[Fwd: Leon Trotsky on trade unions and the state]

[Charles Cornell]

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Subject: Leon Trotsky on trade unions and the state
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:27:58 -0800 (PST)
From: "Lone Wolf" <phoenixx6 at gmail.com>
Organization: http://groups.google.com
Newsgroups: alt.politics.socialism.trotsky

Leon Trotsky on trade unions and the state

There is one common feature in the development, or more correctly the
degeneration, of modern trade union organizations throughout the
world: it is their drawing close to and growing together with the
state power. This process is equally characteristic of the neutral,
the Social Democratic, the Communist, and "anarchist" trade unions.
This fact alone shows that the tendency toward "growing together" is
intrinsic not in this or that doctrine as such but derives from social
conditions common for all unions.
Monopoly capitalism does not rest on competition and free private
initiative but on centralized command. The capitalist cliques at the
head of mighty trusts, syndicates, banking consortiums, and so on,
view economic life from the very same heights as does state power; and
they require at every step the collaboration of the latter. In their
turn the trade unions in the most important branches of industry find
themselves deprived of the possibility of profiting from the
competition among the different enterprises. They have to confront a
centralized capitalist adversary, intimately bound up with state
power. Hence flows the need of the trade unions--insofar as they
remain on reformist positions, that is, on positions of adapting
themselves to private property--to adapt themselves to the capitalist
state and to contend for its cooperation.

In the eyes of the bureaucracy of the trade union movement, the chief
task lies in "freeing" the state from the embrace of capitalism, in
weakening its dependence on trusts, in pulling it over to their side.
This position is in complete harmony with the social position of the
labor aristocracy and the labor bureaucracy, who fight for a crumb in
the share of superprofits of imperialist capitalism. The labor
bureaucrats do their level best in words and deeds to demonstrate to
the "democratic" state how reliable and indispensable they are in
peacetime and especially in time of war. By transforming the trade
unions into organs of the state, fascism invents nothing new; it
merely draws to their ultimate conclusion the tendencies inherent in
imperialism.

Colonial and semicolonial countries are under the sway not of native
capitalism but of foreign imperialism. However, this does not weaken
but, on the contrary, strengthens the need of direct, daily, practical
ties between the magnates of capitalism and the governments that are
in essence subject to them: the governments of colonial or
semicolonial countries. Inasmuch as imperialist capitalism creates
both in colonies and semicolonies a stratum of labor aristocracy and
bureaucracy, the latter requires the support of colonial and
semicolonial governments as protectors, patrons, and sometimes as
arbitrators. This constitutes the most important social basis for the
Bonapartist and semi-Bonapartist character of governments in the
colonies and in backward countries generally.1 This likewise
constitutes the basis for the dependence of reformist unions upon the
state.

In Mexico the trade unions have been transformed by law into semistate
institutions and have, in the nature of things, assumed a
semitotalitarian character. The statization of the trade unions was,
according to the conception of the legislators, introduced in the
interests of the workers, in order to assure them an influence upon
governmental and economic life. But insofar as foreign imperialist
capitalism dominates the national state and insofar as it is able,
with the assistance of internal reactionary forces, to overthrow the
unstable democracy and replace it with outright fascist dictatorship,
to that extent the legislation relating to the trade unions can easily
become a weapon in the hands of imperialist dictatorship....

It is necessary to adapt ourselves to the concrete conditions existing
in the trade unions of every given country in order to mobilize the
masses, not only against the bourgeoisie, but also against the
totalitarian regime within the trade unions themselves and against the
leaders enforcing this regime. The primary slogan for this struggle
is: complete and unconditional independence of the trade unions in
relation to the capitalist state. This means a struggle to turn the
trade unions into the organs of the broad exploited masses and not the
organs of a labor aristocracy....

Inasmuch as the chief role in backward countries is played not by
national but by foreign capitalism, the national bourgeoisie occupies,
in the sense of its social position, a much more minor position than
corresponds with the development of industry. Inasmuch as foreign
capital does not import workers but proletarianizes the native
population, the national proletariat soon begins playing the most
important role in the life of the country. In these conditions the
national government, to the extent that it tries to show resistance to
foreign capital, is compelled to a greater or lesser degree to lean on
the proletariat. On the other hand, the governments of those backward
countries that consider it inescapable or more profitable for
themselves to march shoulder to shoulder with foreign capital destroy
the labor organizations and institute a more or less totalitarian
regime.

BY LEON TROTSKY

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