kromando33
11th January 2008, 11:49
I think I'd like to reflect now on the nature of the so called 'Vertical Trade Union', and to generate discussion on the need to oppose the 'collaborationist' trade unions and establish unions as a direct representative function of the proletariat, not as utilitarian functions and indeed arms of the bourgeois state.
Indeed, a great threat to the proletarian movement is the domination of ultra-bureaucratic trade unions with strong links to the established bourgeois state. This 'collaboration' between the union apparachiks and the bourgeois governments ensures general strikes, wage disputes and the like are all handled within this centralized system.
The idea that the proletariat can collaborate and indeed 'merge' our interests with that of the bourgeois is thoroughly an anti-Marxist position refuted by material conditions. It rejects the notion of class struggle and the mutually exclusive interests of both the bourgeois and proletariat. In reality such a 'deal' is in effect just 'class struggle 101' for the bourgeois, the same way the 'New Deal' system of high wages and welfare capitalism in the 9th century was an attempt to retain the bourgeois dictatorship in more subtle and sinister ways following the Great October Socialist Revolution.
So although openly fascist trade unions, in the national syndicalist model, notably the Organización Sindical Española in Francoist Spainand Ministry of Corporations in Fascist Italy, no longer exist, the tendency toward 'class collaboration' in modern trade unions, and especially a close relationship with 'social democratic' or liberal bourgeois parties and governments has endured.
What the socialist movement needs in a trade union is an organization attached directly to the vanguard party as a tool of class struggle against the bourgeois state, to agitate with strikes, and not to fall into the fascist trap of associating our own interests with that of the bourgeois.
Indeed, a great threat to the proletarian movement is the domination of ultra-bureaucratic trade unions with strong links to the established bourgeois state. This 'collaboration' between the union apparachiks and the bourgeois governments ensures general strikes, wage disputes and the like are all handled within this centralized system.
The idea that the proletariat can collaborate and indeed 'merge' our interests with that of the bourgeois is thoroughly an anti-Marxist position refuted by material conditions. It rejects the notion of class struggle and the mutually exclusive interests of both the bourgeois and proletariat. In reality such a 'deal' is in effect just 'class struggle 101' for the bourgeois, the same way the 'New Deal' system of high wages and welfare capitalism in the 9th century was an attempt to retain the bourgeois dictatorship in more subtle and sinister ways following the Great October Socialist Revolution.
So although openly fascist trade unions, in the national syndicalist model, notably the Organización Sindical Española in Francoist Spainand Ministry of Corporations in Fascist Italy, no longer exist, the tendency toward 'class collaboration' in modern trade unions, and especially a close relationship with 'social democratic' or liberal bourgeois parties and governments has endured.
What the socialist movement needs in a trade union is an organization attached directly to the vanguard party as a tool of class struggle against the bourgeois state, to agitate with strikes, and not to fall into the fascist trap of associating our own interests with that of the bourgeois.