and dissolved in the capitalist order !!
Definition of basic components of validity and efficiency of workers´organizations for advancing the current and future struggles of workers and fulfilling the expectations of the working masses has been an acute issue and perhaps the most acute issue of controversy between groups, tendencies and activists of the Iranian labor movement over the last few years. The opponents of the anti-capitalist criterion of the formation of the working masses, as usual, involve to independence of the trade union from political parties and government.It seems so that benchmarking of independence from the government and political parties it’s supposed to challenging the basis of the class-independence of the labor-movement. In their conversations they believe that independence if such contractual phenomenon, government instituted, trans class and in one word and sentence that everything is non-class and beyond off the material realm of the capitalist social system. First, let answer that what it is the real content and range of this characteristic and highfalutin independence for trade union on the ground of the capitalist system?
The current existing trade unions are all independent of the government in western and Northern Europe, while none of these have announced the own faithfulness and allegiance to any treaty or legal agreement into this or that government and haven’t confirmed this kind of dependence, apparently. What draws all these unions to be involved to such a place of worship sometimes and sometimes such a monastery of illusion and always to wherever capital and capitalism desire isn’t the principle of contractual and legal dependence of unions on the government, but the basis and mechanism of the material existence of unions belong to the principle of capitalist production.
These unions aren’t the executors of governmental orders and prohibitions, but that kind of institutions that are obedient with no authority over the needs and plans, strategies and policies of capital in society. The unions with all legal, free and independent authority with no need for police and guards under the sky of democracy sit on a side of table and discuss or maybe controversy with the capitalist and employers´unions. The trade union in general way, is a homogeneous institution with the capitalist social order, an institution of subordinate institutions that are committed for protecting the capitalist order of production because the territory of involvement and influence of unions are such as the towers, wherever they defend the ruling capitalist system.
The system of labor exploitation, the system that meets the requirements of capital self-expansion, the system of exposition and providing all the requirements of capital rivalry in the realm of the global capitalist market, the value-added system of capital and the system of overflowing the values produced by workers into the channels of capital re-accumulation and the godly and unquestionable domination of capital over the work and living conditions of the workers, in one sentence, the system of wage-slavery. The two unions of workers and capitalists, independent of the state, argue and sometimes quarrel on both sides of the negotiating table in a democratic corresponding to the capitalist production system. The fence of diplomatic strife is the framework of the democratic system of capitalist production. The sworn representatives of unions and loyal to the wage slavery system are supporters and defenders of the survival of this system that are responsible for imposing all agreements with the capitalists and employers on the life and livelihood of the broad masses of workers,
That’s because negotiations on both sides of the table are a fictitious version of two social classes negotiation. Two social classes whose materialist foundation for survival of one’s existence depends on the destruction and complete collapse of the other ones, and seeking a path to keep the working masses alive and establishing the lowest cost for reproducing the labor force of the masses workers in the form of wages as possible. Hereby the independence of the trade union from the government will be preserved and democracy rules !! ، capital is ruling and decides tyrannically and unbridled about length and breadth of workers´ livelihood as a small intangible component in the calculus of productions planning and capital accumulation process to achieve.
See this paragraph from the report from one of the largest free trade unions in the world, the Swedish National Trade Union (LO) :” for a wage policy to be successful it must be matching to reality . The wage-setting policies must go hand in hand with workers´livelihoods on the one hand to being in harmony with work conditions and problems of the employer on the other hand. ” The central bank is constantly monitoring the rise and fall of wages , and if the bank concludes that wages are above the level corresponding to inflation, so it raises interest rates ، higher interest rates increase the investment cost of companies and reduces economic activities and in following ,employment is declining and unemployment is rising……high unemployment warns us that the process of raising wages over a period should be gradual and slow . ” (according to the report of the metal section of the National Trade Union)
The role of trade unions typically in concluding annual or biennial contracts with employers´unions, it sums up the issue of wages . The basis of the negotiations and the foundations of the trade union agreement with the representatives of the bourgeoisie in this sphere of intervention have certain components and factors that has been specified in the report mentioned above and that is adherence to the profitability of capital is the foundation of unity and the starting and ending point in reaching agreements between the employers´and workers´unions .
The syndicalists and sectarians , whether peaceful or militant hiding all these facts and with emphasizing the component of ” independence from the government” such as a deceptive guarantee to hide and the camouflage of their reformism .
We , the anti-capitalist workers insistently believe that the state is the organization of the political , civil and social system of capital , the responsible institution for acting to expectations and requirements for the reproduction of capital and the whole method of capitalist production and the existing trade unions are also an organic and continuous link to the chain of life of the same anti-labor capitalist social order .
The syndicalists and sectarians shout when they hear the facts and answer so that : ” This is different in the case of Iran , because under the domination of predatory regimes , even the issue of non-governmental organizations is vital ” . The syndicalists yell about differences between European trade unions and the repressive police organizations which are the factor of suppressing workers´struggles such as ” workers´house ” and ” Islamic councils ”, and ignoring the difference between the two issues as ignoring the priorities of workers becoming organized !!!
We suppose that the Iranian workers build an organization of exactly the same size and shape as the trade union in Europe , we also temporarily assume that the shadow of the Islamic regime’s suppression is short of this union !! Such as a government-independent trade union , but the organization that is obliged to show respect for the constitution of the existing capitalist society the law that derives from wage labor relations ,the law corresponding to the reproduction of the process of accumulation of capital, discretion and requirements for capital enjoyment of superior production conditions , conditions for obtaining capital for possibility for extensive competition in the world market and the international treaties and agreements of the system of capitalism and so on to be protected.
An organization that is committed to show its allegiance to a perspective of the best possible conditions for capital to flow into the various realms of domestic accumulation and maximum profitability , pay full attention to the need to reach the 50 billions dollars market cap , and with the first threat of capitalists to change the capital areas to invest , it will legitimize the pressure on the living standards of workers and with each step of the intensification of the capitalist economic crisis and closing of schools, kindergartens and hospitals is silent. It respects the necessity of survival and domination of the wage-labor relationship and finally , with all this , carry the Medal of Honor of independence from the government on its chest . Suppose the Iranian working class is very lucky ! and would have an extensive with all these peculiarities, such like an organization that is independent of government but dissolved and degraded in the process of capital reproduction . We ask the supporters of the principle of trade union independence from the government and question is that what problems are supposed to be solved by that government-independent labor organizations for the Iranian working-class !?
No special tact and in-depth research is required for Iranian worker to understand that the problem of their organization is not only about being governmental or non-governmental but to be dissolved in expediency and conditions and also profitability requirements of capital. Just as the government itself arises from the vital needs and survival strategies of the wage-slavery system. Independence of the trade union from the government is one of the most obvious axioms but only the essence of independence from the state, this organization can not be turned into a real form for struggle and a leverage to meet demands of the working-class, for the same reason that the right to strike or freedom of demonstration, restricted and legalized in the wage labor system has not and doesn’t effectively help to solve the simplest living and welfare concern of 21st century European workers. The believers in the sufficiency of the theory of independence from the state with hearing these criticisms curse us as infidels and say that in specific circumstances in Iran or similar communities, every simple economic protest of the workers is like gunpowder depot for political explosions and accordingly, the independence of the workers´organization from the government guarantees the uncontrollable nature of the flames of the labor movement .
We like to ask them that do merely the workers resort to political uprising would be the way to solve the workers´exploitation problem ? Or even the slightest reduction in the intensity of their exploitation ?
From the beginning of the twentieth century until today, it has shown several great revolutions with the widespread role of the working class in these revolutions in the four corners of the world that under the pressure of weakness, disorganization and the lack of a wage-labor abolishing movement it has not solved any problems of the labor movement. Didn’t the Russian working class undertake the greatest revolution in history?, but a few years later they succumbed to the wage labor system in another dreadful ruin, more desperate and confused than before ? Didn’t the working masses of many other countries of the world tried to overthrow one after another the political regimes under the roar of the cannons of the revolution , but in the absence of readiness, organization and the lack of a wage labor abolition approach that remained in the same hell of hunger and the lack of rights and capitalist oppression? Was not the Iranian working class the cause and founder of the 1979 revolution ، but on the same day after the February uprising one of the most brutal religious dictatorships of the bourgeoisie came to power? Thus, merely the politicization of the workers´economic struggles , as long as this politicization of the struggle is not accompanied by an anti-wage labor approach, it does not bring about any particular fundamental changes in the life of the labor movement. Precisely on this basis, merely advocating the independence of the trade union from the government and given the role of this independence in acceleration of the workers ´ economic struggle into a political one , it will not create any course of hope for the workers´struggles. What reformism, whether in the form of syndicalism and praise of the trade union and whether in the form of sectarianism and party creation does not consider is the basis of the independence of labor movement and ts organization from the laws and rules, requirements and strategies of capitalist planning of labor and social production. ” Proletariat is a class in civil society but is not of civil society ” , proletariat in this system is condemned to wage slavery and is forced to struggle against this slavery. The struggle of the proletariat , not only for its complete liberation from this system, but also against any injustice, oppression and misery arising from this system, must be a direct struggle against capitalism with a transparent direction and approach of abolishing wage labor.
If a workers’ organization is to demonstrate the presence, involvement and class unity of the workers in advancing such a class struggle it must be without any doubts , on the principle of independence and non-adherence to the rules and regulations corresponding to the requirements of value-added and profitability of capital. The independence of the workers’ organization means declaring that we are a class in capitalist society, but that our interests, lives and livelihoods are fundamentally at odds with the existence of this system and its laws and rules, and with the terms and conditions of capital reproduction. It means declaring that every penny of capital gain equals tens of pennies of reduction in our standard of living, welfare and social facilities, this means that converting every penny of our labor and production values into capital equals several pennies in degrading living standards and the welfare, educational and health and other needs of our free human development as workers. This means declaring that the state, army and all apparatus of the social-political and civil order of capital is such like an endless well that is for the criminal confiscation of these values produced by us and taking them out of our sphere of human and social benefit .
An independent workers ´organization is an organization whose vital philosophy and endeavor is not based on the conclusion of a compromise contract between labor and capital , not based on the referred of living standards and welfare of working class to capital gains and loss curve not on the observance of the civil social order of capitalism and not on the basis of a compromise between the proletariat and bourgeoisie rather , on the class struggle, on the further reduction of capital gains for the benefit of livelihood and welfare and the higher excellence of workers´lives , focusing on class forces to put as much pressure as possible on the process of value-added capital and disrupting the capital accumulation process on preparing and equipping workers to take control of production ، on the preparation of the labor movement for the overthrow of capitalist property and rely on a more conscious and more powerful mobilization of the working class for the planning of the labor and social production council.
A trade union can be independent of the government but move in the opposite direction of this goal. The existing world trade unions are all like that, and whatever the reformism inside and on the fringe of the labor movement and the foreign defenders of this reformism and a wide range of sects and sectarian parties inherited from left nationalism till populist democracy they wish for workers of Iran is nothing more than this. Their insistence on the abstract component of independence from government and nor being independent of the constraints of the capital reproduction system ، all and including with along with all their statements and standardization, definitions and functions about workers´organization show the same kind of perception of the workers´organization. The anti-capitalist organization of the working class is not only an organization independent of the state , but also a class format for the struggle of the working masses against the material foundations of the existence of the capitalist state. Wishing this organization, all forms of struggle against all forms of capitalist oppression and crimes are intertwined with the struggle against the basis of the wage labor system.
The battle over wages is an ever-stormy trench but the anti-capitalist workers in this class war are not afraid of capitalists threatening to close factories and workshops but on the contrary, they are ready to take over the factories and run the production affairs. Anti-capitalist workers in this class war will not succumb to the threat and intimidation of employers to replace the labor force with the unemployed, because the mass of unemployed workers in the same stronghold of other workers are fighting for the same demands. The invasion of the bourgeois army does not remove them from the battlefield ، rather, they seek to respond to the strike and struggle against the bourgeoisie by joining the new sections of the massive army of workers. The anti-capitalist organization does not see the wage phenomenon as a legal demand based on the acceptance of the capitalist basis, rather see the existential nature of wages as an oppressive imposition by the wage labor system. The united masses of the workers in the form of their anti-capitalist organizations see wages as an unjust manifestation of capitalism and its barbarism against the working class.
Anti-capitalist workers see the demand for wage increase not as the attainment of the full realization of their rights, but as a very small part of a vast mountain full of values derived from the exploitation and plunder of the values of their labor. The anti-capitalist workers see every victory in the wage battle not as a main victory and taking of all unpaid work, but as a stepping stone to a wider and deeper class struggle against all oppressors , against the exploitation and crime of the wage slavery system. This is how the anti-capitalist workers´organization looks at the issue of wages and the struggle to them. Contrary to the lies of syndicalists and sectarians , anti-capitalist workers are not only indifferent to the wage-raising movement , but also see it as a bulwark against the global anti-wage struggle. In this form of workers organizing , any protest against the impunity of the capitalism is an indictment against the whole system.
Our opponents are making a fuss in this regard that as if it against a specific injustice instead of a realistic and possible fight against a specific injustice , it suffices to propagate and generalize against the capitalist system !!! The opposite is quite the case . Take the fight against gender discrimination and women’s right as an example . Our view of this struggle is fundamentally different from that of sectarians and syndicalists . Here , it’s recognized the undisputed source of all forms of discrimination and the greater severity of exploitation and social legal inequalities of women in the wage labor system. The war against this phenomenon is also a completely organic link in the global chain of anti-capitalist struggle. Here, female housekeeping work is not the legacy of the old systems of history, but an exact and coherent and at the same time conditional part of the functioning of the rules and regulations of capital and its accumulation process in the existing society. The struggle against the more horrific exploitation and gender discrimination of women finds its true place only in the heart of a strong anti-capitalist class war of workers movement.
The real demands, not the bourgeois reformist ones, of this movement are the direct and primary demands of the anti-capitalist working-class organization. Calculate hourly housework as working hours for women, adequate kindergarten and preschool courses for all children under the age of seven, absolute prohibition of prostitution based on economic needs and define guarantee of living standards and welfare and social facilities of individuals, regardless of gender and any other differences, elimination of any economic dependence of the couple on each other and complete abolition of forced dependence of children on parents, creating and providing the necessary sociocultural economic conditions for the comprehensive elimination of cohabitation from any patriarchy and gender discrimination and like these are the presumed demands of the workers anti-capitalist organization. It’s with the establishment of this kind of anti-capitalist workers organizing that the women of society will touch their fundamental dichotomy with the women of the capitalist class in all spheres of social protest and to fulfill their expectations on the united front of the global anti-capitalist struggle will be united . The same is true of the movement against child labor, the movement against dictatorship and oppression and the lack of political freedoms, environmental pollution and all the other ills of the capitalist system.
The anti-capitalist organization of the working class encompasses a wide range of struggles against all these sufferings by referring to the clear working class narrative of the content of the struggle. The concept and content of political freedom for workers isn’t the same as the political freedom of bourgeois democracy. The conscious worker sees the dictatorship that rules society not as a dictatorship of a faction of the bourgeoisie but as a dictatorship of the wage labor system, political freedom not just the right to free vote to elect representatives of the capitalist parliament but free from any kind of capitalist sociopolitical interference in their lives, liberation from the existence of the bourgeois state and complete freedom to form labor and production planning councils by the working masses themselves. The nationwide anti-capitalist organization of the working class, the only radical class narrative of the organization of the working masses to struggle against the current situation , against exploitation and class oppression , sufferings and all crimes of capitalism and at the time the class struggle is against the basis of the wage labor system too. Independence from the state is a matter of course for this organization that needs no explanation, the struggle against the bourgeois state is an inseparable part of the whole class war against capital.
This organization symbolizes the united and conscious presence of the working class in capitalist society, the organized field of their class forces for the current class war against capital in all spheres of social life, and it will be the field of exercise for working masses for council and socialist planning process of labor and social production. The working class as a social class in capitalist society but against capitalism and with all its masses of man and woman, employed and unemployed, productive and unproductive and independent of all other distinctions within this organization will place the whole of capitalist society at the center of its class struggle. The problem with setting up such an organization is not being utopian, not the lack of social context to create such an organization, not the lack of acceptance of workers for this organization, not related to the nature of the labor movement and not even the dictatorship and savagery of capitalism but above all these it’s the long-standing historical dominance of destructive reformist tendencies within the working class and labor movement. Comprehensive struggle against trade union reformism, against group and party sectarianism and is against the presence of bourgeois ideas, solutions and strategies in the labor movement is part of the process of fighting for the establishment of this kind of organizing.
. Activists of the anti-capitalist movement of the working class over the last decade around this type of workers organizing have enough been said and written in explaining and proving its conformity with the anti-capitalist nature of the labor movement, how to combine and link the current daily struggle and anti-wage struggle of workers within this organizing, in the root critique of all views and tendencies opposed to this anti-capitalist approach. But on the other side of this anti-capitalist approach are the syndicalists and sectarians and former leaders of the yellow bourgeois reformist and sectarian groups for whom sectarianism is everything and the labor movement nothing, those who once issued a decree about allegiance to ” Lech Walesa ” and today warn about the danger of leftism, these all didn’t avoid any accusal attempt against any dialogue about this kind of anti-capitalist organizing of working masses at all. By rejected the basis of the independence of the workers organizing from the terms, conditions and requirements of capital reproduction leads them to recourse into the single component of independence from the government. The fact is that the mere independence of the trade union from the government, if it doesn’t pour a sip of water into any thirsty throat of workers but does bring for syndicalists and sectarians privileged blessings, because for syndicalists setting up reformist heap on the ruins of a working class anti-capitalist movement is everything.
They don’t see the depth and content of the expectations, capacities and goals of the labor movement beyond the simple manipulation of workers´living conditions. Parties and sectarians also see the labor movement only as a springboard to rise to political power and ascend their parties to the throne of existing society. None of them believe in the formation of the working masses against capitalism, none of them acknowledge the struggle for abolition of wage labor in the capacities of the masses labor vendors.
We conclude the discussion with a brief reference to another type of common standardization or characterization of the functions of trade unions. The procedure is that in addition to the issue of independence from government, the principle of independence Fromm the parties is also insisted upon. The trade unionists and sectarians are more or less in agreement here and in adherence to this part of the principles. The formal difference between their beliefs is that the syndicalists insist on independence from all parties, both left and right, but party sectarians exclude left-wing parties and consider it permissible for the working masses to follow them ! The basis of unity and basis of the unit of formulations or theories of both is one thing.
Syndicalists ، including the pretending communist syndicalists, while rejecting the competence and capacity of the labor movement to struggle against the basis of capitalism,
and believe that workers might support one of the existing political parties that is close to the general lines of the program, goals and policies in fulfilling their union demands without any special affiliation with the party !!
Party-oriented left-wing reformists make the same point differently.
They agree with the syndicalists in depriving the working masses of their capacities to struggle capitalism, but they acknowledge their party as an alternative to the labor movement, and they think that the working masses while forming around their own union demands !! Mobilize behind their sect (Party) and establish this sect on the throne of political power. The sectarians call the resulting of political power as the political power of the working class. The syndicalists and sectarians based on their essential commonalities renew their covenant with each other about condition of non-capitalist of trade union and insist on the necessity of its mere union being , about how the organization interacts with parties ، they argue and debate. One dictates the principle of independence from parties and the other excludes the left parties or in fact the so-called sect of the party from the scope of this ruling.
The anti-capitalist organizing of the working class invalidates all these meaningless and bourgeois nonsensical arguments as strongly as possible. The proletariat doesn’t need two organizations with different identities to advance the trade union fight in one and the political and socialist fight in the other. The conscious workers certainly don’t hang their class movement above any sect and party and in meantime no ideological or sectarian organization outside their class movement and above themselves as own. They’re getting organized against capitalism and struggle within a single organizational framework against all economic and political impositions and oppressions arising from the existence of capitalism, and struggle to get all their current claims. The working masses within their councils are gradually making their anti-capitalist movement more united, more aware and stronger. They’re concentrating their class forces more and more, and they prepare with these more concentrated class forces for the final war with capitalism, for breaking the state machine of capital, establishment of a socialist council organizing for labor planning and social production, ending the wage labor system and establishment of a society independent of exploitation, classes and state.
The communist and conscious workers of the wage-abolition movement never separate themselves from this nationwide working-class organizing and also from any level of organizing of the anti-capitalist workers´movement . They don’t engage in sectarianism and division among the working class in the face of the anti-capitalist council ,because resorting to this kind of acting ، isn’t the communist workers or Marx’s approach , but the according to of sects with the legacy of state capitalism, nationalist and populist democracy and bourgeois socialism. It’s within this global anti-capitalist organizing that communist workers give meaning to their sociopolitical life. With a strong conscious bonding, creative and navigator that activists of the wage labor abolition movement in the heart of this global organizing that on the one hand it guarantees the horizon of the current workers´movement as much as possible and more widely and on the other hand , it contributes to the step by step success of this movement in the struggle against all existing injustices and to prepare it as effective as possible for the last battle against capitalism. Anti-capitalist activists don’t face the dilemma of resolving the relationship between the labor movement and political parties, but they ridicule as an old-fashioned comedy and tragedy among syndicalists and sectarians .
” The anti-capitalist workers of Iran ”
