Unions: vehicles for socialism or inherently reformist?

In the ensuing intra-Alliance debate, the question of the role of trade unions in the struggle for liberation and socialism often comes up. Launching the offensive are those who argue that “unions are by their very nature reformist”. Cited in support of this position is the primary role of unions to negotiate wages and better working conditions for workers.

According to the protagonists of this “limitations thesis” on the role of unions, the labour movement struggles for an improvement in the value of its labour power. It does not fight for the abolition of the treatment of labour power as a commodity. For this reason, unions are seen as working within capitalism for reforms. Extracts from V.I Lenin’s What is to be done have been thrown around to support this position.

Although many in Cosatu have been able to see that those in the ANC who disagreed with a fighting Cosatu, have advanced the “limitations thesis”, the counter-argument has not been able to locate its response within a socialist theory on unions. The article, which we carry in this column, begins to show that within the socialist movement no single view exists on the role of unions in the struggle for socialism.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were optimistic in their early writings on the role of unions in the struggle for socialism. They argued that the way in which economies industrialised gave rise to more workplaces with more workers working side by side in bigger towns and cities. As employers squeezed workers harder, this would encourage their collective organisation in to trade unions. In the process, workers would transform themselves from a class ‘in itself’ to a class ‘for itself’. The next step was the automatic overthrow of the capitalist system.

However, as capitalism developed, Marx and Engels were forced to give reasons when, what they had predicted, did not happen. They said that:

early trade unions had not represented the whole working class but an ‘aristrocratic minority’ of privileged workers. But they continued to believe that as trade unions started to organise lower skilled workers, this problem would correct itself corrupt leaders had misled the unions because members were too passive the British working class had become less poor because of the status of Britain as a strong imperial power.

They had been incorporated into the system and now instead of battling to overthrow capitalism, had focused on improving their own economic positions within the capitalist system.

Even so, Marx still continued to say that trade unions were created by capitalism and would eventually lead to capitalism's downfall.

Pessimism on the role of unions creeps in

Writers after Marx have continued to come up with reasons why capitalism has not been overthrown. V.I Lenin and Italian communist, Antonio Gramsci both felt that trade unions were a “reflection of capitalist society”. And so the chances of them being integrated into the system were very high. For Lenin, a revolutionary vanguard was needed to put revolutionary theory into the thoughts of workers and so prevent trade unions from being integrated into the system. 'Conscious' workers would then lead the transformation of the system.

Gramsci developed Lenin's idea of hegemony further. Gramsci believed that the reason why capitalism survived in the bourgeois democracies in the West was because the bourgeoisie dominated through 'cultural hegemony'.

This was the process whereby the bourgeoisie managed to persuade the masses through consent and not force, that the capitalist system was the best system for them morally, culturally and socially.

“As a union’s growth curve begins to level off, subtle psychological changes tend to take place. The turbulence and enthusiasm of youth, the missionary zeal of a new movement, slow down to a more moderate pace. Increasingly, decisions are made centrally, as a political machine becomes entrenched, as the channels of union communication are more tightly controlled from the top and as reliance on staff specialists expands.

Along with these changes, the national leadership experiences some modification. As the organisation enlarges, the problems of management multiply and the emphasis shifts from organisation to administration, negotiation and contract enforcement. The leaders of the formative years are succeeded by a second and a third generation leadership, who did not experience the early years of struggles and bitterness.

Security for the top hierarchy and the good life on a sizeable salary. ….may be part of a group of corrupting influences. The democratic checks may have weakened with increasing size, centralisation, and power in the hands of full-time functionaries… Societal acceptance and partial absorption tend to accompany success and additional bargaining experience, the amount of joint machinery increases, the union acquires respectability, and its interests broaden. The success that the union has in satisfying workers’ non-wage desires tends to diversify and diffuse its goals.

To summarise, the processes of internal change develop long-run trends toward internal stability, centralisation, and machine control; the processes of external integration encourage a long-range tendency toward accommodation, orderly and peaceful arrangements, and breadth and moderation.

(RA Lester, As Unions Mature 1958 pp 160-7.)

For him, capitalist economic crises would not automatically lead to the overthrow of capitalism. They just gave rise to events that could lead to its overthrow. Achieving hegemony of the values in civil society was needed before there could be any attempt at seizing state power. It meant that the working class had to persuade the masses that the working class view of society was what everyone wanted. He even went so far as to say that "control of state power without hegemony in civil society was an insecure basis for a socialist programme". (D McLellan in Marxism after Marx)

The enemy from within

Michels, writing about the same time as Lenin, concentrated on the internal functioning of political parties. He believed that like other organisations, the tendency for trade unions to become oligarchic (control of the union became centred around the leadership) was great. 

In strike situations, organisers with experience were needed, as unions grew, more specialised experience and leadership were required. Needs started to become more important than goals and the unions then moved from becoming representative of members’ views to mirroring the views of the leadership. Leaders started to impose their ideas from the top. Because members lacked information and experience, they allowed leaders to take the decisions.

Other writers, writing a bit later, believed that government and employers deliberately undermined trade unions and tried to incorporate them into the system. “Union leaders having acquired authority over their members, are used to assist capitalism in controlling the workers.” (Hyman p 18 Marxism and the Sociology of Trade Unions). Conflict between unions and management became institutionalised and controlled and took the puff out of trade unions. The quote in the box from RA Lester, expands on this point.

Limits and possibilities of unions

Despite these more pessimistic theories, other writers have tended to look more at the limits and possibilities of trade unions to change the system and how these are affected by different historical contexts.

This explains why sometimes industrial action, regardless of whether the action achieves its demands or not, can raise workers’ consciousness so that it becomes a “class for itself” and why at other times it fails to move itself beyond a "class in itself".

Such an analysis helps to explain why during the 1980s and early 1990s in South Africa , when workers went on strike for political and economic freedom, their class consciousness was heightened and socialism was on their lips.

And it also explains why now that workers have attained political freedom, common complaints are that union structures are collapsing, that collective action has been replaced by individuals seeking personal enrichment and that the community – trade union link is no more. While there are still strikes, most are directly linked to putting more money into people’s pockets – few of them have the potential to move workers into a "class for itself" mode.

By acknowledging the influence of different historical contexts, this particular position can help us understand why South African trade unions now are different from trade unions 15 years ago. Such an understanding can only help us to plan our future direction.

 Jenny Grice is Numsa’s publications officer.