Trade unions - Lenin

Trade unions represented enormous progress for the workingclass at the beginning of the development of capitalism as the transition from the disunity and helplessness of the workers to the rudiments of class organisation. When the highest form of proletarian class organisation began to arise, viz, the revolutionary party of the proletariat (which does not deserve the name until it learns to bind the leaders with the class and with the masses into one single indissoluble whole), the trade unions inevitably began to reveal certain reactionary traits, a certain craft narrowness, a certain tendency toward becoming non-political, a certain inertness, etc. But the development of the proletariat did not, and could not, anywhere in the world, proceed otherwise than through the trade unions, through their interaction with the party of the proletariat . . .(Lenin, Selected Works, 12 Volume Edition, Vol. 10, pp. 90-91.)