The eternal schism: Reform or revolution in the modern labour movement

“ As fast as labor has become conscious it has organized. The ambition of these class-conscious men is that the movement shall become general, that all labor shall become conscious of itself and its class interests. And the day that witnesses the solidarity of labor, they triumphantly affirm, will be a day when labor dominates the world. This growing consciousness has led to the organization of two movements, both separate and distinct, but both converging toward a common goal--one, the labor movement, known as Trade Unionism; the other, the political movement, known as Socialism. ”

“ Under trade unionism we understand such a form of the labor and trade union movement which has for its purpose only the narrow economic problems of bettering conditions of labor, higher wages, etc.
Trade unionism is a theory which has grown out of the practical Anglo-Saxon labor movement, which in fact does not have in its program, in theory or in practice, the overthrowal of capitalism, but only the betterment of conditions within the capitalist system. ”

“ So the main characterization of trade unionism (also a characterization of reformism, which is understood widely outside the borders of Anglo-Saxon countries) is the struggle within the frame of the capitalist system and the conception of that system as a permanent one within the frame of which we have to struggle and better the conditions of the working class. Most of the practical and theoretical workers of the Anglo-Saxon labor movement openly construed the problems of the trade union only in the sense of bettering the conditions of the working class under capitalism and even. ”

“ As soon as capitalist property will have disappeared, the employer will disappear, and not before. It is in the socialist party—because it is a political party—that one fights against the employer class, and that is why the socialist party is truly an economic party, tending to transform social and political economy. At the present moment words have their importance. And I should like to urge the comrades strongly never to allow it to be believed that trade-union action is economic action. No; this latter action is taken only by the political organization of the working class. ”

“ The British trade union refuses to admit to its ranks those teeming millions of workers whom it terms 'unskilled.'" [386]
Other Socialists complain: "Trade unionism recognises the present system of society, justifies capitalism, and defends wage-slavery, and only seeks to soften the tyranny of the one and assuage the evils of the other. Social Democracy aims at destroying the whole system." [387] "We are never allowed to forget the splendid incomes earned by these aristocrats of labour, a mere tenth of the whole labour class. ”

“ The degradation of the Standard of Life of the skilled manual worker on the break-up of the mediaeval system occurred in all sorts of trades, whether the operative retained his ownership of the means of production or not, but Trade Unionism followed only where the change took the form of a divorce between capital and labour. ”

“ In all cases in which Trade Unions arose, [Pg 26] the great bulk of the workers had ceased to be independent producers, themselves controlling the processes, and owning the materials and the product of their labour, and had passed into the condition of lifelong wage-earners, possessing neither the instruments of production nor the commodity in its finished state. “From the moment that to establish a given business more capital is required than a journeyman can easily accumulate within a few years, gild mastership—the mastership of the masterpiece—becomes little more than a name.... ”

“ The Union leaders, therefore, wisely left this part of their case in the background. They avoided arguing whether Trade Unionism was, in principle, useful or detri- mental, right or wrong. They insisted only on the right of every Englishman to bargain for the sale of his labour in the manner he thought most conducive to his own interests. What they demanded was perfect freedom for a workman to substitute collective for individual, bargaining, if he imagined such a course to be for his own advantage. ”

“ The puzzling fact about the American labor movement is, after all, its limited objective. As we saw before, the social order which the typical American trade unionist considers ideal is one in which organized labor and organized capital possess equal bargaining power. The American trade unionist wants, first, an equal voice with the employer in fixing wages and, second, a big enough control over the productive processes to protect job, health, and organization. Yet he does not appear to wish to saddle himself and fellow wage earners with the trouble of running industry without the employer. ”

“ But these people refuse to understand that the revolutionary path of the labour movement might not be a Social-Democratic path! When absolutism reigned in Western Europe, the entire Western European bourgeoisie "impelled" and deliberately impelled the workers on the path of revolution. We, Social-Democrats, however, cannot be satisfied with that. And if we, by any means whatever, degrade Social-Democratic politics to the level of spontaneous trade-union politics, we, by that, play into the hands of bourgeois democracy. ”

“ And yet with only a little reflection, it would have understood why a subservience to the spontaneity of the mass movement and any degrading of Social-Democratic politics to trade-union politics mean precisely to prepare the ground for converting the labour movement into an instrument of bourgeois democracy. The spontaneous labour movement is able by itself to create (and inevitably will create) only trade unionisrn, and working-class trade-union politics are precisely working-class bourgeois politics. ”

“ Hence, to belittle Socialist ideology in any way, to deviate from it in the slightest degree means strengthening bourgeois ideology. There is a lot of talk about spontaneity, hut the spontaneous development of the labour movement leads to its becoming subordinated to bourgeois ideology, it means developing according to the programme of the Credo, for the spontaneous labour movement is pure and simple trade unionism, is Nur-Gewerkschaftlerei, and trade unionism means the ideological subordination of the workers to the bourgeoisie. ”

“ The rights of the worker are the whole of the produce of his labour. Trade Unionism not only cannot secure that, but has never even tried to secure that. The most that Trade Unionism has secured, or can ever hope to secure, for the workers, is a comfortable subsistence wage. They have not always secured even that much, and, [Pg 153] when they have secured it, the cost has been serious. For the great weapon of Unionism is a strike, and a strike is at best a bitter, a painful, and a costly thing. ”

“ In this way, the overthrow of capitalism was not the aim of these unions, but the gradual change of society. And this development of, socialism from a capitalist society they visioned as a developed form of democracy, a developed democratic society which spreads its democracy to the maximum. It is the development from political democracy, gradually becoming an economic and social democracy. This is the basis of the theory of the social-democratic trade union movement. Socialism, from their point of view, is the legal son of democracy. ”

“ We find that at the beginning of the eighteenth century the typical journeyman tailor in London and Westminster had become a lifelong wage-earner. It is not surprising, therefore, that one of the earliest instances of permanent Trade Unionism that we have been able to discover occurs in this trade. The master tailors in 1720 complain to Parliament that 'the Journeymen Taylors in and about the Cities of London and Westminster, to the number of seven thousand and upwards, have lately entered into a combination to raise their wages and leave off working an hour sooner than they used to do ”

“ Adam Smith remarked that " people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." 1 , And there is actual evidence of the rise of one of the oldest \ of the existing Trade Unions out of a gathering of the > journeymen " to take a social pint of porter together." 2 j More often it is a tumultuous strike, out of which grows a permanent organisation. ”

“ The struggle for control, as carried on by trade unions, centers on such matters as methods of wage determination, the employer's right of discharge, hiring and lay-off, division of work, methods of enforcing shop discipline, introduction of machinery and division of labor, transfers of employes, promotions, the union or non-union shop, and similar subjects. ”

“ Aggressive and uncompromising in a perpetual fight for the strongest possible position and power of trade unions, but always strong for collective agreements with the opposing employers, he displays the business tactics of organized labor. ”

“ In a word, the progressives must be won over from the idealistic and utopian to the evolutionary point of view.
Indeed, it must be granted that insistence upon the real goal and tendency of trade unionism will provoke the capitalist class into greater opposition against the movement. But this will be trebly offset by the added support which the unions will get from the large numbers of militants who now stand apart from them because of lack of understanding. The power of even a few such men, proceeding intelligently along practical lines, is one of the marvels of the labor movement. ”

“ If they follow a Haywood or an Ettor, it is precisely because they have been ignored by a Golden or a Gompers.
Withal, then, trade unionism, despite an occasional revolutionary facet and despite a revolutionary clamor especially on its fringes, is a conservative social force. Trade unionism seems to have the same moderating effect upon society as a wide diffusion of private property. In fact the gains of trade unionism are to the worker on a par with private property to its owner. ”

“ During these years we watch a shifting of leadership in the Trade Union world from the casual enthusiast and irresponsible agitator to a class of permanent salaried officers expressly chosen from out of the rank and file of Trade Unionists for their superior business capacity. ”

“ To the ordinary Trade Unionist the claim of the workman is that of Justice. He believes, almost as a matter of principle, that in any dispute the capitalist is in the wrong and the workman in the right. But when, as a District Delegate, it becomes his business to be perpetually investigating the exact circumstances of the men's quarrels, negotiating with employers, and arranging compromises, he begins more and more to recognise that there is something to be urged on the other side. ”

“ It has been the breakdown of trade unionism before forces alien to itself that has made way for all this trouble, for trade unionism, purged of socialism and syndicalism, works well with the existing system. Accordingly, the only new constructive solutions of our problem that remain for labour to impose, once it is in power, are socialism and syndicalism, that is, the possession of all industry by the State, and, alternatively, by labour itself. ”

“ Hence, our task, the task of Social-Democracy, is to combat spontaneity, to divert the labour movement, with its spontaneous trade-unionist striving, from under the wing of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of revolutionary Social-Democracy. ”

“ The social-democratic trade union movement stands separate from the Social-Democratic Party. It believes somewhat in a division of function: The party has to do with politics, we, the trade unions, have to do with economics. The general problems of the labor movement are under the jurisdiction of the party, but we, the trade unions, should only have to deal with economics. ”

“ Without taking a vigorous part in promoting, enforcing, and resisting all sorts of legislation affecting education, sanitation, the Poor Law, the whole range of the Factories, Mines, Railways, and Merchant Shipping Acts, the Shop Hours, Truck, Industrial Arbitration and Conciliation, and now even the Trade Boards' Act, the Trade Union cannot properly fulfil its function of looking after the regulation of the conditions of employment ”

“ Industrial Unionism is altogether different from Trade Unionism in that it will act along class lines as opposed to craft lines of the present day Trade Unions. The waste of time and energy of hundreds of Trade Unions in this country is made plain when we realise that only twenty Industrial Unions cover and control industry in Soviet Russia.
The S.P.G.B. is continually telling us that we must have a majority of workers class-conscious before we can have Socialism. If a majority of that nature is necessary then many future generations are doomed never to see Socialism. ”

“ They exhibit more tendency to “stand in” with their masters against the community, or to back them against rivals or interlopers, than to join their fellow-workers of other trades in an attack upon the capitalist class. In short, we have industrial society still divided vertically trade by trade, instead of horizontally between employers and wage-earners. This latter cleavage it is which has transformed the Trade Unionism of petty groups of skilled workmen into the modern Trade Union Movement. ”

“ So long as the Trade Union is an organ of revolt against the Capitalist System so long as the manual workers are fighting a common enemy in the private owner of land and capital this corporate selfishness is held in check ; though the frequency of demarcation disputes, even in the Trade Union Movement of to-day, gives some indication of what might happen if the Trade Union became an organ of government. ”

“ A more correct term would be "labor" unionism as distinct from "trade" unionism, or "class unionism" against "sectional unionism." By "industrial unionism" the promoters of the new movement means that all the employees of a given industry are to be solidly bound together in a single union instead of being divided into many separate organizations as so often happens to-day, and so as to act as a unit against the employer, as, for example, the steel workers, machinists, longshoremen, structural iron workers, etc., are all to be united against the Steel Trust. ”

“ The real emancipation of labour," says the official manifesto of the Social-Democratic Federation to the Trade Unions of Great Britain in Sep- tember 1884, " can only be effected by the solemn banding together of millions of human beings in a federation as wide as the civilised world." 2 " The day has gone by," we read in 1887, "for the efforts of isolated trades. . . . Nothing is to be gained for the workers as a class without the complete organisation of labourers of all grades, skilled and unskilled. ”

“ Hence Fabianism has not adopted the somewhat cold attitude of the pure Socialist Party to Trade Unions, but has rather found in their gradual conquest of better wages and better conditions for the workers the line of social advance congenial with its own principles. Again, it has preached that the society which is to exert control must be democratic, if the control is to be, as it must be, self-control: it has taught that such democratic self-control must primarily be exerted in democratic local self-government: it has emphasised the need of reconciling democratic control with expert guidance. ”

“ For when we remember that with democratic control in industry, the British Labour Party demands a universal application of the policy “of the National Minimum, affording complete security against destitution, in sickness and in health, in good times and bad alike, to every member of the community of whatever age or sex,” it is evident that we have the two requirements of that necessary revolution in the worker’s standing which is the corner-stone of a worthy social order. The worker is no longer dependent, a pawn in the game of production, an employed wage-earner, a “hand;” ”

“ Time and experience alone will show how far the empirical Socialism of the Trade Unionist of 1889, with its eclectic opportunism, its preference for municipal collectivism, its cautious adapta- tion of existing social structure, and its modest aspirations to a gradually increasing participation of the workmen in control, may safely be pronounced superior in practicability to the revolutionary and universal Communism of Robert Owen. ”

“ Our relations with the trade unions may therefore be described as friendly whenever they take action against capitalism, and appreciative of their increasing tendency towards Socialism. We always recommend all workers to join the trade union of their trade. No Socialist propaganda is officially carried on by the trade unions, but as quite 75 per cent. of the members of the Social-Democratic Federation are also trade unionists in their respective trades, by their agency Socialist thought is steadily permeating the ranks of trade unionism. ”

“ Examples of successful strikes, information about the higher standard of life, of better conditions of labour, in one district, would encourage the workers in other districts to take up the fight again and again. Fourthly, having made a start in generalising the trade-union struggle, and having in this way strengthened the contacts between the Russian trade-union movement and Socialism, the Social-Democrats would at the same time see to it that our trade-union work did not occupy either too small or too large a share of our general Social-Democratic work. ”

“ Meanwhile, as a result of the successive attacks upon the very existence of Trade Unionism, even in its most limited form, there has been growing up a distinct political organisation of the Trade Union Movement, aiming at securing the acceptance by the electorate, as a whole, of a definitely Socialist policy in the administration of both home and foreign affairs. It is this formation of a Labour Party, ready for the carrying into effect of the new ideas, that we have now to describe. ”

“ The unions as well as their common organizations, the Trade Union Congress, the Labour Party, and the General Federation of Trade Unions are drawing closer together, while the Socialists and revolutionary unionists are everywhere taking the lead—as evidenced, for example, by the election of the most radical Socialist member of Parliament, Mr. ”

“ The organised masses of labour find themselves baffled both by their parliamentary representatives and by their trade-union officials. They are losing faith in their votes and falling back in anger upon insurrectionary ideals, upon the idea of a general strike, and upon the expedients of sabotage. They are doing this without any constructive proposals at all, for it is ridiculous to consider Syndicalism as a constructive proposal. They mean mischief because they are hopeless and bitterly disappointed. ”

“ According to the belief of the anarcho-syndicalists the trade unions will not only make the revolution but will also create the new society. The trade unions will organize production, regulate production within the industries, will govern the public economy. This is the social philosophy of anarcho-syndicalism. ”

“ The obligation and intention of the Government always so to act should be openly affirmed. As Labour has officially adopted the anti-social policy of “direct action,” the Trade Disputes Act of 1906 should be repealed. Whatever reason of political expediency—there was none in law or in logic—justified the application of the Act to cases of economic strikes between employers and employed, no pretext remains for its retention in cases of strikes against the community, especially where an independent inquiry has been refused. ”

“ And one further sees direct action adopted with the ulterior object of wrecking existing craft Trade Union organization, as for instance by revolutionary Unionists in old skilled Unions like the Amalgamated Engineering Union, or by revolutionary Syndicalists who wish to exercise and develop all the latent power of manual workers so that the weapon of the general strike may be sharp and bright on the day when it is to be used to hack down the Constitution, and usher in the social revolution. ”

“ It is not now denied, even by the economists, that Trade Unionism, in its establishment of the Doctrine of the Common Rule, and the elaboration of this into the Standard Rate, the Normal Day, and the Policy of the National Minimum, has to its credit during the past three-quarters of a century no small measure of success, with more triumphs easily within view. Trade Unionism among the manual -workers, like Professional Association among the brain- workers, 1 has emphatically justified itself by its achievements. ”

“ Not the least of the social services of Trade Unionism is that it has furnished to men occupied in purely mechanical work an interest which has helped to keep their minds alive. It is rarely recognised how inevitably certain of our graver social evils are connected with the devitalising influences of modern industrial conditions. Undoubtedly one of the most powerful causes of the deadly grip of the drink traffic upon society is the opportunity it provides of reaction from the depressing and deadening round of the shop. ”

“ Now here the I.L.P. leaders have got hold of quite the wrong end of the stick. The existence of the class war is a fact of common observation. A short walk down any street with your eyes open will show it to you. Indeed it is obvious that there is and must be a permanent antagonism between the buyers and sellers of labour—or if our hyper-economic critics prefer it of “labour-power.” And moreover this fact of the class war is a fact, which every workman (as also every capitalist) recognises in practice, if not in theory. All trade unionism is built upon his recognition of it ”

“ Strikes, and any organised resistance to the employers’ demands, were put down with a high hand. The first twenty years of the nineteenth century witnessed a legal persecution of Trade Unionists as rebels and revolutionists. This persecution, thwarting the healthy growth of the Unions, and driving their members into violence and sedition, but finally leading to the repeal of the Combination Laws and the birth of the modern Trade Union Movement, will be the subject of the next chapter. ”