The Rise and Decline of the Coal Miners Union 1989-1994

The Rise and Decline of the Coal Miners Union 1989-1994

Socialist Action July 1989

Coal Miners Expand Strike Against Bosses’ Offensive

NORTON, Va. — The class war between miners labor and capital is heating up in the coal fields of America. On June 12, over 43,000 members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) — more than half the unionized workforce — staged “wildcat” strikes in 11 states, including West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania.

Rank-and-file mine workers organized the walkouts to express solidarity with 1700 UMWA members who have been on strike against the Pittston Coal Group in Virginia for nearly three months.

The bitter strike against Pittston is shaping up to be a decisive test for the UMWA. If the miners suffer a defeat here, the coal operators will undoubtedly intensify their campaign to wipe out the union completely. With that in mind, the UMWA ranks are linking their fate to the outcome of the Pittston strike.

The “wildcat” strikers’ anger is infecting other workers in the coal fields. At several factories in Pennsylvania, workers demonstrated their solidarity by refusing to go to the work after miners showed up and passed out flyers that explained the strike issues. At a Bethlehem Steel plant in Johnstown, Pa., only 37 out of a workforce of 600 went to work.

The catalyst for the miners’ inspiration is located in a seemingly obscure corner of the nation. As you fly over southwestern Virginia, you see green fields and soft, rolling bills; it looks like a peaceful, serene place. But once your feet touch the ground, you quickly realize there is a militant class battle taking place-with lines clearly drawn.

After 14 months of working without a contract, the 1700 UMWA miners based at Pittston, the nation’s largest coal exporter, were forced to go on strike on April 5. In their “best final offer,” Pittston had demanded the elimination of certain jobs, unlimited overtime (including running coal on Sundays), and cuts in healthcare and pension benefits.

The company was itching for a fight. When the previous contract expired on Feb. I, 1988, Pittston unilaterally cut off healthcare benefits to more than 1500 pensioners, surviving spouses, and disabled miners. The UMW A called the strike after a National Labor Relations Board ruling charged Pittston with “unfair labor practices.”

The strike came at a time when fortunes for the UMWA were not good. With the growth of nonunion mining and the closing down of union mines, coupled with increases in productivity through automation (longwalling and strip mining), the UMW A membership has dropped from 500,000 in 1950 to 65,000 members today.

It is in this context that the union was forced to take a stand and wage a battle at Pittston. Another defeat would directly pose the question of the continued existence of the UMW A, the most militant and democratic union in the country.

Pittston imports scabs

Pittston thought it could defeat the strike by hiring local unemployed workers as strikebreakers. The unemployment rate in the coal fields of Virginia and West Virginia is over 20 percent.

But the company wasn’t able to recruit a sizable force of strikebreakers from these depressed areas. Local working people consider “scabbing” the worst possible sin-to be dealt with accordingly. So Pittston imported scabs from other areas. Yet even these strikebreakers refused to work at night on swing and graveyard shifts.

From the beginning, the miners were faced with the intervention of the Commonwealth of Virginia on the side of the company. Democratic Party Gov. Gerald Baliles dispatched 300 state troopers to the coal fields to intimidate the strikers.

Despite the police presence, the miners have continued their mass picketing and civil disobedience. Pittston is now operating at less than 10 percent of its capacity. This is the result of the solid community support for the strikers, which has transformed the strike into a social movement. Thousands have been arrested—including high-school students, teachers, and religious leaders.

The state and federal courts in “right to work” Virginia have issued injunctions against the UMW A. The union now faces the possibility of being fined over $1.4 trillion plus prison terms for its leaders.

Yet the UMWA maintains that it has a First Amendment right to freedom of speech and assembly. The Pittston strikers are confident they can win.

One striking coal miner told me that employer always acts as if the miners are stupid. But then he proudly described how the miners have countered every move by the company and the government. He also felt that if it were not for the intervention of the government, they could have won the strike m three days.

State Democratic Party convention

The open collaboration of the state government and courts with Pittston’s strikebreaking has encouraged the UMWA to consider some polItical solutions to this battle.

On June 10, 1989, the UMWA organized a protest against Gov. Baliles at the State Democratic Party Convention. UMW A delegates, with the reluctant support of AFL-CIO delegates, staged a protest inside the convention hall when Baliles spoke. The union delegates tried to convince the state Democratic Party to support the miners, but they were blatantly rejected and not even allowed to speak on the issue.

To underscore the fact that the entire Democratic Party machine is lining up behind Pittston, their new candidate for governor, Lt. Gov. Doug Wilder, has come out squarely in support of the actions carried out by Gov. Baliles.

Consequently, the UMW A is considering running its own workers’ solidarity election campaign—independent of the Democrats for the main statewide posts in Virginia. The campaign is being proposed as a protest against the anti-labor and pro-employer policies of the Democratic Party. The election campaign would also be a tactic to counter the antiunion propaganda generated by the press and the state government.

Rally In Charleston

I attended a June 11 solidarity rally in Charleston, W.Va. Speakers from many labor unions gave support to the Pittston strike and to the striking Eastern Airlines workers.

The speakers list included William Winpisinger, retiring president of the International Association of Machinists (lAM); Joyce Miller, president of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW); and a Chinese student from a West Virginia university, who sought solidarity with the struggle of China’s students and workers. .’

But it was the last speaker — Richard Trumka, president of the UMWA—who set the tone for the rally. He spoke about the Pittston strike and the attempt of the state and federal government to break the UMWA.

Trumka pointed out that the state refused to fine the company when seven miners died in a mine accident but, on the other hand, was fining and jailing striking miners. He declared that the UMWA was on strike not only against Pittson, but also against the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Trumka exposed the hypocrisy of the U.S. government when it claimed to support workers in Poland and China who are fighting for democracy and justice. At the same time, he noted, government authorities physically assaulted, fined, and jailed striking miners in southwest Virginia.

Making a direct analogy with the civil rights movement, Trumka declared that the UMWA would defy all unjust injunctions and laws that Oppose the basic rights of working people to achieve justice. The day after Trumka’s militant speech, the “wildcat” strikes began.

Willingness to fight

These “wildcat” strikes demonstrate the willingness and capacity of the union ranks to fight. The UMW A has had a democratic tradition from the time of the Miners for Democracy in the early 1970s. This makes it very difficult, if not impossible, for the government to co-opt the leadership in order to housebreak the membership—as in other international unions in the recent period.

The coal bosses and the government are faced with a situation they did not foresee. In order to defeat the miners, they now face the likelihood of a never-ending war in the coal fields. But, in fact, the coal operators have been conducting such a war for years.

Despite its small size, the UMWA is carrying on a fight that has the potential to win; it could signal the end of the recent spiral of capitulation, concessions, and betrayals that American trade unions have suffered since the PATCO strike in 1981.

The Pittston strike, combined with the solidarity “wildcats” of the UMW A rank and file, could become a turning point for labor. It deserves the support of all working people. The UMWA membership has pointed the way forward by expanding the strike. They are teaching the American labor movement some very fundamental lessons.

Socialist Action August 1989

Virginia miners stand firm as wildcat strikes halted

Robert Peterson

(I sometimes used this ‘pen name’)

On July 18, .1989, the United Mineworkers of America (UMW A) and the Pittston Coal Group agreed to resume negotiations after a month-long series of wildcat strikes in all of the union mines east of the Mississippi.

Along with the agreement to resume negotiations, Richard L. Trumka, president of the UMWA, urged the union membership to end the wildcat strikes. The rank-and-file union miners had been striking in solidarity with the 2000 miners who work for Pittston Coal.

In West Virginia, where the wildcats cut production by almost 90 percent, there was no let up in the strike until July 24, when all of the “wildcatters” reluctantly went back to work. It was estimated at that time that the walkout had already cost the state over $10 million.

The rank-and-file initiatives have brought national attention to the strike. They have also had the effect of solidifying the strike at the Pittston mines to the point where only limited amounts of coal are being produced. (The company lost $8 million during the strike’s fIrst month.) The wildcat strikers have demonstrated the capacity of the UMWA membership to carry out a fight.

The agreement to resume negotiations came after a federal judge, Glen M. Williams, called both the company and the union into court to respond to questions about the strike. Judge Williams is one the judges who earlier issued an injunction against the UMWA and and the miners’ right to picket. A federal mediator will be involved in the new negotiations.

The miners themselves have no confidence that federal mediators— or any government agency —will protect their union or their livelihood. The history of the strike has demonstrated that the government is on the side of the officials. (There have been over 2000 arrests and the UMWA faces fines with a potential cost of $1.4 trillion.)

Although the miners are now hurting Pittston Coal economically, the strike will most likely continue for some time. It will be a test of strength and determination.

Although the strike has now lasted three months, the moral of the strikers remains high. In order to organize the support necessary for victory, the UMWA leadership must demonstrate that it has the same fighting capacity as the membership.

Socialist Action January 1994

UMWA settles strike—signs 5 year agreement

After a six month-long selective strike by 18,000 coal miners against the Bituminous Coal Operators Association (BCOA), the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) bas agreed to a new five-year contract by a 60-65 percent approval vote.

The contract, which effects 60,000 working and laid off coal miners, was supported by Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich. He stated that the contract included “provisions that further strengthen workplace democracy and provide for miners to have a real say in the way work is performed.”

These provisions call for the establishment of UMWA—BCOA Labor Management Positive Change Process (LMPCP) committees. The committees would be put into effect in at least 10 percent of mines to make them more competitive, to reduce the number of job classifications, and to facilitate around-the-clock coal production.

Reich called the new arrangement a “neutral forum — an industrywide, labor-management cooperative committee,” which would allow miners and management to resolve problems “before they face the urgency of an expiring contract.”

In the name of “workplace democracy,” Reich has been advocating such committees in all union contracts with the object of turning all of the unions into instruments to increase productivity and keep U.S. businesses competitive. In general, these committees have powers that circumvent the union memberships’ democratic control over their contract and working conditions.

If the committees, as Reich describes them, are established, they would be a blow to the union democracy that was won by the Miners for Democracy (MFD) in the UMWA. The MFD was a mass movement of miners, their families, and their communities that transformed the UMWA into the most democratic union in the United States in the late 1960s and early 70s.

Districts 4 and 5 in western Pennsylvania, which were part of the stronghold of the MFD, rejected the contract.

“Double breasting”

The main demand of the UMWA was to stop “double breasting” by the coal employers. “Double breasting” is when the coal operators who are signed to a union agreement open up a new mine or buy a mine under a different name and operate it with nonunion miners. Under the last contract, the coal operators were supposed to hire at least 60 percent union miners at these work sites.

It was, however, difficult for the UMWA to enforce these provisions. Under the new contract, the same 60 percent rehiring provision is in effect, but the wording is clearer and more difficult for the employers to violate—although the enforcement is left up to a labor-management committee. It is unknown at this time whether the contract is applicable in mines previously opened up in violation of the last agreement.

The employers also accepted the UMWA proposal—in reality, a concession—to have the option of keeping the present arrangement of eight-hour shifts for five days a week, or to implement 10 hour shifts for four days. The proposal includes a work schedule option was agreed to the creation of a weekend shift that includes 10 hours on Friday or Monday and 12 hours on Saturday and Sunday (34 hours) for 5O hours pay. According to the new contract, this proposal can only be implemented if the operators employ more miners with the addition of an extra shift. If a local union agrees, the employers can also implement other “alternative work schedules.” Thus, working conditions can vary from mine to mine.

These proposals by the UMWA for the 10 hour day and weekend work are a 180-degree shift in policy. The new agreement will allow the more productive mines to be opened seven days a week, with an increase in productivity due to the longer workday. In the long run, ‘more miners,overall, will be laid. off than hired as the less productive mines are forced to shut down. The longer workday also increases the danger of accidents in the mines and shortens the life span of the individual miners.

Socialist Action July 1989

Coal Miners Expand Strike Against Bosses’ Offensive

Rank-and-file mine workers organized the walkouts to express solidarity with 1700 UMWA members who have been on strike against the Pittston Coal Group in Virginia for nearly three months.

Pittston imports scabs

Pittston thought it could defeat the strike by hiring local unemployed workers as strikebreakers. The unemployment rate in the coal fields of Virginia and West Virginia is over 20 percent.

Yet the UMWA maintains that it has a First Amendment right to freedom of speech and assembly. The Pittston strikers are confident they can win.

State Democratic Party convention

The open collaboration of the state government and courts with Pittston’s strikebreaking has encouraged the UMWA to consider some polItical solutions to this battle.

Rally In Charleston

I attended a June 11 solidarity rally in Charleston, W.Va. Speakers from many labor unions gave support to the Pittston strike and to the striking Eastern Airlines workers.

Willingness to fight

Socialist Action August 1989

Virginia miners stand firm as wildcat strikes halted

Roland Petewrson

(I sometimes used this ‘pen name’)

Although the miners are now hurting Pittston Coal economically, the strike will most likely continue for some time. It will be a test of strength and determination.

Socialist Action January 1994

UMWA settles strike—signs 5 year agreement

Districts 4 and 5 in western Pennsylvania, which were part of the stronghold of the MFD, rejected the contract.

“Double breasting”

Leon Trotsky

Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay (1940)

Trade unions in the epoch of imperialist decay

First Published in English: Fourth International [New York], Vol.2 No.2, February 1941, pp.40-43.
Online Version: Marxists Internet Archive, 2003.Transcribed/HTML Markup: David Walters in 2003.
Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive www.marxists.org 2003. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

(The manuscript of the following article was found in Trotsky’s desk. Obviously, it was by no means a completed article, but rather the rough notes for an article on the subject indicated by his title. He had been writing them shortly before his death. – The Editors of FI)

There is one common feature in the development, or more correctly the degeneration, of modern trade union organizations in the entire world: it is their drawing closely to and growing together with the state power. This process is equally characteristic of the neutral, the Social-Democratic, the Communist and “anarchist” trade unions. This fact alone shows that the tendency towards “growing together” is intrinsic not in this or that doctrine as such but derives from social conditions common for all unions.

Monopoly capitalism does not rest on competition and free private initiative but on centralized command. The capitalist cliques at the head of mighty trusts, syndicates, banking consortiums, etcetera, view economic life from the very same heights as does state power; and they require at every step the collaboration of the latter. In their turn the trade unions in the most important branches of industry find themselves deprived of the possibility of profiting by the competition between the different enterprises. They have to confront a centralized capitalist adversary, intimately bound up with state power. Hence flows the need of the trade unions – insofar as they remain on reformist positions, ie., on positions of adapting themselves to private property – to adapt themselves to the capitalist state and to contend for its cooperation. In the eyes of the bureaucracy of the trade union movement the chief task lies in “freeing” the state from the embrace of capitalism, in weakening its dependence on trusts, in pulling it over to their side. This position is in complete harmony with the social position of the labor aristocracy and the labor bureaucracy, who fight for a crumb in the share of superprofits of imperialist capitalism. The labor bureaucrats do their level best in words and deeds to demonstrate to the “democratic” state how reliable and indispensable they are in peace-time and especially in time of war. By transforming the trade unions into organs of the state, fascism invents nothing new; it merely draws to their ultimate conclusion the tendencies inherent in imperialism.

Colonial and semi-colonial countries are under the sway not of native capitalism but of foreign imperialism. However, this does not weaken but on the contrary, strengthens the need of direct, daily, practical ties between the magnates of capitalism and the governments which are in essence subject to them – the governments of colonial or semi-colonial countries. Inasmuch as imperialist capitalism creates both in colonies and semi-colonies a stratum of labor aristocracy and bureaucracy, the latter requires the support of colonial and semicolonial governments, as protectors, patrons and, sometimes, as arbitrators. This constitutes the most important social basis for the Bonapartist and semi-Bonapartist character of governments in the colonies and in backward countries generally. This likewise constitutes the basis for the dependence of reformist unions upon the state.

In Mexico the trade unions have been transformed by law into semi-state institutions and have, in the nature of things, assumed a semi-totalitarian character. The stateization of the trade unions was, according to the conception of the legislators, introduced in the interests of the workers in order to assure them an influence upon the governmental and economic life. But insofar as foreign imperialist capitalism dominates the national state and insofar as it is able, with the assistance of internal reactionary forces, to overthrow the unstable democracy and replace it with outright fascist dictatorship, to that extent the legislation relating to the trade unions can easily become a weapon in the hands of imperialist dictatorship.

Slogans for Freeing the Unions

From the foregoing it seems, at first sight, easy to draw the conclusion that the trade unions cease to be trade unions in the imperialist epoch. They leave almost no room at all for workers’ democracy which, in the good old days, when free trade ruled on the economic arena, constituted the content of the inner life of labor organizations. In the absence of workers’ democracy there cannot be any free struggle for the influence over the trade union membership. And because of this, the chief arena of work for revolutionists within the trade unions disappears. Such a position, however, would be false to the core. We cannot select the arena and the conditions for our activity to suit our own likes and dislikes. It is infinitely more difficult to fight in a totalitarian or a semitotalitarian state for influence over the working masses than in a democracy. The very same thing likewise applies to trade unions whose fate reflects the change in the destiny of capitalist states. We cannot renounce the struggle for influence over workers in Germany merely because the totalitarian regime makes such work extremely difficult there. We cannot, in precisely the same way, renounce the struggle within the compulsory labor organizations created by Fascism. All the less so can we renounce internal systematic work in trade unions of totalitarian and semi-totalitarian type merely because they depend directly or indirectly on the workers’ state or because the bureaucracy deprives the revolutionists of the possibility of working freely within these trade unions. It is necessary to conduct a struggle under all those concrete conditions which have been created by the preceding developments, including therein the mistakes of the working class and the crimes of its leaders. In the fascist and semi-fascist countries it is impossible to carry on revolutionary work that is not underground, illegal, conspiratorial. Within the totalitarian and semi-totalitarian unions it is impossible or well-nigh impossible to carry on any except conspiratorial work. It is necessary to adapt ourselves to the concrete conditions existing in the trade unions of every given country in order to mobilize the masses not only against the bourgeoisie but also against the totalitarian regime within the trade unions themselves and against the leaders enforcing this regime. The primary slogan for this struggle is: complete and unconditional independence of the trade unions in relation to the capitalist state. This means a struggle to turn the trade unions into the organs of the broad exploited masses and not the organs of a labor aristocracy.

* * *

The second slogan is: trade union democracy. This second slogan flows directly from the first and presupposes for its realization the complete freedom of the trade unions from the imperialist or colonial state.

In other words, the trade unions in the present epoch cannot simply be the organs of democracy as they were in the epoch of free capitalism and they cannot any longer remain politically neutral, that is, limit themselves to serving the daily needs of the working class. They cannot any longer be anarchistic, i.e. ignore the decisive influence of the state on the life of peoples and classes. They can no longer be reformist, because the objective conditions leave no room for any serious and lasting reforms. The trade unions of our time can either serve as secondary instruments of imperialist capitalism for the subordination and disciplining of workers and for obstructing the revolution, or, on the contrary, the trade unions can become the instruments of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat.

* * *

The neutrality of the trade unions is completely and irretrievably a thing of the past, gone together with the free bourgeois democracy.

* * *

From what has been said it follows quite clearly that, in spite of the progressive degeneration of trade unions and their growing together with the imperialist state, the work within the trade unions not only does not lose any of its importance but remains as before and becomes in a certain sense even more important work than ever for every revolutionary party. The matter at issue is essentially the struggle for influence over the working class. Every organization, every party, every faction which permits itself an ultimatistic position in relation to the trade union, i.e., in essence turns its back upon the working class, merely because of displeasure with its organizations, every such organization is destined to perish. And it must be said it deserves to perish.

* * *

Inasmuch as the chief role in backward countries is not played by national but by foreign capitalism, the national bourgeoisie occupies, in the sense of its social position, a much more minor position than corresponds with the development of industry. Inasmuch as foreign capital does not import workers but proletarianizes the native population, the national proletariat soon begins playing the most important role in the life of the country. In these conditions the national government, to the extent that it tries to show resistance to foreign capital, is compelled to a greater or lesser degree to lean on the proletariat. On the other hand, the governments of those backward countries which consider inescapable or more profitable for themselves to march shoulder to shoulder with foreign capital, destroy the labor organizations and institute a more or less totalitarian regime. Thus, the feebleness of the national bourgeoisie, the absence of traditions of municipal self-government, the pressure of foreign capitalism and the relatively rapid growth of the proletariat, cut the ground from under any kind of stable democratic regime. The governments of backward, i.e., colonial and semi-colonial countries, by and large assume a Bonapartist or semi-Bonapartist character; and differ from one another in this, that some try to orient in a democratic direction, seeking support among workers and peasants, while others install a form close to military-police dictatorship. This likewise determines the fate of the trade unions. They either stand under the special patronage of the state or they are subjected to cruel persecution. Patronage on the part of the state is dictated by two tasks which confront it.. First, to draw the working class closer thus gaining a support for resistance against excessive pretensions on the part of imperialism; and, at the same time, to discipline the workers themselves by placing them under the control of a bureaucracy.

* * *

Monopoly Capitalism and the Unions

Monopoly capitalism is less and less willing to reconcile itself to the independence of trade unions. It demands of the reformist bureaucracy and the labor aristocracy who pick the crumbs from its banquet table, that they become transformed into its political police before the eyes of the working class. If that is not achieved, the labor bureaucracy is driven away and replaced by the fascists. Incidentally, all the efforts of the labor aristocracy in the service of imperialism cannot in the long run save them from destruction.

The intensification of class contradictions within each country, the intensification of antagonisms between one country and another, produce a situation in which imperialist capitalism can tolerate (i.e., up to a certain time) a reformist bureaucracy only if the latter serves directly as a petty but active stockholder of its imperialist enterprises, of its plans and programs within the country as well as on the world arena. Social-reformism must become transformed into social-imperialism in order to prolong its existence, but only prolong it, and nothing more. Because along this road there is no way out in general.

Does this mean that in the epoch of imperialism independent trade unions are generally impossible? It would be fundamentally incorrect to pose the question this way. Impossible are the independent or semi-independent reformist trade unions. Wholly possible are revolutionary trade unions which not only are not stockholders of imperialist policy but which set as their task the direct overthrow of the rule of capitalism. In the epoch of imperialist decay the trade unions can be really independent only to the extent that they are conscious of being, in action, the organs of proletarian revolution. In this sense, the program of transitional demands adopted by the last congress of the Fourth International is not only the program for the activity of the party but in its fundamental features it is the program for the activity of the trade unions.

(Translator’s note: At this point Trotsky left room on the page, to expound further the connection between trade union activity and the Transitional Program of the Fourth International. It is obvious that implied here is a very powerful argument in favor of military training under trade union control. The following idea is implied: Either the trade unions serve as the obedient recruiting sergeants for the imperialist army and imperialist war or they train workers for self-defense and revolution.)

The development of backward countries is characterized by its combined character. In other words, the last word of imperialist technology, economics, and politics is combined in these countries with traditional backwardness and primitiveness. This law can be observed in the most diverse spheres of the development of colonial and semi-colonial countries, including the sphere of the trade union movement. Imperialist capitalism operates here in its most cynical and naked form. It transports to virgin soil the most perfected methods of its tyrannical rule.

* * *

In the trade union movement throughout the world there is to be observed in the last period a swing to the right and the suppression of internal democracy. In England, the Minority Movement in the trade unions has been crushed (not without the assistance of Moscow); the leaders of the trade union movement are today, especially in the field of foreign policy, the obedient agents of the Conservative party. In France there was no room for an independent existence for Stalinist trade unions; they united with the so-called anarcho-syndicalist trade unions under the leadership of Jouhaux and as a result of this unification there was a general shift of the trade union movement not to the left but to the right. The leadership of the CGT is the most direct and open agency of French imperialist capitalism.

In the United States the trade union movement has passed through the most stormy history in recent years. The rise of the CIO is incontrovertible evidence of the revolutionary tendencies within the working masses. Indicative and noteworthy in the highest degree, however, is the fact that the new “leftist” trade union organization was no sooner founded than it fell into the steel embrace of the imperialist state. The struggle among the tops between the old federation and the new is reducible in large measure to the struggle for the sympathy and support of Roosevelt and his cabinet.

No less graphic, although in a different sense, is the picture of the development or the degeneration of the trade union movement in Spain. In the socialist trade unions all those leading elements which to any degree represented the independence of the trade union movement were pushed out. As regards the anarcho-syndicalist unions, they were transformed into the instrument of the bourgeois republicans; the anarcho-syndicalist leaders became conservative bourgeois ministers. The fact that this metamorphosis took place in conditions of civil war does not weaken its significance. War is the continuation of the self-same policies. It speeds up processes, exposes their basic features, destroys all that is rotten, false, equivocal and lays bare all that is essential. The shift of the trade unions to the right was due to the sharpening of class and international contradictions. The leaders of the trade union movement sensed or understood, or were given to understand, that now was no time to play the game of opposition. Every oppositional movement within the trade union movement, especially among the tops, threatens to provoke a stormy movement of the masses and to create difficulties for national imperialism. Hence flows the swing of the trade unions to the right, and the suppression of workers’ democracy within the unions. The basic feature, the swing towards the totalitarian regime, passes through the labor movement of the whole world.

We should also recall Holland, where the reformist and the trade union movement was not only a reliable prop of imperialist capitalism, but where the so-called anarcho-syndicalist organization also was actually under the control of the imperialist government. The secretary of this organization, Sneevliet, in spite of his Platonic sympathies for the Fourth International was as deputy in the Dutch Parliament most concerned lest the wrath of the government descend upon his trade union organization.

* * *

In the United States the Department of Labor with its leftist bureaucracy has as its task the subordination of the trade union movement to the democratic state and it must be said that this task has up to now been solved with some success.

* * *

The nationalization of railways and oil fields in Mexico has of course nothing in common with socialism. It is a measure of state capitalism in a backward country which in this way seeks to defend itself on the one hand against foreign imperialism and on the other against its own proletariat. The management of railways, oil fields, etcetera, through labor organizations has nothing in common with workers’ control over industry, for in the essence of the matter the management is effected through the labor bureaucracy which is independent of the workers, but in return, completely dependent on the bourgeois state. This measure on the part of the ruling class pursues the aim of disciplining the working class, making it more industrious in the service of the common interests of the state, which appear on the surface to merge with the interests of the working class itself. As a matter of fact, the whole task of the bourgeoisie 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. In these conditions, the task of the revolutionary vanguard is to conduct a struggle for the complete independence of the trade unions and for the introduction of actual workers’ control over the present union bureaucracy, which has been turned into the administration of railways, oil enterprises and so on.

* * *

Events of the last period (before the war) have revealed with especial clarity that anarchism, which in point of theory is always only liberalism drawn to its extremes, was, in practice, peaceful propaganda within the democratic republic, the protection of which it required. If we leave aside individual terrorist acts, etcetera, anarchism, as a system of mass movement and politics, presented only propaganda material under the peaceful protection of the laws. In conditions of crisis the anarchists always did just the opposite of what they taught in peace times. This was pointed out by Marx himself in connection with the Paris Commune. And it was repeated on a far more colossal scale in the experience of the Spanish revolution.

* * *

Democratic unions in the old sense of the term, bodies where in the framework of one and the same mass organization different tendencies struggled more or less freely, can no longer exist. Just as it is impossible to bring back the bourgeois-democratic state, so it is impossible to bring back the old workers’ democracy. The fate of the one reflects the fate of the other. As a matter of fact, the independence of trade unions in the class sense, in their relations to the bourgeois state can, in the present conditions, be assured only by a completely revolutionary leadership, that is, the leadership of the Fourth International. This leadership, naturally, must and can be rational and assure the unions the maximum of democracy conceivable under the present concrete conditions. But without the political leadership of the Fourth International the independence of the trade unions is impossible.