Radical perspectives on the crisis

Well the unions' function as bulk-purchasers of insurance, legal services etc. can and do benefit individual members - they don't always, but plenty of people take advantage of the legal support whereas they'd otherwise be reliant on a no-win no-fee solicitor. Same as I might criticise workers co-ops or consumers co-ops as revolutionary strategies, but that doesn't mean I'd refuse a job in one or refuse to buy food from one. Nor getting a loan from a credit union.

I don't think there's any hypocrisy in saying that the unions can help (sometimes) with individual cases while being structurally part of the management of capitalism, central to the implementation of attacks on wages, pensions and working conditions and a barrier to meaningful collective action against such attacks (or for improvements).

I have criticised the ICC's use of the categorisation of the Unions as 'part of the state' previously as an unhelpful description which confuses most people (includinging many from anarchist and marxist backgrounds) who commonly use a narrower definition of 'the state'.

But I understand the reasoning behind this which recognises the historical direction which the Unions have in general travelled, from genuine, if flawed, workers organisations to an important and integrated part of the management system of modern capitalism.

There is plenty of evidence to demonstrate that actually existing unions in the modern world do actively operate against the class interests of workers and are not simply a passive reflection of the limited level of class consciousness amongst the workers they 'represent'.

Unlike the ICC however, I do not consider that in every case this means nothing is gained within the union framework, but rather that in times of crisis ( a recurring phenomina rather than some permanent state of ecomomic decadence) the heightened stakes for both workers and capitalists mean that struggles do indeed need to break from the union framework and become more political even to be successful in purely defensive terms.. This doesn't of course mean that struggles will necessarily start outside the union framework, though in some circumstances they may do. For this reason I am more sympathetic to Joseph's view here that ordinary membership of a union is not of itself a barrier to criticism of union organisation and action and that a pragmatic approach is needed depending on the circumstances of time and place (remembering that there are some very different circumstances indeed around the world). I have to say however that in the British context at least, even a lay stewards position is so problematical from a pro-revolutionary perspective as to be avoided in most circumstances I can think of.

The post from AJJ shows that the WSM can take a supportive but critical view of workers struggles but this, like most of their material is I suspect, merely reflective, rather than part of an active collective intervention, and flows from their denial of the potential to develop a pre-revolutionary situation through practical escalation of the everyday class struggle. In this respect the ICC position for all it's faults is still within the realm of marxist materialism whereas that of the WSM floats around between a mechanical materialism and outright idealism. If the ICC is at fault it seems to lie in their application of broad historical lessons in an overly ideological way to the practicalities of everyday life but they have learned some important historical lessons which still seem to ellude the WSM.

That's not as clear as I would like it to be but hopefully you get my drift.

I suppose that will now open me up to attack from all sides but it will at least divert you all perhaps from continuing with the debate about 'insults' .

"Central" to the implementation of attacks on wages, pensions and working conditions? You seem to be assuming here, Catch, that, in a depression, workers can somehow prevent a worsening of wages and working conditions. But how? The increase in unemployment tips the balance of forces further in favour of the employers so that - I'm even prepared to say - take-home pay will inevitably fall and that not even the most militant action can stop this, in fact could lead to the employer closing down the business with an even greater loss of income to the workers concerned. This being so, the problem workers face is how to react - to try to negotiate the fall (whether through the existing unions or outside them) so as to limit the damage or to let employers have a free hand to do it? It's not a very nice choice, but that's capitalism. I sometimes think that some people here are blaming the unions when they should be blaming capitalism.

Capricorn you ask

In our leaflets, publications and physical interventions on the picket lines, demos, meetings etc we clearly defend the demands defended by the struggling workers, and seek to show that the only way of really gaining these demands is to spread struggles or if this is not possible to seek to discuss with others workers. We seek to argue that all workers are under attack and that they need to struggle together as a class in order to defend their living and working conditions.

The point about the national interest is not beneath contempt because the unions do defend the national interests, as has been amply shown, especially when it is a case of defending the national imperialism. This is one of the reasons we say they have been integrated into the state. Thus, the integration of the vast majority of unions into the war effort in WW1 and above all in WW2 demonstrated that they nolonger had any working class content but had become part of the capitalist state.

It was also the role that the vast majority of the Social Democratic parties in the First World War, national defence, that was showed that the majority of these parties had been integrated into the state. It was the same with the Trotskyists defense of the slaugther of WW2.

Outside of situations of war the unions have defend the national interest.

The point that Baboon is making and it is a valid one is that through defending the unions you are defending bastions of the national interest. Clearly this is not your intent, but you have not shown that these institutions have done anything but defend the national interest, even though they dress this up as defending workers interests. The arguments of the unions are about the best way to run the firm, or the national economy.

For the ICC saying the unions are part of the state is not some abstraction but has concrete political implications for the class. This does not mean that members of the unions or even the union reps are conscious of the unions role in defending the national interest, but the unions have played an active role in the running of the national economy. The discussions between the unions and the boss, the state etc, the close collaboration between them all for example the social partnership in Germany. One may wish the unions were not like this, but the practice of the unions over the past 90 years has shown that they are an integral part of the defense of the national interest.

I don't doubt that this ("the only way of really gaining these demands") is what you say in your leaflets, but I question that this is what you really believe or even support (in the case of Wapping where the workers were on strike to get their jobs back and their unions recognised again).

The opening paragraphs of that pamphlet Beltov referred us to contains the following:

These claims are what you have always said. For instance, the May 1974 issue of World Revolution states under the head "The Impossibility of Reforms" (meaning by "reform" any improvement including wage increases):

In other words, any wage increase gained by some group of workers can only be at the expense of some other group of workers. This of course is the old "Wages Fund" fallacy that went out with the Ark and was so effectively demolished by Marx in his 1865 talk to British Trade Unionists Value, Price and Profit.

If you really believe this - that one group of workers can only make a gain at the expense of another group - as I think you do, then it is completely illogical from your point of view to say the best way of achieving the inevitably sectional aims of some striking workers is to spread the strike.

I will only add that, as Marx explained patiently to Citizen Weston, any gains a group of workers make in terms of wage increases are made at the expense of the profits of the employer, not at the expense of other workers. And neither do wage increases put up prices (as the common or garden opponents of trade unionism claim too).

It isn't a question of 'don't fight, trust the unions' on one side or of a 'soviet revolution' on the other. It's to encourage the tendency, prevalent in the 60s to the 80s, to overcome the union framework and spread the struggle which, from their very nature, the trade unions try to prevent and compartmentalise. Capricorn now seems to accept that the unions will be actively involved in implementing job, wage and working condition cuts but qualifies this with some sort of idea that this is better than nothing. The whole history of the workers' movement shows that every time the workers make sacrifices for the national interest, which is the union's ultimate defence, they are beaten down even further and harder. In this situation the only real defence of the working class is to tend to strengthen its activity towards self-organisation and extension which, by its defence of class interest rather than corporate or national interest will come up against the trade union framework that is imposed on it. Otherwise it will be sliced up, divided and crushed and, if this extends far enough, will open the way to capitalist decomposition and generalised imperialist war. To be in the union and militate against them is to ask to be, as I was, elected as a shop steward. You have to then, as I did after some time, denounce the union and leave it. It's a messy, brain damaging business, that leaves one open to accusations of inconsistency and hypocrisy. But it is not enough to call on workers to "leave the unions" but militate for the action and consciousness that will encourage workers to take their own collective action which, by necessity, comes up against the union prison; general assemblies, self-organisation and extension. I don't think that one can do this effectively from inside the unions.

Corus has confirmed that it is involved "a range of proposals" with the unions on payroll discussions. The Llanwern plant is under threat and it was this plant in 1984 that Thatcher and her clique guarenteed to keep running as long the ISTC steel union kept out of the miners' strike. I think there was also a guarantee to Ravenscraig in Scotland which, if it hasn't shut down already, is running on a much reduced capacity.

On Capricorn's question about the redundancies in my industry: it was clear who the management wanted to go and after some manoeuvring the management made it clear to me that I could have a say in my redundancy package (and another working close to me - a union member) or I could take the union agreed deal for compulsory redundancy. I choose to do the deal for myself (and my mate) and we got about two thirds more than the union deal.

Capricorn

The quote from the WR is not saying that a pay rise for this or that group of workers in immediately taken from another: ie the class is punished for having asked for a rise. What it says is that:

This means that in the context of the historical crisis of capitalism, not that of rising capitalism in the 19th century, the class is under permanent attack general and that any pay rises etc will be worn away. When capitalism was expanding it could absorb the impact of rising wages, though as Marx's explains the question of pay also has to be seen in the context of the phases of the cycle, This lead to a doubling of real wages in Britain between the middle and the end of the 19th century. In decadence (which clearly you do not agree with) the situation has changed because capitalism is not longer an expanding system as in the 19th century and thus cannot absorb and lead to real pay rises as in the 19th century.
The question of the real pay rises in the 50s and 60s is one we are discussing at the moment.
As for the question of inflation, we do not see this as arising through pay rises but through the growth of state spending, etc.
In this general context workers still have to struggle to defend themselves but anything they win will be eaten away due to the historical crisis of capitalism. We are not saying that because this group of workers gain a pay rise another groups of workers will have theirs cuts, it is the overall crisis that causes these attacks. This underlines why we say that it is only at a class wide level that the attacks can be pushed back. It is not a question of this or that employer attacking this or that group of workers, but of a class wide offensive by the ruling class to drive down wages and living conditions. We are all under attack, it may be more intense for this or that group of workers at a given time, so the only way we can defend ourselves as a class is through seeking to struggle as a class. If we struggle in isolation we will be defended. What worries the bosses more, the union controlled strike or a strike controlled by mass assemblies which seeks to unite with other workers.

Sorry, Ernie, but I can't see the difference between what you say it doesn't mean and what you say it does mean. It is true that the quote says that any pay rise will be "eroded or taken away immediately" (the same phrase "taken back immediately" was also used in your anti-union pamphlet) whereas you water this down to "will be worn away" which suggests a more gradual process, implying that in fact workers could enjoy the benefit of the pay rise for a while (and that capitalism can absorb this). It is also clear that you yourself don't believe it applied in the 50s and 60s (a major concession to the facts and dent in your theory that "decadent capitalism" can't absorb real wage increases). And the passage itself does imply that if it not taken away "immediately" from the section of workers who got the pay rise it will be "immediately" taken away "from other sections of the class".

You'd have been better to have come out straight and repudiated the passage as it is wrong both factually and theoretically. Until then it must be assumed that the ICC still stands by it.

I still don't see the difference between pre-1914 and after-1914. Continuous downward pressures on wages and working conditions existed then as they did now. Pay rises, then, as now, had to be defended against attempt to wear then down and, as you imply, were worn down during the slump phase of the trade cycle. Undeniably, real wages did increase in Britain in the 19th century, and capitalism was able to absorb this. But this has been the case in Britain since 1945 too. Nearly every year since then wages have gone up more than the cost of living. This has been my personal experience (but then I've always worked in places with a union). I imagine it's been yours too.

It's not just a case of focusing purely on the economics - we say that 1914 is a watershed moment because the world war should that there was increasingly limited room for expansion, that expansion for one imperialism meant direct conflict with another, stepping on anothers toes immediately.

Really? I don't know how old you are, but you seem to have forgotten the late 70s / early 80s rampant inflation - the 'winter of discontent' didn't come out of nothing.... Even if you just take the last 10 years - how are you relating wages with cost of living? When the average house price (to take just one example) was 20-something times the average wage, there's something fundamentally wrong with your calculations.

Meaningless tosh - workers in private sectors (i.e. less unionised sectors) have (generally) higher wages for equivalent work - teachers, medics etc. Having a union is no guarantee of getting a cost of living wage rise (whatever THAT is..) ask the teachers, for example...

This thread seems to have become another 'lets talk about decadence' thread, by the back door....

The key aspect is - ALL workers, whether unionised or not, will be faced with a seriously (and rapidly) deteriorating situation, as todays unemployment statistics show. The key question is how the workers respond to this, whether they are able to put forward their own perspective (mass struggles, irrespective of union / sector), or whether the bourgeoisie will be able to demoralise and divert growing discontent onto their own terrain.

These are two contradictory tendencies. As others have noted, the current crisis has the immediate effect of making workers fearful about losing their jobs / homes etc, i.e. a tendency to dampen down the struggle, along with the rearing of xenophobias ugly head. At the same time, the bourgeiosie is forced to openly attack - 'reforms' of welfare, taking on companies (the banks) and then directly having to fire workers (e.g. half the Northern Rock workforce). Constant attacks on the unemployed / single mothers etc.. (These are just the ones that make the news - there are lots of cuts, e.g. in arts, local services, all sorts of social provisions - youth centres etc etc.. which never make it onto the news).

It's not only a case of the development of the mass struggle, because we saw the 'masses' struggling in the 70s/80s - but also whether there is a real political development, for example that we see an upturn in interest in political questioning / openess to revolutionary politics (a hallmark of the late 60s 'explosions'.)

Actually, I don't have a particularly high view of what workers uniting on the economic front can achieve. For me, apart from ensuring the application of safety and other regulations, all this can do is to push up wages faster in a boom than would otherwise happen and slow down the fall in (real) wages in a depression. Wages are a price (the price of labour-power) and go up and down in accordance with labour market conditions. So, if we're entering into a big depression with millions more unemployed as we seem to be, we can expect the price of labour-power to fall. No wildcat action, however militant, will be able to stop this happening any more than the existing unions could. You just can't buck the labour market. So, workers are going to have to negotiate this with employers. I can understand that you find this distateful and have chosen to have nothing to do with, but somebody has to do it, otherwise the employers will do it anyway - on their terms.

Let's lay this red-herring to rest. The leaders of the existing unions certainly are nationalists, as are nearly all union members and workers generally (including those who go on wildcat strikes). So, they will frame some of their arguments as being in "the national interest". But it is only in war-time and under Labour governments (which is why I've always opted out of paying the political levy to the Labour Party) that they have justified wage restraint in this way. More normally, they argue that it is a high wage policy that is in "the national interest", for instance because, as now, this will help "the country" spend its way out of the depression (it won't of course, but that's another matter) or encourage technological innovation or whatever. I don't know if they actually believe this or whether it's just presenting the case for higher wages in a form that will be acceptable to employers and governments.

When unions negotiate and justify wage reductions in industries and firms I don't know of any case where "the national interest" has been invoked. The reason they give is "to save jobs". I agree that in many, even most cases, workers who go along with this are deluding themselves and quite often end up losing their jobs anyway (which is why, in my view, it's better to negotiate the biggest possible redundancy payments instead). But not always. The Corus case might be one of these cases, where the pay cut may be a disguised case of short-time working -- in which case being paid 90% of your normal wage for just turning up and maintaining the steel works rather than actually producing steel would be better than nothing. I don't know if this is actually the case but I just mention this as a possibility to show that things might not be as straightforward as you think.

In any case, if you really are concerned about the wages of these workers, you've got to come up with an alternative. So far, all you have in effect suggested is "soviet revolution" because, basically, you don't think that workers should negotiate with employers at all since the result is bound to be a compromise reflecting the balance of forces between the two sides (as you will have learnt from your shop steward days) and for you "compromise" = "betrayal".

Royal Mail strikes 2007 - CWU continually put back strike dates, then agreed to a deal which was about the same as the one they were originally offered - this despite massive support for the strike - national strikes were delayed then called off during an ongoing wildcat and occupation which left the strikers hung out to dry.

Unison health ballot - local branches told to remain 'neutral' on accepting a pay cut, the union leaflet put the employers arguments first, any local activists who tried to agitate for strike action were witchhunted.

It's not just a case of not winning gains, it's a case of recommending and enforcing pay cuts and the rest to membership and attacking and/or isolating workers who disagree.

Not to mention the material and personal support which both those unions and their leadership give to New Labour - the governing party which is pushing through these pay cuts.

I'd say that's a pretty central place. I'm not interested in 'What if there was no union, what would happen then? eh?', I'm interested in what is actually happening in recent class struggles and for that matter previous ones. If you look at Martin Glaberman's writing on Detroit in the '60s and '70s, much the same things occurred. Union density is a product of worker militancy (or sometimes just traditions of such) within workplaces, not its cause.

That's true, but I don't see how that effects downward pressures on wages and working conditions in the two periods. Nor how workers should organise to try to counter them.

I thought it was generally accepted that "real wages" had gone up more or less continuously in the UK since the last World War. Apparently not, when this conflicts with dogma. Here's one thing I found at random on the internet which says:

There's also a table showing what happened (up to 2000) in the UK compared with the US and Argentina:

I don't know how reliable these stats are but the stagnation they show from 1970 to 1985 does confirm what you say about this period. In any event, capitalism seems to have been able to have absorbed them

Well, other people in another thread here, on this subject of the trend in real wages in the UK, also gave their personal experience. Anyway, I never said that being in a union is a guarantee that your wages will go up in line with some cost of living index. In fact, we'll see that this is not so in the developing depression, but "mass action" won't guarantee this either. In a deep depression we really will see a fall in real wages. That's the way capitalism works and is what will show the relative ineffectiveness (as opposed to the total uselessness, as you claim) of unions and why workers need to organise to get rid of capitalism (rather than to get rid of unions, which seems to be your priority).

I must say it's surprising how deep your anti-unionism is. First, Demogorgon tells me that I could have got the three-year backdated pay that I did if I'd gone to some lawyer or the citizens advice bureau just as easily as I did through my union. Then, Lurch says those textile workers in Chicago who occupied their workplace could have got the same if they gone to some lawyer. Now, you're arguing that workers in non-union firms are better off than those in unionised firms. These are all arguments put by your ordinary anti-unionist such as can be found in any backwoods.

I had my say earlier in this thread but would add one point in response to Capricorn who referred to the importance of the balance of class forces quite correctly, but then treats this as purely a reflection of an externally imposed economic situation, without recognising our class as an active participant, able through our level of class organisation and consciousness to effect the economic world. I should really say the material world in all it's complexity though as capricorn also neatly divides the economic and poltical here in a totally unjustified but traditional WSM (and indeed traditional social democratic) way.

This is how the ICC and WSM participants manage to talk about the apparently same thing without ever grasping the fundamentally different basis of their approach to the relationship between the everyday class struggle (not being reduced to an economic category) and the development of the material conditions for revolutionary change.

I have to say that the ICC has the better grasp of this relationship, at least in it's historical dimension, if not in every aspect of what that may mean in our current practice as pro-revolutionaries. ( It has many other faults of course!).

The WSM participants here and on other threads continually refer back to Marx himself in relation to strategic and tactical matters completely ignoring the reality of the historical changes in modern global capitalism and the role of modern day unions. You don't have to take on board the ICC's decadence theory lock stock and barrel to be able to acknowlege these changes, which make the need for a class based, (as opposed to a sectional trade union based) mode of struggle even more essential.

I did not know that capricorn was WSM!

are we talking World Socialist Movement or Workers Solidarity Movement or something else here?

World Socialist Movement I think - SPGB specifically.

Capricorn can you help us out here?

Yes, I think Django is right. He must mean the "World Socialist Movement", though he could well have meant the "Workers Solidarity Movement" in Ireland as they, too, have a similar position to the one I've been defending:

All good stuff and there's more here.

World Socialist Movement eh? Capricorn finally comes clean.

On Catch's (qualified) point about some advantages to TU membership, bulk purchase of insurance, legal services, etc. These are not political advantages to workers - I'm not suggesting that Catch says they are but I'm making my point. Most of these bulk purchases could be bettered elsewhere. There may be "deals" here and there, holidays, insurance for example, but with the web these can usually be bettered individually. On legal services: one thing I saw as I rose through the ranks of the unions over a decade, was the "sweetheart" deals done between company lawyers and union lawyers. In the 30 years since then my personal experience has been either to negotiate your own deal (as I did with redundancy and got 3 times as much as the union offer - not two-thirds as I said above) or get your own specialist brief. A case in point in the recent scandal surrounding miners' compensation and the peanuts they or their dependents - eventually - received for serious and fatal diseases. It wasn't just rogue barristers that were involved in this disgusting scam, but the miners' union, both through its meetings with Beresford's, and legal relationships between the UDM legal departments and Beresfords. The details are murky, but I wouldn't want the union acting on my behalf.
The idea of "some benefits" to belonging to unions is an open door argument. There's "some benefits" to belonging to one particular insurance company rather than another. There's "some benefits" belonging to one bank rather than another... There's some benefits to belonging to Sinn Fein, the Chinese Communist Party. "Some benefits" is not the issue. It's not a survey by "Which" magazine but radical perspectives on the crisis.

Capricorn's arguments have now descended into sticking his fingers in his ears and making inane noises. He's never heard the national interest invoked in wage claims or union negotiations for wage cuts. Read the recent quotes from Tony Woodley above Capricorn - it was about a week ago. Also go back and have a look at the discussion on the 1984 miners' strike, because you obviously haven't taken any of it in. The union ideology is peppered with the national interest; they act in the interests of the state not the workers.

Capricorn salves whatever conscience he has left by "opting out" of the political levy to the Labour Party. That will not stop his union (what is that union Capricorn now you've been exposed?) talking to the government at every level, taking monies and support from the state and defending the national interest.

Finally, Capricorn is reduced to saying that all revolutionaries (the ICC in this case) offer workers is a soviet revolution. There are pages of discussion above and on other threads, where the ICC and many others defend and act in movements for the workers to take steps now in order to defend themselves against attacks and take their struggle further. Capricorn offers nothing but anti-working class trade unionism and parliamentary democracy.

I repeat my point about credit unions - these are put forward as revolutionary alternatives by some groups, while we (hopefully) all agree here that that's a mystification - so would you have a problem taking out a loan from one?

Re-read what I said. I did say that union bureaucrats do often invoke the "national interest" in wage claims, but to argue that higher wages are in the "national interest" (a silly argument since they are not, the "national interest" being the overall general of the capitalist class). I just questioned whether, as a matter of fact, they used this argument to argue for wage cuts, suggesting that the argument they used for this was, rather, to so-called "save jobs". I don't really want to go down this road as I don't want to seem to be defending them, but I think you're over-stating your case here. Knowing that you are an unreliable source of accurate information, I've tried to find where Tony Woodley is supposed to have argued for pay cuts in the national interest. I've found him arguing for a State subsidy to the UK car industry, but criticisable as that is too it's not quite the same thing.

So, please, where and when did he advocate pay cuts in the national interest?

So you want my class war record? I've already said that I was a member of a print union (SOGAT in the occurrence, it's now got some funny name like Amicus), then of APEX (though I prefer its original name of Clerical and Administrative Workers Union, now part of the GMB). Yes, the leaders of these unions did the things you've said (one of them is now a Baroness), but so what? I didn't agree with them, nor did many others. When I was in SOGAT I was also active in an Association of Rank and File Printworkers (which called for One Union for the Printing Industry and a ballot on disaffiliation from the Labour Party) and later with another ginger group called "Apex Action". I have been a union rep and a branch secretary. So, I do know what goes on in unions, both the good things and the bad things. That's what pisses me off with people like you, especially when I read insults like:

So not only no unions, but no workplace reps either! They're all agents of the State! How naive and ill-informed (and stupid) can you get. Who do you think organise the wildcat strikes you praise so much (and I'm not against them) if not union reps and militants at workplace level? Certainly not those who follow your advice and don't even join a union.

Don't flatter yourself by including yourselves with other revolutionaries. I worked with some of these in the rank-and-file groups I was in and they never took up the bigoted anti-union position that you do. And I still say that you don't offer anything when you "intervene" in strikes other than "soviet revolution". I've asked you and Ernie at least two times what specific measures you advocate. You carefully avoid doing this, so that when a settlement is reached, which is inevitably a compromise, you can denounce those who negotiated it as traitors, rank-and-filists, State agents and the like.
So, I ask you again, if you really do want to help defend the interests of steelworkers threatened with a pay cut or carworkers threatened with redundancy, what are you saying they should demand, concretely, if they go on unofficial strike? What is your alternative to Tony Woodley's demand for a State subsidy? No pay cuts? No redundancies? If so, say it. And say also if, in this period of "decadent capitalism", you think this is achievable.

Capricorn, while I think the ICC's line on the unions is pretty flawed, you've ignored my response, with concrete examples, to your request for an explanation of them being 'central to the implementation' of various attacks on workers - perhaps because it's a less easy target?

No pay cuts, no redundancies seem like good demands to me. They could be achieved as a temporary gain if workers manage to impose a relation of force against the bosses. What exactly are you on about Capricorn?

No sooner asked, than answered.

I agree that this is happening and that it's a disgrace to unionism but is it a case of the union form of organisation as such failing or of the policy pursued by the particular leaders of a union? In other words, is it an inevitable consequence of workers organising at work on a permanent basis to try to protect their wages and working conditions? Could the CWU have called the strike earlier and stood firmer? Could Unison have recommended a No vote? Must the workplace militants who are being victimised always be a minority? Are more militant unions envisageable?

Catch asked:

I repeat my point about credit unions - these are put forward as revolutionary alternatives by some groups, while we (hopefully) all agree here that that's a mystification - so would you have a problem taking out a loan from one?

I think I would rather get a loan from a newly nationalised bank or building society like Northern Rock - much safer than dealing with some fly by night organisation run by a bunch of anarchists, especially what with the current state of the economy, etc etc.

Capricorn asked:
Are more militant unions envisageable?

This is where drawing the lessons of history can be useful, rather than repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

Looking at any number of strikes around the world or in the past we see the same patterns - the steel workers union in Russia was calling off strikes in 1917, and the CNT leadership did the same in 1937. So either there's some strange coincidence of personality flaws in all union leaders ever, or there's a structural reason why they behave that way, I know which I think is more plausible.

Those other words don't really describe a union though do they. There's a whole layer of negotiation framework which unions - including various 'base' unions around the world have to fit into - and governments and employers have been more than willing to negotiate with 'temporary' unions or co-ordinations if the established unions lost control - say in Spain or Italy during the '80s.

Even the mass strikes, occupations and clashes with riot police in Korea are often about union recognition, as in many other places with underground/illegal unions - not that this is the sole content of struggles, but it's a factor in it.

Union leaders have to be seen to exert restraint on their members in order to be able to function as negotiators - this has little to do with day to day 'workers organising at work', and it's not a conspiracy theory either - they have to do that to stay in their job, which by nature is making deals with the bosses. It's not a 'disgrace' to unionism, it's the form and content of unionism in practice as opposed to some idealised version of it.

Well of course they could, but they didn't. Can't or won't?

Well I already mentioned the (revolutionary, Bolshevik led) metalworkers union in Russia. Then there's the mass ( > 100,000) syndicalist union in Mexico which fought with the government against Zapata, the CNT calling of striking workers in '37, the UAW and many others signing no-strike clauses in the '30s/'40s, Martin Glaberman's very clear writing on the role of unions in Detroit during the '60s and '70s, then we could point to two US IWW branches signing no-strike contracts, or the negative role of the Bangladesh garment workers union in recent struggles too. So even during relatively high levels of militancy, unions have acted against their own members, against the working class at large - and new forms and organisations have been thrown up to replace them during those circumstances since - some of which were accommodated later, some destroyed, some massively reduced in number to politically-based organisations when thing died down.

I can see the point you're making here and there's some validity in it. That union leaders are in control of organisations that are selling labour power in bulk to employers. This involves negotiations ending in a contract. The deal is that in return for the union leaders controlling their members, eg by stopping any wildcat action to change the terms of the contract, the employers will guarantee to pay higher wages. Which is what they do from time to time.

I'd just make 2 points in relation to this.

1. By and large these bureaucratised unions are effective in securing a good price for the sale of their members' labour power. The figures show this. Some of the leaders are skilled negotiators and know how to exploit labour market conditions to get the best deal.

2. These organisations don't have to be democratic to be effective, as the notorious case of the once Mafia-controlled Teamsters Union in the US shows.

So, where does this leave our attitude to be to these organisations? I think most union members take a pragmatic attitude to them, supporting them as long as they deliver the goods, ie raising wages in good times and protecting them better than otherwise when labour market conditions turn in favour of employers. Which, as I said, they generally do or at least are capable of doing.

Obviously, we'd like them to be more democratic. Unions in Britain, although much more bureaucratised than they originally were, still do allow a wider degree of democratic participation than in most other organisations of the same size. So I suppose that's what we do. We join them on pragmatic grounds and try to make them more responsive to the members interests. Without supporting the organisations as such (in fact criticising them for not being democratic and for being sectional, associating with the State and political parties, etc), I don't think we should engage in the sort of crude anti-union propaganda as some here have expressed.

But of course they are not revolutionary organisations and are not meant to be, though I would think that at some point, when class-consciousness grows, they will become less business unions and more class-oriented ones (as some of them once were).

I gave the details for the Woodley quotes Capricorn. Look at it. Incidentally this trade union defender of the national interest is living in his union London apartment with a rent of 50 quid a week. Good news for the members.

It's been my experience in and around the trade unions, that most workers most of the time know that the unions are crap and self-serving. It's when the unions radicalise and go with the struggle, even instigating it, that they are the most dangerous (see the discussion on the 84 miners' strike).
But the one thing I've found throughout in workers' attitudes towards the unions is the pernicious idea, peddled on here, that the unions can offer "some benefits", "some insurance", "some protection". The role of the current miners' union in the diabolical Beresford scam against sick, dying and dead miners bears some looking at. What protection, benefits and insurance have the unions offered here? None whatsoever. Not only have they offered no protection at all but they've, at the very least, been negligently complicit in the scam and possibily knowingly complicit. Gangsterism and corruption has been an aspect of the trade unions in my working experience since the 60s. How could it be any other for an organisation that is part of a gangster and corrupt state apparatus?

Aplogies to all for my loose use of intials earlier - I was of course referring to the WSM-SPGB.

Catch is right to divert you onto his and hopefully my criticisms rather than letting you get locked into a debate with the ICC.

Please re-read my point about you and the ICC arguing at cross purposes. Underlying this dispute about our respective attitudes to the Trade Unions is a fundamemtally different understanding of the relationship of class struggle (seen as a social movement encompassing both economic and political elements) to the material development of the conditions for a revolutionary transformation of society. We are talking crudely here about the development of a situation of dual power in which the working class challenges the power of the capitalist system - economically and politically. It is this challenge which creates the potential for a mass shift in consciousness, demonstrating a real potential for change rather than something which is a good idea, but viewed by most as simply impractical dreaming by a minority of pro- revolutionaries.

Whilst non of us view every little strike or occupation in itself as leading onto such a situation of dual power we do recognise the value of workers developing an independent class based experience and consciousnees through struggle which in the right conditions provides a springboard for a much wider and deeper struggle that can challenge capitalism in a serious way..

The TU's in these situations in particular, through their previous role in 'representing' (if badly)the workers various sectional interests, inevitably act as a barrier to the further development of the class (not the TU) struggle.

I recognise, as I explained before, that in the British context (and some but not all others) struggles may start off within the confines of the Union (and as you point out may be initiated by miltant lay union officials in some cases) but it is our common view with the ICC that pro-revolutionaries need to argue for struggles to extend bejond these limits where anything other than marginal issues are at stake. It is precisely in situations where the stakes are high that this argument carries the most weight in terms of both the immediate and long term interests of our class.

The economic and the political struggle are not in real life separate struggles as the SPGB in good social democratic fashion asserts but one struggle in need of one organised class expression. Political groups can assist this process, if they are clear about this relationship but they cannot substitute for it either through the parliamentary or vanguard route.

The likes of Rosa Luxemburge and Anton Panekoek recognised all this long ago why can't the SPGB make that further break, not just from reformism but from the whole social democratic tradition.