Marxism and the trade unions Part 1:

Marx, Engels, Lenin and the British

working class
Professor Mary Davis
Mary Davis is a labour historian and the author of Comrade or Brother? A
history of the British Labour Movement

1. Marx and Engels on Trade Unions

Trade unionism as we understand it today really begins to develop with the
industrial revolution in Britain and the growth of the industrial working class at
the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. At this time it
was illegal under 1799 Combination Acts. In 1834 the utopian socialist, Robert
Owen, initiated the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union, but it discouraged
strikes in favour of forming cooperatives and never really took off. Also in 1834
came the famous case of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, agricultural labourers, who were
sentenced to transportation for the crime of forming a union.
When Marx and Engels arrived on the scene as communists in the 1840s they
found that most radicals, socialists and would be revolutionaries were actually
opposed to trade unionism. Looking back in 1869, Marx noted, in 1847 when all
the political economists and all the socialists concurred on one single point the
condemnation of trade unions I demonstrated their necessity and Engels
concurred Marxs assertion is true of all socialists, with the exception of us two (
In point of fact it was Engels in The Condition of the English Working Class in
1844 who first took first took up the cudgels on behalf of unions calling them,
the military school of the working-men in which they prepare themselves for the
great struggle which cannot be avoided...And as schools of war the Unions are
unexcelled Marx followed suit, making the question of strikes and combinations
a major issue in The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), his polemic against Proudhon
(then the leading French socialist who was anti-union):
In England, they have not stopped at partial combinations which have no
other objective than a passing strike, and which disappear with it. Permanent
combinations have been formed, trades unions, which serve as ramparts for the
workers in their struggles with the employers. The first attempt of workers to
associate among themselves always takes place in the form of combinations...
Large-scale industry concentrates in one place a crowd of people unknown to
one another. Competition divides their interests. But the maintenance of wages,
this common interest which they have against their boss, unites them in a
common thought of resistance combination. Thus combination always has a
double aim, that of stopping competition among the workers, so that they can
carry on general competition with the capitalist.... In this struggle a veritable
civil war all the elements necessary for a coming battle unite and develop.
After 1850 and the onset of a period of reaction Marx largely withdrew from

active politics in order to write Capital in the library of the British Museum but in
1864 he attended the founding meeting of the International Working Mens
Association in London. I knew, he wrote, that this time real powers were
involved both on the London and Paris sides and therefore decided to waive my
usual standing rule to decline any such invitations. . The real powers were the
French and British trade unions.
In the course of his work with the International Marx frequently defended the
crucial importance of the trade union struggle. For example, in 1866, writing on
Trades' unions: Their past, present and future he argued:
Trades' Unions originally sprang up from the spontaneous attempts of workmen
at removing or at least checking that competition, in order to conquer such
terms of contract as might raise them at least above the condition of mere
slaves. The immediate object of Trades' Unions was therefore confined to
everyday necessities, to expediencies for the obstruction of the incessant
encroachments of capital, in one word, to questions of wages and time of labour.
This activity of the Trades' Unions is not only legitimate, it is necessary. It cannot
be dispensed with so long as the present system of production lasts.
However, he also injected a note of caution, warning the working class against
relying on trade unionism alone and warning the unions against focussing only
on the immediate economic struggle.
At the same time, and quite apart from the general servitude involved in the
wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the
ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they
are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are
retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are
applying palliatives, not curing the malady.
And he sounded the same note at the end of Wages, Price and Profit (1865)
Trades Unions work well as centres of resistance against the encroachments of
capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail
generally from limiting themselves to a guerrilla war against the effects of the
existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using
their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class
that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system. In 1875 both Marx and
Engels sharply criticised the German Social Democrats for failing to deal with the
role of unions in their political programme (the so- called Gotha Programme)
...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 proletariats 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)
As the nineteenth century wore on the British working class movement, on its
journey from Chartism to Labourism, became more and more reformist and
respectable and this led Marx and Engels to grow more critical of corrupt trade
union leaders.

Put simply, how do we explain the fact the labour movement, appeared for at least
twenty years to be content to exclude from its ranks the majority of workers
(women, the lesser skilled and the lower paid), and to find for itself a niche within
the capitalist system, the very system which had been the object of such hatred
hitherto? Part of the explanation is to be found in analysis of the decline of
Chartism, which was greatly affected by the spectacular growth of the economy in
the boom years. But this, while it might help to explain the initial shift in orientation
and ideology, cannot explain its long term success or the mechanism for achieving
it.

2. The labour movement and the labour aristocracy

The great prosperity of the mid Victorian period touched even the 'lower
orders'- but not all of them. Had capitalism been able to accomplish such a miracle,
poverty, unemployment and homelessness would have all been eradicated. In fact
for the vast majority of the working population conditions remained almost as
bleak as ever, except perhaps that there was more regularity of employment.
However a section of the working class experienced an appreciable change in
terms of considerable rise in real wages and a vast improvement in living and often
also in working conditions. Contemporaries like the trade unionist George Potter
used the term 'aristocracy' to describe this group of workers who could be easily
distinguished in habits of dress, manners and lifestyle from labourers. Tom Mann in
his Memoirs, describes his comrade John Burns thus, "He always wore a serge suit,
a white shirt, a black tie, and a bowler hat. He looked the engineer all over..". The
general use, then and now, of the term 'labour aristocracy' as a description of the
better-off section of the working class is uncontroversial, although there are
differences as to who the term could be justifiably applied. This aside, the real
controversy lies in the theory which makes use of such a category of workers to
explain the move away from the more revolutionary traditions of the labour
movement associated with the previous period.
So, who were the labour aristocrats? A combination of factors separately or
together determined the prosperity of this group of workers. Of overriding
importance was the profitability of the particular industry in which they were
employed. The most prosperous undertakings were the staple industries (coal, iron
and steel and cotton) together with the building industry which experienced boom
conditions in this period. But that did not mean that all workers in these industries
were labour aristocrats. In some cases (e.g. engineering), higher pay was
determined by skill (usually achieved after serving an apprenticeship). However, in
industries like coal mining and cotton manufacture apprenticeships were rare, but
nonetheless there existed discernible groups of higher paid workers. In mining the
hewers were the best paid and in cotton it was the adult male spinners. There is no
particularly good reason for this other than custom, practice and prejudice within
the industries themselves. (Prejudice because it will be remembered that the first
cotton spinners in the industrialised mills were women, and very poorly paid.) If we
are to find any logic in such payment systems it is probably better explained by the
employers' desire for social control achieved through creating a divided and
hierarchical workforce. Given the immense prosperity of these industries in this
period, it was now possible to create such hierarchies much more consistently than
hitherto through pay differentials. Finally, higher paid workers could be found in
industries which were unmechanised and still depended in part on artisan skill.
Masons and joiners in the building trade fitted into this category as did printers.
The skilled craftsmen in the luxury or bespoke trades (eg tailoring, shoemaking,
jewellery) could also be counted in this group. Underlying all this is the stark fact of

a blatant sexual division of labour which automatically excluded women workers

from the higher earnings league.
Given the absence of a white collar managerial strata and also the small
scale nature of many industrial undertakings, it is hardly surprising that groups of
privileged workers were receptive to the self improvement ideas of the Samuel
Smiles type. Social advancement, even to the point of becoming a small master
seemed well within the grasp of any hard working and thrifty man, provided his
passions were not roused by drink or 'dangerous' politics. Thus it was that the
economic and social boundaries between the labour aristocrats and their 'betters'
were seen by the former as more blurred, with the inevitable consequence that gulf
between the aristocrats and the rest of the working class widened.
Its not possible to say what those who were left behind thought of the new
situation, but it was quite clear that the boom years having created for the first
time the promise (maybe just the dream) of upward social mobility, had a profound
impact on the thinking and the life style of the group of favoured workers. In one
sense there is nothing particularly remarkable about this- ingrained habits of
subservience and deference have always meant that the 'lower orders' tend to ape
their betters. The remarkable (though controversial) aspect is the extent to which
such attitudes and ideas penetrated the labour movement. This is not to deny their
force earlier - it was not the case that one day in 1850 the working class awoke to
find that it had become a reactionary mass, whereas the day before it had been
revolutionary. However, after 1850, the 'defence not defiance' philosophy was the
dominant trend for the simple reason that it made real sense to those who
advocated it.
Given the coincidence of the labour aristocracy and the organised labour
movement, it would be hard to deny the ideological influence of the former on the
latter. Of course there were periods of militancy during these twenty or so years,
just as there were quiet years in the preceding turbulent period. But it is also true
that the dominant characteristic of each period was markedly different, despite
obvious continuities. It stands to reason that those groups who dominate the
movement also dominate its ideas and orientation, and it was undoubtedly the
case that labour aristocracy dominated almost exclusively.

3. Trade Unionism the New Model

Although trade unionism revived after the demise of Chartism, it was clear
from the start that in important respects it was very different from the trade
unionism of the earlier period. Most notably the earlier experiments in general
unionism were discontinued as was its general outlook as expressed in the
objective of the GNCTU -"bringing about a different order of things, in which the
really useful and intelligent part of society only shall have the direction of its
affairs". That said, most of the so-called new model unions were re-formations of
already existing (usually) craft organisations. For example the most famous, the
Amalgamated Society of Engineers (1851) was a grouping of smaller societies
around the largest of the engineering unions, the Journeymen Steam-Engine,
Machine Makers and Millwrights Friendly Society, formed in 1826. Many of these
older (and now amalgamated or revitalised) unions were already craft dominated
and fairly cautious in that they concentrated more on friendly society benefits than
class confrontation. So are the Webbs' correct in their description of the unions
formed between 1850 and 1870 as 'new model'?

The 'newness' of trade unionism in this period resides in their contrast with
the older societies from which they developed. These were usually smaller, more
local and often impermanent. The new formations were nationally based, highly
centralised and much stronger. Their high membership subscription made them
richer too, and hence more able to continue the already established trend of
employing full time officials and offering improved benefits. To this extent, the
Amalgamated Society of Engineers did form a model national organisation on
which many others were based (for example, the Amalgamated Society of
Carpenters and Joiners).
The other new feature was linked to the more favourable economic
circumstances which permitted those more favourably placed workers to engage
more productively, through their unions in forms of collective bargaining which
were very rare in the earlier years of industrial capitalism. Negotiation and
arbitration gradually came to be accepted practices, and were a much more
common means of securing improvements in wages and conditions than strike
action. The first conciliation and arbitration board, consisting of equal numbers of
employers and workers, was established in 1860 for the Nottingham Hosiery trade.
This found imitators in many other industries and regions. Not that strikes did not
take place (for example the engineers strike of 1852 and the protracted London
builders' strike of 1859-60), but caution was to be exercised in the use of the
"double edged (strike) weapon" (Applegarth, secretary of the Amalgamated Society
of Carpenters and Joiners). William Allen, secretary of the ASE informed the 1867
Royal Commission on Trade Unions that in his union "The Executive Council and the
members, generally speaking, are averse to strikes. They think that matters out to
be settled in a different way than coming to strikes or lock-outs"
Whilst the economy was buoyant and expanding and the provision of key
labour (often skilled) was in short supply (owing to union control), a "different way",
in the form of collective bargaining, could be used and yielded rich rewards. The
prosperity of the individual enterprise thus came to be seen as important to the
worker as to the employer. When trade was good and profits high, the well placed
worker expected to share the good fortune.
Of course this meant the jettisoning of the notions of class consciousness in favour
of a more sectional and exclusive trade (or at best trade union) consciousness. The
former appearing as old fashioned rhetoric, whereas the latter could, literally and
figuratively, deliver the goods.
Finally, the other new feature of trade unionism was that fact that apart from
the co-operative movement, it was virtually the only form of working class
organisation. Gone therefore was the independent political dimension of the labour
movement which had so characterised it in its formative years. Apart from some
smaller less centralised, and often more militant unions in the North of England,
this was the only form of trade unionism, whereas in the past it had existed as but
one tendency among others. The smaller craft unions, like those of the tailors and
shoemakers whilst not 'new model' in their organisational form, shared a similar
ideology. George Potter, editor of the trade union paper 'The Beehive' was the
spokesman for these and the northern unions. So, although we know that new
model unionism was symbolised by its exclusiveness, being the organisations of
the labour aristocracy, the fact is that trade unionism in general did not exist for
the vast mass of British workers. Hence it was exclusive in itself and by virtue of its
dominance. It was nonetheless very successful in its own terms. In 1850 there were

roughly 100.000 trade union members. By 1874 this figure had risen to over a
million. Thereafter there was a sharp decline in membership, reflecting the strong
associations of this type of trade unionism with Britain's economic fortunes.
Despite the decline in the years of the depression, most of the unions
established in this period remained intact. Indeed many of the craft based unions in
existence today can trace their history back to the 1850's. Other organisations like
the Trades Councils and the Trade Union Congress itself were also established at
this time. The TUC itself had very inauspicious beginnings and its first meeting in
1868, whilst having an historical significance, passed by virtually unnoticed at the
time. Convened by the Manchester and Salford Trades Council, the presumption
was that the annual congress should be little more than a debating society dealing
with the 'merits and demerits' of 'papers, previously carefully prepared' on a 12
point list of subjects broadly connected with labour and trade union interests. Other
than agreeing to meet annually, no permanent structure or organisation was
established after the first congress. A greater cohesion and immediacy was given
to these leisurely and somewhat scholarly proceedings by the fear that the
government's sudden interest in trade unionism in the 1870's might produce
hostile legislation.

4. Women and Trade Unionism

What happened to the vast mass of workers who were excluded from the
unions of the labour aristocracy? Why did not those workers, the low paid and
lesser skilled who gained little or nothing from Britain's prosperity, organise
themselves? They, the most exploited, were only divided by a generation from the
revolutionary traditions of Chartism, Owenism and early trade unionism. Other than
the evidence we have of their misery, through contemporary novels and social
surveys, we know next to nothing about this majority group. There were some
tentative attempts to organise unskilled labour including agricultural workers, in
the 1870's in the wake of the strike wave inspired by the engineers fight for a 9
hour day in the north east. Despite the efforts of the Labour Protection League the
only survival of this was the Stevedores Union (which later played a key role in the
London dock strike of 1889).
Women workers were a special case. The dominant sexist ideology,
punctured slightly in the previous period, now permeated fully the more class
collaborationist mood of the labour movement. Women workers suffered a great
defeat. The only trade in which they still remained organised in any numbers was
that of weaving. The aim of trade unionism, according to Henry Broadhurst,
secretary of the TUC, speaking in 1875, was
"...to bring about a condition...where wives and daughters would be in their proper
sphere at home, instead of being dragged into competition for livelihood against
the great and strong men of the world." 1
From this kind of thinking sprang the widespread acceptance of the notion of the
'family wage' to be won by the male breadwinner. Hence not only was unequal pay
accepted as a norm, but women's work was only tolerated if not threatening to the
man. In any case it was seen as a mark of shame if a man permitted his wife to
work, hence the widespread practice, hardly contested by the unions until the
twentieth century, of barring married women from employment altogether. Such
attitudes and practices help to explain women's increasing job segregation and the
1 TUC Congress Report 1875 p.14

fact that so much female labour was literally hidden. It is not surprising therefore
that the unions of this period demonstrated a studied indifference if not downright
hostility to women workers. Any attempts to organise women in this period came
from outside the labour movement, often through the work of philanthropic
women. The most notable example is the formation in 1874 of the Women's
Protective and Provident League (later the Women's Trade Union League). Apart
from the still topical debate on this question, the lasting achievement of the
League was to get the first women delegates to the TUC.
Near the end of his life Engels was greatly cheered by the strike wave and rise of
New Unionism (representing unskilled workers ) in the East End of London, in
which Eleanor Marx and other avowed socialists played an important role. But
even here he was forced to note ominous signs of the new union leaders like John
Burns becoming incorporated by the bourgeoisie.
Thus, although the emphasis shifts depending on the changing situation, we find
that from 1844 to the end of their lives, Marx and Engels always defended trade
unions as an absolutely necessary element in the class struggle but at the same
time never gave them uncritical support or regarded them as sufficient in
themselves.

5. Lenin and the Comintern

Tsarist repression made the normal development of trade unionism in Russia
impossible and there were no real trade unions before the 1905 Revolution. The
building of the Comintern in its early years involved political battles on two
fronts: in the first place against reformism and centrism (centrism referred to the
Kautskyite centre of German social democracy and the international cothinkers, formally Marxist but in practice reformist); in the second place against
immature ultra-leftism, which became a significant force in many European
countries during the revolutionary wave that followed the First World War. On
both fronts the question of the trade unions played an important role.
In the struggle against centrism the Comintern bitterly denounced the leaders of
the so-called Amsterdam Trade Union International (such as Carl Legien, Arthur
Henderson and Leon Jouhaux) and sought to persuade unions to affiliate instead
to the Red International of Labour Unions based in Moscow.
In the struggle against ultra- leftism, which became particularly urgent in 1920
as the post-war revolutionary wave receded, Lenin wrote one of his most
important works, Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, in preparation
for the Third Congress of the Comintern. In it Lenin dealt with a number of issues
strategy and tactics, party and class, the policy of no compromise, the
necessity of participating in bourgeois parliaments but on the question should
revolutionaries work in reactionary trade unions? he was especially trenchant:
The German "Lefts" consider that, as far as they are concerned, the reply to this
question is an unqualified negative. However firmly the German "Lefts" may be
convinced of the revolutionism of such tactics, the latter are in fact
fundamentally wrong, and contain nothing but empty phrases. We cannot but
regard as equally ridiculous and childish nonsense ...disquisitions of the German
Lefts to the effect that Communists cannot and should not work in reactionary
trade unions, that it is permissible to turn down such work, that it is necessary to
withdraw from the trade unions and create a brand-new and immaculate

"Workers Union" invented by very pleasant (and, probably, for the most part
very youthful) Communists..
The trade unions were a tremendous step forward for the working class in the
early days of capitalist development, inasmuch as they marked a transition from
the workers disunity and helplessness to the rudiments of class organisation...
the development of the proletariat did not, and could not, proceed anywhere in
the world otherwise than through the trade unions, through reciprocal action
between them and the party of the working classWe are waging a struggle
against the "labour aristocracy" in the name of the masses of the workers and in
order to win them over to our side; we are waging the struggle against the
opportunist and social-chauvinist leaders in order to win the working class over
to our side. It would be absurd to forget this most elementary and most selfevident truth. Yet it is this very absurdity that the German "Left" Communists
perpetrate when, because of the reactionary and counter-revolutionary character
of the trade union top leadership, they jump to the conclusion that ... we must
withdraw from the trade unions, refuse to work in them, and create new and
artificial forms of labour organisation! This is so unpardonable a blunder that it is
tantamount to the greatest service Communists could render the bourgeoisie....
To refuse to work in the reactionary trade unions means leaving the insufficiently
developed or backward masses of workers under the influence of the reactionary
leaders, the agents of the bourgeoisie, the labour aristocrats.'
Lenins polemic was very powerful there is much more in the same vein as the
above but the basic idea is very simple: there are millions of workers in trade
unions and, regardless of their leadership, they are the fundamental mass
organisations of the working class; revolutionaries, therefore, are absolutely
obliged to work in these unions so as to reach, influence and lead the mass of
the working class. Lenins position carried the day in the Communist
International and subsequently has been the starting point in relation to trade
unionism for all serious socialists, that is, those socialists who base themselves
on the working class.