I listened to part of a radio programme on the topic of whether trades unions were relevant in the 21st century. I turned it off after a bit because I find such discussions extremely depressing as, from my perspective, the necessity for trades unions is self-evident. The human being is a social being and is therefore a regulatory being. Humans must regulate their environment, as a regulated and parameter driven environment is essential for their health and well-being. Humans require necessary reference points. The absence of, or destruction of, such reference points produces the condition that sociologists call anomie. This is the great danger of someone in a position of power and influence like the 45, who is quite deliberately destroying traditional reference points, traditional norms and values governing human individual and collective behaviour because he has the power to do so to further his own personal, selfish, and malignant interests. In this he has a successful and poisonous role model in the Blessed Margaret because that was what she did in the UK, producing a fractured and divided society in which hate and division are the principal characteristics of the social and political order. Early industrial society was unregulated and deeply unjust, and working conditions were at the mercy of employers who were able to do whatever they wanted. Such conditions are anti-social and unnatural to the human being and, as a result, the collective of the working people sought to counter the selfish individualism of the employer and bring reason and harmony to the workplace through a balance of competing interests. The mechanism they used was of course the trade union. Adam Smith, for example, wrote about the unjust relations of power between employers and employees and was an early supporter of trades unions, although he did not call them that. He simply referred to combinations. Nothing was more important to Smith than justice and if there was injustice within any arrangement he was opposed to it. Justice can only be established within a regulated environment and is one of the reason I always tell you that Smith did not advocate something called the free market.
Trade unions brought regulation and rational behaviour into industrial society. They brought regulation into working hours, days, weeks and years. They established rational wage bargaining and brought civilised standards into the world through matters such as health and safety, holidays, pensions etc. There was a limit to what they could achieve within the workplace however as much of their needs could only be met with legislation. As a result they were forced to involve in politics and, because of the hatred of working people within the established order, and the refusal of the political elite to recognise the rights of the lower orders, the scum, they were forced to develop political organisations sympathetic to working people. The trades unions were therefore a major catalyst in establishing civilisation, democracy and decency. The methodology trades unions utilised to rationalise and democratise the workplace and the wider society was what we call collective bargaining. There is nothing socialist, communist or even left-wing about this methodology. There is nothing socialist, communist or even left-wing about trades unionism. Indeed it embodies all the requirements of a functioning market economy. Two parties, employers and employees, sit down and bargain over wages and conditions of employment. It is a market situation where there is a power imbalance, but where it is in each others self-interest not to pursue a completely selfish agenda. Each has a product, on the one side it has a position of employment to sell, on the other it has labour to sell. The great leveller is that each needs the other. It is a market situation of compromise and give and take with each attempting to maximise their advantage. If trade unions are seen to be left-wing it is because of the personnel who manage them and is not an inherent characteristic of the essence of their roles and functions. Trades unions are the same as all other social institutions, they are a reflection of the personnel who compose them, but, and this is never acknowledged, they have never challenged the fundamental essence of the capitalist market system, all they have ever sought to achieve is a greater distribution of the rewards of the system that is the result of their labour power.
It is no accident that the primary goal of the Thatcherite Tories was the destruction of the union movement. It is no accident that the Blessed Margaret's accession to power marked the beginning of the end of Britain as a civilised society. That the British working class are their own worst enemy is so obvious that it is hardly worth stating. Any working person who votes Tory is indeed a useful idiot. I actually know former miners who vote Tory, not many, but I do know them. The dominant economic theories tell me that the human being is rational, aye right!! You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
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