The Work of the Revolutionaries in the Trade Unions

Through this brief treatise we will describe how revolutionaries carry out their work in the labor movement in general and in the trade unions in particular, with the aim of winning broad layers of the workers over to the socialist program and leading the working class to its final victory: the eradication of capitalism from the face of the earth and a socialist transformation of society. This work is an adaptation of the discussion document of the Indonesian Militant Central Committee, which should be read in conjunction with several other treatises that we have previously published: Work in Mass Organizations and Revolutionaries, the Cadre Party, and the Problem of the Labor Party .

We will start our proposition from a Marxist axiom whose truth has been proven by history, that the only class that can lead the whole of society to liberate itself from the oppression of capitalism is the working class or the proletariat. We will ignore the educated liberal ladies and gentlemen who often deny the existence of the working class and their revolutionary potential for various reasons. The lives of our esteemed ladies and gentlemen have never intersected with the workers, so they easily deny the existence of workers. If you don't know, you don't love ( out of sight, out of mind ), that's how it is.

From a class in itself to a class in itself

The statement that the working class is a revolutionary class should not be misunderstood if all workers are everywhere and at any timealways had a revolutionary outlook. Workers do not live in a vacuum, but live in a society dominated by capitalist ideology and all the prejudices that arise from it. Only with the domination of this ideology can the capitalist class maintain its power over the workers. This ideological domination is perpetuated through schools, media, government, religion, family, and all aspects that touch workers' lives. This is what is often called false awareness, which closes the eyes of workers from the oppression they experience. This false awareness not only blindfolds him but even encourages him to defend the system of oppression itself as something natural.

But class consciousness is not something static and stands outside the existing reality. It moves and keeps moving, clashing and tugging with life. It is from the daily struggles of the workers that they discover their class consciousness. They become aware of the exploitation they suffer and from there they begin to think about how to fight against this oppression. Initially they responded with individual and scattered actions. But the stubborn fact that they were thrown into large factories by the hundreds or thousands pushed it towards collective struggle. Workers are beginning to see the importance of forming an organization that unites their common interests. This is where trade unions were born, whose job is to defend the interests of workers in economic matters (decent wages, working conditions, etc.).

The workers learned quickly that by striking they could suppress the capitalists and win a better standard of living. The fact that the existing government is a capitalist government, which is why the oppression experienced by workers is also facilitated by the government through various laws, encouraging workers to launch into political struggles that go beyond the narrow confines of their factory gates. In the end, workers reach the highest expression of their struggle, namely the political struggle for power. As Marx said, labor moves from a class in itself to a class in itself.

Pioneer Line

The process of how workers become aware of their existence as a class does not run in a straight line, nor is it evenly distributed. Although objectively they are a class whose labor is exploited by capitalists, the working class is not a homogeneous construct. There are various layers whose consciousness develops at different speeds, because even though they are both workers who are oppressed by the capitalists, their living conditions are not necessarily the same. There are layers of workers who are more advanced, there are those who are more backward, with various gradations. But those who were originally advanced didn't mean they couldn't retreat in consciousness, and those who were initially retarded could jump forward in consciousness suddenly. These various layers interpenetrate, tug and shove,

The best flowers of the proletariat were forged by the long class struggle. They absorb the lessons of struggle – both victory and defeat – and become the collective memory of the working class. The collective experience and memory of this struggle is contained in the form of ideology or theory, namely Marxism, and in the form of methods and traditions, namely the revolutionary party, which are passed down from generation to generation in an unbreakable thread. This is where pioneering or class leadership inevitably emerges, not as something imposed from outside but born from the movement itself.

The relationship between the vanguard and the broad masses, and the task of the vanguard in relation to the historical task of the working class as a whole, is not mechanical. The fact that a layer of workers achieves a higher class consciousness than the rest of the class creates one problem that must be solved: how to bridge this gap in consciousness. Mistakes in doing this can lead us into opportunism (following backward consciousness) on the one hand, or sectarianism/ultraleftism on the other hand (moving too far ahead of the masses). How to avoid both of these dangerous tendencies is an art on a certain level, which like most sports requires instinct and practice. It cannot be learned just by reading books.

The historical factor by which the vanguard of the proletariat, namely the Marxists, is isolated today from the working masses – and Marxism is the idea of ​​a minority among minorities in the workers' movement – ​​dictates our tactics today. We have not been able to win over the masses to the idea of ​​Marxism. Let's emphasize this. All the chatter that we often hear in the movement today about contacting the masses, organizing the masses, going down, the practice, only reflects impatience, namely wanting to reap what has not been done tenaciously and patiently. The advanced vanguard of the proletariat – that is, the Marxists – are already far removed from the ranks of the working masses, but this situation will not last forever. The contradictions of capitalism will continue to push these two separate ranks closer together,

What kind of bridge we can build today will depend on our resources, namely the condition and readiness of our organization. The ranks of the working masses are not homogeneous in consciousness, some are more advanced and some are more backward. When we are still unable to build a long and solid bridge for the broad masses of workers whose awareness is still lagging behind, then we can only reach out to a few workers whose consciousness is more advanced, whose consciousness is closer to ours because we can only build bridges that are short now.

Dive into the Reformist Organization

Here we shall speak in particular on the question of how revolutionaries carry out work in the trade unions. This is in many ways different from work in the mass labor parties, a topic we will consider later, especially as the problem of working in the labor parties becomes more concrete in Indonesia.

We remind you again that the task of the revolutionaries is to build a revolutionary party which will lead the proletariat to the victory of socialism. Therefore this party must have organic ties with the proletariat and their organizations for struggle. The problem is how to build these organic bonds.

In the early period of the labor movement, the organic ties between the Marxists and the proletariat were very strong. This is because in most countries the Marxists generally play an important (and even a major) role in the formation or birth of mass trade unions and mass labor parties. Therefore, the idea of ​​Marxism became a fairly dominant idea in the labor movement at the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.

But not so today. Due to various historical factors – which we will not review today – the Marxists have been isolated from the labor movement and their ideas no longer dominate the labor movement. For example, in Indonesia the 1965-66 massacre and the physical destruction of workers' political and economic organizations by the army really destroyed the organic relationship between the workers' movement and the revolutionaries. This was compounded by the decades-long twist and vulgarization of Marxism by the Stalinists, as well as the general strengthening of reformism throughout the world. Organized workers exist in mass trade unions led by reformists and reformist ideas.

It is in the midst of this isolation that revolutionaries must work. We are obliged to relate to the masses of workers in their organizations which are dominated by reformism. Trying to deny this fact and building its own “red trade unions” separate from the existing mass trade unions means breaking away from the working masses and allowing them to be imbued with the false consciousness of reformism. Roughly speaking, we have to throw ourselves into the swamp of reformism in order to reach the ears of the masses. Not only that, we must clear the quagmire of reformism by launching an ideological battle within the labor movement.

The first condition is the existence of a revolutionary party

The first condition for carrying out effective work in trade unions is the existence of a revolutionary party with solid ideological and organizational foundations. As we have said above, doing work in mass (even “red”) trade unions is like plunging into the quagmire of reformism. This means that comrades who do work in trade unions must have a solid revolutionary ideological foundation, so that they are able to answer reformist arguments. The party is a medium for building a political level of comrades, through weekly cell or branch meetings where education is the main part of cell meetings, as well as other educational activities outside of cell meetings.

Reading or studying alone is not enough to build the foundation of this ideology. Through the party political education is carried out consistently, systematically and collectively, and this will provide a higher quality of revolutionary education. At its core, the revolutionary party is the collective memory of the struggle of the working class, which abstracts into theory the experience of the working class of the last 200 years.

In addition, the party provides comrades with a comprehensive framework, so that comrades do not carry out individual work separately from the overall task of the party and the goals of socialism. Within labor unions there is pressure on unionism, namely pressure to only focus on trade union tasks (advocacy, collective work agreements, etc.). This is because the struggle of trade unions is generally limited to the economic struggle for its members. The task of the revolutionaries is to recruit the most advanced layers of workers from the trade unions, to recruit them into the revolutionary party so that these workers can go beyond the limitations of mere economic struggle, so that their insights are broader and not just advocacy and PKB, so that the workers achieve perfect socialist consciousness.

If workers are only active in trade unions, they will become frogs in their shells, only concerned with the issue of wages. Our task is to open the shell so that the worker can jump further. We have to rally these advanced workers into the party, and this presupposes the existence of a party where the workers can join and grow.

Recruit one two

As we have explained above, labor is not a single, homogeneous class. Our task is to find the one or two who are the most advanced among the hundreds or thousands of workers, and gather them into the party. Trade unions are a good field for doing this because workers are already organized within them, whose awareness is generally higher than unorganized workers. But this does not mean we close the door to workers outside the trade unions, because trade unions will never cover the majority of the working class. In Indonesia alone the number of workers who are organized in trade unions is only a small part of the total workers, around 3-4 million, which is only about 3 percent of the total workforce. Work in the trade unions is therefore only one of the party's field of work, and we must not limit comrade workers to trade union work only. We are not trade union activists, but revolutionaries.

Trade unions are the basic organization of the economic struggle, and for this reason they must necessarily include the widest layer of workers. We must remind ourselves that we are working in unions not to turn these unions into some kind of “socialist” or revolutionary trade unions, in which only workers who agree with socialism may join. We can provide socialist or revolutionary leadership in the trade unions, that is, push for economic struggle programs that consistently and consistently defend the interests of the workers, and the best revolutionary leadership we can provide is by building a revolutionary party that can gather the best layers of workers, build socialist consciousness. them to be the vanguard of the whole working class.

In order to attract the best elements within the union, we must be open with our politics. As long as security allows, we must not hide that we are revolutionaries and members of a revolutionary party. We must spread our ideas through the newspapers we produce, because newspapers are like our party's “business card”. Only then can the best elements of labor be able to judge our ideas and our party.

Challenge

Generally when we do work in a trade union, we don't want to take a leadership or management position in the union. It would be better if we work as grassroots members, which on the one hand frees us from administrative duties of the trade union but still allows us to interact with other workers in the factory or workplace where we are. We will only take a leadership position in a union if we have built a strong base of support among grassroots workers in the union and also have strong cells.

There are a number of dangers if we take union leadership positions without first building a grassroots support base. First, the daily work pressure of union officials which often takes up so much time that it makes us neglect building cells. This is the tendency of Economism that was fought by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, namely the tendency to focus only on the normative (economic) struggle and ignore the revolutionary political struggle (party building). Second, the pressure for reformism within the trade unions, especially at the top of the trade union ranks, can co-opt the comrades if there are no strong cells in which the revolutionary educational program takes place.

On other occasions we sometimes find ourselves recruiting comrades who already held leadership positions in the union before joining us. This presents a different challenge. We cannot simply ask these comrades to simply quit their positions, especially when the union (due to various factors) depends on these comrades as administrators for its existence. This presents the challenge of balancing the day-to-day tasks of trade unions with the long-term task of building a revolutionary party. A challenge that was not easy, especially when these comrades were still at the stage of learning Bolshevik ideas and methods.

To overcome the challenges above, there are several things that can be done. First, the main thing that must be started immediately is to organize regular party cell meetings as a medium for political education. With regular cell meetings, the comrades will begin to be integrated into the work of the party as a whole, and their political and ideological horizons will begin to open beyond the boundaries of trade unionism.

Second, comrades must begin to be able to transfer the responsibility for managing the union to other workers. We do not want to be in a position where we have a monopoly on the management of the trade unions, to such an extent that our attention and energies are diverted from the task of building a revolutionary party.

In addition, we want to build a new layer of union leadership among the workers, empower grassroots members to become leaders in their own union organizations and not always leave their fate to that one leader. This is especially true in Indonesia where the patron-client tradition runs deep. This could start with giving workers the confidence to run their own union. They will make mistakes, but only by making mistakes can workers learn and become confident.

The final word

In the final analysis the task of revolutionaries is not to build trade unions. This statement may disturb many people, but only if we do not understand that what is needed to end the exploitation of workers is the revolutionary seizure of power by workers. The revolutionary party is a prerequisite for the workers to be able to wrest economic and political power from the capitalist class, and therefore the task of the revolutionaries is to build a revolutionary party. The trade unions are one of the many fields of work used by revolutionaries to build this revolutionary party.

If we only focus on the trade union struggle, then this struggle will never end. We just move from one MSE campaign to another, chasing each other at the ever-increasing price of necessity, like the Greek mythological Sisyphus who pushed a rock up a mountaintop but this rock rolled down again and he kept repeating this futile task forever and ever. . We want not only to fight capitalism, but to destroy capitalism and build socialism on its ruins, and for this we need a revolutionary party!