Labor Peace and Capitulationism
US President Franklin D. Roosevelt Signs the National Labor Relations Act
Today, the labor movement is dominated by its right wing. The practice of ‘business unionism’ and ‘labor peace’ – the close collaboration between union leaders and capitalists – has led to the near collapse of the working class as a relevant political force in the US. Labor peace was sold to workers as a great compromise; the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) promised that capital would lower its bayonets and respect the right of workers to organize and bargain as a collective. Through negotiation and bargaining, workers would receive a living wage and a minimum of benefits. This split the working and well-paid proletariat off from the unemployed or working poor. The illusion of a new class was formed, the mythological “middle class”, that was neither petit-bourgeois or bourgeois, but yet not subject to the same ruthless exploitation as the more impoverished segments of the proletariat (a demarcation often drawn along racial lines).
Nearly a hundred years later, this mirage has dissipated. Right wing leadership has lead to disastrous failure after disastrous failure for the labor movement, culminating in the lowest union membership rate of all time, 5.9 percent of private sector workers.
Proximity to capital influenced union leaders who were members of the working class. Constant contact with capitalists, through negotiation and bargaining, brought union leaders into the social circles of the capitalist ruling class and granted them access to the benefits that came with it. Accommodation and labor peace promised increased access to privilege. Worker militancy, on the other hand, guaranteed only struggle and the loss of privilege. Through incentives, union leaders developed a petit-bourgeois mindset. Though they were workers, they became servants of the capitalist ruling class — loyal lieutenants of capital in the labor movement. All this has been compounded by the NLRA, which proscribes more rights than it grants.
Political Education
Strikes are the first weapon of class struggle. They are the primary means by which workers can disrupt their exploitation and effect temporary control over the means of production. Without the ability to withhold their labor, workers have no leverage whatsoever during a dispute with capital. And yet, the aforementioned capitulation by union leadership allowed for the propagation of the “no-strike clause” – the most deadly concession labor has ever made to the bourgeoisie.
The typical no-strike clause prohibits strikes during the period where a contract is in effect. Since most union contracts cover three years at a minimum, capitalists can feel safe from the threat of work stoppages for years at a time. Further, they can expect that any work stoppages will be confined to a usually brief, ritualistic contest, during predictable bargaining periods. Today, the overwhelming majority of union contracts include a no-strike clause. In doing so, organized labor transforms the union from an instrument of proletarian liberation into an apparatus of bourgeois control.
The Separation of Marxism and Labor
The political cause of this organizational anemia was the amputation of Marxism from the labor struggle, which drained the oxygen from the blood of the proletarian movement.
The capitalist state effected this purge in two ways. First by means of draconian anti-communist laws which barred communists from legally serving as union officers. The second, by the adulteration of Marxism and the cultivation of right opportunism within the most politically advanced organizations. Cumulatively, this deprived the working class of political leadership.
All mass movements are faced with frequent and unexpected strategic questions; when and how to strike, which concessions to accept and which to reject, etc. Political leadership provides an analysis of these questions, explaining which path is correct, which is incorrect, and why. The question of ‘why’ and the general question of direction is what maintains the revolutionary energy of a movement during times of repression and defeat.
It is clear that labor peace means only peace of mind for the capitalist ruling class. The most active and class conscious workers must learn how to accept and collect concessions from the bourgeoisie while rejecting the false concept of labor peace. There can be no peace between labor and capital because the contradiction between the two is irreconcilable. Therefore, there must be a determined struggle on the part of labor to supplant and ultimately defeat capital if exploitation is to end and common prosperity is to be achieved.