No “Fairness” Under Exploitation

As our work in the trade unions grow, the cadre of the Communist Workers Platform increasingly find themselves encountering language that is completely alien to our ethos  as communists, our goals as revolutionaries. One such concept sees the term “fairness” being thrown around haphazardly amongst trade unionists. Any experienced communist understands that we can’t simply adopt slogans or terms, lest we fall into  “sloganeering,” or ourselves to redirect or contradict our strategy by adopting what might be seemingly evocative to the workers.

The trade unionists, whether they truly acknowledge it or not, only see class struggle in terms of a check on capital. Between elevating the contract above the realities of exploitation and becoming wholly subservient to the bourgeois legal system, trade union consciousness can only ever strive for the maintenance of capitalism.

The communist recognizes capitalism as a fundamentally exploitative system. So how could any terms under a system of exploitation of workers be “fair”? The trade unionist may at best fall back to the contract as “fairness” manifest. The workers submitted proposals, negotiated, and voted on the terms, how could it not be fair? We communists disagree entirely.

The communists fully recognize the democratic potential of the trade union and the contract. The specific circumstances can fluctuate, sure, but we couldn’t be sincere in our understanding that even a bourgeois democracy is essentially a democracy for any class except the capitalist class. Equally true, anyone who refuses to analyze the class nature of a democracy, is deceiving the workers. We recognize that any trade union that cannot find itself in total opposition to the bourgeoisie is necessarily subservient to it. The contract is perfectly fair in the eyes of the bourgeoisie, but could never truly be fair in the eyes of the workers as they have only been invited to help the capital manage its affairs and have yet to discover the freedom of managing the affairs of their own class unmolested by exploitation.

Besides, even the bourgeoisie isn’t satisfied with what’s fair. The capitalist could receive every concession, every capitulation, every conquest, while at best showing no mercy to the worker within these confines and at worst working to undermine the agreement to further humiliate the workers.

This isn’t to say that the communists reject the concept of fairness outright. Rather, we recognize that even in the most militant, revolutionary unions, fairness can never be found in the contract so long as capital reigns over labor. Instead, the contract serves as an opportunity for the workers to learn how to organize and struggle to improve their conditions. The working class’ advanced detachment, the communist party, seeks to lead them in the struggle against their exploitation, and eventually to a definite end; victory over the bourgeoisie. Thus, we must be rid of the term “fairness” within the trade union movement.