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On 2011-01-23, at 6:45 AM, Lenin's Tomb wrote: > The reality is that unionisation is low because the > working class was defeated by a combination of imperialism, the domestic > slaveocracy and the peculiar binding force of anticommunist nationalism. > The major defeats for organised labour and the Left in the country as a > whole in 1919-21, then in the South in 1934-6, then as a result of the > anticommunist purges in the period from 1947-56, then from 1978 onward have > all shared different combinations of these elements. Actually, for most of the period described above, through to the end of the twentieth century, the unionization rate rose steadily in line with US global manufacturing supremacy. Trade unions were born, grew, and fought their most militant battles prior to their legalization ( and subsequent institutionalization) by the bourgeois state, so repression of the trade unions and the left - which has been a constant feature of the conflict between the classes, varying only in degree and overtness in accordance with the tempo of that conflict - does not in itself serve as an explanation for the low rate of unionization. The preciptious decline in unionization in the core capitalist countries seems to have been due primarily to a) the increase in the relative weight of the service sector, which is structurally more difficult to organize, and b) the revolutionary advances in transportation and communications technology since the 80s coupled with the opening of vast new pools of cheaper labour in the former Soviet bloc, China, and elsewhere. This combination predictably led to a flight of Western industrial capital and the relocation of production in these new more profitable zones of exploitation. The decline in trade union density, bargaining power, consciousness, and combativity is an effect of these deeper changes, as is the correspondingly more adverse relationship of forces between capital and labour and, within the unions, between conservative officialdom and opposition caucuses. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
