Revolutionaries In The Trade Unions

Tobias Rosandic, Kiskeam Co. Cork, a former industrial worker at Volkswagen and member of the Marxist Leninist Party of Germany reponds to the “Socialist Voice” article: “Unions and Industrial Strategy” by Niall Cullinane.

At a time when workers in Ireland face soaring rents, precarious jobs and record corporate profits, the question of what role trade unions should play in the struggle of the working class could hardly be more urgent.

The recent Socialist Voice article “Unions and Industrial Strategy” attempts to answer this question. Yet rather than clarifying the tasks of communists in the labour movement, it ends up normalising the very reformism that has held back the working class for decades.

It is actually difficult to know where to begin, as the article exposes a fundamentally flawed understanding of the role of communists in the unions. Let us start where the article makes a few correct points.

Yes, trade unions are not revolutionary organisations, nor were they ever meant to be. As Karl Marx wrote: “Trade unions arise as a means to overcome competition among workers and to enforce common demands.”

As such they represent the first practical step in the development of proletarian class consciousness.

Trade unions demonstrate the strength of the working class when it is united and organised. They show that the seemingly powerful capitalist class has very little to counter an organised working class when workers choose to fight. This raises a decisive question: what is actually the task of communists in the unions?

The article presents the current character of trade unions as an inevitable outcome of capitalist production relations. Reformism appears not as a political problem to be fought, but as a structural fact to be accepted. The logical consequence of this view is a deeply pessimistic conclusion: that no strategy, no tactic and no conscious political struggle could fundamentally transform the role of the unions.

This pessimism, however, seems to reflect more the current state of the communist party of ireland than the real possibilities of class struggle within unions in Ireland.

The practical experience of countless communist and union activists internationally tells a very different story. Trade unions, as the most important mass organisations of the working class that confront the ruling class on an almost daily basis, are a terrain of struggle between reformism and militant class politics.

It is the primary task of communists to consciously fight this struggle: whether unions remain little more than legal service offices for grievances or develop into real fighting organisations of the working class.

Trade unions largely reflect the current level of proletarian class consciousness. As communists fight to raise this consciousness through their revolutionary rank-and-file work, this struggle must also be carried into the unions. The aim is to radicalise the union base, break it from the grip of bureaucratic leaderships, and push for independent class struggle.

Privileged bureaucrats, social democrats and reformists have developed their own material interests. Lenin described this stratum as the social support of the bourgeoisie within the workers’ movement.

Yet Socialist Voice presents these interests and this social support for the bourgeoisie as a fixed and unchangeable feature of trade unions supposedly arising directly from the economic conditions of the working class itself. Such a conclusion represents nothing less than a capitulation from the very tasks communists face in the current phase of capitalist development.

This directly contradicts the one correct point made in the entire article: that communists must work within the trade unions, and that this is a major task. But if this work is not aimed at developing class consciousness, transforming unions into fighting organisations of class struggle, and challenging the bureaucrats and reformists who dominate them — then what exactly is its purpose?

Lenin made it very clear in “What Is To Be Done?” that the spontaneous struggle of workers produces only trade-union consciousness. The task of communists is therefore not to accept the limits of trade unionism, but to fight within workers’ organisations to raise the struggle to a revolutionary level.

Class position creates material interests. Ideology interprets and justifies these interests. Reformism indeed arises from the social position of certain strata within the working class and from the ideology that legitimises that position.

Reformism therefore is not an inevitable structural condition, but a historical and political problem. Revolutionary politics seeks to develop consciousness that goes beyond immediate material interests.

What, then, could be the ideological roots of such a distorted understanding of the role of communists in the unions?

In the 1950s the Soviet Union introduced a significant shift in its overall strategy that had a profound impact on communist parties worldwide, including the CPI.

The party congress under Nikita Khrushchev introduced several new strategic concepts: the peaceful transition to socialism, peaceful coexistence with imperialism, and an increasing parliamentary orientation.

When revolution is no longer seen as necessary, when capitalism and socialism are no longer understood as antagonistic systems, and when the development of militant class struggle is no longer considered the central task of communists, this inevitably transforms how the role of trade unions is perceived.

Within this political framework trade unions were no longer understood as schools of revolutionary class struggle, but as institutional partners in reform politics. In Germany, for example, this perspective led to the development of theories such as “anti-monopoly democracy”, which effectively left capitalist property relations untouched and exploitation intact.

Class struggle and militant strikes in Western Europe increasingly conflicted with the geopolitical interests of détente. Communist parties were therefore expected to contribute to stability rather than escalation. As a result, the revolutionary character of the class struggle was pushed into the background.

The strategy adopted by many communist parties after 1956 increasingly focused on moderating class conflict, pursuing reformist policies and ensuring stability within the capitalist system.

In order for this practice not to appear openly reformist, it required a theory. That theory usually takes the following form: trade unions are structurally limited, revolutionary politics must occur outside them, and communists must work patiently within these limits.

It is precisely this argument that is now repeated in the Socialist Voice article.

Communists, however, view trade unions as schools of class struggle. Our task is to raise class consciousness to the level of socialist and revolutionary consciousness. The consistent political work of communists within trade unions is therefore essential and must take precedence over many other tasks. Small revolutionary organisations in particular must concentrate their limited resources on this decisive arena of struggle.

Trade unions will not become instruments of class struggle on their own. It is the task of communists to fight within them, challenge reformism and help the working class turn its own organisations into weapons against the capitalist system.