Socialism and Industrial Unionism (1932)

From the December 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

I have been asked to reply to a criticism of the article, “Socialism and Industrial Organisation,” (see the May issue of the Socialist Standard, which appears in the July issue of the Revolutionary Socialist. Criticism, to be effective, must at least be accurate. My critic commences with the misstatement of the title of my article, which dealt with the general question of industrial organisation and not specially with “Industrial Unionism,” whether of the I.W. W. or the W.I.I.U. brand. The article did, it is true, refer to the failure of the S.L..P. to bring to birth in this country the body of which it was supposed to be the “political reflex”; but the main part of the article dealt with actual organisations, i.e., the factory committees. It showed, by quoting concrete detailed evidence, that attempts on the part of these bodies to supersede the Trade Unions had failed both in this and other countries.

The factory committees, elected in the main by non-Socialists, were as incapable as the Trade Unions of emancipating the workers from capitalist control. They were not based upon an understanding of the class struggle, and, like the Trade Unions, were found to be ready to assist the masters to carry on the existing system of exploitation once certain minor concessions had been granted.

Yet, in spite of this experience, the B.S.I.S.L.P. can think of nothing better to do than call upon workers to repeat the attempt to erect “shop committees . . . separate and apart from the Trade Unions” (see editorial article, p. 5). That they are merely camouflaged anarchists is made evident on p. 6, where their platform calls for “the abolition of the State” (para. 5). The present writer does not profess to be able to improve upon the masterly exposition of the scientific view of this aspect of the matter contained in Engels’ “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific” (p. 87, Whitehead Library). There he shows that so far from being abolished the State must be used by the workers in order to accomplish the supreme revolutionary act, i.e., their emancipation. After that it will die out.

Eric Boden