The impetus for this publication was a proposal by Boris Vasilyevich Rakitsky, one of the leaders of the School of Labor Democracy, a nonprofit organization operating under the Institute for the Country’s Prospects and Problems. The School of Labor Democracy conducts training seminars for labor activists and to raise awareness of the role of labor unions in society. This is very good, since in reality the current and future situation of labor unions is very alarming.

Let’s return to earth.

The labor movement, during the best periods of its activity, has always been rational and pragmatic. This was especially true in the early stages of its development, when—suddenly, out of nowhere, and spontaneously—almost all the workers at a given enterprise, who had previously endured injustice in silence, became rebels. Romanticism is more characteristic of professional revolutionaries and, to some extent, the intelligentsia. For workers, the primary concern is the reality of their current situation. Starting from this down-to-earth worldview of the working class, we must seek the ideological development of the labor movement, rather than viewing this worldview merely as a shortcoming. Moreover, every person is a consumer, and only the economic struggle between people from different groups over the control of production can rightly be called a class struggle, since it is here that interests regarding the level of consumption clash.

The struggle for political power cannot generally be called a class struggle, if only because, by its very nature, there can be no such thing as political power of the working class. Political power¹ is always the power of a bureaucrat. The sum does not change when the terms are swapped. A bureaucrat—even one of the most proletarian stock—is a member of a different, opposing group from the one he came from. As a consumer, he is at an advantage, even if his salary is on par with that of a skilled worker or teacher. The disparity in consumption levels (Novocherkassk in 1962, Kuzbass in 1989) gives rise to economic struggle, which is a consequence of the class-based nature of society. The experience of the “socialist camp” shows that fighting against the class-based nature of society with the help of a “proletarian” state is futile. When the miners’ movement in 1989 abandoned the economic struggle and put forward exclusively political demands, it, to put it colorfully, ended up “pulling chestnuts out of the fire” for the new state officials. Some people got rich, but the majority ended up even poorer.

The labor movement can use politicians in its struggle as intermediaries, but it must clearly understand when the movement is using the intermediary and when the intermediary is using the workers for their own interests. Most likely, this line is almost invisible, since politicians will always manage to use the workers to their own advantage more effectively than the other way around.² In practice, the labor movement is unlikely to be able to avoid the mediation of politicians; politicians are as persistent as advertising agents.

According to one precise definition, politics is a concentrated expression of the economy. But for the labor movement, direct politics is an indirect form of activity within the strategy of economic struggle, and all political outcomes must be viewed with great caution. More precisely, it is through economic struggle—rather than the pursuit of political power—that the labor movement concentrates its political efforts. Among the intermediaries of the labor movement, there may also be a political party aligned with the working class. It is an intermediary precisely because a political party is not an organization for economic (class) struggle, but rather an organization aimed at seizing political power. It is not only a structure for cultivating potential officials in the “new” state, but also a structure that claims to be the vanguard (leading force) of the labor movement. Here, it is finally worth recalling that trade unions are the organizations of economic struggle.

Political parties, especially communist ones, like to emphasize their class character. In reality, a political party is built on the basis of a union of ideological adherents, careerists, and people who have simply joined the ranks. Within a party—for example, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) faction in the State Duma—there have always been many “red” capitalists, that is, people whose interests are antagonistic to those of ordinary workers. Political parties are not class-based organizations, but rather structures that claim to represent the interests of a particular class. Parliamentarism, as a system of political party maneuvering, is a sophisticated form of deception, in which decisions are made on behalf of millions of people that harm the majority of them. This is particularly evident in the recent events surrounding the adoption of the Labor Code.

The highest form of organization in the labor movement is the trade union. As an organization of economic struggle, the trade union is a class-based organization. Its members belong to the class of wage workers, who, by virtue of their position, do not have the right to make decisions regarding the management of production and the distribution of profits. This group of people shares a special sense of community, psychology, and common interests.

Those who provide wage earners with the opportunity to sell their labor power (owners or their representatives, in the form of management) constitute another, opposing class. They most often form associations of entrepreneurs and employers. Consequently, the only class-based organizations in society are labor unions and associations of entrepreneurs and employers.

The absurdity of a trade union uniting both wage earners and employers—as in the FNPR—is reflected in the union’s role as a kind of consumer society or a body providing social services, which, unfortunately, is directly understood by some workers. Meanwhile, such a distortion is extremely dangerous. It hinders the development of the labor union as an organization for economic struggle.

On the other hand, a labor union that unites the class of wage laborers is not a political organization, such as a party. Ideological adherents of various political parties and religious denominations may be represented within a trade union. But this does not mean that party-affiliated and religious trade unions do not exist in the world, even though this introduces divisions into the unity of the trade union as a class force and contradicts logical dialectics.

There is a wide variety of labor unions in the world. The ideological orientations of labor unions range from the basic goal of minimizing irreconcilable class contradictions in labor relations through a more equitable redistribution of profits, to the diametrically opposed stance of one social class destroying another.

Integration into the System: Sustainable Development or a Crisis for Trade Unions.

As mentioned above, the individual is a unit in a consumer society. Humanity has truly reached the peak of consumerism under capitalism. The capitalist mode of production is based on the premise that the masses constitute a diverse society of consumers ready to buy and sell. The Soviet Union, as a weak consumer society, collapsed due to the absence of capitalism, although the introduction of capitalism brought even greater hardships to the class of wage workers. As before, a wage worker has the right³ to sell their labor power in order to maintain the body’s physiological functions for subsequent sale. A labor union, by acting as an intermediary for a large number of wage workers in the labor market, directly influences the policies of owners and state authorities. Thus, it occupies its own niche within the state system—and therefore within politics. But by and large, the system, by admitting outsiders into its structure, forces them to live by its rules, in accordance with its ideology. A labor union, like any organization with a structure, easily becomes bureaucratic. It seems paradoxical, but what began as a noble social movement, once integrated into the System, turns out—to put it mildly—to be not entirely consistent. Thus, one might conclude that the contradictions between labor and capital are never resolvable. Labor will strive to wrest a share of the pie from capital—a pie created by labor itself—and regard this mission as its primary goal.

A union’s struggle for a more equitable distribution of profits in favor of workers is merely an intermediate goal, or more precisely, a task. Confusion arises when an organization lacks its own ideology.

Ideology is a system of values, goals, tasks, and ideas, along with their rationale and the ethics inherent in them and simultaneously defining them.

Ideology is an important factor in mobilizing a social movement, although its expression is very often intuitive.

In order to formulate the ultimate goal of a labor union (which is usually singular, since intermediate goals are tasks), it is necessary to honestly answer the question of under what conditions the labor union could cease to exist. The condition for the existence of a labor union is the presence of a system of wage labor. Only upon fulfilling its historical mission—the union’s primary goal—namely, the elimination of wage labor, will the contradictions between labor and capital be resolved.

Naturally, if one surveys the majority of not only Russian but also foreign unions, this primary goal of the union will not be found.

The first ideological creed of the trade unions took shape by 1907 and was set forth in the Trade Union Charter. The trade union congress was held in the French city of Amiens. Therefore, the document came to be known as the Amiens Charter. It should be noted that the wording of the Charter emerged from a conflict between representatives of left-wing parties and anarchists representing the non-partisan movement. The main point of contention boiled down to the role of trade unions in relation to political parties. Party members assigned a secondary role to trade unions, while anarchists believed that the highest form of workers’ organization was not political parties but professional unions (known as “syndicats” in French). The Congress supported the anarchists’ position. Consequently, the economic struggle—rather than the political one—became the priority for trade unions; this was called “direct action.” Members of political parties were allowed to join trade unions, but they were prohibited from pursuing party politics within the labor movement. As a step leading up to the abolition of wage labor, the tactic of workers’ control was formulated, relying on workers’ organizations. And the prelude to the abolition of wage labor was to be a general strike, as a result of which workers would take full control of production by organizing themselves into industrial and territorial federations. This ideological current within the labor movement came to be known as anarcho-syndicalism.

Until the 1930s, anarcho-syndicalism was the dominant ideology in the labor union movement, retaining its influence until the 1950s. However, it eventually gave way to party-controlled trade unionism. Party emissaries were infiltrated into the unions, and many political figures in the parliaments and governments of European countries began their careers in the labor movement. The unions became bureaucratized because it was believed that anarcho-syndicalism was spontaneous in nature and did not conform to the rules of party practice. Party members, having eradicated the spirit of anarcho-syndicalism from the unions, instilled in them a sense of their own inadequacy when it came to radically transforming society. The transformation of the union into merely an organization that secures a “piece of bread” and decent working conditions is the “achievement” of left-wing parties. With the introduction of the theory of social partnership, some national trade union federations have signed agreements containing a clause stating that they will not resort to strikes for the duration of the agreement. In this way, the union gains stability but loses the creativity of the masses.

Since the 1970s, motivation for union membership (referring to unions abroad) has declined sharply. Much has been written about the global crisis facing trade unions and even their possible disappearance. There are objective reasons for this, including the mass exodus of workers from manufacturing to the service sector, the introduction of individual employment contracts in place of collective bargaining agreements, and rising unemployment and underemployment. Government policy has shifted from the “welfare state” model to the “efficient state” model—regardless of whether the government is right-wing or socialist—in which there are no social guarantees, only production efficiency.⁴

The future will show which path the labor union movement will take. It is encouraging that not all labor unions are homogeneous and that spontaneous social protest movements are emerging, free from partisan and bureaucratic hypocrisy.

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1 This refers to power exercised indirectly through the state, as a political system in which the wage labor system inevitably persists. The state may appear to be proletarian on the surface, but political power within it belongs to bureaucrats.

2 “Many workers already understand that the rule of the socialist and communist parties will be nothing more than a disguised form of bourgeois rule, under which exploitation and oppression persist”—“Party and Class,” by Anton Pannekoek, *Del’ Truda* No. 1, Omsk, 1999.

3 Such a right, when labor power is a commodity, is illusory. Unemployment is proof of this.

4 “It is precisely the state that can create the appearance of, and pass off, the interests of capital as the interests of the nation”—I.N. Myslyaeva, “Contemporary Ideology and Practice of Social Partnership,” School of Labor Democracy.