| Revolutionary means are the best way to win reforms |
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| Saturday, 28 November 2009 05:37 | |
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The alternative is to rebuild a working class movement – that means fighting, democratic trade unions and a workers party - that is able to genuinely represent the interests of working people. This does not mean opposing reforms. We believe that the best way – and in times of crisis, the only way – to win reforms is to use revolutionary means. What is the difference between revolutionary and reformist means? Revolutionary means seek at every turn to increase the power of the working class, where reformists take the working class for granted and see their power as something that can be bargained away for concessions. Most union bureaucrats see their job, if they think about it in this way at all, as ensuring the best wages for their members. Socialist trade unionists see the struggle in a broader sense. Higher wages that are not secured by a strong movement will be taken away as easily as they are given. Case studies of reformismHere are three examples: the Maritime Union, which is one of the most left-wing unions and has done an enormous amount of good work, had a campaign about four years ago to renationalize coastal shipping and regulateRevolutionary means seek at every turn to increase the power of the working class, where reformists take the working class for granted and see their power as something that can be bargained away for concessions it through a union-government-employer arrangement. The idea was that foreign shipping would be cut out, allowing the union to better defend and regulate working conditions. The problem is that in order to get an agreement from business and the state, the union would have to discipline its rank and file, cut down on militancy and reduce democracy. The nationalisation of the shipping by Labour could be undone by the stroke of a National government pen but the damage done to union organisation on the waterfront would take years to fix.The second example is Working for Families. The Labour Government cycled a great deal of money to working people through the tax department. This in effect left beneficiaries behind and created a big laundromat, where money paid in tax by working people was redistributed by the IRD – even as the share of tax paid through flat taxes like GST increased. This subsidises low wage employers and creates dependency on the state. It has been integrated into the budgets of so many working class families that National had to promise not to touch it but if it were not for this subsidy, union struggles for better wages would inevitably have taken place, leading to increased confidence and shop floor organisation that would have gone past the limits set by Labour. 1984 Labour governmentThe third example is the most extreme. In the 1980s, the Labour government saw its role as selling out the whole country in order to “save” capitalism and hopefully create more work somewhere down the line. In the same way that the EPMU allowed Sealords to lay off staff section by section in the hope of saving some jobs, Labour shut down whole parts of the economy. The result was a severe weakening of the strength of the working class. As Mike Treen writes on the unite website: “Official data on wage movements in New Zealand point to a real wage decline of around 25% between 1982 and the mid 90s that has never been recovered.”“Productivity has increased by 80% between 1978 and 2008. So real wages are 25% lower but our output is 80% higher.” “Households made up for the loss in real wages by working more hours (principally more women and young people) and going into debt. A report by Simon Collins in the NZH 25/11/06 found that average family income in 2001 in constant dollars was the same as in 1981 despite the fact that the proportion of women working went from 47% to 61% and the percentage of families working 50+ hours a week went from half to two thirds.” "National interest" is a fraud This makes a mockery of the idea of the “national interest” or the argument that fighting for higher wages is self-defeating because it raises inflation. If inflation and strikes were higher in the 1980s, but living standards were better, then the industrial peace and economic recovery of the last decade is exposed as a fraud practised on the majority of the population. The revolutionary approach is perhaps still best summarised by Karl Marx, in the Communist Manifesto: “The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: (1) In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole. Andrew Tait |
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