Vol. 78/No. 8      March 3, 2014

This article, which is must reading for every Marxist, whether or not he is active in the unions, is one of the most brilliant and prophetic Trotsky ever wrote. Far-ranging, pointing to the conditions that were common to unions all over the world at the start of World War II, it penetrates to the central question of unionism in our time: the need for “complete and unconditional independence of the trade unions in relation to the capitalist state.” It is indeed a pity that Trotsky did not live to complete this article, but there is more food for thought (and action) in this short unfinished piece than will be found in any book by anyone else on the union question.

The second article is about “The Question of Trade Union Unity” as it presented itself to the French Left Oppositionists in 1931, when the unions were divided into two rival labor federations. But Trotsky’s treatment of this recurring problem transcends the particular situation that led him to write it and offers guidelines for handling it even today.

“We make no fetish of trade union unity,” he wrote. “It is not a question for us of a panacea.” But at the same time, he stressed, “a preference for an assured majority in a narrow and isolated trade union confederation rather than oppositional work in a broad and real mass organization, is the mark only of sectarians or officials and not of proletarian revolutionists.” He did not advocate trade union unity at all times and under all conditions, but he pointed out its advantages under most conditions for the working class as a whole and for the revolutionists in particular.

The third article, here entitled “The Unions in Britain,” was written in 1933 after Hitler’s coming to power had revealed the bankruptcy of the Communist International (Comintern). The Left Opposition had decided to discontinue its efforts to reform the Comintern and its parties and to work for the creation of a new International. In line with this, the Left Opposition participated in an international conference of left socialist and independent communist organizations held in Paris August 27–28, 1933, where it introduced a resolution advocating a new International. One of the centrist organizations at the conference, the Independent Labour Party of Great Britain, took an intermediate position on this question because it was still suffering from illusions about the possibility of reforming the Comintern — illusions that were partly the result of ignorance about the history of Stalinism.

In this article, written shortly after the Paris conference, Trotsky undertook the task of educating the members of the ILP not only about the disastrous policies of the Stalinists in the union sphere in Britain and elsewhere, but also about the role of genuine revolutionists in combating the union bureaucracy. Among other questions, he deals here with one that has still not died: Is it not possible to skip over the trade union stage?

The fourth article consists of excerpts from letters in 1936, 1937, and 1938 criticizing the Revolutionary Socialist Workers Party (RSAP) of Holland, which had adhered to the movement for a new International at the Paris conference in 1933, but which developed a number of serious differences in the following years and withdrew from the movement before the Fourth International was founded in 1938.

The differences covered a broad range of questions — the civil war in Spain, the nature and internal life of the Fourth International, and others. But they also concerned the RSAP’s union policy, which was concentrated on a small independent grouping, the National Labor Secretariat (NAS), in which RSAP leader Henk Sneevliet played a leading role, but which remained outside of the mainstream of the Dutch labor movement.

The fifth article is taken from the main document adopted at the founding conference of the Fourth International, “The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International.” It repeats the need for revolutionists to work inside the existing unions and condemns “sectarian attempts to build or preserve small ‘revolutionary’ unions” as “the renouncing of the struggle for leadership of the working class.” But it also rejects “trade union fetishism, equally characteristic of trade unionists and syndicalists.” It advocates a struggle not only to replace the conservative union bureaucracy but also to create wherever possible independent militant organizations better suited to mass anticapitalist struggle; and, if necessary, “not flinching even in the face of a direct break with the conservative apparatus of the trade unions. If it be criminal to turn one’s back on mass organizations for the sake of fostering sectarian fictions, it is no less so to passively tolerate subordination of the revolutionary mass movement to the control of openly reactionary or disguised conservative (‘progressive’) bureaucratic cliques. Trade unions are not ends in themselves; they are but means along the road to proletarian revolution.”

The final article in part 1 is the product of a conversation Trotsky had with a CIO organizer in Mexico in September 1938, shortly after the founding of the Fourth International.
 
 
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