Articles by Engels in the Labour Standard 1881

Trades Unions


Part I

In our last issue we considered the action of
Trades Unions as far as they enforce the economical law of wages against
employers. We return to this subject, as it is of the highest importance
that the working classes generally should thoroughly understand it.

We suppose no English working man of the present day needs to
be taught that it is the interest of the individual capitalist, as well
as of the capitalist class generally, to reduce wages as much as possible.
The produce of labour, after deducting all expenses, is divided, as David
Ricardo has irrefutably proved, into two shares: the one forms the labourer's
wages, the other the capitalist's profits. Now, this net produce of labour
being, in every individual case, a given quantity, it is clear that the
share called profits cannot increase without the share called wages decreasing.
To deny that it is the interest of the capitalist to reduce wages, would
be tantamount to say that it is not his interest to increase his profits.

We know very well that there are other means of temporarily increasing
profits, but they do not alter the general law, and therefore need not
trouble us here.

Now, how can the capitalists reduce wages when the rate of wages
is governed by a distinct and well-defined law of social economy? The economical
law of wages is there, and is irrefutable. But, as we have seen, it is
elastic, and it is so in two ways. The rate of wages can be lowered, in
a particular trade, either directly, by gradually accustoming the workpeople
of that trade to a lower standard of life, or, indirectly, by increasing
the number of working hours per day (or the intensity of work during the
same working hours) without increasing the pay.

And the interest of every individual capitalist to increase his
profits by reducing the wages of his workpeople receives a fresh stimulus
from the competition of capitalists of the same trade amongst each other.
Each one of them tries to undersell his competitors, and unless he is to
sacrifice his profits he must try and reduce wages. Thus, the pressure
upon the rate of wages brought about by the interest of every individual
capitalist is increased tenfold by the competition amongst them. What was
before a matter of more or less profit, now becomes a matter of necessity.

Against this constant, unceasing pressure unorganised labour has
no effective means of resistance. Therefore, in trades without organisation
of the workpeople, wages tend constantly to fall and the working hours
tend constantly to increase. Slowly, but surely, this process goes on.
Times of prosperity may now and then interrupt it, but times of bad trade
hasten it on all the more afterwards. The workpeople gradually get accustomed
to a lower and lower standard of life. While the length of working day
more and more approaches the possible maximum, the wages come nearer and
nearer to their absolute minimum -- the sum below which it becomes absolutely
impossible for the workman to live and to reproduce his race.

There was a temporary exception to this about the beginning of
this century. The rapid extension of steam and machinery was not sufficient
for the still faster increasing demand for their produce. Wages in these
trades, except those of children sold from the workhouse [1]
to the manufacturer, were as a rule high; those of such skilled manual
labour as could not be done without were very high; what a dyer, a mechanic,
a velvet-cutter, a hand-mule spinner, used to receive now sounds fabulous.
At the same time the trades superseded by machinery were slowly starved
to death. But newly-invented machinery by-and-by superseded these well-paid
workmen; machinery was invented which made machinery, and that at such
a rate that the supply of machine-made goods not only equalled, but exceeded,
the demand. When the general peace, in 1815, [2] re-established
regularity of trade, the decennial fluctuations between prosperity, over-production,
and commercial panic began. Whatever advantages the workpeople had preserved
from old prosperous times, and perhaps even increased during the period
of frantic over-production, were now taken from them during the period
of bad trade and panic; and soon the manufacturing population of England
submitted to the general law that the wages of unorganised labour constantly
tend towards the absolute minimum.

But in the meantime the Trades Unions, legalised in 1824 had also
stepped in, and high time it was. Capitalists are always organised. They
need in most cases no formal union, no rules, officers, etc. Their small
number, as compared with that of the workmen, the fact of their forming
a separate class, their constant social and commercial intercourse stand
them in lieu of that; it is only later on, when a branch of manufactures
has taken possession of a district, such as the cotton trade has of Lancashire,
that a formal capitalists' Trades Union becomes necessary. On the other
hand, the workpeople from the very beginning cannot do without a strong
organisation, well-defined by rules and delegating its authority to officers
and committees. The Act of 1824 rendered these organisations legal. From
that day Labour became a power in England. The formerly helpless mass,
divided against itself, was no longer so. To the strength given by union
and common action soon was added the force of a well-filled exchequer --
"resistance money", as our French brethren expressively call it. The entire
position of things now changed. For the capitalist it became a risky thing
to indulge in a reduction of wages or an increase of working hours.

Hence the violent outbursts of the capitalist class of those times
against Trades Unions. That class had always considered its long-established
practice of grinding down the working class as a vested right and lawful
privilege. That was now to be put a stop to. No wonder they cried out lustily
and held themselves at least as much injured in their rights and property
as Irish landlords do nowadays. [3]

Sixty years' experience of struggle have brought them round to
some extent. Trades Unions have now become acknowledged institutions, and
their action as one of the regulators of wages is recognised quite as much
as the action of the Factories and Workshops Acts as regulators of the
hours of work. Nay, the cotton masters in Lancashire have lately even taken
a leaf out of the workpeople's book, and now know how to organise a strike,
when it suits them, as well or better than any Trades Union.

Thus it is through the action of Trades Unions that the law of
wages is enforced as against the employers, and that the workpeople of
any well-organised trade are enabled to obtain, at least approximately,
the full value of the working power which they hire to their employer;
and that, with the help of State laws, the hours of labour are made at
least not to exceed too much that maximum length beyond which the working
power is prematurely exhausted. This, however, is the utmost Trades Unions,
as at present organised, can hope to obtain, and that by constant struggle
only, by an immense waste of strength and money; and then the fluctuations
of trade, once every ten years at least, break down for the moment what
has been conquered, and the fight has to be fought over again. It is a
vicious circle from which there is no issue. The working class remains
what it was, and what our Chartist forefathers were not afraid to call
it, a class of wages slaves. Is this to be the final result of all this
labour, self-sacrifice, and suffering? Is this to remain for ever the highest
aim of British workmen? Or is the working class of this country at last
to attempt breaking through this vicious circle, and to find an issue out
of it in a movement for the ABOLITION OF THE WAGES SYSTEM ALTOGETHER?

Next week we shall examine the part played by Trades Unions as
organisers of the working class.

Part II

No. 5, June 4, 1881

So far we have considered the functions of Trades
Unions as far only as they contribute to the regulation of the rate of
wages and ensure to the labourer, in his struggle against capital, at least
some means of resistance. But that aspect does not exhaust our subject.

The struggle of the labourer against capital, we said. That struggle
does exist, whatever the apologists of capital may say to the contrary.
It will exist so long as a reduction of wages remains the safest and readiest
means of raising profits; nay, so long as the wages system itself shall
exist. The very existence of Trades Unions is proof sufficient of the fact;
if they are not made to fight against the encroachments of capital what
are they made for? There is no use in mincing matters. No milksop words
can hide the ugly fact that present society is mainly divided into two
great antagonistic classes -- into capitalists, the owners of all the means
for the employment of labour, on one side; and working men, the owners
of nothing but their own working power, on the other. The produce of the
labour of the latter class has to be divided between both classes, and
it is this division about which the struggle is constantly going on. Each
class tries to get as large a share as possible; and it is the most curious
aspect of this struggle that the working class, while fighting to obtain
a share only of its own produce, is often enough accused of actually robbing
the capitalist!

But a struggle between two great classes of society necessarily
becomes a political struggle. So did the long battle between the middle
or capitalist class and the landed aristocracy; so also does the fight
between the working class and these same capitalists. In every struggle
of class against class, the next end fought for is political power; the
ruling class defends its political supremacy, that is to say its safe majority
in the Legislature; the inferior class fights for, first a share, then
the whole of that power, in order to become enabled to change existing
laws in conformity with their own interests and requirements. Thus the
working class of Great Britain for years fought ardently and even violently
for the People's Charter, [4] which was to give it that
political power; it was defeated, but the struggle had made such an impression
upon the victorious middle class that this class, since then, was only
too glad to buy a prolonged armistice at the price of ever-repeated concessions
to the working people.

Now, in a political struggle of class against class, organisation
is the most important weapon. And in the same measure as the merely political
or Chartist Organisation fell to pieces, in the same measure the Trades
Unions Organisation grew stronger and stronger, until at present it has
reached a degree of strength unequalled by any working-class organisation
abroad. A few large Trades Unions, comprising between one and two millions
o£ working men, and backed by the smaller or local Unions, represent
a power which has to be taken into account by any Government of the ruling
class, be it Whig or Tory.

According to the traditions of their origin and development in
this country, these powerful organisations have hitherto limited themselves
almost strictly to their function of sharing in the regulation of wages
and working hours, and of enforcing the repeal of laws openly hostile to
the workmen. As stated before. they have done so with quite as much effect
as they had a right to expect. But they have attained more than that --
the ruling class, which knows their strength better than they themselves
do, has volunteered to them concessions beyond that. Disraeli's Household
Suffrage [5] gave the vote to at least the greater portion
of the organised working class. Would he have proposed it unless he supposed
that these new voters would show a will of their own -- would cease to
be led by middle-class Liberal politicians? Would he have been able to
carry it if the working people, in the management of their colossal Trade
Societies, had not proved themselves fit for administrative and political
work?

That very measure opened out a new prospect to the working class.
It gave them the majority in London and in all manufacturing towns, and
thus enabled them to enter into the struggle against capital with new weapons,
by sending men of their own class to Parliament. And here, we are sorry
to say, the Trades Unions forgot their duty as the advanced guard of the
working class. The new weapon has been in their hands for more than ten
years, but they scarcely ever unsheathed it. They ought not to forget that
they cannot continue to hold the position they now occupy unless they really
march in the van of the working class. It is not in the nature of things
that the working class of England should possess the power of sending forty
or fifty working men to Parliament and yet be satisfied for ever to be
represented by capitalists or their clerks, such as lawyers, editors, etc.

More than this, there are plenty of symptoms that the working
class of this country is awakening to the consciousness that it has for
some time been moving in the wrong groove [6]; that the
present movements for higher wages and shorter hours exclusively, keep
it in a vicious circle out of which there is no issue; that it is not the
lowness of wages which forms the fundamental evil, but the wages system
itself. This knowledge once generally spread amongst the working class,
the position of Trades Unions must change considerably. They will no longer
enjoy the privilege of being the only organisations of the working class.
At the side of, or above, the Unions of special trades there must spring
up a general Union, a political organisation of the working class as a
whole.

Thus there are two points which the organised Trades would do
well to consider, firstly, that the time is rapidly approaching when the
working class of this country will claim, with a voice not to be mistaken,
its full share of representation in Parliament. Secondly, that the time
also is rapidly approaching when the working class will have understood
that the struggle for high wages and short hours, and the whole action
of Trades Unions as now carried on, is not an end in itself, but a means,
a very necessary and effective means' but only one of several means towards
a higher end: the abolition of the wages system altogether.

For the full representation of labour in Parliament, as well as
for the preparation of the abolition of the wages system organisations
will become necessary, not of separate Trades, but of the working class
as a body. And the sooner this is done the better. There is no power in
the world which could for a day resist the British working class organised
as a body.