From time to time, within the Communist Left, but more often in radical reformist circles, there appear criticisms against our – supposed – position on intervention in “economic” struggles; that is to say the struggles for the defence of daily working conditions (wages, hours, work rhythms and workloads, against sackings, etc.). These criticisms are quite unfounded, because they ignore or, if they are acting in good faith, mistakenly interpret what we have always said on this question. In fact they claim that we deny the importance of the “guerrilla struggle” against the bosses, limiting ourselves to abstract calls for the class to make the revolution.

One could be surprised to see these repeated accusations – given the vast number of documents published throughout our history (both as the ICT and as individual organisations affiliated to it)⁽¹⁾ and given our participation, within our means, in the struggles of our class – and so we must once again clarify certain points for those mistaken comrades acting in good faith.

We believe that the working class has to struggle to defend its immediate living conditions, both in the workplace and beyond, but we add that today, in this historical phase of crisis of the cycle of accumulation, the room for manoeuvre has narrowed considerably, not only for reformism (whose paths are well and truly closed), but also for the demand for better living conditions, because, in times of crisis, the "bitter" bosses take without giving anything in return. This does not mean, however, that we must not fight. Quite the contrary! It means only that we must be clear and honest with the working class, say openly how things stand, in order to highlight even more clearly the struggle between capital and labour: there is no room for mediation (except in a minimal and sporadic way), only one can win.

We are, of course, critical of the “list of trade union demands” of the small trade unions (whether rank-and-file, “combative”, “alternative”, etc.) and of some Bordigists, which include, for example, a working week of 30 to 32 hours with no loss of pay, large wage increases, full wages for the unemployed, etc. But do we criticise them, because we are opposed to the mitigation of exploitation that these claims, if they were satisfied, would entail? Of course not. The fact is that these demands would need to involve a mass struggle, far beyond – and even against – any trade union practice, which would lead precisely to that frontal confrontation with the bourgeoisie and its state, a pre-revolutionary situation (which, however, presupposes at the same time the presence of the party, sufficiently rooted in the class or at least in its most combative sectors...). How can we demand a 30-hour work week, etc., and what is more via strikes which are announced weeks, even months in advance, in compliance with anti-strike legislation present in various forms in all – or almost all – countries, not to mention that the bourgeoisie will never grant them and that it will rather unleash its enforcers of order (legal and “extra-legal”) against a possible struggle movement, which would objectively raise the question of power?

Moreover, among the activists who defend the need to formulate direct economic demands (and criticise us), some believe that the magic mass strike will automatically and spontaneously transform economic demands into political demands, but history has shown that they are mistaken. In Poland, in the 1980s, there were very large strikes that paralysed the whole country, but they were not accompanied by a massive development of class consciousness; so the workers did not know what to do with the power they had acquired and the movement was finally defeated.⁽²⁾

In short, that's what we say, nothing more. It is always better to look at the long list of facts rather than tilting at windmills simply to take pleasure in a sterile controversy.

To help recall some of these facts, we reproduce here an article by our comrade Mauro jr, published in No. 2/2000 by Battaglia Comunista, as well as an excerpt from the 1997 theses on the unions of the PCInt, which also reflect the position of the ICT as a whole.

Trade Unions – Correcting Misunderstandings

Battaglia Comunista, No. 2, February 2000, leftcom.org

Trade unions are useless for revolutionary strategy, but demand struggles are the lungs of the class and the condition for the existence of this strategy

We have always argued that the revolution will march over the corpse of the trade unions and that they can at most constitute one field of action (in general, but today even that doesn’t exist) for revolutionaries, but that they can in no way constitute a tool of revolutionary strategy. More and more, the daily experience of the proletariat proves us right. But daily political experience also shows us how easy it is to confuse these positions with the apparent simplification that we would consider demand struggles to be useless.

Now, if this misunderstanding is justifiable (but not acceptable) among ordinary workers, perhaps in good faith, engaged in one or the other of the organisations of radical trade unionism, it is in no way justifiable in groups and organisations that claim to be guardians of Marxist, revolutionary, programmatic orthodoxy, etc. It is unjustifiable, but it exists. Even better, it has been expressed by one of the so-called members of the International Communist Party (Programma Comunista) to our North American supporters.

Without commenting on this ... accident, we will jot down some notes to help dispel this misunderstanding, insofar as it is in good faith.

The essential nature of the demand struggle

For Marxism, from its origins, the demand struggle of workers to improve wages and working conditions, which directly opposes the capitalist interests in reducing them, constitutes the elementary form, essentially irrepressible, of the class struggle. It is therefore the unavoidable condition of any “political transcendence”, that is to say, of any development of the class struggle to its highest expression, the revolutionary attack. We could note, in passing, that the class struggle presents itself in a particularly acute way today in reverse, with capital carrying out a frantic attack on wages and working conditions, and a working class unable to resist it.

Is this enough to rule out any hypothesis that the demand struggles are in vain (a hypothesis paradoxically defended by some of the micro-groups resulting from the various eruptions of the Bordigist cauldron)?

To say that demand struggles are useless would be tantamount to declaring that the conditions that allow any event to take place are, in any case, useless.

A class unable to carry out actions for demands and to oppose by struggle the most acute forms of its oppression is a class incapable (unworthy) of revolution, condemned to perpetuate its condition as an oppressed class.

But the demand struggles of the proletariat are one thing, and the organisations that claim to lead these struggles (and which, today, sabotage them in a professional way) are another.

What is a union and how does it work?

The trade union was born as an organisation of the workers to negotiate the price and the conditions of sale of the labour force, and it has always had this aspect; even today – it may seem strange, but that is how it is – it remains so. (For the followers of invariant orthodoxy, the specific function of the union had already been described by Engels towards the end of the 19th century).

The essential conclusion is that unions cannot, as a mediator in negotiations, serve the revolutionary organisation of the proletariat.

The communist movement had to go through difficult hardships to achieve the understanding of what we believe is obvious today. It had to go through the experience of 1905 and October 1917, as well as the negative verification of the Trotskyist hypotheses of the conquest of the trade unions (in the context of the famous conquest of the majority) to reach – with the internationalist communists – the conclusion which, on a purely theoretical level, could already be drawn at the end of the nineteenth century, that is to say after the writings of Engels on the unions.

It has happened, in other fields, that the working hypotheses of the Communist International, inherited perhaps from the Second International, were refuted only at the end of difficult trials – and certainly not by the Stalinists who defended them until the last breath – although they already contradicted the principles and method from which they claimed to be derived. The national question is an example that could be described as a classic case.

“Well,” the interlocutor in good faith might say, “if you feel that the union that is waging demand struggles is not ‘good’, then for you, it is the struggles themselves that are no ‘good’.” The flaw in this reasoning lies in conflating the demand struggle with the union form.

The workers’ struggle – for demands, of course – takes different organisational forms in different periods

The union is certainly the dominant form: it is the most structured and, by its nature and function, the most self-preserving. When it, as it does today, does not defend the immediate interests of the workers – for capital survives only by attacking them – it continues to defend the foundation of its existence, namely negotiation, that is, the capitalist relationship, and thus mediates the capitalist attack on wages. It is for this very reason that it has great historical continuity, fulfilling its function well in the ascending phases of the capitalist cycles, that is to say in periods of regular and quiet accumulation, with rates of profit adequate for accumulation itself.

Other forms of demand struggle

But the workers' movement has always been able to establish alternative organisational forms to the trade union when, for one reason or another, it did not exist: from struggle committees and assemblies to the sectoral or national co-ordinations of such committees.

These are the organisations that the class gives itself to defend its immediate interests, which express themselves through the demand struggle itself and are closely linked to it: once the struggle is over, these forms of organisation also disappear.

The possible ways of their demise are as varied as they are important (and it is through these forms that the revolutionary vanguard recognises itself and engages itself): whether they disappear, leaving behind a legacy of political organisation within ghe class and the revolutionary vanguards within the class (the soviets of 1905 in Russia and, to a lesser extent, the struggle committees of May 1968 in France as well as other minor experiences across Europe), or are transformed ... into permanent unions (the last great example: the struggle in Poland in August 1980, which ended with the victory of the reactionary Solidarność, and, to a lesser but no less significant extent, the inglorious transformation of the Cobas of 1987 into the small SiCobas union).

This latter solution, which consists in transforming proletarian bodies in the service of the struggle into permanent bodies in the service of negotiation, leads to the weakening of the revolutionary class perspective. The permanent body, the trade union, will always tend to follow, at an ever-increasing pace, the anti-revolutionary path of the official trade unions against which, perhaps, the struggle had begun (as in Poland in 1980).

However, it is thanks to the experience of the self-organised struggle by workers through the assemblies and the election, by them, of delegates who can be dismissed at any time, that it is possible to obtain a positive result in the development of class potential. If only because it will have reinforced the awareness among the concerned proletarians that they can represent a collective force capable, "perhaps", of achieving greater things.

The permanent trade union body, on the other hand, pushes workers to constantly seek negotiation, to align themselves with the current trade unionism; in short, everything that goes against the workers.

Is that clear now? We are for demand struggles, which are the lungs of the working class, and we are against the trade unions, because in the decisive moments they go against this struggle.

And the objective today is precisely the resumption of the demand struggle of the proletariat (eve if only to defend itself against capitalist attacks).

That is why we have also committed ourselves to study, within the new class composition produced by the crisis and the resulting restructuring, the possible forms of resumption of the struggle, in order to carry out our work and make our contribution to those most conducive to the revolutionary perspective, namely the liquidation of this now rotten system of production and distribution.

Excerpt from the 1997 theses on the union of the PCInt

Communist Work and the Trades Unions Today, VI Congress of the PCInt, leftcom.org

[...]

Thesis 7

There can therefore be no real defence of the interests of the workers, no matter how immediate, except outside of and against the union line and any type of contractual mediation, which always ends by losing rights and control. Faced with the attacks of capitalism in crisis, the concrete defence of workers' interests clashes immediately with the capital's survival. In this sense the distinction between defensive and offensive struggles is only really decided by the political content of the struggles.

When they arise from the real struggles of the class - and not from the radical reformist fantasies of ex-Stalinist political sects which are now in the process of renewal - the demands for a shorter working week and equal wages are defensive. Similarly, the demand of the unemployed and marginalised masses for a guaranteed minimum wage is a defensive struggle. Both these demands (which today seem to constitute the political programme of radical-reformism) in reality represent a vital necessity of the proletarian masses, brutally denied the necessities of life by capital. Wherever they are presented as genuine demands, they express the proletariat's will to defend itself and at the same time the necessity to demolish the capitalist mode of production. The acceptance of this necessity alone would define their potential for success, independently of whether they are regarded as defensive or offensive struggles.

Thesis 8

Given that it is not the task of the revolutionary political party to advance any demands other than the demand for proletarian political power and since the economic struggle of the workers, even if it is only defensive, remains a necessity besides being a precondition for the development of the struggle for emancipation from the rule of capital, the problem for the communist advance guard, their tasks and their activities are posed in these terms:

• Communists participate in the economic struggles of the class in their capacity as vanguard of the same class.
• They distinguish themselves by agitating for and publicising the revolutionary programme, for putting an end to and transcending wage labour.
• To the extent that they fulfil these tasks and condemn the limits of the pure demand struggle, they enter into open antagonism with the union organisations.

And it is this relationship between the tasks of the party and the activities of militants inside workers' struggles which makes it practically possible for those same economic struggles to develop in a political direction towards the struggle for power.

[...]

Notes:

(1) See e.g. What Does the Communist Left Do?

(2) On the movement in 1980s Poland, see Solidarność: Trade Unionism or Self-Organisation?