The Following blog post is a debate thread concerning whether or not trade unionists in Imperialist countries such as Britain represent an aristocratic and privileged sector of the global working class. Flowing naturally from this is what would this mean for political strategy and tactics for world revolution. The thread is posted (amended to remove repetition by different posters) as it does reveal the rejection of Marx and Engels position on the labour aristocracy, not to mention the position of Lenin in his classic works of the First World War period, see:
"To adopt, as some on the left do, a headline slogan like ‘asylum seekers welcome here’ is a mistake. It will never gain the ear of the vast majority of working-class people in Britain."-Hannah Sell, Socialist Party Deputy General Secretary, http://www.socialismtoday.org/79/asylum.html
This blogger adds:
"AT THE SAME time, it is necessary to work out a more detailed programme in individual communities where there has been a sudden influx of asylum seekers. We always fight to prevent working-class communities having to suffer further over-stretching of limited services. Government policy means that this is the effect of the sudden arrival of new asylum seekers. We have to call for community campaigns to secure extra resources – more teachers, doctors, language support and so on – in some cases, even as a precondition to the arrival of new groups of asylum seekers. In doing so we should always strive to build a united campaign of asylum seekers and local communities."-Hannah Sell, ibid
So a leading Marxist calls for working class communities to make extra funding the basis for allowing refugees to settle-not a united struggle, buit an exclusionist struggle.
'The Socialist Party-translating the method of Marxism into the chauvinism of the better off sections of an Imperialist states working class'-new banner headline for demos?
Steve Revins of Socialist Fight added:
Hannah Sell is "a leading Marxist"? huh i guess she is a leader of the SP and she does "speak for them"....
I agree with what you say here, but have to 'take issue' a bit with this "better off sections of an Imperialist states working class": actually everyone in Britain as every other imperialist State is MUCH "better off" than the majority of the world's population (the majority of which is now for a few years proletarians rather than peasants).
you know 1bil of the 6bil population are currently dying from malnutrition and/or lack of basic things like clean water.....
in an imperialist state, as elsewhere, a worker is exploited and oppressed: as a worker, producing value.... you know about that!
my theory is that the German car-workers, altho higher-paid than the British, are MORE EXPLOITED because they produce more value: so are robbed of more.....
but that theory easily lends itself to 'nationalisms'....i am just trying to get to the bottom of what You are saying, Chris: is it that in some way the "better-off" strata or sections or whatever - it's real people we are talking about, and perhaps i am one of them!.....
that these workers are in some way responsible?
I would definitely say that their position as 'direct' slaves of the imperialists, "at home" means that they have a 'special' responsibilITY, because it's quite obvious that the Revolution has to be in the advanced parts of the world, ie the imperialist countries.
of course i am completely UN-judgemental about the word "advanced"!
Gerry Downing, also of Socialist Fight added:
they (depoendent countries) are objectively unable to do more than slightly alter their terms of trade with world imperialism led by the US, no matter how heroic their revolution. And I speak here of Castro and Chavez and the like who make/made some improvement in response to pressure from below, many of the bourgeois nationalists like Mandela and Lula don’t even do that. But, as has been asserted by Steve, we must kill the beast at its head and to do that we need the metropolitan working class, which does constantly renew itself through immigration and capitalist crisis will always return the revolution here to the agenda. We just have to find out and practice revolutionary intervention and provide revolutionary leadership here or the one billion starving will never have a hope of getting fed
This blogger responded:
No, the bulk of workers do not have the same complicity in the super exploitation of workers abroad as the skilled sections of the working class. Just a few facts and a few figures. The % of workers earning the minimum wage who are unionised is 16%. The 19% of those earning £500-999 is 40%, and the % of those earning over £999 is 20 %. These figures reveal quite starkly just who the trade unionised working class is, and why they are such a conservative and reactionary force on the whole. It is not the case that they are never changing, for example the aristocracy used to be steel workers and miners, these industries died a death and those sections were smashed. The stability of an Imperialist state requires a layer of workers to act as the watch guard of the working class generally. The aristocracy of labour today is perhaps the best kind of aristocracy, with 48% of trade unionists having degrees or equivalents, and the likelihood of you becoming a trade unionist rising as you become a manager or above. Where do the bloated salaries of train drivers or teachers come from? They do not come from any kind of extra value produced by these sectors, no, they come from the subsidy-direct in the case of Rail-appropriated from the Imperialist sections of the bourgeoisie through state taxation. The fact that there is still class conflict means very little, viewed from a context of this struggle being one of how best to redivide the very real exploitation of workers abroad.
Do all workers benefit in some way through Imperialism (remember, the Brit bosses have 5XGDP abroad)? No. Those workers who are indigenous/well settled and have access to things such as the state benefits system, the education and health systems etc do benefit slightly from the super exploitation of our international brothers and sisters-the fact that they do this as unorganised, very low paid workers counters any real benefits they may gain. Those who have the skill premiums and are considered and consider themselves as stable workers suitable for organisation and class collaboration do very well out of Imperialism. It is this layer who do best out of the welfare state, a system ostensibly meant to protect and assist the poorest sections of society the most. A report from Civitas exposed the middle class (which many of the top layers of the trade unions would fall into) benefit most from the NHS and other welfare services. The report argued: 'The government is faced with the dispiriting fact that not only have health inequalities not improved, but they have got worse… Not only are lower socio-economic groups less healthy, but the relative gap is growing … it is becoming increasingly clear that the NHS often does little to combat inequality-and may even make it worse, by providing an inequitable service.' (p.80) http://www.roadtothemiddleclass.com/blog1423_middle_class_benefit_most_from_welfare_state.html
How else do we explain how much worse off workers in the colonial countries are than the better off layers here? The level of struggle? no, if struggle determined living standards then the Indian working class would be living it large. We can explain it only through the prism of a bribed and corrupted top layer of the class, organised in trade unions, collaborating in the exploitation of workers and poor people abroad.
The types of jobs that trade unionists do reflects their higher levels of qualification. 42.1% of trade unionists are now professionals or associate professionals, compared to 26.7% for the working population as a whole and 20.6% who are non-members. In 2005, a mere 8.8% of trade unionists were Process, Plant and Machine operatives. Most tellingly, in 1991, 34% of trade union members were either managers, professional or associate professionals; by 1995 this had risen to 41%. Now, 51.5% of trade unionists fall into these three categories. The more highly skilled the job, the more likely you are to be a trade unionist. You are also more likely to be a trade unionist if you have worked at a place for ten yrs or more like 47% of trade unionists, despite less than one third of workers generally being in that situation of tenure. One third of trade unionists earn in the minimum wage - £499 category, and it is clear from the sort of jobs being attacked through the economic crisis that it is this layer who struggle in a crisis: postal workers, bin men, care workers have all been forced to fight the bosses crisis, although without out much in the way of official leadership or support. Why is this? and why do the lower paid trade unionists, those on the minimum wage like the heroic female and Asian workers at Gate Gourmet get shafted so readily when push comes to shove? because these workers and jobs are transitory, always being destroyed and replaced by similar jobs and grades by the destructive process of capital accumulation. The unions are dominated by the much higher paid and by the much more secure. How else to explain the support for the bureaucracy in the unions for so long? People can either be considered stupid, but even then only for some of the time. The harsh reality of unions being dominated by their top halfs, and as a consequence having no issue with sell outs of the lower paid, the wider class or the counter reformism of the Labour Party. This has even been displayed very recently in the RMT, where we have the leader looking at an old Labour alliance for the elections, whilst the bulk of the membership and the executive could not give a flying f*** and as a result Crow is forced to back the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition an individual.
What to do? well, the fact of trade unions only organising half of the better off third of workers effectively, makes inroads to the bottom third and the unorganised mass of workers, especially the worst off agency/temp and migrant workers all the easier. To organise these layers as a battering ram against the conservative wrecking influence of the current unions is THE task of tasks facing revolutionary communists in the union movement. We will no doubt find allies amongst some layers who are being forced down into the ranks of the low paid, as the most oppressed sections of the class found allies in the heroic miners of 1984-5. The great miners strike was a textbook example of how a section of workers previously very well paid as a result of struggles, remember, before the 1970s the miners were only averagely paid compared to the skilled workers, can become a target for the bosses. It took bringing down a government to secure greater subsidy and henceforth higher wages-wages which came from British capital being able to use some of the loot from abroad to buy a relative social peace at home. This situation could not last. The strike of 1984-5 was essentially about destroying the power of this old section of the class. The rest of the union movement, including the skilled sections of the trade unions, scabbed on the miners. The trade union and Labour Party leaders isolated and abused Scargill as a Dinosaur, which of course he was-out of date for seeking to defend an industry and trade union ear marked for obsolescence by British bosses. This is how the aristocracy and their leadership operate-isolate the fighting sections of the class, wreck their struggles and make clear that fighting comes at a very heavy cost.
Do workers and the oppressed in the bulk of the World need to wait until the labour aristocracy in Britain has somehow committed harikari and become revolutionary?-Let us hope not.
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