The birth and essence of trade unions

Fri, 21 Jul 2017 10:23:32 +0000

By Dr Kashiwa Bulaya

The social plans to serve the interests of the workers in their Utopian form were evolved, as a rule, not by the workers but by progressive thinkers in many cases belonging to other classes.

The English Utopian socialist Robert Owen (1771-1858) was born into a craftsman’s family, but became a businessman before he turned twenty. From 1800 to 1829 he managed a cotton-spinning mill in New Lanark, Scotland, and did much to improve the conditions of work and life for the workers. His speculation on the result of his activities led Owen to the idea of reforming society.

Owen evolved his Utopian system towards 1820s. In the next decades it was developed and commented upon both by Owen himself and by his followers. Owen’s concepts of human nature are the core of this system. Following the 18th-century French rationalists he presumed that man’s character formed in the process of interaction of his natural organisation with the environment. In Owen’s view, the decisive factor is the influence of the external conditions, the social environment, while individual efforts undertaken to form a character are of secondary importance.

Owen on Class Antagonism

According to Robert Owen, no individual is responsible for his character and his system of views, and this is also true of entire social classes. From here in particular, Owen draw the conclusion that class antagonism, just like hatred, revenge in relations between individuals, is an irrational expression of emotions, for each class is a victim of its own ideology. Consequently, Owen concluded, it is not the class struggle but knowledge of the laws governing the formation of characters that can lead the workers to their emancipation. He considered his doctrine of the human character not only as the fundamental law of human nature but also as the greatest revelation opening the way towards a rational organisation of society.

It was precisely from this doctrine that Owen proceeded in criticising the capitalist system, its economic and moral mainstays, as well as in his efforts to outline the contours of the future and even to translate its models into reality immediately. Indeed if man’s character and consciousness are formed by the environment, which is capitalist society, this society is responsible for the sum total of evil accumulated during the long period of its existence: class antagonism, class struggle, exploitation of man by man, poverty wars, crime and various vices.

Owen’s Interest in Economic Relations of Capitalism and the Concern for the Workers

Studying the influence of the environment on man, Owen made an in-depth analysis of the economic relations of capitalism which had taken shape in England in connection with the Industrial Revolution and gave serious thought to the conditions in which national wealth was created. Owen’s interest in these subjects was especially stimulated by economic crisis of 1816-1819, which followed the years of economic growth caused by the wars with France. Another reason for Owen’s interest in economic problems was the failures of his numerous appeals to the rich and the powers-that-be, as well as more and more frequent attempts to establish contact with the working class; they enhanced sympathetic interest in the position of the workers.

Pondering over measures that could abolish unemployment, Owen levied criticism on the fundamental attributes of the capitalist system: private property, the division of labour deforming man’s natural aptitudes, avarice and profit chasing, competition and over production crises. Owen’s greatest contribution was his assessment of the historic significance of the advance of productive forces in the era of Industrial Revolution. The growth of large-scale factory industry on the basis of machine technology, he asserted, had become the scourge of the working people, dooming them to unemployment. At the same time, Owen presumed that the material forces maturing within the bowels of society would eventually lead to social transformations. He included industrial and scientific progress as an essential component in his vision of the ideal society. Owen emphasised at the same time that the beneficial role of the machine relieving man would be brought into play only when economic progress was subordinated to a rationally understood goal-the happiness of mankind. The rapid growth of the productive forces would provide everything necessary for a population of any size (the Multhusian fears were unfounded).

If, however, despite the spread of machine production in England of his time the masses suffered from poverty and privations, Owen predicted that the existing social system would be worn out. Thus, Owen closely approached the idea that historical development is linked with changes in the mode of production. This puts him ahead not only of the Utopians of the 16th-18th centuries but also of a number of Utopians of his time and lends a certain degree of scientific approach to his views.

Owen Predicts end of Conflicts between Rich and Poor

Owen maintained that all conflicts between the rich and the poor would come to an end, and the class struggle would cease but as a Utopian, he did not show or indicate how that would happen. Owen proclaimed: “All of human race shall be happy, or none, visualising the universal motto for nations”. The principle of equality also underlines the constitution of the community settlements expounded in Owen’s work “The Book of New Moral World (1836-1844)”. In his other work, “The Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race (1849)” he emphasized that the transition to a new society, “the change from the ignorant, repulsive, unorganised, and miserable present, to the enlightened, attractive, organised, and happy future, can never be effected by violence or through feelings of anger and ill-will to any portion of mankind”. Owen wrote.

Owen Urges Governments to Change Society

For many years Owen hoped to realise his plans quickly. He regarded his experiment in New Lanark, the only attempt ever made to govern society on the principles of goodness and truth, as he said, as proof of their feasibility. Travelling in England, France, Germany, the United States of North America and Mexico, he submitted numerous projects to governments. He referred to his experiment at New Lanark as eminently successful. “Let society be now based on the same principle, and all evil will soon disappear”, he pleaded in his appeals to governments.

On his return to England, Owen again appealed to county councils, to Parliament, to influential and outstanding individuals, spoke before numerous audiences, wrote pamphlets and articles for newspapers. However, the more he elaborated on his ideas, the cooler was the attitude towards him from the bourgeois public who saw in his plans an encroachment on mainstays of their state.

While Owen was carrying out his experiment, the English labour movement became more active. A number of proponents for social change-William Thomson, John F. Bray, John Gray and Thomas Hodgskin published works whose ideas were close to those being developed by Robert Owen. Periodicals which expressed to a definite extent the interests of the workers appeared on the scene (for example, The Poor Man’s Guardian founded in 1830). Groups of Owen’s followers formed in the midst of the workers. Conspicuous among them was the craftsman Abram Combe (1785-1827) of Edinburgh. In 1820 Owen visited New Lanark, and in the next year founded an Owenite club in his native town. Before long it had almost 500 members, all of them workers.

In the process of its development practical Owenism diverged more and more from Owen’s original doctrine. His appeals and works helped the workers to evolve their own views. On his return to England in 1829 Owen at first overlooked these small experiments, which he believed to hold out little hope.

 However, the failure of his own Utopian project in America and his ruin had the result that the views of Owen, who was as eager as ever to help the working people, tended to become more realistic. He began to ponder over the opportunities for social change offered by the rapid growth of the working class.

Owen’s Practical Contribution to the Labour Movement

The Owenites made their first appreciable practical contribution to the labour movement in the field of co-operative undertakings. Towards time of Owen’s return from America co-operative societies had encountered great difficulties in marketing their wares and resolved to apply Owen’s idea of exchange bazaars in practice.

It was based on his concept of iniquity of metal currency and the gold standard, which could be abolished, he thought, through the issue of paper banknotes guaranteed by the assets of the British Empire; then the intrinsic value of the precious metals would be greatly below iron and steel.

An exchange of labour products without the aid of money, Owen believed, could help remake society by reducing the sphere of operation of the vicious capitalist system.

By improving the well-being of the workers and by eliminating poverty and ignorance this exchange would lead to the triumph of the finest traits of human nature within their midst and prepare them for entry to a “new moral world”.

 In practical terms the idea was that co-operators in all branches were to bring the articles they made to the central Exchange or Bazaar where they could be credited with Labour Notes based on the estimated cost of the raw materials and the amount of time taken for their manufacture. In practice, the exchange Bazaars set up between 1827 and 1832 were a failure.

The only positive result of this unsuccessful venture might be the fact that the workers who attended the Bazaars were indirectly drawn into the ranks of Owen’s supporters

The workers were intrigued by Owen’s projects and sometimes supported them enthusiastically; however, they could not adopt them and give up their class positions. For them the Trade Unions were primarily an instrument of practical struggle to satisfy their daily needs.