be responsible to the political power of the working \nclass.\n<\/li><li>Separates &#8220;community&#8221; from &#8220;workers&#8221;.\nThe workplace based model, developed about a hundred years ago, was \ndesigned to administer production. It took over half a century, but SIU \nsupporters finally recognized that a purely workplace based \nadministration does not explicitly include anything outside of the \nworkplace. This has led some to suggest including a community side to \nthe administration.\nThis explicitly two-pronged approach creates an administrative split \nin society that needn&#8217;t, and shouldn&#8217;t exist. Of course those in the \nworkplace know how to do their job better than the average person in the\n street, and the WSM is not suggesting that people shouldn&#8217;t be allowed \nto do their jobs as they see fit. What the WSM does say, is that the \nadministrative split only exists when you take the SIU route.\nTaking the WSM approach that production is a social activity, a part \nof society as a whole, and not something to be given to workers, by \nindustry, as their own, then the problem does not exist. The SIU model \nwould generate a &#8220;workers&#8221; versus the &#8220;community&#8221; antagonism that is \nridiculous and unnecessary.\n<\/li><li>SIUs cannot serve as proper unions under capitalism.\nA major concept of unionism is &#8220;strength in numbers&#8221;. Under \ncapitalism, for a union to have enough power to effectively represent \nits members it needs to comprise all or at least a large majority of the\n workers in a business\/worksite\/industry. If it does not, it has little \nor no clout in dealing with the employer. SIUs exclude non-&#8220;socialist&#8221; \nworkers\u2014the vast majority of workers today\u2014leaving the SIU powerless to \nprotect its members against their employer. We recognize that a small \nSIU together with a big non-&#8220;socialist&#8221; union has fighting power, but it\n is not the SIU which gives the combination the power: it is the big \nnon-&#8220;socialist&#8221; union.\n<\/li><li>Blueprints, today, for administering future socialist society are imprudent and undemocratic.\nThe SIU model is usually presented as a picture. Pictures are \ntremendously powerful and the image itself has far more impact and \nretention for most people. That is not to claim people are stupid, but \nto recognize the power of images on the human psyche. The WSM believes \nthat the result of the picture is that the background to the plan is \nlost. It is the background which is important, not a possible end result\n of it.\nThe picture becomes the plan, the promise for how &#8220;socialism&#8221; would \nbe administered. Even without the picture though, the prominence given \nthe SIU administrative model pushes the importance for considering how \nsocialism should be administered into the background. If the plan is \nflawed, as the WSM claims, the flaws will not be addressed, and it will \nbecome a serious hindrance to solving the problems left over from \ncapitalism.\nThe WSM also holds that it is imprudent, and undemocratic, for \ntoday&#8217;s socialist minority to be telling people how to administer a \nsocialist society. When a majority of people understand what socialism \nmeans, the suggestions for socialist administration will solidify into \nan appropriate plan. It will be based upon the conditions existing at \nthat time, not today. Two of the major conditions relevant to this will \nbe a growing recognition that people can and do cooperate, and that \nsocialism will not have &#8220;workers&#8221; as a class separate from anyone else: \nthere will be no classes.\n<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Craft, or trade, unions represent a single craft or trade. In contrast, industrial unions represent all workers in a specific industry, or with a specific employer. Socialist Industrial Unions (SIUs) are industrial unions, representing entire industries, with the stated aim of creating a socialist society. SIU supporters claim that it is necessary to seize the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"magazine_newspaper_sidebar_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-302","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}