Thesis on Trade Unions from Theses of Programmatical Orientation by Internationalist Communist Group (1989)
The objective of the bourgeois state, the democratic state, is to keep the proletariat disorganised, denied as a class or, better still, contained and mobilised in the service of the bourgeoisie. What is essential to all democratic mechanisms is the destruction of the organic unity of the proletariat, its interests and its “organisation” into partial “interests” which correspond to the individual, the citizen (homo economicus), buyer and seller of commodities. Unions are vital organs of the bourgeois state which fulfil this function. In effect, they represent the “world of work” within Capital, that is to say the proletariat liquidated as a class, divided into sectors, negotiating (like any other individual in mercantile society) the selling price of their commodity – labour power – which, in turn, assures a “reasonable” rate of profit and guarantees social peace. In the face of this type of organisation, the proletariat struggles to organise itself outside and against the unions which, as obstacles to communist revolution, must be completely destroyed. This is why all ideologies which recommend reform of the unions, their reconquest or working within them (even if they say they are doing so to destroy them) sow the seeds of confusion. They keep proletarians, who intuitively sense the reactionary role of the unions, trapped in these organs of the state (which also happens to help improve their credibility). They serve reaction. The fact that, in numerous cases, we find real workers’ organisations at the origins of these organisations merely confirms the capacity of the bourgeoisie to recuperate organisational forms created by the proletariat and to use them for its own ends.