Leon Trotsky, On the Role and Tasks of Trade Unions; Draft resolution for the Tenth Congress. March 14, 1921

During the fierce trade-union controversy of 1920–21, Trotsky argued that the unions should become “production unions,” closely integrated with the state’s economic apparatus. This draft resolution, prepared for the Tenth Party Congress, attacks what Trotsky saw as the complacency of Lenin’s “Platform of the Ten” and the syndicalist drift of the Workers’ Opposition. It lays out a program of planned “fusion” between unions and economic agencies, pairing internal “workers’ democracy” with disciplined mobilization and compulsory labor.

Original Source: Л.Д. Троцкий, Роль и задачи профессиональных союзов: (К 10-му съезду партии). Москва: Типо-лит. Наркомата путей сообщения, 1921.

Introduction

The comprehensive Party discussion on the role of the trade union has already accomplished a positive result in that it helped to clarify the basic issues at slake and to remove imaginary differences and plain misunderstandings. As a result of this discussion, it is possible now to affirm that there exist within the party three points of view on the trade-union question.

The position of the "Ten" is essentially an endorsement of the old practice of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions, which repudiates the need of a "radical change in the methods and the tempo of work" of the trade unions, sanctioned by the Ninth Party Congress. The position of the 'Ten" completely ignores the deep crisis which the trade unions are passing through, a crisis which expresses itself in the utter aloofness in which the trade unions stand in relation to the economy and the lack of coordination between the methods and procedures of trade-union work and the production problems which the unions are facing.

While justly emphasizing the need for a resolute transition to methods of workers' democracy, the position of the 'Ten" shuts its eyes to the fact that in and by themselves the methods of democracy within the unions-without changing the position and the role of the unions in the workers' state-will fail to solve the problem and bring the crisis to an end.

In some of its practical conclusions, the platform of the 'Ten" is making a number of concessions to our point of view, but by and large it retains and sanctifies the condition of aloofness existing between the trade unions and the economic organizations. At times the two sides enter into temporary agreements, at others they are in conflict.

The platform of the "Workers' Opposition," while expressing a legitimate aim of concentrating the administration of industry in the hands of the trade unions, gives to this aim an utterly erroneous expression, both from a theoretical and practical point of view, and is shifting more and more in the direction of syndicalism.

Completely ignoring the fact that our economic organizations came into existence with the help of the trade unions and that, with all their bureaucratic traits, these economic organizations incorporate the accumulated organizational and economic experience of the workers' state, the "Workers' Opposition" proposes to consider dead and buried what has been done in the past in the field of economic construction and, rather than reorganize the existing economic organizations by the inclusion of larger numbers of workers in them, they propose to replace them mechanically by an elective representation of workers, starting with the plant and the mine and ending with the higher economic institutions of the Republic. Such a solution must inevitably lead, no matter what the intentions of the authors of these proposals may have been, to a disruption in the relations among factories and plants, to the destruction of the centralized economic machinery, and to the loss of the Party's leading influence over the trade unions, as well as over the economy...

The Nature of the Trade-Union Crisis

1. Concerning the question of the role and aims of the trade-union organizations during the epoch of the dictatorship of the proletariat, our Party program says: "The organizational apparatus of socialized industry must be based, first and foremost, on a trade-union foundation. Since, according to the laws of the Soviet Republic and existing practice, they are already participating in all local and central organs of industrial administration, the trade unions must achieve a de facto concentration of the whole national economy considered as a single economic unit. This will ensure the closest possible tie between the central machinery of state administration, the national economy, and the large masses of the toilers. In this way the trade unions will facilitate the widest possible participation of the toiling masses in the conduct of economic affairs. The participation of the trade unions in the administration of the economy is at the same time the most important factor in the fight against the bureaucratization of the Soviet economic apparatus and will make possible a genuine people's control over the results of production."

2. This self-evident and undisputable idea, expressed in the Party program, points to the fact that the taking over of production [management] by the trade unions, under the leadership of the Party and the general supervision of the workers' state, is something which cannot be achieved by a single act, but requires a long process of training, organization and grouping of the working class, necessitated by the economics of socialism. This process has already gone through a number of stages corresponding to the forms in which the trade unions participated in the organization of the economy. Thus, soon after the October Revolution the working class, mainly through the medium of the trade unions, created elementary organs to take over the nationalized enterprises. With the further development of economic institutions, an inevitable segregation between these economic institutions and the trade unions has taken place. The parallelism is leading to jurisdictional disputes, organizational friction, and conflicts. The efforts of the economic organizations during this period of specialization and segregation were directed toward limiting trade-union interference in economic life...

3. What is most urgently needed at this time is an earnest effort on the part of the trade-union leaders, as well as of the Party as a whole, to revitalize and strengthen the trade unions as soon as possible, to create a more intimate connection between the unions and the economic organizations, to correlate trade-union methods of work with the tasks in the economic field, and to ensure a greater influence of the trade unions in the organization of production. These are the objectives of the Party during the new epoch of economic construction.

The Trade Unions as the Prop of the Party

4. In presently undertaking their basic work directed toward the organization of the economy, the trade unions must not only preserve but also expand and intensify their role as mass organizations of the working class and draw systematically the millions of toilers, no matter how backward they may be, into participation in the life of the Soviet state. Real, i.e., living and conscious, as opposed to formal, consolidation of millions of workers into trade unions can be achieved only on the basis of active and creative participation of the trade unions in the economic life of the country. At the same time the conscious participation of millions of workers in economic construction will secure for the Party a firm class foundation and will enable the Soviet government to meet the difficulties arising from the economic fragmentation and the political backwardness of the multimillion masses of the peasantry.

Educational Work of the Trade Union ("The School of Communism" )

5. The greatest problem of our epoch is the transformation of the trade unions into production unions, not in name only but in content as well. Under present-day conditions.

the educational work of the trade unions can unfold itself only on condition that greater and greater masses of workers are drawn into the work of organizing production.

[Paragraphs 6 and 7 repeat points that were stressed by Trotsky again and again: trade unions must shift their work to problems of industrial production rather than concentrate on workers' welfare.]

8. It is important to implant into the minds of working masses the idea that their interests are best defended by those who try to raise the productivity of labor, who are trying to improve the operation of the economy and to increase the amount of material goods. It is this type of organizer and administrator, if he satisfies the necessary political prerequisites, who should be elected to the leading positions in the trade unions on the same bases as workers from the bench. The trade unions should train and support a new type of trade-union leader, full of energy, economic initiative, looking upon economic activity not from the point of view of distribution and consumption, but from the viewpoint of expanded production, looking not with the eyes of a man bargaining with the Soviet government, but with the eyes of an economic organizer.

9. Production propaganda, which is a component part of production education, has as its basic aim the establishment of new relationships between the workers and what they are producing. Under capitalism the worker's ideas were determined by the fact that he was trying to liberate himself from the clutches of hired labor. But under present conditions the thoughts, the initiative, and the will of the workers must be centered first and foremost on improving the organization of production and on the more efficient use of machines and mechanisms...

The Fusion of the Trade Unions with the State

10. The fusion of the trade unions with the state has already gone a long way insofar as the claims of the state upon the workers are concerned. It is through the medium of the trade union that the state registers the worker, puts him on a specific job, sets norms for his output and wages for his work, and punishes him for infraction of labor discipline.

The other side of the fusion process, viz., the influence of the workers' trade unions on the organization of the economy, is lagging behind to a considerable extent. And yet, it is only the development of this second aspect of the fusion process that is capable of securing a proper place for the trade unions in the workers' state, and making it possible for the great masses of workers to understand the socialist character of compulsory labor which the trade unions are called upon to enforce and without which no solid economic improvement is possible.

11. The gradual concentration of production management in the hands of the trade unions, as is required by our party program, means the transformation, according to plan, of the trade unions into agencies of the workers' state, i.e., the gradual fusion of the trade union with the Soviet apparatus...

12. Fortifying the trade-union positions in the economic sphere is the most effective method of fighting against bureaucracy. On this point our party program states: "Participation of trade unions in economic management and the drawing of large masses of workers into this work are the principal methods of fighting against the bureaucratization of the economic apparatus." It follows that the fight against bureaucracy is not an independent problem that can be solved by means of special organizational measures. It is a component part of trade-union work directed toward training the masses in the processes of production and in the management of production. It follows that the fight against bureaucracy requires not so much the creation of new control organs as the improvement of existing economic organizations.

Methods of Persuasion and Methods of Compulsion in the Trade Unions

13. The principal method of trade-union work is not the method of compulsion but the method of persuasion, which docs not in the least exclude the possibility that in case of necessity the trade unions should also apply the methods of proletarian compulsion (mobilization of thousands of trade-union members for service, disciplinary courts, etc.). Reorganizing the trade unions by orders from above is certain to defeat its own end. The methods of workers' democracy, which were sharply curtailed in the three years of the most cruel civil war, should be re-established on a wide scale and first of all in the trade-union movement. It is necessary first of all to re-establish the system of electing officials for the various trade-unions organs and to reduce to an unavoidable minimum the practice of appointments from above. The trade unions should be built on the principle of democratic centralism. At the same time care should be taken to ensure that centralization and militarized forms of work do not degenerate into bureaucracy and "stand-patism." The recourse to labor militarization made necessary by events will be crowned with success only to the extent that the Party, the Soviets, and the trade unions succeed in explaining to the masses of toilers the necessity of these measures for the salvation of the country.

The Party and the Trade Unions

14. In view of the exceptional importance which the trade-union movement is bound to acquire in the near future the Party should pay greater attention to the unions than it has done in the past. Party leadership within the trade-union movement should be greatly increased. But this leadership should involve, mainly, steering the ideological work of the trade unions and should not turn into petty tutelage over them or excessive interference in their daily work. The Communist factions within the trade unions are under control of the party organizations. The selection of the leading trade-union personnel should be under the supervisory control of the Party, which uses the party factions of the trade unions to ensure that the leading positions in the trade unions are occupied by men recommended by the Party. But the party organizations must strictly adhere to the normal methods of proletarian democracy, especially in the trade unions, where the selection of leaders must be made by the organized masses themselves.

15. [In this paragraph Trotsky maintains that only under the above conditions will the Party be in a position to exercise complete control over trade unions and at the same time to leave a certain amount of local independence to trade union leaders.]

The Trade Unions and the Political Departments

16. In the past, when the attention and the energies of the Party were directed predominantly to the fronts, the Party was forced, under pressure of economic necessity, to create special organs, known as political administrations, for the purpose of carrying out special tasks which the trade unions were unable to perform. It was for this reason that the temporary organ-Glavpolitput-came into existence. The Ninth Party Congress has authorized that body "to adopt extraordinary measures necessitated by the terrific collapse of the transport system, so as to prevent its complete paralysis and the ruin of the Soviet Republic."

The Tenth Congress recognizes that the economic objective for which Glavpolitput was created has been accomplished (as indicated in the resolution of the Eighth Congress of Soviets) and endorses the liquidation of that organization.

17. The All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions, the organization which unites several million trade-union members, should be transformed by the party into a powerful organization, capable of carrying out the gigantic tasks which the Russian trade-union movement is facing.

It would have been impossible to build the Red Army without abolishing the elected committees of the old type. On the other hand, the national economy cannot be raised to the necessary level without, at the same lime, raising the level of trade-union organization by using the methods of workers' democracy.

18. The transition to the methods of workers' democracy should be made effective in all trade unions. At the same lime, the Tenth Congress recognizes that, without changing the position and the role of the unions within the workers' state, the transition to workers' democracy within the trade unions will not solve the basic question of socialist economic construction.

Practical Steps to Be Taken

19. The present position of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions and the central committees of individual industrial unions is such that they stand outside the basic economic activity of the country. This cannot be recognized as normal. It is necessary to remedy a situation under which nearly every trade-union worker who demonstrates high qualities as an organizer and economic administrator is torn away from the union, as well as from the masses of workers, and is swallowed up by the machinery of production.

20. To establish better relationships, it is necessary that the trade unions themselves participate directly in the elaboration of economic plans, as well as in the methods of plan implementation.

In the workers' state there can be no organizational separation between specialists in production management and specialists in the trade-union movement. As a general principle, it should be recognized that anyone needed for work as a production specialist is, by the same token, needed by the trade unions and vice versa. Every valuable trade-union worker should also be a participant in the organization of production. With this in view, the Tenth Party Congress considers it essential to establish a central committee consisting of representatives of the Central Council of Trade Unions, the Supreme Council of National Economy, the People's Commissariat of Agriculture, the People's Commissariat of Railroads, and others) to coordinate the relationships between the trade unions and the economic organizations in a manner that would correspond to the facts of production experience....

Source: James Bunyan, ed., The Origins of Forced Labor in the Soviet State, 1917-1921 (Stanford: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1967), pp. 221-245, with minor modifications.