The Socialist and Trade Unionism: The situation reviewed. (1911)

From the November 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

What is the Socialist attitude toward trade unions and trade unionists?

The Tyranny of Theory.

This is a question which has been agitating certain minds of late—minds which are so overwhelmed with the Socialist theories of political economy that they have lost the power (if they ever had it) of analysing the conditions prevailing, and of judging how far and how completely those conditions warrant the application of the theories.

Starting from the theory that it is inevitable that the condition of the workers will get worse while capitalism lasts—a pronouncement which, under proper and careful definition is perfectly correct—they arrive at the conclusion that trade unions are not, never have been, and never can be, of use to the working class.

These gentlemen are usually men who have given some attention to economic science, who have assimilated a multitude of worthy and irreproachable theories regarding the laws of capitalist society; but, from absence of the judicial mind, they accept these theories without sufficient thought as to their limitations, and as to the conditions which qualify them, and without which they cannot be true. Hence these right and proper theories become mere shibboleths, hobble-skirts about the ankles of those submerged and lost in verbal fashion. It is inevitable that such people will argue (I had almost said think) “in terms of contradiction”.

For instance, they will accept the theory that capitalism presupposes competition, and also the theory that competition tends to monopoly, yet they expect the laws of competition to operate in cases where the conditions of competition have given place to those of monopoly.

Of a Mind with the Capitalists.

These critics and opponents of ours admit—nay, more than that, they are too blatant to be confined within the limits of a mere admission, they assert—the commodity nature of labour-power. They recognise that the owners of the commodity labour-power, like the owners of all other commodities, must always struggle for the best price in order that their commodity may, in the long run, realise its value. Yet, strange confusion of ideas, while admitting the necessity of this continual fight, they would deny the workers the weapons of the struggle—trade union combination and the strike. In this they are so far anti-Socialist to be in perfect accord with the capitalists themselves.

Of course, what blinds them to the true state of affairs is another half-digested theory—that the return to labour is determined by the cost of subsistence. They argue that therefore the resistance of the workers is also determined by the cost of his subsistence, and that he has no need to fashion any other forces than that of his bare, naked will not to give way before he has to; that combination, that organisation, which is so potent and vital a factor on the political field, on the economic field is utterly worthless—a snare, a delusion, a pitfall, a gin, a chimera, a mirage, an obfuscation. The workers are to have none of it. The laws which arise from free competition are quite sufficient, under all capitalist conditions, to give the workers all they can get under all the circumstances of capitalism.

Forgotten—that the cost of subsistence is not a fixed point; forgotten—that the standard of subsistence is not entirely independent of the workers’ power of resistance; forgotten—that the statement that the wage (in the long run) is the reflection of the value of the labour-power is a statement of the effect of a law which implies the highest resistance on both sides; forgotten—that competition leads to monopoly.

Conditions undergo Change.

With the development of capitalism the conditions of the labour market undergo change. Wage-slavery remains, it is true—no changes reach down to that fundamental condition. But on the side of the purchasers of labour-power there is a tendency to restrict competition. As the smaller employers are crushed out the men find themselves haggling with fewer but more powerful antagonists; as rings and trusts and combines and masters’ associations spring up free competition conditions are upset, and the laws which arise from such, and operate only while such conditions obtain, are more or less modified, or displaced by laws which arise out of monopoly conditions.

Let us take any gigantic exploiting concern—the combined railway systems of this country, for instance. No intelligent person will claim that there is the same play of free competition among them as purchasers of labour-power that there is among the employers in many industries. True, the railways as a whole have to compete with other industries for the raw, untrained labour-power in the first place, but after that competition practically ceases. Time was when the companies did “poach” one another’s signalmen, drivers, and guards, but now, to all intents and purposes, the “skilled” railway worker has but one possible employer.

To talk of the laws of free competition in this case is a bit wide of the mark. The worker in no longer free to sell himself to the highest bidder, for there is only one bidder. Competition on one side is dead, and the laws of competition hobble along with one foot in a muddy furrow. It would be folly to expect anything else.

Now as there is but one employer that these men can sell their labour-power to, they have not the opportunity of putting themselves up to auction. The only thing they can do is to refuse or threaten to refuse to sell their labour-power upon the offered terms. This, of course, is the strike or the threat to strike.

Trade Unions Necessary.

It is perfectly clear that such a proceeding as this must be collectively engaged in. It is perfectly obvious also that this means combination, organisation. So some form of union becomes the necessary instrument to correct or counterpoise the monopoly conditions set up by the development of combination among the masters.

Combination on the workers’ part has the effect, undoubtedly, in such circumstances of considerably increasing their power of resistance, for now the very extent of the employers’ needs becomes a source of embarrassment to them. It was no difficult matter to replace a few “malcontents”, but to fill the places of a large and well-organised section is a very different matter.

With the development of capitalism there is necessarily an increased tendency toward this obliteration of competitive conditions by combination among the masters. The only answer to it at the moment is for the workers to shift their line of resistance from the individual to the collective. Who denies this is an individualist, an anarchist, to the core.

Make no mistake about it, without some form of organisation the men are helpless in face of the present combination and growing tendency to combination on the part of the masters. Yet the very law which our critics adduce against us, the law that labour-power will, like all other commodities, realise its value in the long run, presupposes that they shall continually struggle for better terms. It is only out of this contention of opposing forces that the law operates.

Now our opponents tell us that trade unions and strikes are no good because when a victory is obtained the law of wages “ . . . sharp racks to pinch and peel” and so reduce things to the old level.

The Struggle Must be Maintained

This deduction can only be drawn from half-understood theories. While it is true that all their struggle in the labour-market cannot raise the workers’ remuneration above the line fluctuating about the subsistence level, while it is true that any alteration of that subsistence level must, if maintained, result in a corresponding and nullifying intensification of the exploiting system, it is true also that the struggle must be made.

With all the workers’ struggles, say our critics, the economic laws decide that their enjoyment of the wealth produced shall be determined by the necessary cost of subsistence. But they forget to say what would happen without the struggle.

If higher wages are answered by speeding-up and improved methods of production, the tendency toward this is always present. Machinery and methods develop with stationary or even falling wages. If every vestige of the workers’ power of resistance was blotted out, so that the only limit to plunder was the physical law that a given amount of food can only produce a given amount of energy, still the means of production would tend to develop, because though that given amount of food could never be made to produce more than a given amount of energy, that energy may be made, by improved methods, to create a greater amount of wealth.

To cease to struggle, therefore, is no means of escaping from the tyrant competition of machinery. On the other hand, to cease the struggle is to reduce human labour-power even below the commodity status. The labour-power of the wage-slave is no more than a commodity because of the wage-slave’s propertyless condition; it is no less than a commodity because he has a power of resistance. Why is the labour-power of a horse not a commodity? Simply because the horse has no power of resistance. The wage-slave owns his labour-power. He is free to take it into the market and fight for the best price for it. The horse does not own his labour-power, hence it is he and not his labour-power who is the commodity. In this respect the chattel slave and the horse are alike, and the fact is reflected in the remarkably similar treatment accorded to both.

These things show, then, the folly of the argument that the struggle of the workers in the economic field for better conditions under capitalism is futile and superfluous because the economic laws determine what those conditions shall be. The laws of the exchange of the commodity labour-power are the laws of free competition. To formulate them is simply to indicate what will happen under given conditions, which in this case include a continual struggle on both the buyer’s part and the seller’s part.

The struggle, then, is presupposed. Therefore every means that strengthen the workers in that struggle are good in so far as they do so. Organisation, then, becomes necessary to the workers as a foil to that organisation among the capitalists which tends to disturb free competition and set up new conditions. What form shall the organisation take?

The critics who stand so much upon their theories without troubling to make sure that all the conditions necessary to their veracity are present when they apply them, says that organisation must be founded upon a revolutionary and class-conscious basis. Good.

But the same critic will inform us, out of the plenitude of his theories, that all institutions are based on economic conditions. At any rate, the need for combinations among the workers arose long before the knowledge of the working-class position so essential to class-consciousness became general. Indeed, the basis of the trade unions to-day is evidence amounting to almost proof that such knowledge is not wide-spread even now. The material, then, for a class-conscious trade union movement did not exist when the first unions were formed—it does not exist even to-day. In face of these facts how could it be expected that the trade unions could, or can at present, be based upon class-conscious principles?

There is this essential difference between the Socialist movement and the trade union movement: the former was called into being by the need for revolution—the latter was not. It must be recognised that the need for the workers to struggle for the best conditions under capitalism is as real as the need for revolution. In this struggle for the highest price for labour-power the trade unions did and do represent the highest form of weapon which it was or is possible to fashion with the material to hand. So far, then, they are good.

The strike, of course, is the force behind all trade union organisation. A trade union is a combination for the purpose of making it possible to collectively withhold labour-power. All the union’s operations are conditioned by the progress made in that direction. Therefore if trade unions are good the strike is good also—though least good, it is possible, when it passes from a standing menace to an active hostility.

Now our critic, who is fond of throwing words into high-sounding phrases and then risking his life for them, tells us that strikes are guerrilla warfare, and therefore are useless. But strikes and the menace of strikes are not guerrilla warfare. On the contrary, in certain circumstances and for the purpose they aim at—the resistance of capitalist encroachment—they are the last resort, the only form of warfare left open.

It is true the opponent of the Socialist attitude tries to play tricks with himself, tries to detach himself from all his human qualities and make himself the mere embodiment of an idea. He claims to view the struggle in the labour-market from “the Socialist standpoint”. The view from this elevation is, according to him, that anything which does not directly forward the emancipation of the working class does not concern him.

The possessor of this strange attitude of mind prides himself ostentatiously on having reached that high scientific pinnacle where he is quite beyond the reach of every activity, mental or otherwise, but the abstract idea—Socialism. “Scientifically and logically”, he argues, “to the Socialist, as a Socialist, nothing matters but Socialism”. If a man could stand as the mere receptacle of the one idea, Socialism, the logic of this position might (or might not) be conceded—but scientifically the position is unsound. For the scientist may not stop where the logician does: he has to ask what are the essentials of Socialism. The first essential he discovers is—a human race. Without humanity there can be no Socialism. Directly he admits this he discovers that, even as the frigidly pure, passionless, scientific exponent and advocate of Socialism the every day affairs of men do matter, for assuredly if any calamity threatened to blot Man out of the scheme of things, to obliterate one of the essentials of his scientific obsession, it would concern him.

Such an admission, of course, is fatal to the position that the Socialist, as such, is concerned with Socialism alone. For if he is under the necessity of being concerned, in the last analysis, with the existence of the material for his Socialist society, then he has to find reasons for drawing a line anywhere, in matters that affect the condition of that material.

Such reasons do not exist—he is on an inclined plane.

A. E. Jacomb

(To be continued.)

Link to Part 2

Home Rule in a Nutshell. (1911)

Book Review from the November 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Home Rule in a Nutshell, by J. MacVeagh, M.P., Price 3d.

It is significant for the members of the working class – in Ireland or elsewhere – that there is no direct mention or statement of their position and problems anywhere in this pamphlet. While as if to emphasise its concern for the chosen class we are told on page 3 that “the impulse of Nationality comes from higher than earthly powers”.

What a consolation to those who find themselves put to so many shifts in endeavouring to account for the shortcomings of Home Rule! All through the plea it is the owning section of the Irish race – whether agricultural or manufacturing – whose interests are considered and argued for on every page.

Perhaps this accounts for the short-sightedness of the author when he tells us, in italics, on page 6, that “The Act of Union has . . . crushed Irish trade and industries”, while on page 7 he says “so far back as the middle of the seventeenth century England began to legislate to destroy Irish industries . . . The great woollen industry was destroyed by an Act of the English Parliament”. And on page 8 we are told that “every industry to which Ireland turned was destroyed by England by the imposition of prohibitive duties or by the closing of ports”.

That fifty years elapsed between the middle of the seventeenth century and the Act of Union hardly seems a sufficient reason for saddling the actions of both periods with the same single result. How much the  Home Rule movement is a capitalist movement is shown when our author boasts that “Ireland gave generals and soldiers to fight for Great Britain in South Africa” (p. 18), and has given to the British Empire some of its greatest statesmen, generals, diplomats – men like Henry Grattan, Edmund Burke, O’Connell, Parnell, Govan Duffy, Duke of Wellington, Lord Roberts, Lord Kitchener” – all, be it noted, toadies and lickspittles of the English ruling class.

While reference is made to the famine of 1847, not a word is said regarding the fact that it was not lack of food that caused the dire calamity, but the selling of the foodstuff to pay rent to Irish, as well as English, landlords.

On page 60, however, the truth appears. “The United Irish League is a sort of Farmers’ Trade Union”, we are told. Exactly. Hence its opposition to the agricultural labourers’ attempts to improve their miserable position. And among the chief causes of the so-called improvement that has taken place in late years is given, “five years of Liberal administration”!

Two things, however, are done well in the brochure. One is the showing of the hopelessness of the physical force movement against England – a movement that unfortunately contains a large number of the working class in its ranks. The other is the exposure of the humbug of the self-styled loyalists of Ulster with their threat of civil war if a Home Rule Bill were passed.

The facts and figures given in the latter connection are the most valuable in the pamphlet.

Jack Fitzgerald

Woe to the Vanquished. (1911)

From the November 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Evidently the capitalist class were convinced of one thing by the railway men’s strike, and that is that under the present conciliation scheme the long, dreary delays in dealing— or pretending to deal —with matters in dispute gave a good excuse for a strike. Hence the appointment of the Royal Commission to investigate the workings of that scheme and to report changes with a view to the prompt and satisfactory settlement of differences, directly the men had been swindled over the strike and persuaded to return to work by their treacherous leaders.

This commission has, after examining a number of witnesses, issued its Report, and the most satisfactory result has been the derision and repudiation by numbers of the men of this document, signed though it is by Arthur Henderson, “Labour” M.P., as chief decoy duck for the Liberal party.

The examination of the witnesses threw a lurid light upon the work Mr. Henderson had in hand. Every witness from the men’s side was pressed by this sycophant to state or agree with some scheme that would keep the men from striking, no matter what conditions were in dispute or how long the “arbitration" was in reaching a settlement.

In summing up the evidence from the men’s side the report says :

  “Complaint is made that where advantages accrued to the men by the agreements arrived at by the Boards, or the awards of arbitrators, these advantages were counterbalanced, or altogether taken away by changes in the 'management.' The chief instances given are the reclassification of grades, the employment of men in a lower grade to discharge the duties of men in a higher grade, adjustment of hours of duty so that Sunday rates of wages and overtime are avoided, and, where hours of labour were shortened, the arrangement of hours of going on and coming off duty in a way that spread the period of duty over a greater number of hours.”

To this the employers replied that “the changes in matters of management which the men allege deprive them of the benefits granted by awards, were not carried out with that object.” (Italics ours.)

Here we see that it is not even attempted to deny the men’s statement, but only the motive for such actions.

Yet in spite of this the Commission says :

   “We think that with their great responsibilities the companies cannot, and should not be expected to, permit, any intervention between them and their men on the subjects of discipline and management."

No wonder their Report met with the derision of the men when the most vital questions are to be left entirely in the hands of the employers for settlement!

The suggested amendments to the 1907 Conciliation Scheme are worthy of notice.

The Central Boards are to be abolished. The Sectional Boards are to be retained. But the latter are to have a chairman selected from a panel to be constituted by the Board of Trade. If the Sectional Board does not agree upon a name from this panel, the Board of Trade selects one. His powers and decisions are peculiar. The Boards are to meet twice a year, but a special meeting may be asked for by either side to be held in fourteen days. Should a difference arise as to the date or necessity of holding such special meeting, the chairman’s decision settles the matter.

If the two sides of the Board fail to reach an agreement the chairman gives a decision!

   “Settlements arrived at by agreement between the two sides of a Conciliation Board shall have effect for at least twelve months." 

But —

    “Settlements by decision of the chairman of a Board shall have effect for at least two years.”

And as before, no meeting be held during August or September, except by mutual consent.

Here we see how the official representative of the capitalist class—the chairman—has enormous powers in ending any dispute that arises and so deprive the men of the old excuse of delays.

In all essentials the scheme will work more rapidly and strike its blows in greater number than before. The men have not yet gained a single essential point they did not possess before, while the companies’ interests are more rigidly safeguarded under the swifter moving machinery now available.

Jack Fitzgerald