MIA: Subjects of Marxism: Learning Marxism
Additional Readings on Unions
See Also: the Definition of Unions in the Encyclopedia of Marxism.
Industrial Unionism and Constructive Socialism, by James Connolly
In short, social democracy, as its name implies, is the application to industry, or to the social life of the nation, of the fundamental principles of democracy. Such application will necessarily have to begin in the workshop, and proceed logically and consecutively upward through all the grades of industrial organization until it reaches the culminating point of national executive power and direction. In other words, social democracy must proceed from the bottom upward, whereas capitalist political society is organized from above downward.
The Labor Unions and the Class Struggle, by Max Shachtman
The actual work of the unions is based upon an acceptance of capitalism. They are not organized for the purpose of liberating the working class from the condition of exploitation and oppression to which it is doomed under capitalism. Instead, they confine themselves to the attempt to raise the wages of the workers and obtain favorable social legislation while keeping the capitalist profit system. The longer capitalism is allowed to exist, the more acute become its problems. The more acute its problems, the stronger and more urgent its drive against the workers' living standard. The most that the unions can do – given the way they are now constituted and led – is to resist this drive, try to slow it down. If they remain committed to the capitalist system, the unions, and the workers in general, are limited to defensive actions and, in the long run, to defeat.
Should Revolutionaries Work in Reactionary Trade Unions?, by Vladimir Lenin
The trade unions were a tremendous step forward for the working class in the early days of capitalist development, inasmuch as they marked a transition from the workers' disunity and helplessness to the rudiments of class organisation. When the revolutionary party of the proletariat, the highest form of proletarian class organisation, began to take shape (and the Party will not merit the name until it learns to weld the leaders into one indivisible whole with the class and the masses) the trade unions inevitably began to reveal certain reactionary features, a certain craft narrow-mindedness, a certain tendency to be non-political, a certain inertness, etc. However, the development of the proletariat did not, and could not, proceed anywhere in the world otherwise than through the trade unions, through reciprocal action between them and the party of the working class.