Letter from Steve McKenzie, Unite Community member
In a letter to August Bebel in 1875, Karl Marx’s close friend and collaborator, Fredrick Engels, was highly critical of a unification document that was being put forward to form the theoretical basis of the merger of the German Social Democratic Party and the German Workers party. [Pictured above, Engels to the left, Bebel to the right]
One of the many critisisms Engels made is reproduced below, it outlines clearly a Marxist understanding of the importance of the role of the trade unions
“There is absolutely no mention of the organisation of the working class as a class through the medium of trade unions. And that is a point of the utmost importance, this being the proletariat’s true class organisation in which it fights its daily battles with capital, in which it trains itself and which nowadays can no longer simply be smashed, even with reaction at its worst (as presently in Paris).
“Considering the importance this organisation is likewise assuming in Germany, it would in our view be indispensable to accord it some mention in the programme and, possibly, to leave some room for it in the organisation of the party”.
Today, the trade unions have unfortunately become heavily bureaucratised and power is centralised into the hands of highly-paid unelected officials. Most of today’s union leaders are on the right of the labour movement, or are a kind of faux left.
It is vital that Marxists today play a central role in democratising and politicising the trade unions, all of the time fighting to ensure that there is a strong industrial base at a workplace and branch level. Engels was one hundred per cent right. Unions are the workers’ true class organisations. They can only fulfil their role properly, fighting our daily battles with capital, if they are democratised and become truly membership-led.
