Anarchism and the Labour Movement
The labour movement - that is, the movement of workers acting as workers - is central to building the power of the working class and the construction of socialism. While people are oppressed and exploited in various ways under capitalism, capitalism is predicated on the relationship between the capitalist and working classes. We seek the destruction of capitalism and class society and it is only through our self-activity as workers that capitalism can be overcome.
We do not argue this from an abstract glorification of the working class but from the concrete position of workers in relation to capital. It is as workers that we have the ability to strike capitalism at its heart, to target profits, to fight directly against the bosses and on the day of the revolution to seize the means of production, thereby destroying the basis of capitalism and class itself. It is the class position of the worker which unites the majority of the world's population and which lays the basis for a global solidarity with the power to confront capital. For these reasons the labour movement maintains a central position in our revolutionary strategy.
The clearest manifestations of the labour movement are currently the trade unions, although we understand that other organisational forms are likely to supersede them in a revolutionary period such as workers councils and workshop committees.
As long as the unions serve as the main focal point for the worker's struggle it is essential that anarchists organise within them. However, this does not mean uncritical support for the unions, or that we do not understand their current limitations. The labour movement as it currently stands is highly bureaucratized and class collaborationist in nature. This does not mean the unions should be abandoned as a lost cause. Instead, it orientates us towards the work of increasing the militancy and participation of the rank and file in opposition to the bureaucracies.
The Role and Contradictions of Trade Unions Under Capitalism
Trade unions fulfil two contradictory roles under capitalism. They are fighting organisations for workers which exist to group together workers of a shared workplace or industry to effectively fight for collective interests. Unions also maintain the role of acting as a mediator between labour and capital. This dual purpose of fighting organisations and mediators speaks to many of the contradictions we see present in our current Australian trade unions.
Yet it is in their role of fighting organisations that can unite workers together in struggle on the basis of shared interests that the most effective basis for building workers power resides. To reject unions out of hand is to reject the means to bring workers into the struggle against the bosses, and the ability to grow our power as a class.
We maintain that how this contradiction plays out is related to the balance of forces between the classes and the processes of the class struggle itself. Trade unions are not inherently collaborationist, nor highly bureaucratised. However, it is indisputable that their contradictory position under capitalism means that there is a powerful push in this direction.
In opposition to this tendency, revolutionaries, workers, and material circumstances have the capacity to transform the unions in a different direction. We fight to transform trade unions into participatory fighting organisations controlled by the union rank and file and to orientate them towards revolution. Despite this, we understand that maintaining a revolutionary orientation within the unions without the culmination of revolution will only be a temporary state of affairs as the terrain of the class struggle shifts alongside material conditions.
The class struggle is characterised by rising and falling levels of struggle and militancy. Working-class organisations reflect this. As revolutionary consciousness rises throughout the class, the scope for unions to become revolutionary, or for new openly revolutionary unions to form increases, as does the ability for unions to take on characteristics of genuine rank-and-file control. Conversely, even the most revolutionary of unions will struggle to maintain this outlook during the ebbs of struggle as reaction and class collaborationism grow. Revolutionary unions are then forced to either fade into irrelevance, become little more than political organisations, or adapt themselves to the new reality, thereby losing their revolutionary characteristics.
Rather than being a reason to ignore the importance of trade unions, this position instead illuminates the limitations of trade unions unto themselves, the importance of socialist militant minorities to be organised separately to the unions but active within them, and eventually the need to go beyond the union form of workers organisation altogether.
Trade Unions in the Current Juncture
At the current juncture, the most pressing task facing socialists is rebuilding the Australian union movement, not by growing it solely in terms of pure numbers, but also in terms of genuine rank-and-file militancy, participation, and control. As of a 2022 report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the rate of union membership sits at only 12.5% of Australian workers, with this number significantly lower in many industries. The percentage of membership does not in itself tell the full story. Equally as important is the rate of active rather than passive membership.
The collapse of the union movement reflects several factors. Amongst them are the efforts of capitalist propaganda against unions, the restructuring of production and the successful union-busting efforts of the Accords and neoliberalism. Beyond these external factors there remain significant structural and strategic issues within the unions which have contributed to their slow and ongoing decline.
Most Australian unions have developed to the point where genuine avenues for rank-and-file members to participate and have a say in their unions are almost non-existent. Unions often act more as a service than as a fighting organisation into which workers can directly throw themselves. The majority of Australian trade unions now exist as something alien to their members. The interests of the union bureaucracies have increasingly diverged from the wider class due to the privileges they entail, their ties to the Australian Labour Party (ALP) and the dynamics of mediation that dictate their range of activity. The result is many unions prioritising the maintenance of “class peace” over developing workers’ power. From this, much of the Australian working class no longer sees the trade unions as something which can concretely improve their working conditions, or as something that belongs to them.
Trade Unions and the Australian Labor Party
The trade union movement in Australia is severely constrained by its connection to the Australian Labor Party. Through this connection the unions lose their ability to act as independent fighting organisations for the workers and instead act as an auxiliary to the fundamentally capitalist ALP. The struggle of the workers against the bosses and the state is made secondary to the parliamentary ambitions of the ALP. Due to this relationship, the trade union movement voluntarily weakened itself and its ability to engage in industrial action, citing the creation of a fictitious class peace with the introduction of the Accords and neoliberalism during the Hawke and Keating governments.
The trade union movement must break with the ALP and reject all calls to attach itself to any political party. To act most effectively as fighting organisations, able to act at will against the bosses and politicians, the trade unions must exist independently from all political parties. The greatest trade union strength is born from class independence, not limiting the scope of the unions to being a wing of any political organisation.
To reject the notion that trade unions should affiliate with political parties is not to reject the importance of the labour movement engaging in political struggles, but to reject the notion that the only means for the labour movement to engage in political struggle is in the realm of parliament or through a political party. Both economic and political struggles can be waged directly through the unions, thereby bringing the working-class into opposition, not just against the bosses, but against the State itself. Industrial action such as the strike is not only a means to fight for concessions in the workplace, but act as the means for workers to win concessions directly and most effectively from the government too.
The Socialist Task in the Labour Movement
To rebuild the union movement is not a simple task. Workers must be brought into active participation in struggles in their workplaces and through this struggle into the union. It is through concrete workplace struggles that workers gain an understanding of what the union is beyond existing as a distant service. As we rebuild the unions through workplace struggle, we must also extend the struggle to inside our unions.
The union bureaucracies play a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. This means that the working class acting as union rank and file must enter into struggles against the bureaucracies to transform the unions themselves. To fully succeed it will also require a struggle against the limitations introduced onto the worker's ability to engage in direct action. We must retake the ability to engage in industrial action at will, which means building a willingness to take illegal or unprotected action.
The task of socialists then is twofold: organising in our workplaces to bring our co-workers into struggles against their bosses and organising amongst our union rank and file to confront our bureaucracies and embed union control within democratic rank and file structures. To most effectively act as fighting organisations for the class, and as potential revolutionary organisations, our unions must be focused on direct action, increasing class conflict and genuine control and participation by the union membership.
Bureaucracies must be limited and elected officials recallable; the unions must maintain a position of class independence from political parties. The unions cannot limit themselves to purely economic matters but must maintain a willingness to engage in direct action over social and political issues. From such a basis a revolutionary unionism, which is to say a unionism that on a mass-scale has accepted the task of revolutionary transformation can develop.