Syndicalism, its cause and cure. (1912)

Book Review from the December 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

Syndicalism and the General Strike – by Arthur D. Lewis. (London; T. Fisher Unwin. Price 7s 6d)

As the only party in Great Britain that has taken up a definite and consistent attitude towards Anarchism in all its forms, it is meet that we should have something to say on the latest work on Syndicalism that has been published.

We have adopted a frankly hostile policy to this latest importation for the simple reason that we are a Socialist party. The sorry plight of those so-called Socialist bodies like the B. S. P. and the I. L. P. is a natural result of their lack of principles based on a correct knowledge of the position of our class. Inside the former body there is a heated controversy, both among the “leaders” and the rank and file, as to whether Syndicalism is the road for the workers to travel. The curious position of the I. L. P. is shown by their advocacy of the General Strike at the International Labour Congress as a weapon against war!

The cause of Syndicalism lies in the history of these and similar parties. In the Blatchford section they have literally bred Syndicalism by their disgusting election tricks, so often exposed in these pages. Their former members, now Syndicalists, point to the vote-hunting, compromising campaigns of Bethnal Green and Northampton, along with others, as showing the failure and danger of political action. The Independent Labour Party, too, has so treacherously played the part of advance agents of the Liberal party that from political opportunism their supporters right-about-turn to denounce political action altogether  — not that they understand Syndicalism any more than its leading votaries, but believing it to be anti-political, they seek shelter beneath its slogans and formulas.

Our statement of the cause of Syndicalism is supporter by the Syndicalist author of the book under review, who states (p. 187) that: –

“There are practically only one or two Syndicalists in England, but discontent with the degree of success obtained through the Parliamentary Labour Party has led to a general return to trade unionism and strikes as a means of fighting the employers . . . The belief that at least one member of the party bargains with the Liberal Government with a view to his personal advantage; the moderation of its words in Parliament compared with its words on the platform; the incapacity of many members of it, who are only dolls in the hands of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald; the acceptance by certain of its members of paid posts given by the Liberals; and its love of Puritanism, have all helped to cause a feeling of disappointment and disillusionment in many who once trusted and believed in it.”

That, then, is the cause of the spread of Syndicalism. It is clearly shown by this that Syndicalism thrives on ignorance. Only mis-educated, non Socialist workers would ever trust the Labour Party, would ever expect them to look after the toilers’ interests; and when the failure of their political inaction is realised, it is not the political method itself that has been found wanting, but it is the lack of sound knowledge on the workers’ part that is demonstrated. Because the political machine has been used in a capitalist direction the Syndicalist and his dupes proclaim the failure of politics!

The present book consists chiefly of quotations from the works of the Syndicalist leaders of to-day throughout Europe, and the author ventures his opinions very little. When he does so, he shows not only that he does not understand Syndicalism, but that he understands Socialism still less. In the preface he declares Socialism to mean that “huge State monopolies are to be formed in all industries, and that these will be controlled by a few very powerful officials at Westminster”.

This is typical of the misrepresentation that the Syndicalists feed their followers on. If Mr. Lewis would consult what he calls an “orthodox” Socialist, say Frederick Engels, he would find that Socialism rises upon the ashes of the State, for when Socialism comes the day of the State has closed for ever.

Though the title of the work is Syndicalism and the General Strike, only one chapter is devoted wholly to the latter question. The chief part deals with the theory of Syndicalism and Syndicalists.

Our author tells us that “the Syndicalist likes poor unions best — riches bring caution: he likes low weekly dues and small benefits”. Rather we would say, the average Syndicalist likes no dues and many benefits. We are promised much melodrama and but little organisation and education by his statement that: “The great weapon of the workers against their masters is disorder”. And one phase is described as “sabôtage or the destruction of property, intimidation of masters, sitting in factories with folded arms so no blacklegs can take your places, leaving work at an hour earlier than the masters want, telling the truth to customers: all these are means by which the masters can be made to yield”.

What they are to be made to yield by these means we are not told. But anyone can realise that while these things may prove aggravating to the isolated employer, and make him more bitter against the music-hall revolutionists, yet if this kind of thing was general, all the employers being on the same footing, they would feel its effects very little.

But to keep this conduct up the workers would need the power, not merely to personate George Washington, but to take control of the entire means of life; not to leave at an earlier hour than the masters desire, but to leave masters altogether. The crude notions of these folk are brought forward in the idea of “sitting with folded arms” while the masters want food, clothing, etc. for their daily needs. Sabotage, like all Syndicalist methods, is born of the want of sound knowledge and strong organisation.

Despite the fact that the author declares that the General Confederation of Labour in France “contains both a reformist and a revolutionary section”, and that the latter is “the minority of a minority of a minority — only some of the members of the C. G. T. being revolutionists and the C. G. T. itself only representing a minority of the unions” — despite that, however, the Anarchists miscalled revolutionists have a governing influence in the organisation, and have made its actions both comedies and tragedies.

They don’t believe in democracy. As the leading French Syndicalist, Émile Pouget, says in the work quoted — “The Syndicalist” — “Syndicalism and democracy are the two opposite poles which exclude and neutralise each other . . . This is because democracy is a social superfluity, a parasitic and external excrescence, while Syndicalism is a logical manifestation of the growth of life”, etc. Another French leader, M. Pierrot, is quoted as saying in “Syndicalism and Revolution” : “It is better to have an active group who know how to carry the masses and turn them in the right direction by their words and actions” . “The Syndicalist”, says our author “has contempt for the vulgar idea of democracy: the inert, unconscious mass is not to be taken into account when the minority wishes to act so as to benefit it”.

That is the key note. The ‘intellectual’ few are to dominate the many. Not democracy but autocracy and dictatorship. The day of  a revolution carried out on these lines would also be the day of counter-revolution, the day of disaster, of drilled, unthinking masses being driven to the New Jerusalem. The day of revolution would but be the prelude to the long, black night of apathy and despair.

 

The Socialist Party, however, clings fast to democracy in organisation and in action. It knows that the real, reliable movement can only be built up with an alert, awakened, interested working class. That alone can bring about emancipation — not a few leaders hypnotising an ignorant rank and file.

Syndicalism means but a change of leaders. As Gaylord Wilshire’s (the wealthy Syndicalist) magazine declares (November 1912): “The new movement calls for new leaders”. And again: “The new conditions must bring forth a new type of leader, powerful, inspiring, and heroic”. Leadership, not a live membership doing their own work in their own way, that is the ideal. Mr. Lewis points out that unions with small funds are wanted, for, says he, “where funds are large the workers are made to vote for or against a strike”, thus showing that the Syndicalist objects to the will of the worker being expressed and acted upon.

“Syndicalism has an immediate programme. It would have the unions look to it that there are meeting places for working men, where there will be lectures, baths, and all that helps them to learn how to take control of production and consumption; also the officials, with professional help, should get for the workers their legal rights and place medical and legal advice at their disposal.”

So anxious are they about reforms that they even worry about legal rights. Fancy hungering after the rights conferred by lawyers and by Parliament! But it is not surprising, for above all else the Syndicalists are reformers. Without economic knowledge or political insight, what else could they be? The English Syndicalist, Mr. Tom Mann declares (“A Twofold Warning”) that poverty can be abolished under capitalism, and he also says: “I contend that reducing the working hours provides a solution for the problem of unemployment, and it matters not what system obtains”. With this rot they make converts among the ignorant, yet any tyro in economics could prove to him that the reserve army of labour is the corner-stone of capitalism, and that the shortening of hours doesn’t mean the lessening of the product of the same number of men. The Chief Inspector of Mines just reports that in spite of the Eight Hours Day Bill, and the strikes last year, over seven million tons more coal were produced than in 1912, and on the average every miner’s output increased three tons. This is typical of the whole industrial world.

Syndicalists claim great things for their strikes and sabotage. Something now! “The use of trade union labels is regarded as an instance of direct action”. The free advertisement of particular employers! Further we are told that by sabotage “bread has been made inedible but not injurious” — a kind of general “hunger strike” forced upon the working class.

But the sad story of Spanish, French and Italian strikes and sabotage has somewhat dimmed the picture. Yvetot, the chief of the C. G. T., in his ABC of Syndicalism, confesses that “the principle obstacle to a revolution is the army . . . When the Government does not use the army to replace strikers, it makes soldiers into massacrers of workmen”. What, then, is the use of the General Strike? What can it do against the army? As Yvetot says, the army massacres the strikers. In Italy, we are told (p. 104): “A general strike of railway workers was attempted in 1905 as a protest against a new attempt to introduce the (strike smashing) law; it failed and the law was passed. Men were shot down by the soldiers in 1907 and there was a renewal of a wide-spread strike. The strikers were defeated, and it was said that 20,000 men, or one third of all the men on the railways, were punished, either by imprisonment, discharge from the service, fines, or degradation of rank.”

Arturo Labriola, the leading Italian Syndicalist, shows the similarity between Syndicalism and capitalism. He says: “You can imagine that a Syndicat for a certain trade could contain all the workers in a single branch of industry, could contract on uniform conditions with all the capitalists on behalf of these workers, and would form a kind of common treasury of all the profits, to be distributed according to a rule of exalted justice to all its members  . . . This process could go further. It can be imagined that at a certain point of its development the workers’ union might hire the capital of the capitalists for a fixed return and then use it co-operatively, either working in one mass or constructing so many separate co-operative bodies each having separate and distinct accounts.”

And he goes on: “Syndicates, as organisms opposed to monopoly, and therefore open to all, would enthusiastically receive the capitalists of yesterday become the companions of to-day, and would make use of their indisputable directive and administrative ability.”

Before leaving the General Strike theory it is useful to note the words of Mr. Ben Tillett, quoted in the book. Speaking after the 1911 Transport strike was over he said (Glasgow, 11.2.12): “A  week before the strike a Cabinet Minister pleaded with me in a tearful voice to stop the strike. Of course, this pleading was unheeded until the men got what they wanted”.

Yet within six months of that speech the transport workers were fighting fir the very demands they had “won” the year before! And what a cruel comment was the suffering of that historic defeat on the “efficacy of the strike” idea!

The general strike of miners and other strikes in England bring home the lessons of the Socialist. Whilst the strike, local or industrial, may effect improvement for the time, slavery remains. Whilst the threat of a general strike may induce concessions, it cannot bring a solution. The best results of economic unity can only be effected by class-conscious toilers who recognise the need for class action, class union, for working class ends; who realise that, as the road to emancipation lies in control of political power, political action is a vital necessity.

The cure for Syndicalism is education in the Socialist principles and policy. There is no substitute for a Socialist working class seeking its salvation through the political struggle. When the toilers understand Socialism they will have no room in their minds for the sophisms and fallacies of Syndicalism.

Adolph Kohn

Syndicalism: its origins and weaknesses (1986)

From the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Eighty years ago this month the main French trade union confederation of the time adopted at its Congress in Amiens a Charter which, spreading far beyond France, became the doctrinal basis of a theory of unionism and revolution known as “syndicalism” (this is in fact merely the ordinary French word for trade unionism, so in France this doctrine is known as “revolutionary syndicalism “). As this doctrine has played an important historical role in working class thinking and organisation, we mark this event by publishing below an English version of the chapter on trade unionism that appeared in the pamphlet Pour le Socialisme Mondial (“For World Socialism”) put out in French by the world socialist movement in 1981 and which reproduced the Charter in full as well as giving a socialist assessment of it.

Associations of workers of the same trade have existed since the Middle Ages but only became organisations of wage earners to negotiate wage rates and conditions of work with employers in the middle of the 19th century. Up till then these associations had been mainly mutual aid societies, but even these had been banned by the Le Chapelier Law of 1791 which was later incorporated into the Napoleonic Code. Workers’ associations nevertheless continued to exist. It was not until 1864 that they were permitted to come out into the open and not until 1884 that they were fully legalised.

In the 1860s the main workers’ organisation in France was the “Association Internationale des Travailleurs” (International Working Men’s Association) which had been founded in 1864 by French and British workers. Although Karl Marx played a prominent role in its activities the IWMA was not a socialist organisation but was mainly concerned with organising trade unions and supporting strikes. It did, however, introduce some socialist ideas to French workers. Thus in 1869 we find a federation of workers’ organisations in Paris proclaiming as its final aim “the total emancipation of the workers in a new social order where the wages system will be abolished” and in 1870 Leo Frankel declaring (not quite accurately) during a trial of some French members of the IWMA that “the international association does not have as its aim an increase in the wage of workers, but indeed the abolition of the wages system”. This demand for “the abolition of the wages system” had first been raised by the British Chartists in the 1830s and 1840s and had been taken up by Marx in an address he gave to the General Council of the IWMA in 1865 (published after his death as a pamphlet entitled Value, Price and Profit which we strongly recommend for an understanding of trade unionism, its uses and limitations). It was to become a prominent slogan of French trade unionism in the period up till the First World War, after the working class movement had recovered from the setback represented by the bloody suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871.

In 1895 various trade unions and other workers’ organisations joined together to form a “Confédération générale du travail” (General Confederation of Labour) which in 1902 declared its objective to be “the disappearance of the wages system and employers”. In 1906 the CGT adopted at its congress in Amiens a new programme. In view of its historical importance we reproduce (in a contemporary translation) this “Charte d’Amiens” in full:

“The General Confederation of Labour unites, independent of all political groupings, all workers who recognise the struggle to be carried on for the abolition of the wages system [. . .]

Congress considers this declaration to be a recognition of the class struggle which, on the economic field, places the workers in revolt against all forms of exploitation and oppression, material and moral, carried out by the capitalist class against the working class.

      Congress makes this theoretical affirmation more precise by the following points:

Regarding day-to-day needs. Trade Unionism pursues the co-ordination of the efforts of the workers, the increase of the workers’ welfare through the realisation of immediate amelioration, such as the shortening of working hours, wage increases, etc.

But this is only one aspect of its task. Trade Unionism is preparing complete emancipation which can only be realised by the expropriation of the capitalist class. It favours as a means to this end the general strike and considers that the trade union, now a unit of resistance, will in the future be the unit of production and distribution, the basis of social organisation.

Congress declares that this two-fold task, for day-to-day life and for the future, arises from the actual position of wage-earners, which forces the working class and imposes on all workers, whatever their opinion and political and philosophical views, the duty to belong to the basic organisation, the trade union. Therefore, so far as individual members are concerned, Congress declares complete freedom for every Trade Unionist to participate, outside of the trade organisation, in any forms of struggle in accordance with his political or philosophical views, confining itself only to asking him, in return, not to introduce into the trade union the opinions which he professes outside it.

In so far as organisations are concerned, Congress decides that in order that Trade Unionism may obtain utmost effectiveness, economic action should be exercised directly against the employing class and that the Confederal organisations should not, as trade unions, pay any attention to parties or sects which, outside or alongside, may pursue completely independently the transformation of society.”

The doctrine here expounded became a current in the working class movement that has become known as “syndicalism”. Only some of the leaders of the CGT accepted this doctrine and regarded the trade unions and the general strike as the means to overthrow capitalist rule and establish a new society. The bulk of the members were interested only in “day to day needs”, though they were sometimes prepared to support revolutionary phrases as a means of frightening employers into conceding higher wages or better conditions.

The Charter was not as anti-political as it has sometimes been claimed to be. It does not proclaim the incompatibility of trade union and political action, but only that political divisions should not be introduced into the trade unions. This was sensible, since to be effective in their role of bringing pressure to bear on employers over wages and working conditions trade unions need to organise as many workers as possible, irrespective of their political or philosophical views. They are, and must be, composed of workers of all views. To introduce political views (including the anti-politicaI views of the anarchists) is to risk division, so weakening the union in the face of the employers. In recognising this the Charter of Amiens adopted a sound position (one which is unfortunately not always remembered today).

Trade unions arise out of the wage-relation that is at the basis of capitalism. Capitalist society is divided into two classes: the capitalist class who own and control the means of production and the working class who, excluded from such ownership and control, are forced to sell their mental and physical energies in order to live. The wage which workers receive is the price of their labour-power and the price of this commodity fluctuates, like that of all commodities, around its value as determined by the amount of socially-necessary labour incorporated in it. If competition between workers for jobs was unrestricted then wages would tend to fall below the value of labour-power, as often happened in the 19th century before effective trade unions existed. Combining together in trade unions to exert collective pressure on employers is a way workers can prevent their wages falling below the value of their labour-power. Put another way, it is a way of ensuring that they are paid the full value of what they have to sell. This is the usefulness of trade unions to the working class but they can do no more than this. They cannot substantially increase the living standards of their members under capitalism but they can ensure that wages are not reduced below the subsistence level.

Trade unions, then, are defensive organisations of the working class which, in order to be effective, must recruit all workers, on the basis merely that they work for wages in a particular industry or trade and not on the basis of their political or philosophical views. This means that they are not, and cannot be, revolutionary organisations since they will be composed of non-socialists as well as of socialists. In fact at the present time, when the working class does not yet want and understand socialism, the overwhelming majority of trade unionists will inevitably be non-socialist and hence non-revolutionary. This was so before the First World War too. This was why it was absurd to expect, as did the syndicalists, the trade unions to act in a revolutionary way for this was to expect non-revolutionaries to behave as revolutionaries.

To end capitalism the great majority of workers must have first come to want and understand this change since the new socialist society which will be established in place of capitalism can only function with the conscious and active participation of its members—something the syndicalists did not accept. They imagined that they, as a conscious minority, could lead the discontented mass of workers in a general strike against capitalism. This would inevitably have been defeated with many workers being killed, especially as the anti-political stand of the syndicalists meant that the state, which controls the means of coercion, was to be left in the hands of a government representing the capitalist class.

Although the sincerity of the syndicalists’ desire to end capitalism cannot be questioned, their understanding of the future society to replace it can be. In suggesting that society should be organised on the basis of trade unions—“the trade union [. . .] will in the future be the unit of production and distribution, the basis of social organisation”—the syndicalists were merely projecting into socialism the industrial and professional divisions of workers which exist under capitalism. Since socialism is based on the social ownership (= ownership by society) of the means of production, the trade union ownership proposed by the syndicalists was not socialism at all but a modified form of sectional ownership.

The First World War revealed that not only were the bulk of CGT members not revolutionary but that they were patriotic. From this time on began a process of collaboration with and integration into the state by the trade unions which continues to this day, with the unions represented on many governmental institutions at national and local level and receiving subsidies from the state for certain of their activities. Trade unionism, in other words, has dropped its pretence at being revolutionary, though the present CGT did not eliminate its paper commitment to “the disappearance of the wages system and of employers” till 1969. This has led some to argue that as the trade unions are no longer revolutionary they should not be supported by those who want social revolution, but should on the contrary be opposed. This is not a fair criticism nor a valid conclusion.

The trade unions are essentially defensive organisations with the limited role of protecting wages and working conditions and it is by this criterion that their effectiveness or otherwise ought to be judged. By this standard, although they make many serious mistakes (disunity and rivalry, collaboration with the state and with political parties), by and large the existing trade unions do succeed in protecting wage rates and working conditions against what Marx called “the never-ceasing encroachments of capital”. Our members do join the existing trade unions and work within them to defend wages and conditions. We do not criticise the unions for not being revolutionary, but we do severely criticise them when they depart from the principle of an antagonism of interests between workers and employers; when they collaborate with employers, the state or political parties; when they put the corporate interests of a particular section of workers above that of the general interest of the working class as a whole.

But even if the unions made no mistakes of this sort, what they can achieve for the working class under capitalism is very limited. They can—and do—enable workers to get the full value of their labour-power, but they cannot stop the exploitation of the working class. This exploitation is inherent in the wages system and can only be abolished along with it through the conversion of the means of production into common ownership under the democratic control of the whole community. But this requires political action based on socialist understanding by a socialist political party for which the trade unions, with their limited defensive role, can never be a substitute.

Adam Buick

Correspondence: Next one please. (1915)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

To The Editor.

The S.LP. of A., in dealing with the criticism of A. E. J. in the “Weekly People” dated the 6th of March. They say: Pure and simple politics fail and always will fail the workers because they fail to attend to the one Source of Power which the workers possess, the economic power, that is, that power which the workers daily have in their hands when they are in the workshops—the power over industry.

A. E. J., in the “S.S.,” April issue, in the course of his remarks on the above criticism says: The idea that the workers have power over industry is exquisite foolery. What conceivable force gives them any such power, etc. In your July issue you tell the workers to use its supreme economic power for the liberation of human kind from wage slavery. Is that not a contradiction of A. E. J.’s remarks which you have endorsed by the fact that you gave publication to. What is economic power ?

Yours truly,

T. W. Creswick, 

Kennington, S.E.

———————————–

If Mr. Creswick had given the matter a moment’s thought he would have saved himself the labour of writing. The contradiction only exists in his own mind.

We may take the definition given in his own letter. That definition is narrow, but it will suffice. Economic power is power over industry. It is, as stated by A. E. J., exquisite foolery to say that the workers have this power in their hands when they are in the workshops. It is as absurd as it would be to say that the slave who lugged laboriously at an oar in a Roman galley under the lash of the slave driver had economic power in his hands. The differences between the chattel-slave and the wage-slave in this respect are due to the political rights of the latter, which are in turn the outcome of economic necessity.

In the leading article of the July “S.S.” the statement occurs, referred to by our correspondent, of the need for the working class to “become masters of the State, and use the supreme economic power for the liberation of human kind from wage-slavery.” This, of course, is the very reason we are a political party. It is because the State has supreme “power over industry.” The article in question showed how the State was rapidly becoming more and more the direct exploiter of industrial undertakings. The political State, with its armed forces and machinery of government, is ever more obviously the supreme “power over industry” that must be captured by the working class. Until the workers control it, they are themselves controlled by it both economically and politically, that is to say, both by government and by private capitalists.

The essential difference, therefore, between economic power and political power, in this connection, is that the political power is the supreme economic power. Individual capitalists only wield economic power by virtue of their political control of the State, which guarantees, enforces, limits or extends their economic power.

This simple fact, that the political State is the supreme economic power, is always overlooked by Syndicalists. It enforces the need for political action above all, as the coordinate and culmination of the organised wages struggle ; and it shows how entirely correct was A. E. J. in his stricture upon the S.L.P. of A.

Ed. Com.

The Dublin lockout of 1913 (2002)

Book Review from the February 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Dublin lockout is an important part of working class history, but there are few accessible sources of information. We review a new book which puts this right

Perhaps only those who have taken a particular interest in the history of the workers’ movement in Britain will have heard of the Dublin lockout of 1913 and then maybe will only know what happened in general terms, for instance that the workers’ leader was called Larkin and that mobs led by Catholic priests prevented workers sending their children to the rest of Britain for the duration of the dispute. Up to now the most accessible source of information about it has been James Plunkett’s 1969 novel Strumpet City but that was a novel. Now Irish Times journalist Padraig Yeates has produced a 600-page account, based on original contemporary sources, called simply Lockout: Dublin 1913 (Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 19.04 euro). It is an important contribution to working class history, especially as the events in Dublin in 1913 and 1914 raise general issues concerning trade unionism, nationalism, and the role of religion.

Ireland in 1913 was in the midst of yet another Home Rule crisis. A Liberal government was trying for a third time to bring in Home Rule for Ireland in the form of a parliament which would have certain powers within the United Kingdom and the British Empire. The Unionists in Ulster, supported and egged on by the Tory opposition, were mobilising to resist coming under the control of a Home Rule parliament in Dublin.

One revealing aspect of Yeates’s book is how the socialist analysis of the Irish Home Rule crises has now become the standard view. We have always attributed the conflict in Ireland between Nationalists and Unionists to a split between two sections of the capitalist class there whose vital interests differred: the developed industrial capitalists of the North who were an integral part of the overall British capitalist class and who wanted to remain a full part of the UK so as to have continued free access to the markets of Britain and its Empire, and the fledgling capitalists of the rest of Ireland who wanted protection from the competition of British products behind a tariff wall. To win popular support for their respective positions the Northern capitalists played the Orange card while the other side played the Catholic card. Hence what was essentially a split in the capitalist class in Ireland appeared as a religious conflict between protestants and catholics.

Yeates takes this for granted and accepts that Irish nationalism was essentially the nationalism of the rising Catholic “middle class” (in the 19th century sense of small business and professional people). One of these was the leading Irish businessman, William Martin Murphy, who was a central figure in the Dublin lockout. The chairman of the company that ran the Dublin trams and owner of the Irish Independent, the Sunday Independent and the Evening Herald, he had been an Irish Party MP on the anti-Parnellite wing, i.e., the wing that was particularly influenced by the Catholic Church which had enjoined the Irish Party MPs to disown Parnell because on his affair with a married woman.

Murphy, Yeates tells us, “saw home rule less as an opportunity to seize the levers of state power and patronage than as a chance to develop Irish industry. His increasing criticism of Redmond’s leadership of the Irish Party had less to do with the fact that Redmond had been a Parnellite than with his inability to gain greater fiscal powers from the Liberals for the proposed home rule parliament” (pp. 4-5).

However, it was not in his capacity as a Nationalist politician that Murphy has earned his notoriety in British and Irish working-class history. It was as the leader of the Dublin employers (most of the bigger ones in fact were not Nationalists but protestants and Unionists). But it did show that workers in Ireland could expect no charge in their condition from a Home Rule – or even an independent – government.

Syndicalism

The whole affair started in July when James Larkin, leader of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (and he was a leader with followers, even if he could still be described as a working-class fighter), decided to organise the Dublin tramway workers. Murphy replied by sacking members of the union. The union then got its other members to black the Dublin tram company. It also organised a big protest demonstration in the centre of Dublin on 31 August, which the government banned and which turned into a police riot in which many passers-by were beaten up – yet another bloody Sunday. Murphy’s next move was to get the Dublin employers to agree to require their workers to sign a form stating that they would have nothing to do with the ITGWU; those who refused were sacked, in effect locked out.

Larkin was what was called at the time a “syndicalist”, which meant someone who believed that the way forward for workers was combined industrial action on the basis of “an injury to one is an injury to all”. In practice it meant that other workers – ideally, all other workers – should take action in support of any group of workers on strike by blacking goods produced by or supplied to their employers – the “sympathetic strike”.

People who call themselves syndicalists today tend to be doctrinaire anarcho-syndicalists who repudiate any form of political action and rely on strikes only, including one big final general strike to overthrow capitalism. Larkin and the others were not so doctrinaire; in fact Larkin himself had been elected as a Labour councillor to Dublin City Council in 1910 (but had been disqualified because of a previous criminal conviction). Their position was well summed up by Tom Mann, the most prominent English syndicalist of the time (and former member of the Socialist League and future member of the Communist Party) in a speech he gave to the locked-out workers in Dublin on 27 January 1914, as written up by Yeates quoting a contemporary report:

“‘trades unionism is syndicalism’. His object was ‘to combine all workers in each industry, to raise them all nationally and internationally, so as to take over control of the whole economic system.’ In that way the proletariat ‘could fix the number of working days, the abolition of employers, capitalists and government–which latter is only a functionary of the employers.’ The ‘ideal of the co-operative commonwealth will be realised'” (p. 531).

This was all very well in theory but to be effective it would require a very high degree of class consciousness, so high in fact that, if it existed, workers would be in a position to take direct political action to end capitalism. The syndicalists, however, advocated the use of this tactic by workers who were not fully class-conscious, i. e., not socialist-minded and who still thought in sectional rather than class terms, and while leaving the state in the hands of the representatives of the capitalist class. Another factor working against its success was that under capitalism the employers always have the whiphand. If they so choose they can, because they own so much wealth, always break any strike by starving the workers back to work. This was in fact the choice of the Dublin employers in 1913. Murphy had already insolently, but unfortunately pertinently, reminded his workers of this when he addressed them in July right at the beginning of the dispute:

“Murphy told the tramway men that the company’s shareholders ‘will have three meals a day’, whether the strike succeeded or not. ‘I don’t know if the men who go out can count on this'” (p. 7).

Faced with this tactic by the employers of trying to starve into submission the workers in the ITGWU and those in other unions that had taken action to support them, a sympathetic strike by British transport workers (seamen, railwaymen, dockers) was one option. This was what Larkin favoured. Another option was to enable the workers to hold out longer by providing them with food and/or money. This was the option the TUC chose, and unions and union members contributed considerable amounts of food (carried to Dublin in specially freighted ships) and money. Yeates estimates this at the equivalent today of 10 million Irish pounds (12.5 million euro or £8 million sterling), an impressive display of working-class solidarity, and it did allow the workers to hold out until the end of January 1914.

The Catholic Church

Another initiative in this sense, not from the TUC but from individuals sympathetic to the Dublin workers, was to lodge Dublin workers’ children with sympathisers in England and Scotland while the dispute lasted. This seemed a reasonable tactic, but when they heard of it the Catholic Church went ape. The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr William Walsh (who was an Irish Nationalist and had also been one of those who had instigated the campaign to topple Parnell) immediately issued a statement condemning this as a danger to the children’s souls. This was the green light for the most outrageous actions by his priests. Screaming mobs led by priests stopped the children going. The Irish Catholic wrote about protecting “the children whom degraded and dissolute parents would fain surrender to Socialism or to any other Satanic influence” (p. 321).

One of the few to denounce the Catholic Church’s stance on this issue was the poet W. B. Yeats who declared at a public meeting “some day we will have to reckon with those who have fomented fanaticism in Dublin to break up the organisation of the workers” (p. 297).

Both Larkin and James Connolly, the IGTWU’s Belfast organiser who had been called to Dublin to help, were practising Catholics who claimed, contrary to all the evidence, that Socialism and Catholicism were not incompatible. Yeates quotes from a sermon given on 12 September by Father John Condon, a leading Dublin theologian of the time, which raises the intriguing question of what Larkin and Connolly were told when they went to confession:

“I have to tell you, beloved brethren, that the word Socialism connotes a body of doctrine which no Catholic who values his faith can accept; and I say further, that the Catholic who, with his eyes open, gives his sympathy and support to the methods and aims of Socialism is a recreant to his creed” (p. 157).

Archbishop Walsh, addressing a meeting of the St Vincent de Paul Society on 27 October, took up an even worse position preaching that only faith in God providing a better life in heaven could make the poor happy (“pie in the sky when you die”), a reminder of one important reason why socialists oppose religion:

“he dismissed outright the belief of Larkin and his fellow-socialists that the poor could save themselves by some form of social revolution. He believed that happiness was possible in this urban hell only for those willing to accept their lot; ‘holidays’ in England would make the attainment of that spiritual goal far more difficult” (p. 313).

Larkin, to give him his due, told the priests not to interfere. Connolly, too, had replied, in his pamphlet Labour, Nationality and Religion, to an attack on socialism by a Jesuit priest, Father Kane, in his 1910 “Lenten Discourses”. Father Kane, incidentally, had evidently read some SPGB publication as Connolly quotes him as saying at one point: “Now, as to the Socialist system. In the official declaration of the English Socialists we read – the object of Socialism is ‘the establishment of a system of society, based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by, and in the interests of the whole community'”.

The Irish Nationalists

The Irish Nationalists and Home Rulers were no more favourable to the workers. Some denounced the aid given by the TUC as “English charity” and even hinted that it was intended to further disadvantage Irish industry by raising wages so as to make it less competitive with English industry. One of these was Arthur Griffith, the narrow-minded founding member and theoretician of Sinn Fein, who, records Yeates, felt that “British trade unionists were exploiting the lockout to undermine Irish business” (p. 353). He also attacked in article in Sinn Fein on 25 October the view that “Capitalism not England is the enemy” by claiming:

“Not Capitalism, but the abuse of Capitalism oppresses Labour . . . Not in the destruction of the Capitalist, but in his subjection to the law of the State, interpreting the conscience and the interests of the Nation, will Labour be delivered from its oppression and restored to all its rights. I affirm that the evils of the social system, as they exist in this country and in Great Britain, are wholly due to English policy and Government . . .” (p. 354).

Fellow narrow nationalist and later Irish Republican hero and martyr, Patrick Pearse, took up a similar position, stating that he believed that “the root of the matter [dire and desperate poverty] lies in foreign domination” (p. 221).

In fact, there weren’t many who were actually saying (correctly) that “Capitalism not England is the enemy”. Connolly, who by now was well on the way to becoming a physical force republican (and, like Pearse, a future republican hero and martyr), argued in effect that “Capitalism and England are the enemy”. Larkin wouldn’t have disagreed but his approach was more down-to-earth: “Home Rule does not put a loaf in anybody’s pocket” (p. 181); Redmond (leader of the Irish Party) and Carson (leader of the Ulster Unionists) were “both simply the mouthpieces of the capitalist class” (p. 254); “Home rule would ‘clear the decks for the workers'” (p. 272).

That’s about all it did. In 1921 Ireland – or 26 of its 32 counties – did get an independence of sorts but capitalism remained—and so, as predicted by socialists, did its problems. The facts themselves – the continuing dire and desperate poverty, unemployment, emigration, slums, and ill-health – were to confirm that it was indeed not “English rule” or “foreign domination”, but capitalism, that had been the cause of the problems the workers in Ireland had had to face in 1913, 1914 and before.

The sympathetic strike – or rather the resistance to the lockout – ended in failure at the end of January in face of the intransigence of the employers and after the TUC had decided it could no longer afford to continue sending food and money. Larkin advised his members to go back while still refusing to sign the anti-union form. The employers took most but by no means all of them back but didn’t insist they sign the form.

Larkin blamed the TUC for not having called a general sympathetic strike of transport workers in Britain. Maybe this would have made the employers bend a little, by perhaps getting them to offer a “no victimisation” clause, i. e., the restoration of the status quo before the dispute. Which could hardly be called a victory. Basically, however, the reason for the failure was that the “syndicalist” tactic wasn’t as effective as its advocates imagined.

Adam Buick

Socialism and Industrial Organisation (1932)

From the May 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

A reader asks : 

“What is the attitude of the S.P.G.B. to the industrial organisations of the workers. All the other parties claiming to represent the interests of the workers have always had some policy in this matter. The S.P.G.B. appears to lack one. The I.L.P. support the Trade Unions, the Communists back the Minority Movement, the S.L.P. advocated Industrial Unionism, and the B.S.P. favoured certain forms of syndicalism. Where does the S.P.G.B. Stand ?”

Towards the end of last century the work that had been done in placing the workers’ slave position in a clearer light and inducing them to organise on this basis was diverted by trade-union leaders into narrow trade-union channels, and the political parties that arose, such as the S.D.F. and I.L.P. felt compelled to pander to this side in order to attract membership.

When the Industrial Unionist movement first came into existence its appeal on the surface appeared to be so strong that the established parties anticipated that it would sweep the board. Consequently they modified their policy to prevent the feared landslide in membership and to attract more members by appealing directly on the ground of helping the workers in their immediate demands.

The ideas of syndicalists are a survival from conditions in the early days of the capitalist system before improved means of transport and communication and the extension of the franchise had made it possible for a class organisation of the workers to be established. Such ideas arose in countries where capitalism was still immature and where the ranks of the factory workers were still being recruited from among the small producers, i.e., peasants and handicraftsmen. These people carry their old ideas of property relations with them into the new conditions of life. They were accustomed to owning their instruments of production, small plots of land, small workshops and simple tools, either as individuals or as small groups, and when brought into contact with capitalist exploitation they readily adopted the idea that the factory should belong to the group working in it.

At the same time the State appears to these people as a power apart which must be overthrown, but which they cannot hope to control.

In England the developments of international commercial and financial relations have long ago shown such ideas to be obsolete. The mass of the workers have accepted the notion that they cannot do without capital, and that, therefore, the workers in any particular factory are dependent (through the capitalists) upon the rest of the workers in capitalist society. The wage contract hides from them the fact that the capitalists are a parasitical class.

The struggle between the industrial workers and their employers takes, therefore, the form of collective bargaining which requires organisation of a wider scope than that of a factory group. Hence we have Trade Unions accepting the capitalist system of production and trying to obtain for their members the full market price of their labour-power. Socialists organised in the S.P.G.B. recognise that these efforts are necessary under capitalism, but we also recognise that the establishment of adult suffrage provided the workers with a weapon with which they can end capitalism. We regard Trade Unions as insufficient in any case and, in so far as they are composed of non-Socialists, their actions are frequently found to be reactionary, both upon the industrial and the political fields. We do not, however, regard this as a reason for advocating and supporting policies which prove upon examination to be even more reactionary.

Policies which encourage the workers in different industries to entertain the idea that they have interests distinct from those of other sections of the workers, or that incite them to attempt to defy the forces of the State, only result in the weakening of their existing organisations and delay the time when they will organise as a class. Actual history demonstrates that the Trade Unions are superior to alleged alternative forms of organisation as a means of dealing with capitalist conditions, and that in spite of their weaknesses the former survive where the latter are either absorbed or entirely disappear.

Our critic mentions the S.L.P. Its attempts to found an industrial union in this country were a complete failure, and the same may be said of the syndicalist movement with which certain members of the B.S.P., such as Tom Mann, were associated. Towards the latter end of the War, however, leaders of these bodies acquired temporary prominence through their association with the shop stewards and factory committees movement. The comb-out for military needs placed a premium upon skilled workers, and as the employing concerns were making abnormal profits, minor concessions were made to keep the industries working smoothly. An illusory “Workers’ control” became the slogan of the day, misleading many into believing that their emancipation was at hand.

The termination of the War reversed these conditions. The return of millions of workers from the army coupled with the shutting down of munition works and other sources of military supplies, weighted the scale more heavily in favour of the employers in relation to their employees. Leaders of factory committees became leaders of the unemployed, and began to turn their attention from specifically industrial matters to political agitation.

The S.L.P. and B.S.P. went to pieces, and from the confusion arose the Communist Party. The tactics of this body have varied from support of men like A. J. Cook in 1928 (with his policy of nationalisation) to the support of breakaway leaders, such as Allan, of the United Mineworkers of Scotland. Futility has invariably been the outcome and the leaders of the Minority Movement have frequently confessed their failure. (See Daily Worker, Jan. 25th.)

It is instructive to turn to the history of similar movements in other countries. In his “Works Councils in Germany,” Mr. C. W. Guillebaud gives an interesting and detailed account of post-war industrial movements in that country. While the end of hostilities produced somewhat similar results there as in Britain, there was a difference which became more marked as time went on. The German industrial capitalists had to turn from the supply of war materials to the indemnifying of the Allied Powers, which involved a considerable maintenance of production. It was deemed expedient, therefore, to give to the factory committees or works councils a definite legal standing, which, combined with other minor concessions, secured what the masters wanted, i.e., a certain measure of industrial peace. As the author puts it :—

“In 1922 and, indeed, throughout the first four years after the War the councils were often able to extract concessions from the employers by virtue of their bargaining strength and that of organised labour in general. Prices were rising continuously, trade was brisk, and while a strike meant a considerable sacrifice of profits the inflationary process lessened the importance of elements of cost which would have bulked much larger in the eyes of the employers in a period of industrial depression.” (pp. 97-8.)

The boom collapsed towards the end of 1923. The number of those in receipt of unemployment benefit rose from a quarter of a million in September to a million and-a-half in February, 1921 (p. 108). The effect of this upon the position of the workers can be readily guessed.

“(It) placed the employers in a position of unqualified strength within the factory and business undertaking. The Works Councils found themselves forced to remain strictly on the defensive, and became, in fact, more concerned with the question whether they themselves would join the unemployed and have to subsist on the mere pittance given in the form of unemployment benefit, than with the stalwart upholding of their rights and privileges.” (pp. 109, 110.)

Thus the factory committees came up against the same economic forces which placed severe limits upon the activities of trades unions. So far from supplanting these bodies, the works councils were absorbed by degrees in the general movement. Still more striking is the evidence provided by Mr. Maurice Dobb concerning the fate of the factory committee movement in Russia. Describing the situation during the few months prior to the Bolshevik seizure of power, he says :—

“Already under Kerensky factory committees had been given certain powers, and in some cases had assumed or tried to assume more powers than they were actually given so that the industrialists were loudly clamouring for the suppression of the committees within reasonable bounds and the restoration of workshop discipline. Cases of actual seizure of factories were not unknown, though still exceptional ; but quite considerable interference with the management was more general and seems to have been prompted in most cases by the desire of the workers to prevent the closing down of the work and their own dismissal.” (Russian Economic Developments, p. 35.)

For tactical reasons the Bolsheviks supported this movement, but their assumption of power in 1917 led to a conflict between them and the factory committees, in which the latter eventually got the worst of it. As Dobb puts it :—

“After the taking of the political key positions in October, the question of factory committees and workers’ control was still regarded from a tactical standpoint. . . . Industry still remained predominantly under the command of the capitalist, and an extensive system of workers’ control, backed by the political influence of the new Bolshevik State, was regarded as the best way of ensuring that the continued rule of the capitalist in the industrial sphere should be no more than that of a limited monarch.” (p. 38.)

The Bolsheviks were in no position to dispossess the capitalists entirely and establish Socialism. Hence they soon found themselves under the necessity of supporting them against the factory committees.

“What the new government principally feared was that the owners of the factories would bring pressure to bear by closing the factories and locking out the workers. These fears considerably influenced the Decree on Workers’ Control of November 14th, 1917.”

Whilst this gave the committees the right to inspect accounts and maintain discipline,

“Article 7 reserved to the proprietor the sole executive right of giving orders as to the running of the concern, and expressly forbade the factory committees to interfere.” (p. 39.)

The development of the civil war made centralised control of immediate importance to the new State. Thus we read that :—

“In cases of essential industries Vesenha (Supreme Economic Council) elaborated plans of organisation and itself sent officials from the centre to cajole or override the factory committees, conciliate the technical staffs and start production again upon some more satisfactory basis. At the same time the anarchism of the factory committees themselves was curbed by merging them with the trades unions. . . . Trade union influence could now be exercised to secure a uniform policy and observance of government orders and decrees on the part of the factory committees.” (p. 46.)

So that in the very country where it reached the peak of its development, the movement for “workers’ control” eventually became merely a means for securing the survival and smoother running of capitalism. The productive forces cannot be permanently fettered anywhere by such utopian and reactionary conceptions.

Only the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production can emancipate the workers from capitalist control. The establishment of society upon this basis can be accomplished only by the conscious political action of the workers as a class. Workers who grasp these facts are not to be hypnotised by claims made on behalf of any so-called “revolutionary” industrial organisation.

Eric Boden

Blogger's Note:

See the article 'Socialism and Industrial Unionism' in the December 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard.

In revolt (2023)

Book Review from the May 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour Revolt in Britain 1910-14. By Ralph Darlington, Pluto Press, 2023

The period of strikes between 1910 and 1914 was known at the time as the ‘Labour Unrest’. Darlington says that it should rather be described as the ‘Labour Revolt’. Miners, railway workers, dock workers, and many others were involved in bitter strikes, some accompanied by rioting when the police protected ‘blacklegs’ that the employers brought in to try to keep production going. The army was called in too. Workers were killed, either shot by soldiers or beaten by the police, in Belfast (2), Liverpool (2), Tonypandy (1), Llanelli (2) and Dublin (2).

Darlington discusses possible reasons for the revolt. Wanting to be treated with more respect will have been an element as he suggests but the rise in the cost of living which eroded real living standards will have been the most important.

The bogey for the capitalist press was ‘syndicalism’. Darlington brings out that what was called this was a practice rather than a doctrine and was a revolt against trade union officialdom as much as against employers. He notes that the number of paid union officials had increased faster than the number of union members. These officials prioritised union recognition by employers to negotiate agreements but these involved commitments not to strike without first going through conciliation procedures. An element of ‘syndicalism’ was workers insisting that their union’s officials be their servants and not do deals over their heads; they wanted employers to be treated as the class enemy rather than mere bargaining partners. It was essentially militant trade unionism.

There were doctrinaire syndicalists who advocated more than this and saw the objective as the workers eventually, through ‘direct action’ and a general strike, taking over and running the industries in which they worked. But there can’t have been many activists and strikers who took this seriously or who thought it realistic to expect the government to stand by and let this happen when it even intervened to hinder the ordinary trade union struggle. Most activist workers knew that political action was also necessary; indeed the demand for worker representation in Parliament was another feature of the wider period.

Darlington criticises the SDP (as the SDF became in 1908 and then in 1911 the BSP) for insisting on the need to gain control of political power before taking over the means of production and so regarding the trade union struggle as ‘secondary’. But, in a footnote towards the end of the book, he criticises syndicalism because ‘it did not explicitly address the problem of how a revolutionary general strike to establish workers’ control would overcome the state monopoly of armed force in defence of the capitalist economic and social order’, adding ‘it did not consider the question of the conquest of political power’.

He also discusses the position of the De Leonist SLP and criticises its ‘doctrinaire and sectarian’ view that workers should form revolutionary unions to oppose the existing unions. This doctrine, known as ‘dual unionism’, was also embraced by the IWW and some syndicalists. Other syndicalists favoured staying in the existing unions and trying to make them more democratic and militant.

One contemporary group whose views he does not discuss is the SPGB. There is a single mention, to say that George Hicks, the national organiser of the Operative Bricklayers’ Society, was a founder member. E. J. B. Allen, one of the doctrinaire syndicalists he cites on a number of occasions, was also a founder member, though Darlington has him as a founder member of the SLP. There can be no justification for discussing the views only of the SLP but not the SPGB which was probably slightly larger and was active in more places.

The Socialist Standard of the time covered all of the big strikes discussed by Darlington (and one he doesn’t — the 1911 London printers’ strike). The September 1911 issue carried a detailed 4,600 word editorial on the failed 1911 railway workers strike under the title “Strikers Struck. How the Railway Servants were betrayed’ which argued that the strikers should have given priority to demanding the release of all imprisoned strikers and improved hours and wages rather than to the ‘recognition’ of union officials as negotiators, and concluded:

‘The most they may snatch from the ashes of their ruined hopes is the lesson that, whether on the industrial or the political field, their struggles must be grounded upon democracy. Their position must be democratic, their methods must be democratic, their weapons must be democratic. Even under capitalism democracy is no empty word, and its first interpretation is that the representative is the servant, not the leader. Had the railwaymen given this reply to their so-called leaders when the latter sent the fatal message: “All men must return to work immediately,” they would not now be chewing the cud of their disappointment, marvelling at the difference between recognition of the unions and recognition of their officials, and wondering if they had not better set about making the unions (which appear to consist of the officials) recognise the men.’

As to the syndicalists and other anti-parliamentarians:

‘The final lesson, and the greatest of all, is to be found in the crushed hopes of the Industrialists, the Syndicalists, the Anarchists. These claim that the means of production must be seized in the teeth of the armed forces; the Socialists hold that the preliminary must be to get control of the armed forces by capturing the machinery of government.’

The 1912 strike in the London docks was dealt with in the August issue under the title “Dockers Betrayed” which made the same point regarding union officials. The failure of the rail union leaders to support sympathetic strike action to help the locked-out (by an Irish Nationalist employer) Dublin transport workers was covered in the January 1914 issue under the title “Sold Again”. The August 1911 issue included an eye-witness account, and experience, of police brutality in Manchester (all these articles can be found here: www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/standard-index-1910s/).

What the articles show is that the SPGB didn’t conform to the left-wing calumny that it is ‘anti-trade union’. What it was against was not to workers forming unions or even appointing officials but to the control of unions and of struggles over wages and working conditions by officials who regarded themselves as the leaders rather than the servants of their members. It was for democratic organisation of workers to wage the struggle against employers, even if this was indeed ‘secondary’ to the need to gain control of political power. And it opposed ‘dual unionism’, working within the existing unions.

It is only on the last but one page that Darlington reveals that he supports ‘the Bolshevik doctrine of a revolutionary vanguard party’, though this could have been guessed from his earlier analysis that what was lacking in the period was the right leadership.

Nevertheless, the book does usefully describe in detail and analyse the national and local strikes of the period, including those by women workers. It will obviously be on the reading list for anyone studying or interested in the period.

Adam Buick

Backward races. Lessons from South Africa. (1927)

From the August 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist Party speakers are continually being asked whether Socialism will have to wait until the black and yellow races have been converted. The questioner usually is very gloomy about the whole business. “What is the use,” he says, “of preaching Socialism here in England if all our work is going to be ruined by the backwardness of Japs and Chinese and negroes and other non-white races?” We have for our part never been much perturbed. Capitalism and the development of industry are the necessary and sufficient producers of Socialist thought and Socialist thinkers. The process is slow, but it is universal wherever the capitalist social system extends. We have no fear that any section of the working class in the industrialised nations will suddenly find itself isolated ahead of the main body of the Socialist forces. Most emphatically we do not expect this in England, despite the fact that the general level of political understanding is probably higher here than in any of the Great Powers. We know well enough what slow and painful work it is to build up a Socialist organisation. The vision which distresses our questioners, of a clear-headed, enthusiastic working class in Great Britain panting for Socialism and impatiently waiting for backward foreign persons to wake up and come into line, is hardly in keeping with the facts. If we get on with our job of propagating Socialism at home we can safely leave the workers in other countries to do likewise.

It is interesting to observe, therefore, what encouraging advances have been made by the black workers in South Africa. The white workers organised in the South African Industrial Federation deliberately and persistently refused membership to blacks, and placed barriers in the way of attempts to organise them. The whites, including the South African “Labour” Party, supported the Government policy of maintaining political, economic and geographical barriers against the black races. In Cape Town the Cape Federation of Labour Unions was a little more alive to working-class interests and admitted “coloured” workers (i.e., those of “mixed” race) to membership, although it still interested itself only in those who were classed as skilled workers. In January, 1919, some two dozen black workers, despairing of assistance from the whites, took on the huge task of forming a Union for all black workers and founded the Industrial and Commercial Union (I.C.U., now the Industrial & Commercial Workers’ Union of Africa). It has made great progress in spite of the difficulties placed in its way by the white organisations and by the Governments, and hopes are entertained of spreading eventually throughout the continent.

The position of the I.C.U. was greatly strengthened last year by the decision of the International Federation of Trade Unions to accept its affiliation in place of the white workers’ S.A. Industrial Federation, which was all but defunct. The condition laid down and accepted was that the I.C.U. must declare its readiness to link up with trade unions of white workers whenever the latter were ready to adopt that policy. The whites in the newly-formed South African Trades Union Congress were so much taken back by this recognition of the black trade unions that they have now declared their willingness to discuss with the I.C.U. the possibility of accepting all workers, without reference to race, into an enlarged Trades Union Congress. There is therefore a likelihood that at no distant date racial divisions among the organised workers in South Africa may be overcome. At least the white “last ditchers” who cannot tolerate association with black skins may be compelled to withdraw from the T.U.C. and conduct their (fortunately) hopeless fight in isolation. And this promising development will be the result not of white but of black common sense and clear thinking.

A declaration setting forth the policy of the I.C.U. will serve to show that a partial understanding of the class position of the workers has been attained by the black if not by the white unions :—

“Whereas the interests of the workers and those of the employers are opposed to each other, the former living by selling their labour, receiving for it only part of the wealth they produce ; and the latter living by exploiting the labour of the workers, depriving the workers of a part of the product of their labour in the form of profit, no peace can be between the two classes—a struggle must always obtain about the division of the products of human labour, until the workers, through their industrial organisations take from the capitalist class the means of production, to be owned and controlled by the workers for the benefit of all, instead of a few.”

This declaration contains one very serious fallacy, but even so it will compare well with the majority of foggy aims contained in trade union rule books even in this country. It is a natural mistake for disfranchised black workers, legally barred from effective participation in most political activities in South Africa, to place their hopes in industrial action. We do not doubt, moreover, that experience of the uses and limits of economic organisation will soon induce the black workers of South Africa to see that control of the State is essential to the achievement of Socialism by the working class.

Edgar Hardcastle

Industrial Action or Political Power? (1976)

From the May 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is a sobering thought that fifty years after the so-called General Strike, the working class as a whole and the trade unions in particular, are still fighting the same defensive struggle. Though it is a truism that while capitalism and the wages system remain, workers must organize to struggle at the industrial level, over wages and working conditions, it is a truism which gets no further forward. To continually grope along the same well-worn path and still harbour the illusion that some day, it may lead somewhere, has all the ingredients of a farce gone mad.

In any other field of human endeavour, if there had been so much trial and error for so little result, it would long have been questioned whether the right course of action was being taken. But determined, it seems, to retain their blinkers at all costs, the trade unions plod on, never noticing the signs that say “Hey, you’ve passed this way a thousand times before! “Since 1926 there have been 86,578 recorded strikes in the UK, an average of 1767 each year.

At the time of the General Strike, the SPGB praised the solidarity of the workers and condemned the conniving treachery of the TUC leaders. We ridiculed the so-called Communist Party who meekly demanded the replacement of one set of leaders by another. We pointed out that reliance on leaders was fatal to working-class interests. We argued against the procedure of “the tail wagging the dog”, whereby the General Council of the TUC called the strike on and off without consulting those involved. Since then, two generations of essentially similar empty-headed leaders have come, and uneventfully gone, leaving their rank-and-file meal-tickets precisely where they found them. The CP and the “left” have continued to play their nefarious rôle: unenlightened themselves, they are powerless to spread enlightenment.

Over the years there have been many cries of “victory” as workers have won the day, or at least wrung concessions in particular strike actions. While it is better that the workers should win, rather than crawl back defeated on the bosses’ terms, the significance and durability of such victories has yet to be seen in their class perspective by most of those concerned. However well the workers fight industrial struggles, no final victory is possible in this field. At the end of the day their position in society remains that of a non-owning, exploited class of employees. Ironically, even their solidarity (itself a fine and noble attribute) in such struggles can be turned against them, because the employers can better afford a long drawn-out struggle, without being reduced to the pittance level of welfare starvation. If a particular firm goes broke, capital can always regroup and seek other profitable fields for exploitation. For the workers whose livelihood depends upon a regular pay-packet, such situations mean worsening poverty, if not disaster. One need only look at the plight of one-and a-quarter millions unemployed pathetically demanding “the right to work” to see who has the whip-hand. It also provides further illuminating insights as to how far they have got with these struggles in fifty years.

Clearly, it is contradictory and nonsensical to vote continuing political power to the parties of capitalism, and then rely on the hopelessly inadequate strike weapon to redress the balance in a disjointed series of skirmishes over wages and conditions with individual employers or particular industries: having voted acceptance of the system, to settle down to a lifetime of fighting its inevitable results. Unless we are to resign ourselves to an eternity of bickering over wage rates, the vicious circle has to be broken.

From the standpoint of the capitalist, “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds”, but for workers, the key factor in the struggle is that they are selling themselves. The permanency of such a system is untenable. The missing element that holds the solution is working-class awareness. Awareness of what needs to be done to end capitalism. Awareness, that in the political field alone lies the power to terminate the existence of class society.

Industrial Actionists who urge workers to see more in trade-union struggles than merely defensive actions, are nothing more than so many posturing cardboard revolutionaries. They sneer at political action to gain control of the state because, they say. Parliament is a capitalist institution. Then, virtually to a man, they urge workers to vote the Labour Party into power to use this “capitalist institution” for running capitalism. Failing to see the need for majority understanding, they think the political field is tainted but the industrial field is clean and this is where the final struggle will take place. There are however not two sets of workers, those in unions and those who vote at elections. They are the same workers, and the lack of Socialist knowledge prevents them from pursuing class emancipation as the immediate issue.

It is worth noting that with widespread unemployment and capitalism in yet another crisis, according to their funny theories, this should be their finest hour — but the workers in trade unions are not rallying to the banner of Industrial Action. With the onset of this current slump, the number of strikes declined dramatically. In 1975 806,000 workers were involved in strikes. This was less than half the number for 1974. There was a twenty-three per cent, decrease in the number of stoppages in the same period. Some of the “militant” shop stewards who should be spear-heading the onward rank-and-file rush to “workers’ control” (or some other equally vague objective) have been falling like ninepins. They are dedicated to erroneous theories. If they had any sound ideas they would not now be in disarray. They have nothing new to offer and despite their delusions of grandeur, they are as muddled as those they expect to follow them.

Throughout the period of the General Strike, as indeed for our twenty-two years of existence before it and fifty years since, the Socialist Standard has consistently argued for class-conscious action in the political arena, as the only way to achieve Socialism. Any objective assessment of those fifty years of working-class history, can only confirm our case.

Political power through control of the state machine is the means whereby the owning class is able to dominate society. There are no capitalists at factory gates reading proclamations about their ownership rights. Any disturbance at the factory gate is handled by police or, if it gets nasty, by the armed forces. These coercive agencies are under the direct control of the political machine. The legality of private property institutions, is decided by the state. To gain possession of all the means of production and distribution by the whole community it is an inescapable necessity to capture political power. Obviously only a world-wide working-class majority with Socialist understanding would be interested in gaining political power to end class society. Parliament is a capitalist institution now, because the great majority of workers vote for capitalist parties. When the quality of the vote changes, so will the purpose to which it is put. Then, Parliament will be used to strip the capitalist class of their ownership of the means of living. What, in the final analysis, gives the licence for continuing capitalism is the workers’ approval of it. Fortunately, the democratic process cuts both ways. When the workers cease supporting capitalism and exploring blind-alleys, they will vote for Socialism.

The capitalist class, which, according to leftist folklore, could do nothing to stop the workers taking over the factories, suddenly becomes endowed with mystic powers the moment the political field is discussed. The left haven’t even learned that the capitalist as 'such does nothing. It is workers who run his state for him, just as they run his factories. What they are really saying is that workers in the Civil Service and armed forces would continue supporting capitalism. Even if this were true it could not determine the outcome of events. But there is nothing to insulate workers in government jobs or armed forces from the spread of Socialist understanding. Socialist ideas will permeate all sections of the working class. The leftist industrial-actionists fail to grasp the significance of a world majority wanting Socialism. This is part of the weakness of élitist thinking. They cannot visualize the workers being self-reliant and having no dependency upon leaders.

Leftist humbug about the capitalists closing down Parliament, can easily be put to the test without bloodshed. They have never tried to explain and work for Socialism. But, given the continuation of their present state of confusion, fifty years from now on the centenary of the General Strike, they will still be demanding the “right” to work.

Harry Baldwin

"What We Want and Why." (1922)

Book Review from the December 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

The above is the title of an attempt on the part of six leading lights of the Trade Union world to hide their lack of any common definite object, save that of misleading the workers from the road to emancipation. We are obliged to tell the publishers [Collins] frankly that they have issued a rather expensive 7s. 6d. article. None of the contributors are particularly clear as to what they want, while as to why they want it, they are vaguer still.

The ambitions of Mr. J. H. Thomas would, apparently, be satisfied with an efficient railway service, to be secured, presumably, by “nationalisation.” He is very keen on convincing his readers that he is not out for “aggression.” “Peace and economy” are his watchwords. The interests of the railway servants take second place with him, even if they can be said to have a place at all. He shows the waste going on under such relics of the competitive system as exist, but fails to show how the elimination of that waste would assist the employee ; and keeps dark the fact that economy under capitalism simply means getting the same amount of work done with fewer men. The concentration of the railways in the hands of a capitalist State is only a means to the accomplishment of that end. For this reason it is somewhat difficult to follow Mr. Thomas when he asserts that, “with State ownership we could see a possibility of improving the general condition of the worker” (p. 17). As he himself points out (p. 24), where State ownership exists, as in several countries on the Continent, the chief beneficiaries are the business firms who obtain concessions.

Mr. Thomas attaches very great importance to the machinery of conciliation between the workers and the bosses, yet on page 26 we are told that “no machinery can have the slightest value unless it is operated with good-will on the part of both interests.” Why should good-will obtain between parties whose interests are diametrically opposed to one another? To that question Mr. Thomas provides no answer.

He shows that the workers by strict observance of the companies’ rules could practically “stop the service” (p. 28), but “I should personally never favour such action.” He leaves it to his colleague Bromley to point out that the companies are not so squeamish. They have no hesitation in using their rules to send a man to prison if it suits their purpose (p. 176). It is the old story. The workers are advised to be peaceful and to leave their case to their leaders what time the bosses do as they like. And this is the gentleman who poses, and is accepted by the workers, as their champion !

Robert Williams, of the Transport Workers’ Federation, would have us believe that he is a Socialist, yet does not condescend in the space afforded by fifty pages to give us a clear definition of Socialism, nor any hint as to how it is to be brought about. He appears to be much more concerned to excuse and justify the treacherous activity of the leaders of the Triple Alliance, on the ground of trade depression and increasing unemployment. Although the workers were organised in much greater numbers than ever before, and he admits that the need for militancy was just as great as it ever had been, he pretends that the rout has been nothing more than an inevitable retreat carried out in an orderly manner. He fails to show that the real cause of the trouble has been the lack of understanding and mental solidarity on the part of the workers themselves; for which he, Robert Williams, and his colleagues are, in view of their opportunities, largely responsible by default. Williams advances some timid criticism of the Labour Party’s association with the Coalition during the war, and attributes their defeat at the General Election (1918) to this cause. The logical process by which he arrives at this conclusion is somewhat obscure. In any case, the Labour Party’s policy from the date of its inception has never been guided by any intelligible principle, so that Mr. Williams has only himself to blame if he has been disappointed in it. If he really wanted Socialism he would abandon the Labour Party to its inevitable fate, dishonour and disruption !

Tom Mann, in “The Case for the Engineers,” provides a little variety, inasmuch as he makes some pretence at analysing the existing order and offering an alternative ; yet here, again, the alternative is not defined with any degree of clarity. “Economic change” is mentioned, but its precise character is not stated; while as to the means whereby it is to be accomplished, we are referred vaguely to “industrial action.”

“The Politicians,” by whom, presumably, Mann means the Labour Party, are superficially criticised. Their faith in Parliament and constitutional methods is attacked, but their political treachery and duplicity are not mentioned. Mann appears to be utterly oblivious of the fact that Parliament controls the armed forces of the nation and is not likely to stand meekly by while the “men in the workshop” do as they like. The political machine is the only means whereby the workers can give public and effective expression to any common aim and purpose which they may develop as a class. For that reason the Socialist advocates its use. To leave it in the hands of the masters is sheer criminal stupidity !

Coming back to the engineers, Mann endeavours to illustrate the power of industrial action by instancing the hopelessness of asking for a rise in wages from Parliament. He fails to see that the same workers who are asking for a rise have sent their enemies to the seat of government. Are people in such a mental condition ready to emancipate themselves by any action, industrial or otherwise? Further, how can struggles on the industrial field over wages, hours, etc., lead to freedom from wage-slavery? Mann appears to hold that the industrial organisations will gradually assume control of the worshops and pay all wages, etc. Are the masters, therefore, going to surrender their profits. And, if not, what advantage will the worker obtain by drawing the price of slavery through his branch secretary?

Real control centres in the possession of the means of production, and the fight for that possession must take the form of political action. Capitalist property will exist just so long as the capitalist class are left in control of forces which protect that property.

Mr. Noah Ablett illustrates from details of his own experiences the destructive conditions under which the miners toil. When, however, he deals with remedies he becomes extremely confused. He condemns private ownership on account of the antagonism of interests which it involves, and yet advocates a programme of reforms which will become meaningless as soon as private ownership is dispensed with. One is thus driven to the conclusion that by the elimination of private ownership he simply means “nationalisation,” which, for reasons already stated, can offer no gain to the workers. In order to make this clearer, let us proceed to Mr. Bromley’s article.

Mr. Bromley covers much the same ground as J. H. Thomas, but gives a more definite description of what “nationalisation” amounts to. On pages 186-7 we read, “two unions very carefully drafted a Bill for the complete nationalisation of the railways. . . . It proposes the purchase of railways stocks and shares through the medium of Government Stock . . . charged on the State railway undertaking and the Consolidated Fund, which shall bear such a rate of interest as would enable it at the time of issue to be realised at par.” Thus “nationalisation” simply transforms the capitalists . . . concerned from shareholders in a private concern into Government Stock holders still living on the workers by means of the rate of interest !

Mrs. P. Snowden deals with the competition existing between the sexes in the working class. Her “ultimate ideal” is the “payment for work, irrespective of sex, of such a wage as no man or woman would be afraid or ashamed to accept” (p. 214). Albeit, she has previously pointed out that the existing “industrial system does not scruple to play off women against men in attempts to lessen the costs of production by reducing the wages bill” (p. 212). She wants the capitalist system minus one of its principal and essential features, the subsistence level of wages. Curiously enough, on page 261, discussing the necessity of finding work for an ever-increasing number of women, she says that “This can only be done satisfactorily when the social system of the present has given place to a new order, in which all the instruments of labour are in the hands of the community as a whole.” The force and significance of this admission do not appear to strike her, however, as she proceeds on the next page to propose all sorts of ameliorations in the worker’s lot without the slightest hint as to how they are to be accomplished. Further, she advocates the technical education of women and girls, apparently blind to the fact that hundreds of technically trained men are at the present moment searching in vain for a purchaser of their labour power. She fails to point out that the women, no less than the men, of the working class need to realise that they are slaves. This is the essential preliminary to any improvement.

So long as the capitalist class control the means of life, every economy and every improvement in the education, health, and technical ability of the workers, male and female, only results in their becoming more productive slaves. The fruits of their increased productivity go to the masters and not to themselves. This is the central fact ignored or obscured by these so-called leaders of labour.

Whether the workers follow the Labour Party “to nationalisation” plus reforms, or the Industrialist leaders to “workshop control” plus reforms, they are doomed to disappointment. The only road to emancipation is the conversion of the means of life into the property of the whole people. To this end we call upon the workers to organise consciously, and politically for the capture of the machinery of government.

Socialism, undiluted and unadulterated, is what the Socialist Party wants. As to why we want it, only look around you. Millions of willing producers are compelled to be idle while they need food, clothing, housing, etc., and the means exist ready to hand whereby they can produce them ! Generations of workers have put their faith in legislative reforms and strikes, but we are as far away as ever from economic security. 

The Social Revolution offers the only way out. Muster, then, under our banner, with a view to its speedy accomplishment.

Eric Boden