153

p The October Revolution has had and continues to have a pervasive influence on the development of the working-class movement in the capitalist countries. Initially, the most powerful factor was the socialist revolution that had put an end to exploitation and had come out for peace, bread, and happiness for the enslaved people, stopped national oppression and begun the construction of a socialist state. The powerful example of the October Revolution and the urge to follow it have spurred the working people of many countries in fighting capital. All the major manifestations of the upswing of the labour movement between 1918 and 1923 reveal the impact of the October Revolution.

p The revolutionary offensive of the international workers’ movement considerably weakened the world bourgeoisie on their home front and was a great help to the Soviet working people in repulsing internal and external counter-revolution. By affording this assistance, the working-class movement was, 154 in fact, defending the cause of socialism throughout the world. Once the revolutionary wave had subsided, international capital tried to mount an economic and political blockade of the world’s first workers’ and peasants’ state so as to isolate it from their own workers. But the truth about Soviet Russia and socialist construction penetrated the iron curtain of anti-Soviet and anti-communist propaganda, and got through to the working people of the world. By their success in every field, the Soviet working people created more favourable conditions for the revolutionary working-class movement in the capitalist countries.

p Since the October Revolution, the labour-capital conflict has become internationally a contest between the two socioeconomic systems, socialism and capitalism, with the Soviet Union becoming a powerful bulwark of the world workingclass and national liberation movements.

p As the socialist economy has grown in strength, improved its methods of management and more effectively employed its reserves, it has helped to demonstrate the advantages of socialism, bolster the defences of the socialist countries and raise living standards. In the long run, these developments are a factor revolutionising the working people in the capitalist countries.

p The importance of the Directives of the 24th Congress of the C.P.S.U. on economic development from 1971 to 1975 can hardly be exaggerated, for they reflect the desire to ensure a further and considerable rise in the Soviet people’s living standards through a fresh upsurge in the productive forces. With that end in view, there is to be a tireless effort to improve methods of economic management and enhance the efficiency of socialist production, and to make the fullest use of scientific and technical achievements. Deputy General Secretary of the French Communist Party, Georges Marchais, told the Congress: “Your successes along this way are of tremendous international importance. .. . They inspire the working class and masses of people in the capitalist countries to fight the domination of the monopolies, and facilitate this struggle."  [154•1 

p The October Revolution has also enhanced the socialist concept and stimulated the workers’ struggle because they 155 can now see in practice the advantages of socialism with their own eyes.

p Despite the hard conditions, the socialist countries have done wonders in gaining better material and cultural standards for their people. They have abolished every form of exploitation, provided their people with the best free medical service and free education system in the world, and have ensured the right to work and rest.

p Among their major achievements is the establishment of a form of democracy superior to that of bourgeois society. State power has been transferred to the working people, headed by the working class. This is genuine popular power. The world has never known such a degree of direct massive participation in government.

p Other nations that have taken the socialist road have been able to draw extensively on the half-century of Soviet experience in building a workers’ state. This experience is also invaluable for workers under capitalism. As the late Palmiro Togliatti said at the Ninth Congress of the Italian Communist Party, “We must never forget that our Soviet comrades also suffered, triumphed and fought for us, for the liberation of our working class, for the freedom of the Italian nation. The experience they have accumulated in their struggle is equally our own: it is the most valuable asset of the whole world working-class and communist movement."  [155•1 

p The October Revolution has drawn fresh contingents of working people into the world revolutionary movement, particularly in the colonial and dependent countries. The disintegration of the colonial system, the upsurge in antiimperialist struggle, and the striving of many young sovereign states to attain economic and political independence have shaken the capitalist world to its very foundations. The area of imperialist exploitation and room for bourgeois manoeuvre have been diminishing. The imperialists are no longer able to use their colonial possessions as springboards for an offensive against the democratic forces in the metropolitan areas—as Spanish and French reactionaries once did. Today, the working class, rallying the rest of the working people, is wielding state power to build a new society over 156 a large part of the earth; this has immensely increased its impact on the life of mankind as a whole. The formation of the world socialist system is the principal achievement of the revolutionary working-class movement.

p Within the capitalist countries, the authority of the working-class movement has greatly increased. Its strength and organisation have forced bourgeois governments, when they frame their policies, to take note of the stand taken by workers’ mass organisations. It is able increasingly to intervene in a wide range of issues, going well beyond purely economic interests. Today, no issue of home or foreign policy, or of economic and social development, is ignored by the working class and its organisations.

p The working-class movement is exerting an influence on the economic policies of governments and the monopolies. In recent years, it has frequently counterposed the bourgeois economic programme with its own positive programme of action in tune with the working people’s interests and designed to break the economic grip of the monopolies.

p In its political struggle, the vanguard of the working-class movement stands out as the main factor in enhancing the working people’s role in bourgeois society, transforming bourgeois-democratic institutions into an effective instrument for redistributing power in favour of the working people, and curbing the political power of the monopolies.

p In its ideological struggle, the working-class movement, primarily the Communist Parties, does what it can to blunt the effect of bourgeois ideas intended to justify the capitalist exploitation policy, and strives to promote class consciousness among the working people and ultimately to produce politically conscious fighters for socialism.

p The growing strength of the working-class movement is based above all on a great increase in numbers and influence of mass workers’ organisations, especially trade unions. At the time of the October Revolution, trade unions had only about 15 million members. Today, they have some 200 million members, about 40 per cent of the world’s working class. In the advanced capitalist countries alone, there are 70 million trade unionists, i.e., approximately 35 per cent of all wage workers. The best organised are those in industry, mines and railways. Unskilled workers, women, white-collar workers, engineers and technicians are unionised to a lesser 157 extent. In the U.S.A., for example, only 13.5 per cent of women workers and 10 per cent of white-collar workers, engineers and technicians hold union cards, and in Britain a quarter of the women workers and under one-third of the white-collar workers are trade unionists.

p Some countries have a comparatively low level of trade union membership: only 23 per cent in the U.S.A.; 24 per cent in Canada and 26 per cent in France. The figures are higher elsewhere: West Germany and Japan have 36 per cent, the Netherlands, Britain, Italy, Finland and Switzerland have between 40 and 46 per cent, and the Scandinavian countries, Belgium, Austria and Australia over 50 per cent.

p In many capitalist countries, the trade union leadership is openly reformist, sometimes even captive to blatantly bourgeois ideology and purveying a variety of professional prejudices. Most national trade union bodies are members of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, which is under strong Right-wing Social-Democratic influence. But the French General Confederation of Labour (C.G.T.) and the General Italian Confederation of Labour (C.G.I.L.) have consistently fought to defend workers’ interests. Both are affiliated to the World Federation of Trade Unions (W.F.T.U.), the only international trade union centre bringing together trade unions from countries with different social systems. Both the C.G.T. and the C.G.I.L. are fully committed to the class struggle against the bourgeoisie and enjoy the greatest prestige in their own countries. Other organised blue- and white-collar workers are members of the International Confederation of Christian Trade Unions (C.I.S.C.); many countries also have their own autonomous unions that refrain from joining either national or international bodies.

p The political organisations of the working-class movement have also gained much strength. The October Revolution helped to revolutionise broad masses of workers and showed a mode of workers’ struggle that differed from that followed by the leaders of the Second International. It led to the emergence of Communist Parties in many countries and of the world communist movement. Since then, the Communists have always been in the van of the fight for peace, democracy and socialism, and for the interests of the vast majority of working people.

p In the inter-war years, when extreme reaction began its 158 counter-offensive, the Communist Parties organised the working class and its allies in defence of democracy, against fascism and war. In Austria, Italy, Spain, Germany, France and Britain, the Communists were invariably in the forefront of the fight against monopoly capital. Their efforts were not everywhere crowned with success: fascism took over in Italy, Germany, and Spain, and thousands upon thousands of Communists were sent to concentration camps. But elsewhere, fascism had to retreat in face of the workers’ united front.

p During the last war, a mighty Resistance movement sprang up, primarily to combat fascism, but also to fight for a more democratic society, and the Communist Parties once again took the lead in this movement. It was their example in France and Italy, among other countries, that brought them mass support. Following the victory of the anti-fascist forces led by the socialist state, and with the democratic struggle on the upgrade and socialist ideas gaining in popularity, several Communist Parties participated in governments and made a substantial contribution to promoting democracy and improving socio-economic conditions for the working people. Soon, however, capitalism launched a counter-offensive and by the end of the 1940s and beginning of the 1950s, the working-class movement was in retreat in face of rampant reaction, a vicious anti-communist campaign and the cold war. This temporary setback was overcome towards the late 1950s, and the mass working-class and democratic movement recovered, with the Communist Parties gaining new members and improving the strategy and tactics of revolutionary struggle.

p As the 1960 Moscow Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties stated, the world communist movement had become the most influential political force of the age and a major factor in social progress. Evidence of this was the advent to power of Workers’ and Communist Parties in a number of countries, the growing popularity of Marxist-Leninist ideas and the numerical growth of the Communist Parties. From the establishment of the Communist International the number of Communist Parties had grown from 10 to 88, with about 50 million members.

p In recent years, Communist Parties have gained ground in many areas of the world, so that they now operate wherever there is a fully-formed working class. In some 159 countries, Communist Parties have become truly massive and a major political force, as the Communist Parties of Italy, France and Finland. The Communist Parties of these and some other capitalist countries enjoy considerable inlluence among both industrial and non-industrial workers, and in the trade union movement. They are frequently successful at parliamentary and municipal elections. In the 1963 general election in Italy, the Communist Party won 25.3 per cent of the poll, securing 166 seats in the House of Deputies and 85 in the Senate. In the 1968 elections, it won 26.9 per cent and another 15 parliamentary seats. In the 1967 general election the French Communist Party gained over a million more votes than in the 1962 election, thereby consolidating the Party’s position as the chief Left-wing force in the country, with 73 Communist seats in the National Assembly—an increase of 32. However, the extraordinary elections to the National Assembly in June 1968 showed a shift to the Right, and the number of Communist seats fell to 33. The election results are patently at odds with the social and economic gains won by the working-class and democratic movement in May and June that year, the main reason being the campaign of mounting terror, blackmail and slander against the Leftwing forces, notably the Communist Party. The alleged danger of civil war had its effect on the vacillating, pusillanimous, chiefly petty-bourgeois, section of the French population. Nevertheless, the 1968 parliamentary election showed that the French Communist Party continues to be the major Left-wing opposition force.

p In 1966, the Finnish working-class movement scored an important success at the polls. The four-party alliance, including all the working-class parties, took office. Several Communists were incorporated in the new government headed by Social-Democrats.

p It is, of course, impossible to gauge the authority of the Communist Parties simply by the poll, for it is much wider and permeates every aspect of social and political life. Even where the Communist Parties have been banned and forced to work underground, many of them play an important part in the mass socialist movement.

p The October Revolution may be seen as a watershed between the two major trends in the working-class movement— the revolutionary trend, epitomised in the Communist 160 Parties, and the reformist trend, usually identified with the Social-Democratic (Socialist) Parties. Social-Democrats continue to command considerable intluence on the bulk of the workers in many countries (Britain, Australia, Austria and the Scandinavian countries among others). Since the last war, their parties have increased their numbers and now have some 16 million members, as compared to the 3.4 million in 1914. In some capitalist countries they are a major political force with a strong following among the electorate. In the post-war period, more than 20 Social-Democratic Parties have been in office or in government coalitions.

p More recently, the Communists have made impressive gains in both local and national elections, thereby enhancing the influence of the working class in all departments of capitalist society, including the fight for peace, democracy and social progress.

In most capitalist states, the workers’ struggle to improve their living standards continues to be an important stimulus for extending the mass working-class movement. In the time that has elapsed since the October Revolution, the strike as a weapon of economic struggle has lost none of its significance. Despite the fluctuations in the uneven development of the working-class movement itself, strike action remains at a high level and is proof of the acute contradictions between labour and capital.

Table 25 Growth of the Strike Movement in the Advanced Capitalist Countries Annual average (1,000)* 1924-1938 1946-1950 1951-1955 1956-1960 1961-1967 Number of participants ..... 2,319.6 11,545.1 9,080.8 7,696.3 10,474 Number of lost man-days . . 49,911 93,895 65,499 56,418 51,789 * The official statistics on which these calculations are based usually give dat only on strikes which are purely economic (and not all of these either), which means far from all the labour-capital conflicts. Calculated from ILO, Year Booh of Labour Statistics, Geneva, 1936-68.

p The growing massiveness of strikes has been characteristic of the class struggle in recent years. The main reasons are: increase in the number of workers, increasingly diverse 161 participation in the strike movement, improved tactics, and increasing importance of big strikes that hit whole branches and sometimes even several branches of the economy. Industrial workers are still the most militant strikers. Highlypaid workers, including those in the growth industries, are today being constantly drawn into the economic fight against the bourgeoisie. The strike movement of recent years has once again demonstrated that the improvement of social and economic conditions, won in class struggle, may serve as a springboard for a fresh drive by the working people, and this is illustrated by the big strikes of metal-workers in Italy, engineering workers in Britain, and steel-workers in the U.S.A. and so on.

p Meanwhile, the body of strikers has noticeably changed. The exacerbation of the contradictions between the monopolies and most of the population, and the proletarianisation of innumerable sections of the white-collar workers, have involved new categories of workers in the strike movement. Strikes have been spreading to those employed in education and public health, to civil servants and bank employees, and engineers and technicians in industrial enterprises.

p Clashes between labour and capital in key sectors of the economy are often stubborn and protracted. The 1959 strike of 500,000 American steel-workers lasted just short of four months. More recently, various strikes have exceeded a month in Britain, Belgium, Italy, Japan, France and elsewhere. Lengthy strikes are normally preceded by short-term action to mobilise the participants and give notice. On the whole, however, strikes are becoming shorter. Between 1924 and 1938, strikes lasted on average 21.5 days; between 1946 and 1952, 8 days; 1953-58, 5.75 days; and 1959-64, 5.77 days.

p This has two causes. First, with a relatively buoyant economy, it often pays an employer to make concessions rather than let the strike go on; second, the unions have perfected their strike tactics. They have learned .to make use of favourable economic situations. The occasional shortterm stoppage and ban on overtime are both effective weapons that threaten fulfilment of urgent profitable orders. Other methods are the industrial “go-slow”, the fifteen-minute work-cut in commencing or terminating work, and the scrupulously observed work to rule.

p Being fully aware of the interconnectedness of modern 162 technology at individual enterprises and related branches of the economy, trade unions try to affect production by lightning strikes in separate branches of the economy and by alternate or staggered stoppages, where shops or whole enterprises shut down in turn. Such tactics draw large numbers of workers into the strike movement and prevent substantial material losses by their members. Recent strikes have often been accompanied by meetings, demonstrations and marches in support of the workers’ cause. Some countries have experienced strikes embracing several sectors of the economy. In some cases the strike battle takes on more active forms. Thus, the May 1968 strike in France led to workers’ control of factories, mass meetings and demonstrations. It spread from a small group of factories to whole branches of the economy, from the state to the private sector, from industry to transport, to the offices, the schools and the banks. This kind of action turns into a crucial event in social and political life, intensifying the massiveness of the workingclass movement, winning over other sections of the population and enhancing the effectiveness of their action.

p One of the major demands of the working class is still for higher wages, implying a rise in absolute wages, inclusion of each wages component in collective agreements so as to strengthen trade union control over wage fluctuations, and end discrimination in the wages of women and juveniles.

p The intensification of labour engenders an urgent need for struggle to reduce the working day and extend paid holidays. The problem of employment has been growing more acute in view of the new scientific innovations in industry, and of mechanisation and automation. This problem is most acute in the U.S.A., where many strikes are caused by fear of automation bringing mass unemployment. American workers demand special clauses in their labour contracts to shield them from arbitrary dismissal as a consequence of the redundancies caused by automation.

p West European workers have been fighting to prevent the monopolies from carrying through any form of rationalisation or structural changes in the economy at the expense of the workers. They are not fighting technical progress, but to ensure that it is not accompanied by any worsening in their own condition. The closing down of submarginal enterprises and the fold-up of whole industries present social as well as 163 economic problems to the workers who become redundant.

p The natural response from the working class has been to fight against the closure of such factories, one of the most dramatic struggles having been fought in the coal industry. The Belgian Government’s decision to shut down nine mines in Borinage provoked a powerful miners’ strike in February 1959. A similar walk-out occurred in the French town of Decazeville in 1961-62. In 1964, a massive explosion of protest was caused by the West German Government’s intention to close a number of big mines. The miners are not alone in being menaced by mass sackings. British workers launched a massive protest campaign against attempts to implement the so-called Beeching Plan to “rationalise” the railways and so cause mass redundancies among railwaymen. The Italian Government’s decision to shut down part of its Livorno dockyard was met with strikes; and the same thing happened when the French Government began to abandon its dockyard at St. Nazaire in Brittany.

p In their efforts to prevent modernisation at the workers’ expense, the trade unions and workers’ political organisations have put forward their own programme of dealing with the situation. They have demanded a shorter working week, longer paid holidays, adequate redundancy pay and provision of new jobs for unemployed workers. They have pressed for new branches of industry in threatened areas, and for largescale retraining schemes paid for by the state or the employers. In many cases, the employers and the state have been forced to come to meet these demands.

p The different condition of the working class and the level of the working-class movement in the various capitalist countries explain the variety of workers’ demands. The time is mostly past when workers in the developed countries had to fight for elementary needs, such as a crust of bread or a roof over their heads. Today, even many traditional demands have been elevated to a new level. The workingman is increasingly seeking a decent standard of living, security in the future, the application of scientific progress for his own benefit, and defence of his rights as an individual.

p In virtually every capitalist country, the working class has managed to win the right to conclude collective agreements, whose negotiation has become an arena of sharp class conflicts, largely on issues affecting the workers’ labour and 164 living standards. Economically the bourgeoisie is stronger than the working class, but the workers’ power lies in their organisation and ability to bring pressure on the employers. And only when these pressures have been exhausted do they resort to the most effective weapon in their economic armoury—the strike. Being well aware of the growing effectiveness of the strike today, employers frequently endeavour to stave off a head-on clash. Given a relatively buoyant economy and high level of employment, the capitalists have more often been obliged to make concessions to the workers. In these circumstances, the prestige of the trade unions, their strength, militancy and influence even among the unorganised workers, have grown so much that the mere threat of a strike is sometimes enough to force the employers’ hand.

p The economic struggle is of great importance in increasing class consciousness and organisation, being a principal channel for involving the mass of working people in the class conflict with the bourgeoisie. At a time when the working class is politically so active, with the Marxist-Leninist Parties organising and directing the workers’ economic battles, the struggle can be an important means of enhancing the ideological and political awareness of the workers.

p During the 1960s, the fierce class struggle in many capitalist countries found expression both in an increase in strikes and in an assault by monopoly capital on the workers’ positions in every sector. Everywhere there were attacks on trade union rights and attempts to curtail their activities by legislation, to tame them and bring them under state control, to hamper workers’ organisation in unions and to limit the right of collective bargaining.

p The bourgeoisie has had the help of the state in taking direct measures against strikes: arbitration of labour conflicts (including compulsory arbitration), direct state intervention in major labour disputes, anti-strike legislation, and so on. One has only to recall the many examples in which the recent class struggle abounds: the decrees on enforced labour deployment in France and Belgium, adoption of anti-strike legislation in several West European countries, the frequent threats to impose compulsory arbitration in the U.S.A. and Canada, which have brought to bear on the results of many class clashes, the direct ban on 165 strikes (by court order), and the strengthening of the antistrike activity by arbitration bodies in Australia and Belgium.

p Some governments have even used the army, the police and the courts to put down strikers, and have officially banned the Communist Party because it is a most active and consistent champion of the workers’ cause. Typical in this respect was the action of the Belgian Government against the 1960-61 strike. It first threw in all the police it could muster and, when that failed, called out army units against the striking workers, employees, shop-keepers and students. The Political Bureau of the Belgian Communist Party summed up the situation in these words: “Having failed to win the support of the country for the Loi unique by democratic means, the Eyskens Government has resorted to arbitrary methods. On the pretext of maintaining public order it is confiscating newspapers, conducting police raids, arresting strikers, persecuting active trade unionists, and, to justify itself, spreading false information."  [165•1 

p Western Europe has recently been plagued by the TaftHartley type of statutory postponement or ban of strikes. The public order acts adopted by the Belgian authorities empowered the government to prosecute, under criminal law, pickets and participants in meetings and demonstrations, and even to apply preventive detention to militants and strike leaders. The French Government adopted a law regulating the right to strike for employees at state enterprises, enjoining workers to satisfy a number of preliminary conditions before calling a strike, notably a five-day warning period and statement of intended duration of the strike. Even in Britain, where strike rights have been more sacred than elsewhere, a compulsory “cooling-off period" was made law in 1966, whereby notice is to be given of an official strike and time allowed for the government to postpone the strike for a period of up to seven months. The whole purpose of this is to reduce the effectiveness of the strike movement. Finally, governments often intervene directly in the biggest labour conflicts.

p In its drive against the working-class movement, 166 state-monopoly capitalism combines blatantly coercive measures and bourgeois liberalism, together with bourgeois reformism, social demagogy and innumerable devices for putting economic and ideological pressure on the working class. The mass media have all been finely honed for dressing the minds of the common people; they are used to meddle in trade union polls, peddle anti-communist propaganda and deliberately try to influence the outcome of local and general elections. In the defence and promotion of its economic and social liberties, the working class is up against a wily opponent that can combine the power of individual employers and monopolies with that of the bourgeois state.

p In some capitalist countries, the state sector covers some 20-25 per cent of industrial production and the entire sectors of education and public health, which makes the state a major national employer.

p With the state, in addition to individual employers, increasingly determining the workers’ material condition, the latter’s economic struggle often takes on a political complexion and extends beyond the framework of the factory, urging the need for thorough-going socio-economic reforms at national level. The workers’ class struggle again and again develops into a campaign for wider democracy (irrespective of the subjective attitudes of the participants) in the country’s economic and political affairs, for giving the working people more say in shaping policy, and for changing the general direction of socio-economic policies in their favour. Naturally enough, this tendency is not equally pronounced everywhere.

p The workers in many countries have been taking a more active part in the fight against the socio-economic policies of bourgeois governments conflicting with workers’ interests. Strikes that begin with economic demands are often inevitably filled with political content.

p In countries ruled by police dictatorships, where bourgeoisdemocratic liberties are flagrantly suppressed, the workers’ economic and political struggle is closely intertwined. In 1962, the wave of strikes that started in the Asturias region soon swept the whole of Spain. From being a campaign for better economic conditions, it became a movement for establishing class trade unions and the right to strike. This was a protest against the entire social policy of the Franco regime. 167 The Falangist Secretariat, which props up the fascist regime, was forced to admit that the many strikes in recent years had undermined the regime’s authority and sparked off a crisis within the Spanish trade unions. One important aspect of these events was the formation of unitary workers’ commissions at many factories, marking a new stage in the fight for the establishment of genuine class unions as a counterweight to the so-called vertical trade unions (the compulsory branch unions of capitalists and workers that are a component part of the Franco regime).

p Political and economic demands were also combined during the unprecedentedly extensive and explosive three-week strike by 10 million French workers in 1968. This initially spontaneous explosion began with backing for teachers and students campaigning for radical reforms in higher education and democratisation of the whole education system. It was not long, however, before the strike became the biggest workers’ demonstration for better working and living conditions since the time of the Popular Front. It was the workers’ response to the anti-social policy of the government and the capitalist monopolies, particularly the 1967 government review of social insurance. The strike movement became so powerful and organised that it forced the authorities and the employers into negotiations and substantial concessions over wages, working hours and union rights at factories. What was particularly interesting about the May demonstrations was that they combined economic demands with political and social slogans. Ultimately, the strike became a popular campaign for democratic reform of the country’s politics. On the initiative of the Communist Party, the French people began to debate the replacement of personal power by a popular government of the democratic alliance.

p The bourgeois class has long tried to confine the trade union movement to narrow economic issues, to petty activity within the framework of the existing social order and to keep it away from any contact with socialism. But this is becoming a lost cause as the unions step up their political activity and the workers’ mass organisations have an increasing impact on the policies of the ruling class.

p Alongside their concern for economic and social improvements for themselves, the workers are taking an increasing interest in national-economic policies, in economic 168 programming, investment and employment, prices and incomes. In recent years, one key aspect of state-monopoly control has been an incomes policy whose main purpose is to set a ceiling on wages. This is another attempt to overcome the intractable problems besetting the capitalist economy at the workers’ expense. One purpose of the incomes policy is to stop the unions making further inroads into bourgeois positions. The policy itself ignores the rising cost of living and is designed to increase the rate of exploitation of the working class. By setting barriers in the way of the workers’ economic struggle and free collective bargaining, the incomes policy ultimately serves the purpose of tying down the working-class movement and turning the unions into social partners of the bourgeoisie.

p Most unions vigorously refuse to be bound by an incomes policy. As a result, the fight to obtain wage rises above the official level sometimes brings on an open clash between the workers and the state. During the 1966 merchant seamen’s strike in Britain, the seamen put forward wage and working hours’ demands that clashed with the Labour Government’s incomes policy. The authorities brought every pressure to bear on the seamen to get them to renounce their demands. The strike ended in a compromise, with the employers and government making substantial concessions to the men. The trade union and working-class movements have been persistently attacking the incomes policy and other economic measures conflicting with their own interests and demanding effective democratic and anti-monopoly control of the economy, and the use of material and labour resources to improve standards for the working people.

p The Achilles heel of the trade union movement continues to be its lack of cohesion, which is variously manifested in different countries. In the U.S.A., Britain, Sweden and Australia, among other countries, where most unions are integrated in a single national congress, there are many autonomous organisations and innumerable midget unions. The situation is different where there are several union congresses frequently taking differing ideological and political stances. The growth of the class struggle intensifies the urge for cohesion and concerted action by all unions and working people’s organisations, as will be seen from the enlargement of union bodies, amalgamation of autonomous unions and the 169 national union centre and joint action by various union centres. In Italy, for example, most workers’ campaigns over the last few years have had the backing of the major union bodies— the General Italian Confederation of Labour (C.G.I.L.), the Italian Labour Union (U.I.L.) and the Italian Confederation of Christian Workers’ Unions (I.C.C.W.U.). On the initiative of the first of these, the big three met in the spring of 1966 to discuss the principal issues facing the working-class movement and the prospects for labour unity. The French unions have also taken major steps towards permanent high-level collaboration. An agreement on unity was signed in early 1966 between the C.G.T. and the French Democratic Workers’ Federation (C.F.D.T.) (formerly the French Christian Workers’ Federation [C.F.T.C.]). The two biggest union bodies had thus worked out the text of a concerted programme, so that major workers’ action now has united trade union backing. Unity is being similarly cemented between the various composite union bodies in Belgium, Finland and the Netherlands.

p But mergers among labour organisations do not, however, automatically imply greater strength. Not all unification is for the good, and not every split is for the bad. The demand for cohesion at all cost may sometimes do the working-class movement nothing but harm. When, in 1967, the Amalgamated Union of Automobile and Aircraft Workers in the U.S.A. broke away from the A.F.L.-C.I.O., it did so in protest against the reactionary home and foreign policy of most parent union leaders. The crisis came as a natural result of major shifts of opinion in American labour and a more realistic outlook among a number of union leaders.

p Changes have also been taking place at international level. On the tide of success scored by the popular democratic and labour movement in 1945, a united international union body was established—-the World Federation of Trade Unions (W.F.T.U.). But unity was shortlived. The W.F.T.U. split in 1949, at the height of the cold war, when the reactionary and anti-communist hysteria was being whipped up in the capitalist world. Except for the French and Italian, all national union congresses of the big bourgeois states walked out and set up their own agency—the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (I.C.F.T.U.). Today, the growing internationalisation of capital, epitomised in the 170 Common Market, and the concerted attack by the monopolies on workers’ rights and living standards insistently demand concerted action by international trade union bodies. This the W.F.T.U. is endeavouring to attain. As Louis Saillant, W.F.T.U. General Secretary, declared at the 1966 session of the Federation’s Executive Committee: “The W.F.T.U. call to work for joint action is addressed to all workers, whatever their political, philosophical and religious convictions. . . . We want to start a dialogue in every possible place, especially with people who hold different views to ours. A dialogue on issues of unity is necessary even with those who are opposed to unity, for this will help to carry on a thorough-going discussion of these issues among working people everywhere."  [170•1  In 1962 and 1963, on W.F.T.U. initiative, conferences were held in Leipzig with both major international union agencies participating. Their aim was to thrash out ways of combining forces against the monopolies. One important move in the direction of international trade union solidarity was the 1965 agreement of the French C.G.T. and the General Italian Confederation of Labour. The two biggest national union bodies set up a standing co-ordinating and initiating committee, as a centre for co-ordinating the trade union struggle in Western Europe. A joint Anglo-French aircraft union conference was held in December 1964 to take stock of the British Government’s intention to scrap plans for the Concorde supersonic airliner and the consequent threat of mass sackings. The conference demonstrated the capacity for joint action by unions affiliated to different international bodies.

p Despite the I.C.F.T.U. ban, reinforced in 1964, on contacts with “communist” trade unions (including the Italian— C.G.I.L.—which includes Socialists and Communists), there is growing pressure within the reformist unions for unity, as will be seen, in particular, from the meetings between the leaders of various unions (railwaymen, utility workers, etc.) in France, Italy and Belgium and members of various international union agencies. Unions in Britain, Sweden, Austria, Belgium and Switzerland, in fact, have contacts with unions in the socialist states. The two largest West European union bodies—the British Trades Union Congress (T.U.C.) and 171 the West German Association of Trades Unions (D.G.B.)— sent delegations to the U.S.S.R. in 1966. The Belgian General Workers’ Federation has favoured a common programme of action for Common Market trade unions regardless of their international union affiliation.

p It is indicative that massive action invariably receives moral and material backing from workers all round the world, as in the world campaign for solidarity with the striking Italian metal-workers in 1962-63, the French miners in 1963, the British seamen in 1966 and the French working people in 1968. Workers employed by the same firm in different countries sometimes act in unison. Thus, the employees of the French Michelin came out in support of the Italian Michelin workers on strike in Turin. A conference for united action of workers employed by the Solvay Company in Italy, France, Belgium and Austria was held in 1962.

p In recent years, the trade union movement in the capitalist countries has, on the whole, gained in strength and gathered momentum, so that its impact on domestic events has substantially increased. Through its mass organisations and especially the unions, the working class now has a real chance to improve living and working conditions and step up the fight to transform society.

p Some national union programmes directly speak of the need for the unions to take part in the struggle to abolish private enterprise and the wage labour system. Such clauses feature in the programmes of the Belgian General Federation of Labour, the General Italian Confederation of Labour and the French C.G.T. Recent class battles have made it palpably obvious that the unions cannot be enclosed in the narrow confines of the economic struggle. The need to expand union functions is one of the most urgent demands of the moment. The importance of trade unions in modern capitalist society has grown so much that the authorities often endeavour to subordinate them and integrate them into the capitalist system.

p In some countries trade union officials are now represented on amalgamated agencies, alongside civil servants and employers, largely concerned with economic and labour issues, and economic programming. Naturally enough, the authorities see that the most militant working-class 172 organisations are excluded. An example is the consultative agencies of the European Economic Community—the Economic and Social Committee, the European Social Fund, and the consultative agencies for redeploying labour and for vocational guidance, the E.E.C. ruling fathers admitting only union bodies that are members of I.C.F.T.U. (or I.C.C.T.U.). Despite the limited functions of such agencies, the revolutionary working-class movement could make a significant impact on their work. The French C.G.T. and Italian C.G.I.L. have, for example, been working to get their representatives on these agencies, and the French and Italian Communist Parties, in the European Parliamentary Assembly. The 1966 meeting of the two parties in San Remo made it clear that the Communists intended to carry the campaign for workers’ rights and national interests into these European institutions so as to prevent capitalist integration from hampering democratic reforms. Relying on support from the mass workers’ movement, the working-class organisations can use these agencies as a platform for class struggle and for co-ordinating action on a supranational level.

p The working-class movement has increasingly tried to use some of the favourable circumstances arising from the contradictory evolution of state-monopoly capitalism to switch government socio-economic policy into an antimonopoly direction. Workers have been securing representation on economic policy-making bodies both within individual factories and in whole sectors of the national economy. They have been moving into decision-making areas that had previously been the exclusive preserve of the employers and have been demanding a say in management, with a considerable extension of the rights of their unions, shop-steward committees and factory councils.

p These bodies, elected by workers sometimes belonging to different unions, have the job of curbing the power of the capitalists in management. The monopoly bourgeoisie has been putting up fierce resistance to the idea of worker participation and striving to nullify workers’ gains by distorting the very essence of labour democracy and replacing it by their own brand of “social partnership”. But the workers are not so easily deceived. In 1959, U.S. steel-workers went on strike in protest against attempts to delete contract clauses which prevented employers from taking arbitrary action, 173 without the trade unions, against the workers, tampering with wages and sacking men. There is widespread demand for greater labour union rights on the shop lloor, and more comprehensive coverage by collective agreements of every aspect of labour relations. Similarly, the strike of Italian metalworkers in 1962-63, repeated in 1966 and the biggest of its kind since the war, was over a clause that would ensure trade unions a say in setting wage and work rates, the rules for hiring and firing workers, and various types of bonuses and supplementary payments. “Undermining the principle of private enterprise,” was how the Italian employers described these demands. After a bitter and protracted test of strength, the employers finally gave way on most of the strikers’ economic demands and recognised the union’s right to represent labour interests directly at factory level. Although these gains were being sabotaged, the strike did mark a new stage in the fight against capitalist exploitation.

p The campaign for worker representation in management can become a key element in the class struggle, paving the way for socialist management of industry. In the revolutionary situation just before the October 1917 Revolution, Lenin regarded workers’ control of production and distribution as a first step along the path to socialism. Today, with the influence of the trade unions and the whole workingclass movement so much stronger in the economic and social life of bourgeois society, workers’ control of capitalist enterprises is possible even without a direct revolutionary situation.

p In a number of West European states today, the campaign to extend the workers’ say in economic policy is not confined to the factory. The demand for a contractual guarantee of labour relations is becoming increasingly popular as the battle mounts for radical anti-monopoly changes in the economy and throughout national affairs and for a greater worker influence on the economic policies of the monopolies and the ruling class as a whole. This type of demand can be a connecting link between the labour movement and the broad anti-monopoly democratic movement.

p The call for democratic nationalisation is an integral part of the struggle to democratise economic life in bourgeois society. Immediately after the Second World War, 174 several industries were nationalised in a number of capitalist countries, largely as a result of persistent labour pressure. In Britain, the dispossessed owners were awarded huge compensation, and monopoly capitalists were given key posts in the running of these industries. In effect, working conditions did not alter and wages came under even greater pressure from the capitalist class. In France, nationalisation occurred with substantial worker participation—this was at a time when the Communists were in the government and the biggest party in the Assembly, and the trade union movement was united. Democratic statutes were adopted for the nationalised industries, and their workers were given statutory assurance of substantial social and economic improvements (in comparison with workers in private industry).

p Yet nationalisation did not justify all the hopes of the workers. Monopoly capital was largely able to snatch the fruits of nationalisation for itself. Nor did it shake the foundations of capitalist property, for the monopolies, in alliance with the state, did much, often successfully, to nullify the gains of the workers in the nationalised industries won in fierce battles and to restrict their rights, especially the right to strike. As a result, some workers see nationalisation under capitalism as a device largely curtailing their ability to secure economic gains; naturally enough, this does not promote the fight for democratic nationalisation.

p Nevertheless, the nationalisation campaign is becoming an increasingly positive factor. The labour movement by no means regards the state sector purely as an arm of the capitalist monopolies. World socialism being such an effective force in the economic competition between the two systems and the labour movement able to wield such pressure in capitalist affairs, nationalisation could be a weapon for curbing the economic power of the monopoly capitalists. No wonder they have been working hard to bury the very idea of nationalisation. Today the slogan of democratic nationalisation is gaining more and more support within the working-class and democratic movement.

p Democratic nationalisation implies at least two elements. First, nationalisation of the key monopolised branches of the economy (oil, gas, chemicals, nuclear energy, metallurgy, banking, insurance companies and transport). Second, 175 nationalisation can only become an effective weapon in defeating the monopolies if the workers take part in running the state sector. The participation of working-class organisations in the policy-making bodies of nationalised industries and factories can make the nationalised sector operate for the good of the workers. Within the nationalised industries the labour struggle for higher living standards increasingly becomes a fight to change government economic policy on these industries, which in itself does much to expand the labour movement and make it more effective. Democratic nationalisation can become an important element of the anti-monopoly movement and a springboard for further action. Moreover, the campaign for workers’ control of individual factories, sectors and the entire capitalist economy is fast becoming one of the main levers for increasing labour influence in capitalist society.

p The economic democracy campaign is bound up with the workers’ political struggle and efforts to establish and extend political democracy and to enhance labour’s authority over every aspect of ruling-class policy. The evolution of capitalism implies, inter alia, constant improvement of the apparatus of bourgeois political rule. Not only the working people but also the monopoly capitalists have learned from the experience of nazism. State-monopoly capitalism has essentially preserved the basic attributes of bourgeois democracy (though this has not prevented it from using naked violence against the labour movement). Today, as the labour movement gains in strength, class awareness grows and socialism becomes an ever greater magnetic force, the workers’ political struggle and attainment of even traditional bourgeois democratic liberties sometimes present a potential threat to the political supremacy of monopoly capital.

p On the whole, the development of state-monopoly capitalism has shown a constant urge on the part of the authorities to slice the working people’s democratic rights, vitiate the democratic content of political and social representative institutions, reducing the authority of parliament and local government and depriving them of their powers. The most flagrant expression of this trend is the May 1967 events in Greece. The mounting success of the democratic movement, which promised to culminate in a victory at the forthcoming parliamentary elections, was temporarily 176 cut short by a reactionary coup d’etat. The resultant military dictatorship paralysed normal life and destroyed many political and social organisations. In 1968, the West German Bundestag passed a reactionary bill to amend the constitution, empowering the Government to proclaim an emergency at any time and exercise virtually unlimited dictatorial powers with all the coercive anti-labour measures under martial law. This marked a fresh step towards a totalitarian, militaristic state, curtailment of political and social liberties and suppression of progressive parties, trade unions and mass bodies. In response there came a tide of political demonstrations and strikes that swept the principal cities.

p In many countries, this type of flagrant reactionary encroachment on democratic liberties has evoked a storm of popular protest. This happened in Italy in the summer of 1960, when the Tambroni Christian-Democratic Government gained a parliamentary majority solely with the open backing of the neo-fascists. This was a signal for the profascist elements in the country: with the tacit agreement of the Prime Minister, the leading fascist party, the Italian Social Movement, decided to hold its congress in Genoa, the centre of the war-time Resistance movement, a clear challenge to the country’s democratic forces, which did not go unheeded. The country was hit by a general strike. On June 30, participants in a mass anti-fascist demonstration clashed with the neo-fascists and the police who took their side. The protest movement gained support from all sections of Italian society and resulted in a temporary restoration of unity among the democratic forces. In the face of such strongpopular indignation, the reactionary forces had to retreat and Tambroni had to step down. This did much to encourage a shift to the Left among Italian workers and enabled the democratic forces to make impressive gains at the subsequent elections.

p The French working class has more than once foiled attempts by the fascist ultras to gain power. The general political strikes of 1961-62 and 1968, on each occasion involving more than 10 million people, vividly demonstrated the popular mood, initially for peace in Algeria, and recently for greater democracy in French politics.

p The Belgian general strike of 1960-61 was plainly 177 political in opposing the policies of the Eyskens Government, notorious mainly for its economic development bill, dubbed the “poverty bill" by its opponents. Many strikers came out with a number of democratic demands. The strike united both unions and various political organisations and grew into a truly popular movement. The continuing labour strife, accompanied by clashes with the police and official repressions, finally brought down the government.

p Japan, too, has her share of popular protest, largely directed against the Japanese-American “security” treaty and for a dismantling of U.S. bases. One such massive protest in 1960 impeded the U.S. President’s visit to Japan and brought down the Kishi Government.

p Working people in countries ruled by fascist or reactionary military dictatorships have a particularly tough fight for political liberties. In Spain, the anti-Franco campaign is spreading. In Latin America and many African and Asian countries, the working class is on the move against reactionary dictatorships, in defence of national sovereignty and for democratic measures to transform the social structure.

p Efforts to safeguard and strengthen peace, to reduce international tension, and repulse the forces of revenge and militarism, must be seen in the context of the general democratic action taking place throughout the world. Today, the working class, the intellectuals and other sections of the population stand behind this movement, so that the peace campaign has become a genuinely popular affair.

p The peace movement has been assuming the most diverse forms, from mass meetings and token action to peace marches and collections of signatures calling for peace. Significantly, progressive peace-loving forces are very active in the U.S.A., the chief potential perpetrator of aggression. In recent years, the peace campaign has outgrown national boundaries; peace fighters from other countries frequently take part in marches and demonstrations in Britain, the Scandinavian countries, Italy, France, West Germany, Belgium and Holland.

p The U.S. aggression in Vietnam has evoked a tremendous explosion of protest in all countries. That workers of the capitalist world have united in protest is potent demonstration of the international character of the labour movement. Workers and their organisations in many capitalist countries have constantly voiced their support for the heroic 178 Vietnamese people. At its Congress in 1966, the General Council of Trade Unions of Japan (S.O.H.Y.O.) protested against the aggressors’ use of military bases on Japanese soil and the entry of U.S. nuclear warships into Japanese ports. It demanded that the Vietnamese people should be left to settle their own affairs on the basis of self-determination. In July and October of 1966, millions of Japanese workers and students took part in general strikes in protest against U.S. aggression in Vietnam.

p Similar large movements in support of the Vietnamese people’s courageous resistance to the U.S. aggression have taken shape in Australia, Britain, Italy, France, Norway, West Germany, Belgium, Finland and Sweden, among others. The voice of protest against the intervention has also come from the U.S.A. itself. In 1965, at the Sixth Trade Union Congress, there was severe criticism of the Johnson Administration’s aggressive policies and of the official A.F.L.-C.I.O. leadership, headed by George Meany, which backed government policy. Emil Mazey, Secretary-Treasurer of the United Auto Workers, said he was one of those “ concerned Americans who is worried about our foreign policy, where we are going in Vietnam".  [178•1  Two years later, in 1967, a national labour conference in defence of peace was held in Chicago. Representatives of 60 unions recorded their disagreement with the A.F.L.-C.I.O. leadership’s stand on U.S. foreign policy. In their political resolution, they stressed their opposition to the Vietnamese war and called for action to stop it. The peace campaign and protests against U.S. aggression in Vietnam are at the same time a struggle against internal reaction. The bellicose foreign policy of the American administration has a fatal effect on the country’s internal politics.

p The launching of the cold war and Dulles’s brinkmanship in the late 1940s and early 1950s were paralleled at home by increasing reaction, which made it easier to split the labour movement. That is why the movement for peace and an international detente is at once a movement for democracy and progress. It embodies a cause that unites the mass of people, urging on them the conclusion that 179 monopoly capital, the main obstacle to lasting peace and democracy is also the chief enemy of the workers and all exploited sections of society.

p The Communist Parties of socialist and capitalist countries are prominent in the popular struggle against imperialism and for an international detente. They view the preservation of peace as the vital issue of our day. When the European Communist and Workers’ Parties held a conference in 1967 at Karlovy Vary, they declared that “the Communists are deeply convinced that by safeguarding peace and security on their continent against the forces of aggression and war, they are acting for democracy, social progress and national liberation, for the peoples of the whole world".  [179•1 

Working-class action in leading the democratic and political struggle helps to reinforce the workers’ position in society, enhances the prestige of workers’ organisations, helps to forge mass anti-monopoly coalitions and cements the close bond between the overall democratic movement and the fight in defence of the vital interests of all peoples.