Trade Unions

[Charles Brown <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Articles by Engels in the Labour Standard 1881


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Trades Unions

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Source: Reproduced from the newspaper;
Written: May 20, 1881;
Published: No. 4, May 28, 1881, as a leading article;
Transcribed: director@xxxxxxxx, Labor Day 1996.

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Part I


In our last issue we considered the action of Trades Unions as far as they
enforce the economical law of wages against employers. We return to this
subject, as it is of the highest importance that the working classes
generally should thoroughly understand it.

We suppose no English working man of the present day needs to be taught that
it is the interest of the individual capitalist, as well as of the
capitalist class generally, to reduce wages as much as possible. The produce
of labour, after deducting all expenses, is divided, as David Ricardo has
irrefutably proved, into two shares: the one forms the labourer's wages, the
other the capitalist's profits. Now, this net produce of labour being, in
every individual case, a given quantity, it is clear that the share called
profits cannot increase without the share called wages decreasing. To deny
that it is the interest of the capitalist to reduce wages, would be
tantamount to say that it is not his interest to increase his profits.

We know very well that there are other means of temporarily increasing
profits, but they do not alter the general law, and therefore need not
trouble us here.

Now, how can the capitalists reduce wages when the rate of wages is governed
by a distinct and well-defined law of social economy? The economical law of
wages is there, and is irrefutable. But, as we have seen, it is elastic, and
it is so in two ways. The rate of wages can be lowered, in a particular
trade, either directly, by gradually accustoming the workpeople of that
trade to a lower standard of life, or, indirectly, by increasing the number
of working hours per day (or the intensity of work during the same working
hours) without increasing the pay.

And the interest of every individual capitalist to increase his profits by
reducing the wages of his workpeople receives a fresh stimulus from the
competition of capitalists of the same trade amongst each other. Each one of
them tries to undersell his competitors, and unless he is to sacrifice his
profits he must try and reduce wages. Thus, the pressure upon the rate of
wages brought about by the interest of every individual capitalist is
increased tenfold by the competition amongst them. What was before a matter
of more or less profit, now becomes a matter of necessity.

Against this constant, unceasing pressure unorganised labour has no
effective means of resistance. Therefore, in trades without organisation of
the workpeople, wages tend constantly to fall and the working hours tend
constantly to increase. Slowly, but surely, this process goes on. Times of
prosperity may now and then interrupt it, but times of bad trade hasten it
on all the more afterwards. The workpeople gradually get accustomed to a
lower and lower standard of life. While the length of working day more and
more approaches the possible maximum, the wages come nearer and nearer to
their absolute minimum -- the sum below which it becomes absolutely
impossible for the workman to live and to reproduce his race.

There was a temporary exception to this about the beginning of this century.
The rapid extension of steam and machinery was not sufficient for the still
faster increasing demand for their produce. Wages in these trades, except
those of children sold from the workhouse [1]
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/05/28.htm#n1>  to the
manufacturer, were as a rule high; those of such skilled manual labour as
could not be done without were very high; what a dyer, a mechanic, a
velvet-cutter, a hand-mule spinner, used to receive now sounds fabulous. At
the same time the trades superseded by machinery were slowly starved to
death. But newly-invented machinery by-and-by superseded these well-paid
workmen; machinery was invented which made machinery, and that at such a
rate that the supply of machine-made goods not only equalled, but exceeded,
the demand. When the general peace, in 1815, [2]
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/05/28.htm#n2>
re-established regularity of trade, the decennial fluctuations between
prosperity, over-production, and commercial panic began. Whatever advantages
the workpeople had preserved from old prosperous times, and perhaps even
increased during the period of frantic over-production, were now taken from
them during the period of bad trade and panic; and soon the manufacturing
population of England submitted to the general law that the wages of
unorganised labour constantly tend towards the absolute minimum.

But in the meantime the Trades Unions, legalised in 1824 had also stepped
in, and high time it was. Capitalists are always organised. They need in
most cases no formal union, no rules, officers, etc. Their small number, as
compared with that of the workmen, the fact of their forming a separate
class, their constant social and commercial intercourse stand them in lieu
of that; it is only later on, when a branch of manufactures has taken
possession of a district, such as the cotton trade has of Lancashire, that a
formal capitalists' Trades Union becomes necessary. On the other hand, the
workpeople from the very beginning cannot do without a strong organisation,
well-defined by rules and delegating its authority to officers and
committees. The Act of 1824 rendered these organisations legal. From that
day Labour became a power in England. The formerly helpless mass, divided
against itself, was no longer so. To the strength given by union and common
action soon was added the force of a well-filled exchequer -- "resistance
money", as our French brethren expressively call it. The entire position of
things now changed. For the capitalist it became a risky thing to indulge in
a reduction of wages or an increase of working hours.

Hence the violent outbursts of the capitalist class of those times against
Trades Unions. That class had always considered its long-established
practice of grinding down the working class as a vested right and lawful
privilege. That was now to be put a stop to. No wonder they cried out
lustily and held themselves at least as much injured in their rights and
property as Irish landlords do nowadays. [3]
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/05/28.htm#n3>

Sixty years' experience of struggle have brought them round to some extent.
Trades Unions have now become acknowledged institutions, and their action as
one of the regulators of wages is recognised quite as much as the action of
the Factories and Workshops Acts as regulators of the hours of work. Nay,
the cotton masters in Lancashire have lately even taken a leaf out of the
workpeople's book, and now know how to organise a strike, when it suits
them, as well or better than any Trades Union.

Thus it is through the action of Trades Unions that the law of wages is
enforced as against the employers, and that the workpeople of any
well-organised trade are enabled to obtain, at least approximately, the full
value of the working power which they hire to their employer; and that, with
the help of State laws, the hours of labour are made at least not to exceed
too much that maximum length beyond which the working power is prematurely
exhausted. This, however, is the utmost Trades Unions, as at present
organised, can hope to obtain, and that by constant struggle only, by an
immense waste of strength and money; and then the fluctuations of trade,
once every ten years at least, break down for the moment what has been
conquered, and the fight has to be fought over again. It is a vicious circle
from which there is no issue. The working class remains what it was, and
what our Chartist forefathers were not afraid to call it, a class of wages
slaves. Is this to be the final result of all this labour, self-sacrifice,
and suffering? Is this to remain for ever the highest aim of British
workmen? Or is the working class of this country at last to attempt breaking
through this vicious circle, and to find an issue out of it in a movement
for the ABOLITION OF THE WAGES SYSTEM ALTOGETHER?

Next week we shall examine the part played by Trades Unions as organisers of
the working class.