The rise of Fascism and the impotence of political democracy as a weapon against it have robbed the petty-bourgeoisie of the illusion that its arguments and ideas were the locomotive of history. But the crisis of the petty-bourgeoisie is the crisis of politics and here as always, the instinctive attitudes of the working class must be our guide. The modern American worker is supremely indifferent to politics. Three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, it matters little or nothing to him whether a Democrat or a Republican holds office. And on the three hundred and sixty-sixth day, he usually cares only if it is a presidential year. This lack of political interest has its roots in the American development. The experience of the workers has been that Democratic or Republican, whatever the differences or lack of difference in the platform, successful candidates acted according to the needs of the Amerian capitalist economy.
Because different political parties have made so little difference to the actual development of the American economy, politics has been mainly a competition between groups of capitalists, organized into political machines, to cut for themselves bigger slices of the American pie. The pie was enormous and the politicians were begrudged their cuts only occasionally. Particularly in the cities where the political machines ruled during the invasion of immigrants from Europe, there was complete candor between the machine and the voters as to the code governing elections. Politics was an exchange of votes for the very real if inexpensive favors on the many problems that beset the foreign-born worker in a confusing new environment. However with the integration of the immigrant workers and the passing of the political machine, the machinery of politics has been exposed in all its nakedness. The result has been that the American workers are beginning to make their own profound critique of bourgeois politics as a fraud and a deception making no difference to their actual life.
In this, the American workers express with unerring instinct the same truth at which Marx arrived by his thoughtful study of the French Revolution. Politics, Marx said, was profoundly and essentially bourgeois. Its basis is the domination of one class over another and its consolation is that it provides the individual who is actually alienated in his material life with the illusion that he is participating in a social community. In their striving for complete emancipation, men go through the stage of political emancipation because it represents a progressive step over the domination of men by the opiate of religion. Religion gives men the illusion of democracy only in the heavenly kingdom. Political democracy at least brings the kingdom closer to earth.
But »political emancipation is the reduction of man, on the one side, to the member of bourgeois society, to the egoistic independent individual, on the other side, to the citizen, to the moral person.» The more man is alienated from his true humanity in the process of production as a worker, the stronger must be the opiate that he is a social individual in his political relationships as a citizen. Hence, the necessity for the Fascist state. But »not until the real individual man is identical with the citizen and has become a generic being in his empirical life, in his individual work, in his individual relationships, not until man has recognized and organized his own capacities as social capacities and consequently the social force is no longer divided by the political power, not until then will human emancipation be achieved.»
That is what Marx conceived as socialism-the actual appropriation by the workers in their productive material life, of their human capacities. Politics and the state would wither away, because it would no longer be necessary to maintain the illusory political community.
The analysis which Marx made ofpolitics applies not only to bourgeois politics but to all attempts to substitute the political community for the actual community of emancipated man in the labor process. Thus, what dominates the life of the United States today is not the bourgeois parliament in Washington, which is at this moment beginning to appear as little more than an investigations committee, but what has been wisely called the »economic parliaments» of the trade union councils and conventions. It is the trade unions which today form the political community for millions of workers and to which therefore must be applied the Marxist criticism of politics.
The American worker today has transferred his cynicism regarding bourgeois politics to trade union politics. In the trade union hall and at trade union meetings, he sees different caucuses vying for power and for the administration of the union. In creating the industrial union movement the workers felt that they were creating an instrument for their social emancipation. Now, however, the union appears only as an arena for opposing political groupings. The worker wonders why the labor leaders whom he has created should behave as they do. The answer to his question must be sought in the actual development of the capitalist mode of production. Thereby, we can not only explain the labor bureaucracy to the workers but also to itself.
A labor union like the United Steel Workers of America embraces close to a million workers and includes not only steel foundries but iron-ore mines of the Mesabi, the aluminum rolling mills of Alcoa, Tennessee, the locomotive shops of Schenectady and the can factories of San Francisco. The structure of such a union is an industrial government with branches and divisions, not only parallelling those of the steel monopolies but even rivalling those of the national government. There is a legal department, a research and engineering department, a contract department, an accounting department, and a legislative department. The trade union machinery corresponds department for department, plant for plant, company for company, city for city, state for state to the machinery of the bourgeoisie.
The overall operations of such a union are the means whereby unity and continuity of production is maintained for different industrial units all the way from the mining of ore to the finishing of steam shovels. The United Steel Workers Union has been aptly termed U.S.A. The petty-bourgeoisie rants about the control which such giant unions have over the country. The big bourgeoisie knows that without these unions, it would be virtually impossible for it to keep production going for more than a few days. Modern society has reached the point where what is decisive is not the interlocking of financial wealth or directorates but the interlocking of production. For this the union or some kind of organization of labor is absolutely essential.
The union contract which is the constitution of this industrial government is the modus operandi of the actual process of production. It contains the analysis, breakdown and codification of the actual labor process of the millions of workers engaged in these industries. The most important features of the union contract are not the wage rates nor even the hours, but rather the unending rules and regulations regarding classifications of work, conditions of labor, piece-rates, etc.
These classifications and rulings are the classifications and rulings of the alienated, fragmented activity of the workers. They are the modern analogue of the old guild restrictions of feudal society. But whereas the guild restrictions were a barrier to the division of labor necessary to unlock the mysteries of production, today's codifications of alienated labor are a barrier to the reintegration and synthesis necessary to revolutionize the process of production. The revolutionary potentialities inherent in the productive forces, both material and human, have reached the point where the codification of the alienated labor process is a restriction on the economic necessities and actual yearnings of the workers for universality and reintegration.
The union contract governs the life of the worker from morning to night, during every minute of his working hours. The petty-bourgeois concept of the »social contract» was the myth of isolated individuals in which each counted only as one in forming the political community. The union contract is the actual reality of the fragmented individual in the labor process. The workers defend the union contract as a weapon against the bourgeoisie given the present relations of production. Not to defend the contract would intensify their exploitation because it would enable the bourgeoisie to force upon them a quantitative increase in alienated labor of the same quality. Moreover, and even more important, is the fact that the workers have won the contract through class warfare and see it as a symbol of victories won against the bourgeoisie. At the same time, instinctively, the workers feel that the classifications only codify their alienation. The workers fight hard for better contracts, they demand that the labor leaders get better contracts for them. But when the contract is won, the workers sense immediately that it represents a new shackle on them and an added responsibility for continuous production. Hence, they snort at the contract and console themselves that their struggle at least brought them a raise. It is a demonstration of the fact that the reforms of better contracts remain within the framework of alienated labor and only decrease its quantity.
The labor leader of today has no special privileges or skills to protect as did the organized workers of the old craft unions. More often than not, he has but recently come from the bench, and in actual salary and standard of living does not exceed the workers whom he represents. What corrupts the labor leadership is its role in the process of production itself. The labor leadership is the administrator of the union contract.
Because the labor bureaucracy represents the divisions of labor within the capitalist mode of production, its representation of the ranks must turn into an administration of the ranks. The labor bureaucracy is the agent of the workers but it is the agent of the alienated, i.e. semi-skilled workers. It is not, like the old Social-Democracy, an agent of the capitalists but it is a representative of the capitalist mode of production. The labor bureaucrat sits down with the capitalists and works out time-studies and classifications, not because he is collaborating with them as individuals but because they both represent the capitalist mode of production. That is why there is practically no difference between the time-study provisions of the union, the company and the labor relations board. And that is why, also, every committee man has at some time or other had misgivings about sending an aggrieved worker back to his bench on the basis of such provisions.
The wildcat strikes which have dotted the American landscape since the middle of the war are an expression of the hostility of groups of workers in isolated departments here and there against the alienated character of their labor. Once begun, they become the signal for other workers in other departments to revolt against the general alienation. The sharp words of a foreman, 90° heat, a new division of labor, any one of these can bring about a wildcat strike which erupts in the midst of the interlocking »socialized production» between the various industrial plants. It is precisely for this reason that the labor bureaucracy is so hostile to the wildcat strikes. The union bureaucracy represents the unification and stabilization of alienated labor. On the other hand, the wildcat strikes represent a revolt against alienated labor. The union bureaucracy pledges union responsibility in exchange for union security, but it cannot deliver because union responsibility depends on the ranks, and the ranks do not regard the stabilization of the status quo in production as their mission. The bureaucracy prefers well-organized national strikes to wildcats. Production is paralyzed as a whole, there is no disruption of the interlocking of production, and with everything shut down, there is no necessity for the mass picket lines which can erupt into conflicts with the state.
But the trade unions are not merely a structuralization of the existing mode of production. They are also the fruit of the expanding unity of the workers, a unity expanding along with the cooperative form of the labor process and exploding in the strikes which organize the union in opposition to the bourgeoisie. In this sense, they are schools of communism for the workers and have an intrinsically political character whether or not they take political expression on the parliamentary arena. It is this aspect of the trade union movement, the fact that they threaten a political movement of the working class against the bourgeoisie, which the capitalists fear most and which they are always seeking to undermine. Similarly it is this aspect of the trade unions which the workers are most prepared to defend against any attempts of the bourgeois state to destroy their organized strength.
In the same way, the labor leadership is not only the representative of the bourgeois mode of production but also the militant leadership thrown up by the mass movement. In this sense, the labor leadership represents the social movement of the masses against their alienated labor, represents their creative unity in action, and their need to appropriate the instruments of production in the all-sided way which, as we have shown, is only possible with a completely new mode of production.
The trade union leadership therefore has a dual character. It is the administrator for the capitalist mode of production but it maintains its hold on the masses only through the social, political and economic gains which it re resents to the masses as a result of past struggles and as a promise of the future.
The Roman Emperors could not develop a mode of production which would give employment to the proletariat who had known free labor. They had therefore to give them bread and circuses and a political empire in which they could serve as overlords. In the modern world the New Deal bestowed respectability on the system of public works. The union bureaucrats try to avoid this pitfall. But they cannot satisfy the much more deeply rooted yearnings of the modern proletariat for a mode of production in which it can freely exercise its natural and acquired powers. They must therefore attempt by all forms of social programs, e.g., the health, educational and recreational programs of the ILGWU, the political programs of the CIO-PAC, the program for »wage increases without price increases» of Reuther, the welfare funds of Lewis, to justify their leadership of the workers. All the secondary aspects of the misery of the proletariat, the labor leadership can tackle, all material' needs it can seek to satisfy, but the basic human need in the proletariat to appropriate the social productive powers in the labor process itself, that the trade union leadership cannot tackle so long as it functions as an integral part of the trade union machinery built on the existing mode of production.
We have treated above the misconception of class society that the real universality of men is not to be found in the labor process but in pursuits outside of it, in religion, art, politics, literature, etc.
Inherent in the wage labor on which capitalist production is built is the ideology that productive activity is merely a means to existence rather than the first necessity of human existence. Productive activity, in other words, is considered in bourgeois society to be labor, a means to satisfaction of needs and not a human need. The shortening of the working day, a fundamental premise for the new socialist relations of production, has been regarded as a means whereby the worker could have more hours to himself outside of production rather than as a means whereby his productive hours could become more human. Yet productive activity is the distinguishing characteristic of the human species, and to unleash such productive activity by developing the all-sided individual in the process of production is the objective of the socialist revolution.
The labor bureaucracy cannot tackle the essential question of the in-human activity of man in the labor process, because to do that it would have to represent a more human and therefore more productive mode of labor. In other words, it would have to pose the social revolution to the workers, not only as ridding society of the capitalist exploiters, but also as the solution of all concrete day-to-day problems arising from their life in the factory in a revolutionary manner. Unless it does this, it must remain confined within the bourgeois ideology of wealth and poverty in material terms.
The trade union leadership of today degenerates into rival political machines like the capitalist parties of yesterday because the necessary revolutionary development of production which is now on the order of the day, rests not with it but with the objective needs of the economy rooted in the workers at the bench. Except for a political caucus which represents the movement of the workers toward a revolutionary solution for their life in the factory, each new leadership only administers the alien mode of production as did its predecessors, since each is the prisoner of this framework.
But there is one big difference between the capitalist politicians and the labor politicians. The workers to whom the trade union politicians must appeal are not the immigrants and dispersed artisans, mechanics and laborers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Rather they are highly concentrated, organized, disciplined by production, and have a deep yearning for social change. Therefore, to capture the allegiance and votes not only of the workers in his own industry but throughout the nation, and also to woo the petty-bourgeoisie, a labor politician like Reuther must put forward a comprehensive program for a New Deal as did the bourgeois politician Roosevelt in an earlier period. Reuther is perfectly aware that the whole movement of industry is in the direction of more extreme centralization of capital and socialization of labor. He is playing his political cards with this in mind. But as Marx pointed out in his analysis of Napoleon III, what appears in one period as tragedy, must appear in its imitation as farce. The American workers have gotten over the shock of the 1929 depression and the confused restlessness which could be appeased by Roosevelt's New Deal. Reuther may stop half-way. The American workers will not. Any movement which would place Reuther or one of the national labor figures at the head of the nation would be the result of such a self-mobilization of the nation's workers and such an attempt to rid themselves of the whole alienation of capitalist production that the labor bureaucracy would either be forced into a counter-revolutionary dictatorship against them or such a fumbling and confusion as would make the impotence of Attlee in Britain look like superb statesmanship.
So sharp is the contradiction within the trade union activist between his role as representative of the social movement of the proletariat and his duties as representative of the alien mode of production, that it is not uncommon for the trade union militants who helped form the CIO in 1936-37 to be returning to their benches or to shop stewardships, relinquishing their posts to ex-AFofL leaders, professional labor leaders, lawyers, etc. They are some of the material from which the revolutionary leadership of the next period will come. The theoretical answer to their dilemma, as it is the answer to the dilemma of all layers of society, is in the understanding of the social movement which brought them to leadership in the mass strikes of 1936-37.
Every major struggle by the workers is a struggle to leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom. When the struggle is over, and the gains have been crystallized in higher wages, shorter hours and union security, it appears that the essence of the movement was not the creative energies of the masses bursting the seams of capitalist society but rather the concrete ends achieved. The CIO, however, coming in a period when, particularly in the United States, an industrial revolution was taking place, when the whole world was agitated by the barbarisms of capitalism and when new deals and new social orders were part of the mental environment of every worker, still retains its revolutionary content in the memories of the workers who participated in its formation. Their hostility to the labor bureaucracy is an expression of their determination not to allow the CIO to become a routine appendage to the capitalist mode of production. As the bourgeois analyst, Peter Drucker, has pointed out, it is this revolutionary content to their unions which makes the workers today press upon their leaders to fight it out rather than to negotiate. In essence, the CIO was a social crusade, an attempt on the part of the American workers to rise to their historic destiny and reconstruct society on new beginnings.
Since World War II new millions have joined this crusade and acquired an organic awareness of the inter-relatedness of production between one department and another, from coal mine to assembly line; between town and country, from continent to continent. For the same reason that they derive a genuine satisfaction from the intricate functioning of this productive mechanism, they are today, more than ever before, seriously disturbed by the constant disruptions and threats of disruptions inseparable from its capitalist administration.
The American bourgeoisie is organically incapable of assuring any perspective of economic and social stability and progress on the one-world scale axiomatic in our time. Already its political front, which had seemed so imposing, is beginning to show signs of great strain. Today, more and more workers say, with that simple directness which requires no proof:
»Sure, we could it better.» In these words, there is contained the workers' recognition of the enormous scope of their natural and acquired powers, and the distorted and wasteful abuse of these powers within the existing society. In these words is contained also the overwhelming anger of the workers against the capitalist barriers stifling their energies and hence victimizing the whole world. Never has society so needed the direct intervention of the workers. Never have the workers been so ready to come to grips with the fundamental problems of society. The destinies of the two are indissolubly united. When the workers take their fate into their own hands, when they seize the power and begin their reconstruction of society, all of mankind will leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom.