Part I: The Capitalist State
The capitalist class understands that the class struggle cannot be wished away. If they want to keep control of society it is therefore necessary for them to try and manage it. They are prepared to use force and violence to do this. In the 2012 mineworkers’ strikes the ANC government declared a state of emergency across the platinum belt, deployed heavily armed police and shot dead 34 mineworkers at Marikana. To think that this was an exceptional tragedy that could never be repeated would be a dangerous mistake.
Organised violence against workers is routine under capitalism. Even taking part in a legal strike does not always give protection from police intimidation, harassment or even assault. Sometimes the bosses will use hired-thugs to attack workers and the ‘neutral’ state turns a blind-eye. But wherever possible the bosses prefer to disguise the violence of their system. Capitalism’s stability is at risk if its brutality is too obvious. Moreover, it is expensive to suppress the working class by force. So the capitalist class has developed methods of control for ‘normal times’.
The capitalist class’s economic dictatorship gives them enormous power to shape ‘public opinion’ through their control of the media and the education system; the family and religion are used to encourage the ‘virtues’ of hard work, obedience and acceptance of authority. The capitalist class use these levers to try and lower the temperature of the class struggle and avoid provoking a head-on confrontation between the classes.
Reforms
The struggle for the fullest possible political freedoms and democratic rights has always been a part of workers’ struggles. The struggle to end apartheid and win basic political freedoms and democratic rights were hard fought in South Africa. The right to vote, to form political parties and trade unions, freedoms of speech, assembly and movement are very important tools that workers can use to organise. The very fact that today we are able to organise trade unions openly is a debt owed by workers to all those who struggled before them.
With organisation workers can force the capitalist class to make democratic concessions. At other times the bosses and the capitalist politicians recognise that it is in their interests to grant workers and their trade unions certain legal rights to stop a conflict from starting. From this combination of mass pressure and political calculation, laws like the Labour Relations Act and Basic Conditions of Employment Act have been passed, and special courts like the CCMA and Labour Court created. On paper at least, these place some limits on the bosses’ right to exploit workers.
But workers face enormous obstacles in exercising their rights. The bosses find legal tricks to win cases. They have the money to hire lawyers to create endless delays. They use the time that they ‘buy’ to demoralise workers into giving-up. Other ‘pro-worker’ reforms are no better than window-dressing. The 2015 law requiring all workers under labour-brokers to be hired as permanent staff after three months was simply ignored by the bosses. After more than three years the Constitutional Court has upheld the law – but even this is being challenged. The ANC government has done nothing about the bosses’ defiance. If they were serious about ending the super-exploitation of labour broking they would have hired thousands of new labour inspectors to enforce compliance.
When past concessions to workers become inconvenient the capitalist class will try and take them back. For example in 2018 new amendments to the Labour Relation Act were passed by the ANC government with the support of other capitalist political parties that make a legal strike more difficult to organise.
Economic Dictatorship
Democracy and the freedoms and rights mentioned have not been sufficient for the working class majority to end poverty, inequality and unemployment. If anything things are moving in the opposite direction. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The young age of South Africa’s democracy is not the issue. Across North America and Europe democracy is decades, even centuries old. But poverty and inequality continue to exist there too. The enormous burden that corruption places upon state institutions is likewise more symptom than cause. Corruption is endemic to capitalism and has been excused, dressed-up and justified in different ways as long as capitalism has existed (see There Can Be No Capitalism without Corruption and other material on the MWP website). Rather, there is a more fundamental contradiction between democracy and capitalism.
We have already seen that the bosses cannot allow workers a real say in the workplace. It would make exploitation impossible. But the same is true across the economy as a whole. This too must be placed beyond the control of the majority. The result is a limited capitalist democracy (or bourgeois democracy as Marx called it) where institutions that appear highly democratic – one person, one vote, a parliament, a constitution, courts etc. – exist side by side with an economic dictatorship of the capitalist class. This contradiction demands strict limits on the democratic rights and individual freedoms of workers.
For example, imagine a group of 100 workers. They are unhappy that the time of their lunch hour has been changed. If one worker walks out alone the boss might complain, but he will likely agree it is their right to quit if they want to. Even if two, three, four or five workers did this. But if all 100 workers walk out together to demand that the boss changes their lunch hour back the boss will howl about an ‘illegal’ or ‘unprotected’ strike. He will say that workers are “holding him to ransom”. It is likely that the police will be called to deal with the workers. The boss may decide to fire every worker on the spot for ‘gross misconduct’.
From the point of view of the workers their actions were democratic. By walking-out they have exercised their right to protest. To make their views known they have used their freedom of speech and their freedom of association (i.e. to organise). But when the police arrive it is the workers who will be arrested, not the boss. From the point of view of the bosses and the defenders of capitalism it was ‘mob-rule’.
Of course workers can organise to defend themselves from the most arbitrary treatment. But democratic mass organisations like trade unions are a problem for the capitalist class’s economic dictatorship. So everything possible is done to strangle the class independence of trade unions and co-opt them within the framework of the capitalist state. From the bosses point of view the legal framework of the capitalist state is organised according to the principle, “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”.
On the surface South Africa appears to give organised workers and their trade unions significant status and power. For example, trade unions can appeal to the courts if an employer refuses to recognise them. Different collective bargaining forums allow trade unions to influence the wages of entire industries. But the price of the appearance of power is an unspoken agreement to ‘play the game’ according to the bosses’ rules.
For example, as we have explained above, industries are divided into many rival companies. They are all competing with each other meaning huge waste. Will the representatives of the so-called ‘neutral’ capitalist state ever point their finger at this? Will they ever recommend that the state intervenes and forces the consolidation (i.e. merger) of an industry to maximise economies of scale, reduce waste and free the resources necessary to raise wages? If a trade union were to raise such a bold proposal they will be told that it is “outside the mandate” of the forum. Anything that truly challenges the bosses’ control of the economy is off-limits.
Often the more generous a concession appears, the greater the deception it hides. For example, the constitution upholds the freedom of association – i.e. the right to organise – of both workers and employers. The right to strike is also recognised, though it is subject to heavy control. But the bosses’ right to lock-out workers is also recognised. This means that the constitution assumes private capitalist ownership of the economy. The constitution’s formal equality before the law is in reality a defence and recognition of the bosses’ economic dictatorship and a cover-up of the huge inequality of power between exploiter and exploited.
Karl Marx explained that, “The executive of the modern state is nothing but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie [capitalist class].” Under capitalism the reality is that even the most ‘democratic’ state is not neutral in the class struggle. The capitalist class uses it to defend their control of society. But to disguise this they present the state as an ‘honest broker’ between different but equal ‘stakeholders’. Lenin pointed out that,
“A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best shell … it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it.”
The State and Revolution, 1917
But always, behind the ‘democratic’ appearance, lies the threat of the organised violence of the capitalist state. If the bosses are unable to keep us busy chasing our tails they will crack our heads. Indeed, the legal framework of capitalism allows the bosses to appeal to ‘law and order’ as a justification to supress workers’ struggles when they step outside of what the law sanctions – and the law sanctions only that which does not challenge capitalism.
Capitalist Politics
The capitalist political parties play an important role in this too. They act like there is no alternative to capitalism. If they do talk about an alternative to capitalism it is consciously left fuzzy and undefined with the idea encouraged that it will somehow be created via their party’s control of the capitalist state.
The most radical capitalist political parties may talk about expropriation of land or nationalisation of key industries. But this does not mean they are calling for a challenge to capitalism as a system. For example, if expropriation of farms swaps white capitalist farmers for black capitalist farmers, private ownership of the economy has not been changed. There has just been a re-division of ownership within the capitalist class. If nationalised industries are ‘owned’ by the capitalist state and run by capitalist politicians they will use nationalisation to promote and defend their class interests. For example, by subsidising privately owned industries, as Eskom does for the mine bosses by charging lower tariffs.
All the politicians and political parties that agree that capitalism is the ‘only’ way to run society ultimately have to accept and defend the bosses’ economic dictatorship. This is why the trade union movement cannot be neutral or stand aside from the question of politics. There are important discussions taking place among organised workers on this issue. The question of Cosatu’s Alliance with the ANC is again rising to the surface. Within Saftu there is a debate about launching a workers party. The MWP is of the firm view that the organised working class must be at the forefront of building a socialist mass workers party. Trade unions challenge the bosses’ control of the workplace every day by independent working class organisation. Why would we leave their political control of society unchallenged? The struggle against the bosses on the shop floor must be extended into every corner of society. (See Struggle for a Mass Workers Party.)
Part II: The Trade Union Bureaucracy
Workers often view capitalist politicians with suspicion even at the best of times. But the leaders of the trade unions are far closer to workers’ day-to-day lives. The bosses can have no better allies if those who lead the organisations that are meant to fight capitalist exploitation agree to defend it.
This requires weakening members’ control over their leaders; of making the leaders vulnerable to pressure from the bosses and shielding them from the pressure of the workers. Leon Trotsky explained that:
…the whole task of the bourgeoisie [capitalist class] consists in liquidating the trade unions as organs of the class struggle and substituting in their place the trade union bureaucracy as the organ of the leadership over the workers by the bourgeois state.
Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay, 1940
The co-option of leaders is not always done through corruption, though this is often an important part of it. Brown envelopes of cash are in fact the least reliable method for co-opting the workers’ movement. If it is exposed the corrupt leader quickly loses influence over workers.
A far more reliable method is to change the outlook of workers’ leaders – for workers’ leaders to convince themselves that there is no alternative to capitalism. This outlook can be encouraged from the ‘harmless’ step of the shop steward attending the manager’s private Christmas party, to the integration of the unions into the capitalist state through the various bargaining forums, parliamentary committees, courts and ‘dispute resolution’ laws we have already mentioned.
All of this opens up workers’ leaders to the influence of an entirely different milieu (or environment). Here they are exposed to ‘sensible’ middle class opinion which agrees on the ‘proper place’ of trade unions in society – they can complain, protest even, but never challenge the foundations of capitalism. This is the viewpoint of those with certain privileges under capitalism. It is the milieu from which the bosses recruit the managers, HRs, lawyers, and accountants that will sit across the table from shop stewards. These people are far removed from the mines, the factories, the workshops, the cleaning trolleys, the kitchens and security parades of raw class exploitation. What is out of sight is out of mind. From this middle class point of view capitalism may not be perfect but it works well enough because it works for them. The middle class plays an important role for capitalism. They help to dress-up and justify it as ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ – as ‘just the way things are’.
The boardroom will be very strange environment for a shop steward newly elected and sent for a week of negotiations. It is easy to get lost in such a hostile landscape. Our shop steward will be told by capitalism’s representatives that the existence of the class exploitation that yesterday he or she took for granted, is in fact all a big misunderstanding. The company is actually one big happy family working together for the mutual benefit of all. But returning to the shop floor and the day-to-day reality of class exploitation can keep shop stewards’ feet on the ground.
Privileges
But the bosses find ways to try and stop workers’ leaders’ feet from ever landing back on the ground. The starting point for this co-option is encouraging privileges that no other worker could ever dream of – privileges enormously over-and-above what is actually required to be an effective workers’ leader.
The struggle for workers’ rights has always included correct demands for full-time shop stewards paid their normal wage by the boss. Workers rightly see it as a sign of progress when their union has the funds to open offices, hire full-time organisers and for certain elected leadership positions to become full-time posts. All of this is necessary for building a strong trade union. For most, being the shop steward is the hardest and most demanding job there is in the workers’ movement. Only the bravest and most self-sacrificing workers would even be willing to do it, normally pushed into the position because they have the confidence of other workers.
But the bosses’ find ways to make progress in the strength of trade union organisation work for them too. The bosses ‘re-tool’ measures originally necessary to build the workers’ movement as an opportunity to co-opt it. So the shop steward is released permanently from the hard and boring work of the shop floor. He or she is given their own office, additional allowances, an expensive cell phone, a new car. The bosses of some companies automatically put shop stewards on management pay grades. The bosses try and create as much distance as possible between workers and their leaders in order to isolate the leaders and ‘soften them up’ to their point of view.
The granting of special privileges can be extended into the trade union structures by those whose appetites have grown with eating. They want to feel the ‘social equals’ of the middle class representatives they sit opposite in the boardroom. They want to present the union general secretary as equivalent to a CEO. So full-time officials’ salaries and perks can grow and grow and grow. They are freed from using public transport because they can afford their own cars. They no longer have to rely on under-funded public hospitals or government schools for their children because they can go private. Eventually, they move out of working class communities and move in next door to the bosses and their managers in the suburbs.
These trade union leaders become lifted into the middle class. The milieu they are exposed to in the boardroom becomes the norm of their personal life too. They no longer move in working class circles or mix with working class crowds. They start to view the world as the middle class does. They start to think that, “yes, capitalism is bad, but it is not that bad, after all, it works for me now too”.
The interests of such privileged trade union leaders are no longer the same as the interests of the workers. They want to enjoy their privileges. The class struggle can become a nuisance to them. If it threatens to get ‘out of hand’ it can even become a threat to their privileges – a strike could end in defeat and job losses damaging the union’s finances. This gives them an interest in limiting struggle – they become conservative and scared to ‘rock the boat’.
From here, it is not a great leap to start looking beyond their union’s risky ‘core business’ of the class struggle to all sorts of ‘get rich quick’ schemes such as union investment funds. These introduce severe conflicts of interest and tie trade unions ever more closely into dependence on capitalism. Trade unions cease to be the thorn in the side of the class enemy but become the ‘partners’ of big business and the launch pad for trade union leaders’ business careers. For example, chemical workers’ union CEPPAWU, alongside the Nactu federation, both became shareholders in Sasol in 2008 – a company they both had members in. The former CEPPAWU general secretary used fake documents to win contracts worth R300 million before his fraud was discovered. The Coastu-affiliated mineworkers’ union NUM has a long standing 50/50 partnership with the Chamber of Mines in Ubank – a short-term money lender, in effect a loan-shark, targeting mineworkers as its main customer base. This gave the NUM a vested interest in low wages as this would keep their lending services in high demand among poverty-stricken mineworkers.
When enough workers’ leaders have been co-opted in this manner, what started as necessary administration has become something else – bureaucracy.[1] Whereas workers see trade unions as a vehicle to take forward their struggles for better wages and working conditions the trade union bureaucrat views them as the source of their privileges.
When bureaucracy becomes institutionalised (i.e. a permanent part of the ‘culture’ of a trade union) careerism takes root. The type of shop-steward we described earlier is pushed-out by those wanting to climb on the gravy train – opportunism replaces principle. This leads to destructive rivalries between unions to dominate an industry, collect workers deductions and control investment funds. Within unions a thuggish fight for positions can take hold. To create the space to play these games bureaucrats must suppress democracy and workers control and replace it with corruption, intimidation and even violence.
Results
Now the bosses can let the workers’ leaders police the workers’ movement for them. This ‘outsourcing’ of the defence of capitalism is the best possible scenario for them. What better friends could the bosses have than shop stewards, trade union officials and trade union leaders who do not believe there is any alternative to capitalism? Or worse, do not want an alternative to capitalism? They will enter every negotiation, campaign and strike looking to compromise. With no belief that anyone other than the capitalist class can run society trade union bureaucrats run in terror when they are accused of ‘politicising’ a struggle. They easily accept the limitations that the capitalist state places on the workers’ movement and instead of challenging it they beg for its co-operation.
There are however limits to how far this agenda of co-option and control can be pushed. A trade union is nothing without its members. Ultimately even the worst trade union bureaucracy needs to keep the workers’ movement alive as the source of their privileges. Although some trade union bureaucracies have stretched this to its limits by basing their privileges more and more on the union investment funds we have already mentioned and other corporate sponsorship. But they can never completely break their dependence on workers without the union ceasing to be a union.
Despite all of these pressures, many shop stewards, trade union officials and leaders never surrender to the bosses or capitulate to bureaucratic pressures. But there is not a single trade union or federation that exists that is not vulnerable to co-option. The danger comes from the very nature of capitalism. But it is possible for workers to defend against it. This requires organisation around the programme of revolutionary trade unionism. It is a programme that has a clear alternative to capitalism that can help workers avoid the traps created for them.
