Trade union politics

Lenin said: "There could not have been Social Democratic (read Communist) consciousness among the workers.

It would have to be brought to them from without.

The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e. that conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc. The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied class, by intellectuals. By their social status, the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia." (What is to be Done, Selected Works, 3 Volume Edition, Vol. 3, pp. 148-149).

The crux of this thought is of critical importance to Indian workers today. What is the way forward: is the way forward to confine the workers to trade unionism, to trade union struggles, or is it to work to lift the consciousness of the workers to the level of Communist (scientific socialist) consciousness, and build a revolutionary scientific socialist party of the working class capable of leading the whole struggle against capitalism? To do the former is to perpetuate capitalism: to do the latter is to prepare for the overthrow of capitalism. Modern revisionists in India seek to confine the workers to trade unionism, to trade union politics, and thus to do something which does not really challenge capitalism as a social system.