- Balbir Saini, Ram Kumar Savita & Rameshwar Dutta/ 18.11.2018
Underscoring the urgency in building of a World Party of the Working Class, on the basis of the program of Permanent Revolution, the program of the WSP says: “The urgency of building such a party of the working class is underscored by the fact that under the impact of the global capitalist crisis, the working class is being propelled into struggle, yet everywhere it immediately comes up against the fact that the organizations that once claimed to speak in its name—the remnants of the Stalinist parties, Social Democracy and the Trade Unions—uphold the capitalist profit system and seek to split the working class along national lines.”
Calling for opposition to the trade union bureaucracies everywhere, WSP calls upon the workers to shun the illusions in Trade Unions, that have become Trozan Horses for bureaucracy. The program, traces back the origin, development and decay of the Trade Unions: “At the advent of old national capitalism based upon ‘free competition’, the Trade Unions have emerged as combination of workers, out of the system of bargain for better working conditions, primarily for the better sale price of their labour, at the hands of capitalists. However, after emergence of Imperialism, the trade union movement, became a ready bastion for reformism and opportunism and started to degenerate first in Imperialist countries and then in the entire world. In the age of globally mobile capital and dismantling of the national economic structures under its hand, the trade unions have lost all their steam. They remain plagued by trade sectarianism, under domination of a labour aristocracy everywhere.”
It explains further, “Not only the most advanced German Trade Unions had blocked all discussions on the tactics of ‘general strike’ and resolved against the Great October Socialist Revolution, but as the whole experience of the last century shows, the trade unions have played a major role in breaking strikes, lowering wages, eliminating benefits, cutting jobs and shutting down factories. Indifferent to the hardships of their ordinary members, and protected by the “dues check-off” and labor laws from rank-and-file protests, the unions are tied by a thousand threads to the corporations and the capitalist state. The Trade Unions at the most represent the workers as an oppressed mass and not as a revolutionary class. With the decline of the age of nationalism and reformism, the role of trade unions has come to a dead end.”
Having said this, the WSP program sets out the strategic tasks before the Marxists, in relation to the Trade Unions, in the age of their complete decay: “We call for a break with these redundant, sectarian and corrupt bureaucratic organizations, which do not represent in any manner whatsoever, the interests of the modern proletariat. Instead, we must focus upon formation of new independent organizations - such as factory and workplace committees - that truly represent the interests of the rank-and-file workers and have potential to grow directly into workers soviets.”
This is the strategic line of WSP based upon characterisation and role of the Trade Unions in our epoch. WSP has underscored the complete decline of the Trade Unions losing all progressive role in our epoch. It thus calls upon the workers to break with these props of imperialism and establish militant mass organisations of the working class.
This strategic line, must be translated then into tactical path. This means the concrete road to implementation of this line, i.e. a leap in mobilisation of the working class in Struggle Committees and Soviets from decaying Trade Unions.
This goal can only be achieved only through most energetic work inside and outside of all existing workers organisations including the Trade Unions.
“Break With Trade Unions” does not imply a “boycott” of work inside Trade Unions, rather a vigorous campaign inside and outside them to convince the working class about their uselessness, against illusions in them and for mobilisation of the workers in militant Struggle Committees.
The Trade Unions had been bound up with the national state of the bourgeoisie and the nation-based economic regime under it. With decline of the bourgeois national state, the Trade Unions have also suffered the simultaneous decline. Their role as pressure groups upon the national state that they retained in the past, has waned away completely. These Trade Unions get more and more assimilated into the structures of the bourgeois national state, that stands guard to the interests of national bourgeoisie in all countries, against global integration of economic life and the challenges emanating from this globalisation to the sectarian interests of the national bourgeoisie. The prime task of Trade Unions today, is to bind the workers behind the national regimes of bourgeoisie and subordinate the working class to its establishment.
The fight for mobilisation of the workers to mount an offensive against world capitalism, has thus to pass through the phase where a most determined fight has to be launched to liberate the working class from the suffocating stranglehold of the trade union bureaucracies.
Conquest in this fight, demands a most arduous work inside all workers’ organisations including the trade unions for realisation of the program of WSP. We must show to the workers not only through our strategic analysis but more concrete examples in day to day struggles how these trade unions and their bureaucracies are dedicated to the service of the national bourgeois and how are they bound up with its political establishment. We must point out at each step how the TU bureaucracies are bound up not only with managements of individual industrial undertakings, but are inseparably bound up with the political state of bourgeoisie. We must show that the TUs are left of no use except as an impediment to all struggles of the working class.
Despite their thorough and complete decline and despite their turning against the interests of the rank and file workers, it would be nonsense to call for ‘boycott’ of the trade unions or any other workers organisations, however reactionary they may be, leave aside their reformism.
‘Boycott’ of TUs that still remain mass organisations of the working class and in whom the majority of the workers still retain illusions, would be a simple idiocy, to say the least. Marxists must go inside the TUs as in all other mass organisations of the working and toiling people.
The only question remains: What should be the purpose of our participation in the TUs as a Marxist Party? What program should we fight for inside them? To where our activities inside the TUs must be directed? What should we tell the workers inside them?
This is the core question, where real differences emerge inside the left and which all pseudo-lefts hide from their supporters. Here, the entire left, that itself is bound up to the national bourgeois and its state, stands against the WSP. Their whole work inside the TUs is directed at reinforcing the illusions of the workers in TUs. They themselves organise into bureaucracies to sit at the head of the TUs. These false lefts themselves are nothing more than bureaucratic crust upon this or that TU. Their material interests are bound up with TU bureaucracies and through them to the regime of national bourgeoisie.
WSP, on the contrary, appeals to its supporters, not only to shun their own illusions in the TUs, but to intervene in all workers movements and organisations to educate the workers in that spirit. This struggle against TU bureaucracies, simultaneously is the struggle to organise the rank and file struggle committees everywhere. These Struggle Committees must break the stranglehold of TU bosses upon the rank and file workers by launching the militant struggles as part of the overall offensive against capitalism, over their heads.
This fight for rejection of the bosses and the TUs under them and for mobilisation of the working class for establishment of struggle committees, cannot succeed without concerted, determined and persistent efforts inside and outside of all mass organisations of the working class.
If the reactionary bureaucracies are to be defeated, they must be defeated inside each factory, each colony and above all inside their own fortresses- the trade unions.
Though Trade Unions do not and never represented the majority of the working class, even in advanced countries, leave aside the backward countries. They always represented the minority of the organised working class. They always fought for limited, sectarian, trade union interests of this or that sections of the workers. They never represented the working class as class on the whole, but only its divided and often conflicting interests. Today, these Trade Unions are completely dead and cannot achieve any considerable conquests for workers.
Yet a mass of workers remains adhered to these TUs. Here emerges a conflict between the objective interests and the subjective mood of the working class, that lags far behind the objective conditions. On the one hand the TUs have suffered complete decay and have transformed over time to their opposite- from grassroot fighting organisations of the working class to the prison cells to confine the workers to prevent them from fighting capitalism- while on the other, the consciousness of the mass of workers remains still stuck to these TUs.
This conflict, can be resolved on a progressive basis, only through untiring work among the mass of the workers- both inside and outside the TUs and other workers organisations and movements.
Though the trade unions are all poisoned through officialdom of the elite layers of labour aristocracy everywhere, yet the interests of their grassroot memberships- the rank and file workers- cannot be reconciled with their leaderships at any cost whatsoever. While upholding and fighting for the interests of the mass of workers, we must highlight the apparent conflict between the two. We must expose the role and character of TU bosses and bureaucracies under them to ordinary workers.
Our enemies, the very people who are sitting in or supporting the TU bureaucracies for the apparent reasons, are spreading rumours that WSP is advocating boycott of TUs and political work inside them. They do not and cannot dare to face the real question that WSP is raising continuously - “What should Marxists do inside the Trade Unions”? Instead they spread lies against the WSP that it is appealing for boycott of the Trade Unions.
This is blatant lie!
Far from appealing for ‘boycott’ of TUs, we are exhorting our cadres to undertake most serious and vigorous political work inside the TUs to educate the workers in the spirit of WSP. It is this program, this orientation and this work, of which our enemies are hostile to and afraid of. They are not afraid of our assumed ‘boycott’ of TUs. This is what they would relish most. They are not afraid of our supposed ‘boycott’ but by our orientation to participation in the TUs, but in revolutionary spirit of Marxism.
The spirit in which the WSP proposes to educate the workers, is however, not the trade union spirit, not at all the spirit of Robert Knight but of Karl Liebknecht- as Lenin put it in his seminal work ‘What is to be Done’.
It must be underscored that the role and character of the Trade Unions, is not a fixed notion of Marxism. Marxists look at the world not as a static picture but as a running film.
The decline in role and character of TUs was so apparent in Lenin’s era. They continued to decline further and Trotsky repeatedly noted it till his demise. Around eight decades after Trotsky, the last vestiges of any progressiveness of the TUs have evaporated. They are left as hollow shells of bureaucracy. Our program and strategic orientation must base itself upon this decline. However, our tactics must adapt themselves to the stark reality that the subjective consciousness and understanding of the working class, not only of backward sections but of the advanced ones too, lags far behind the objective realities and conditions of our times. Large sections of the working class still entertain enormous illusions in these TUs.
Our task, thus, is not only to curse the TUs but to educate the mass of workers of their role and character. This education, however, can only be imparted through real life struggles- the everyday struggles of the class- the only classrooms for the mass of working people.
Underscoring the urgency in building of a World Party of the Working Class, on the basis of the program of Permanent Revolution, the program of the WSP says: “The urgency of building such a party of the working class is underscored by the fact that under the impact of the global capitalist crisis, the working class is being propelled into struggle, yet everywhere it immediately comes up against the fact that the organizations that once claimed to speak in its name—the remnants of the Stalinist parties, Social Democracy and the Trade Unions—uphold the capitalist profit system and seek to split the working class along national lines.”
Calling for opposition to the trade union bureaucracies everywhere, WSP calls upon the workers to shun the illusions in Trade Unions, that have become Trozan Horses for bureaucracy. The program, traces back the origin, development and decay of the Trade Unions: “At the advent of old national capitalism based upon ‘free competition’, the Trade Unions have emerged as combination of workers, out of the system of bargain for better working conditions, primarily for the better sale price of their labour, at the hands of capitalists. However, after emergence of Imperialism, the trade union movement, became a ready bastion for reformism and opportunism and started to degenerate first in Imperialist countries and then in the entire world. In the age of globally mobile capital and dismantling of the national economic structures under its hand, the trade unions have lost all their steam. They remain plagued by trade sectarianism, under domination of a labour aristocracy everywhere.”
It explains further, “Not only the most advanced German Trade Unions had blocked all discussions on the tactics of ‘general strike’ and resolved against the Great October Socialist Revolution, but as the whole experience of the last century shows, the trade unions have played a major role in breaking strikes, lowering wages, eliminating benefits, cutting jobs and shutting down factories. Indifferent to the hardships of their ordinary members, and protected by the “dues check-off” and labor laws from rank-and-file protests, the unions are tied by a thousand threads to the corporations and the capitalist state. The Trade Unions at the most represent the workers as an oppressed mass and not as a revolutionary class. With the decline of the age of nationalism and reformism, the role of trade unions has come to a dead end.”
Having said this, the WSP program sets out the strategic tasks before the Marxists, in relation to the Trade Unions, in the age of their complete decay: “We call for a break with these redundant, sectarian and corrupt bureaucratic organizations, which do not represent in any manner whatsoever, the interests of the modern proletariat. Instead, we must focus upon formation of new independent organizations - such as factory and workplace committees - that truly represent the interests of the rank-and-file workers and have potential to grow directly into workers soviets.”
This is the strategic line of WSP based upon characterisation and role of the Trade Unions in our epoch. WSP has underscored the complete decline of the Trade Unions losing all progressive role in our epoch. It thus calls upon the workers to break with these props of imperialism and establish militant mass organisations of the working class.
This strategic line, must be translated then into tactical path. This means the concrete road to implementation of this line, i.e. a leap in mobilisation of the working class in Struggle Committees and Soviets from decaying Trade Unions.
This goal can only be achieved only through most energetic work inside and outside of all existing workers organisations including the Trade Unions.
“Break With Trade Unions” does not imply a “boycott” of work inside Trade Unions, rather a vigorous campaign inside and outside them to convince the working class about their uselessness, against illusions in them and for mobilisation of the workers in militant Struggle Committees.
The Trade Unions had been bound up with the national state of the bourgeoisie and the nation-based economic regime under it. With decline of the bourgeois national state, the Trade Unions have also suffered the simultaneous decline. Their role as pressure groups upon the national state that they retained in the past, has waned away completely. These Trade Unions get more and more assimilated into the structures of the bourgeois national state, that stands guard to the interests of national bourgeoisie in all countries, against global integration of economic life and the challenges emanating from this globalisation to the sectarian interests of the national bourgeoisie. The prime task of Trade Unions today, is to bind the workers behind the national regimes of bourgeoisie and subordinate the working class to its establishment.
The fight for mobilisation of the workers to mount an offensive against world capitalism, has thus to pass through the phase where a most determined fight has to be launched to liberate the working class from the suffocating stranglehold of the trade union bureaucracies.
Conquest in this fight, demands a most arduous work inside all workers’ organisations including the trade unions for realisation of the program of WSP. We must show to the workers not only through our strategic analysis but more concrete examples in day to day struggles how these trade unions and their bureaucracies are dedicated to the service of the national bourgeois and how are they bound up with its political establishment. We must point out at each step how the TU bureaucracies are bound up not only with managements of individual industrial undertakings, but are inseparably bound up with the political state of bourgeoisie. We must show that the TUs are left of no use except as an impediment to all struggles of the working class.
Despite their thorough and complete decline and despite their turning against the interests of the rank and file workers, it would be nonsense to call for ‘boycott’ of the trade unions or any other workers organisations, however reactionary they may be, leave aside their reformism.
‘Boycott’ of TUs that still remain mass organisations of the working class and in whom the majority of the workers still retain illusions, would be a simple idiocy, to say the least. Marxists must go inside the TUs as in all other mass organisations of the working and toiling people.
The only question remains: What should be the purpose of our participation in the TUs as a Marxist Party? What program should we fight for inside them? To where our activities inside the TUs must be directed? What should we tell the workers inside them?
This is the core question, where real differences emerge inside the left and which all pseudo-lefts hide from their supporters. Here, the entire left, that itself is bound up to the national bourgeois and its state, stands against the WSP. Their whole work inside the TUs is directed at reinforcing the illusions of the workers in TUs. They themselves organise into bureaucracies to sit at the head of the TUs. These false lefts themselves are nothing more than bureaucratic crust upon this or that TU. Their material interests are bound up with TU bureaucracies and through them to the regime of national bourgeoisie.
WSP, on the contrary, appeals to its supporters, not only to shun their own illusions in the TUs, but to intervene in all workers movements and organisations to educate the workers in that spirit. This struggle against TU bureaucracies, simultaneously is the struggle to organise the rank and file struggle committees everywhere. These Struggle Committees must break the stranglehold of TU bosses upon the rank and file workers by launching the militant struggles as part of the overall offensive against capitalism, over their heads.
This fight for rejection of the bosses and the TUs under them and for mobilisation of the working class for establishment of struggle committees, cannot succeed without concerted, determined and persistent efforts inside and outside of all mass organisations of the working class.
If the reactionary bureaucracies are to be defeated, they must be defeated inside each factory, each colony and above all inside their own fortresses- the trade unions.
Though Trade Unions do not and never represented the majority of the working class, even in advanced countries, leave aside the backward countries. They always represented the minority of the organised working class. They always fought for limited, sectarian, trade union interests of this or that sections of the workers. They never represented the working class as class on the whole, but only its divided and often conflicting interests. Today, these Trade Unions are completely dead and cannot achieve any considerable conquests for workers.
Yet a mass of workers remains adhered to these TUs. Here emerges a conflict between the objective interests and the subjective mood of the working class, that lags far behind the objective conditions. On the one hand the TUs have suffered complete decay and have transformed over time to their opposite- from grassroot fighting organisations of the working class to the prison cells to confine the workers to prevent them from fighting capitalism- while on the other, the consciousness of the mass of workers remains still stuck to these TUs.
This conflict, can be resolved on a progressive basis, only through untiring work among the mass of the workers- both inside and outside the TUs and other workers organisations and movements.
Though the trade unions are all poisoned through officialdom of the elite layers of labour aristocracy everywhere, yet the interests of their grassroot memberships- the rank and file workers- cannot be reconciled with their leaderships at any cost whatsoever. While upholding and fighting for the interests of the mass of workers, we must highlight the apparent conflict between the two. We must expose the role and character of TU bosses and bureaucracies under them to ordinary workers.
Our enemies, the very people who are sitting in or supporting the TU bureaucracies for the apparent reasons, are spreading rumours that WSP is advocating boycott of TUs and political work inside them. They do not and cannot dare to face the real question that WSP is raising continuously - “What should Marxists do inside the Trade Unions”? Instead they spread lies against the WSP that it is appealing for boycott of the Trade Unions.
This is blatant lie!
Far from appealing for ‘boycott’ of TUs, we are exhorting our cadres to undertake most serious and vigorous political work inside the TUs to educate the workers in the spirit of WSP. It is this program, this orientation and this work, of which our enemies are hostile to and afraid of. They are not afraid of our assumed ‘boycott’ of TUs. This is what they would relish most. They are not afraid of our supposed ‘boycott’ but by our orientation to participation in the TUs, but in revolutionary spirit of Marxism.
The spirit in which the WSP proposes to educate the workers, is however, not the trade union spirit, not at all the spirit of Robert Knight but of Karl Liebknecht- as Lenin put it in his seminal work ‘What is to be Done’.
It must be underscored that the role and character of the Trade Unions, is not a fixed notion of Marxism. Marxists look at the world not as a static picture but as a running film.
The decline in role and character of TUs was so apparent in Lenin’s era. They continued to decline further and Trotsky repeatedly noted it till his demise. Around eight decades after Trotsky, the last vestiges of any progressiveness of the TUs have evaporated. They are left as hollow shells of bureaucracy. Our program and strategic orientation must base itself upon this decline. However, our tactics must adapt themselves to the stark reality that the subjective consciousness and understanding of the working class, not only of backward sections but of the advanced ones too, lags far behind the objective realities and conditions of our times. Large sections of the working class still entertain enormous illusions in these TUs.
Our task, thus, is not only to curse the TUs but to educate the mass of workers of their role and character. This education, however, can only be imparted through real life struggles- the everyday struggles of the class- the only classrooms for the mass of working people.
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