Trade Unions, Class and Power Course 2018

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/f The Tutor The Tutor will be Professor Mary Davis

Organisation and Outcomes for the Class Each class will be built around two questions and will draw upon the life experience of those attending as well as knowledge of the texts.

Required reading will be limited to two or three short pieces – although for classes three and four you will be asked to undertake short case studies.

At the end of the class you should have secured: • An understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the trade union movement today • An ability to explain how capitalist exploitation takes place and of its limits • A knowledge of how the working class movement has in the past succeeded in shifting the balance of power against capital and how capital has fought back _________ Classes by Professor Simon Mohun

Marxian Political Economy and its Enduring Relevance

Texts Mary Davis, Comrade or Brother R. Miliband, Parliamentary Socialism Seamus Milne, The Enemy Within Robert Tressell, Ragged Trousered Philanthropists Some of these texts are available on the On-line course webpages

Additional Reading Emile Burns, Introduction to Marxism – specially chapter 3 access here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/burnsemile/1939/what-is-marxism/index.htm John Eaton, Political Economy, esp. Chapters 6, 8 and 12 http://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/bitstream/1/1559 0/1/2125.pdf

Trade Unions, Class and Power

Jonathan White (ed), State Monopoly Capitalism Manifesto Press 2017

Celebrating Marx’s 200th Birthday

Tutor: Professor Mary Davis On Tuesdays at 7 p.m.

30 January

Trade unions today (and yesterday)

13 February

Exploitation

27 February

Turning Points - when trade unions and the labour movement shifted the political balance in their favour

13 March

How the ruling class fights back – and the limits to its power

7 p.m. in the Library

27 March Session 1: Overview of the Marxist approach to a capitalist economy 10 April Session 2: Value and price 24 April Session 3: Profit and the rate of profit 8 May Session 4: Money, finance and crisis

Saturday 5 May SOAS, Central London

Speakers include Professor Mary Davis Professor David McLellan John McDonnell MP Isabel Monal (Cuba) Professor Ben Fine Sitaram Yechury

Prabhat Patnaik Sarah Moeseta (South Africa) Ian Gough John O’Neill Denise Christie Professor Ursula Huws

Registration will begin on 1 March Full details will be available from the MML website early in the New Year

Classes start at 7 p.m. The fee for the course is £20 (£12 unwaged).

Please register early so that you can get access to the resources of the Marx Memorial Library on-line course. This will include on-line texts for pre-course reading and, later on, student and tutor interaction so that, if you miss a class, you can catch and up and attend the next.

This folder provides a brief introduction and guide to the literature Marx Memorial Library, 37a Clerkenwell Green, EC1M 3RU http://www.marx-memorial-library.org.uk

The Class Questions

Trade Unions, Class and Power This course is about trade unions, class and power. It looks at the strengths and weaknesses of the trade union movement in Britain today, how the experience of work is changing and how people can be won to become active trade unionists in current circumstances.

The course examines exploitation, how all workers are exploited and what constitutes the working class. It stresses the importance of trade union activity but also argues that wider political mobilisation of working people as a class is essential.

It considers the circumstances in which such working class mobilisation has been able to achieve major victories. It then examines the nature of the state and of the ruling class and the limitations with which the ruling class has to work – looking at specific examples of concerted ruling class action. It concludes by considering capitalist state power and counterposing it to the way the working class organises itself based on the development of solidarity.

The two case studies for Class 3 relate to 1888-1890 and 1970-74.

1889-91 saw the emergence of ‘New Unionism’: mass trade unions organising unskilled and semi-skilled workers and adopting the language of class and socialism. This took place after a thirty year period in which trade union organisation had been restricted to some sections of skilled workers (probably less than 10 per cent of the total workforce) and when the trade unions that did exist were ‘non-political’ or allied to the Liberal Party and did not talk in class terms.

The second example is the victory of the TU movement over the Conservative government in 197074. This mobilisation occurred after a couple of decades in which sociologists claimed that post-war prosperity had turned workers into aspirant members of the middle class, that class solidarity had vanished and the Labour Party would have to abandon any policies involving socialist change.

CLASS 1 TRADE UNIONS TODAY – AND YESTERDAY Question 1 Draw on your own experience to explain why people join trade unions today and what turns some of them into trade union organisers ? Is this different from the past ?

Question 2 What are the strengths and weaknesses of the TU movement today ? What are the limits to trade union power ?

Mass meeting at Fords in the 1950s CLASS 2 EXPLOITATION The release of the Pentonville Five in 1972

Things to look for are how material conditions altered, how new types of organisation developed, how far this depended on organisers who carried forward past experience and how far the key organisers were sustained by a socialist class ideology.

The two case studies for Class 4 relate to the 1926 General Strike and its aftermath and the Conservative Party’s assault on trade union power between 1979 and 1986.

CLASS 3 SHIFTING THE BALANCE OF POWER IN FAVOUR OF WORKING PEOPLE This class will look at two periods: 188890 and 1971-74 Question 1 What constitutes the working class today, as against the late 19th or mid20th century, and what lessons can be learnt from past periods of working class advance in understanding the conditions required for wider class organisation today ?

Question 2 How important for the development of class solidarity is belief in the feasibility of an alternative economic system that is not exploitative – and a perspective of advance towards it [use examples from 1889 or 1971-4 to assess] ?

Question 1 Why did the rate exploitation increase after 2011 and how important is the workplace struggle on wages in reducing the rate of exploitation ?

CLASS 4 THE RULING CLASS AND THE LIMITS TO ITS POWER

Question 2 What social conditions are necessary for exploitation to take place through ‘freely’ negotiated contracts in the labour market? How have these conditions changed recently ?

Question 1 What was similar and what different about government tactics post 2010 and either 1926 or 1979-86 ?

This class will look at two periods 1926-27 and 1979-86

Question 2 What do these episodes have to tell about how the ‘ruling class’ exercises power in our period, the limits to it and the contrasting way the working class exerts power ?