Workers World, Vol. 12, No. 6, April 15, 1970
It has been well over a century since Karl Marx, in an address to the International Workingmen’s Association, analyzed the general relations of profits to wages in a pamphlet which has been passed down and been read by the millions throughout the world and which is popularly known as “Value, Price and Profit.” While the pamphlet is generally concerned with analyzing the economic relationship among wage, labor and capital, there are at the end of the pamphlet several concluding remarks made by Marx concerning trade unions which retain as much or possibly more validity and relevance than when Marx delivered his famous address.
“Trade Unions,” said Marx, “work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially,” he continued, “from an injudicious use of their power.” In what sense? In the sense that: “They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerrilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wage system.”
Much water has run over the dam since Marx wrote this and the working class has undergone many transformations since then. The nature of the so-called free competitive forces of the capitalist system has long given way to the unbridled rule of monopoly capitalism and what was once considered more or less legitimate form of trade union leadership, in the sense that there was some correspondence between rank-and-file needs of workers and trade union leadership, has long given way to the monstrous growth of a trade union bureaucracy which in conditions of imperialist war and domestic reaction has become a political police of the capitalist government over the war.
Nevertheless, as Marx correctly observed over a century ago, trade unions are centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital and their singular failing, when in fact they are resisting the encroachments of capital, is that they limit themselves to a “guerrilla war.” What did Marx mean by a “guerrilla war”? He did not use the term in the sense that we use it today in the contemporary world struggle as a tactic employed by the liberation movements in the struggle against imperialism. He used the term in the classical sense, in reference to sporadic, isolated and uncoordinated struggles with very sharply defined, limited objectives and not, of course, conceived with the ultimate objective of generalizing these disparate skirmishes into an overall assault against the citadel of capital.
Scarcely anyone who has had his eyes open at all can deny that there is a vigorous, general resurgence of trade union militancy throughout this country. It is not only the postal strike, the teamsters, the sanitation workers, but literally hundreds of smaller strikes are occurring with increasing frequency. In many cases they are of a protracted and bitter character with violence on an increasing scale and with the repressive forces of the capitalist state coming to the aid of the employer in every case.
What becomes immediately apparent if one looks at the labor scene from an overall view is the correctness of Marx’s observation that the unions are confining themselves to a “guerrilla” tactic. There is no national cooperation, no coordination, and almost an absolute minimum of mutual aid and assistance with only the barest minimum of a show of labor solidarity. And yet it becomes painfully apparent with each new strike that the works are facing a common enemy in the capitalist class and that the various capitalist cliques are bound by a common class solidarity when they are in struggle against the workers.
Nowhere is the lack of general labor solidarity more critical than in the cases of the many long and bitter strikes that have been carried on by relatively smaller groups of workers against the powerful capitalist combine which can be called the meat trust.
A case in point is the strike of perhaps some 1,500 workers at the Dakota City, Nebraska, plant of Iowa Beef Processors Inc. The workers are led by the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butchers of America. This has been a long and tough strike and, while the parent union has done as much as any union in its position can do, the most notable fact to emerge from the struggle is the lack of national working class solidarity from the rest of the labor movement, considering that this strike has lasted almost nine months; has gone through many arrests; has experience so much repression at the hands of the local authorities in collusion with the company; and has seen the cooperation of all arms of the government, company, press and police. One truly marvels at the solidarity shown by the meat packing workers.
Oftentimes it happens in the course of such a long strike that new issues between the workers and the company are developed which are almost as important as the demands for which the workers originally went out on strike. At this moment in the particular strike we are discussing, the company and the union have announced a pending settlement. It is too early for us to have a full picture of it and how it would affect the workers, but one aspect of it is of general interest to all the workers in the United States because it affects the character of the solidarity that is needed in any type of struggle like this.
The union apparently won a 58-cents-an-hour wage increase for the first year followed by a 15-cents-an-hour wage increase for the second and third year as part of an overall attempt to gradually eliminate a wage differential between the slaughtering and processing divisions of the company. This may or may not be equal to the strength the workers feel they showed in the course of such a brutal struggle. The union leaders themselves have evaluated the increases as a compromise.
But the aspect of the settlement that is of general interest to all the workers in the United States is the one regarding the return of all the strikers to work. Here it appears that the union agreed that the names of those workers allegedly involved in “gross acts of vandalism or violence” are to be submitted to a so-called “impartial arbitrator” who will determine whether they will be permanently reinstated and his decision in turn may depend on what the capitalist courts decide on the many cases that are pending now. This goes to the very essence of the meaning of a union and of the meaning of labor solidarity. If the union leaders deliver the fate of the victimized strikers to the tender mercies of an arbitrator who in turn wants to see what the courts will decide first, then that is one of the worst blows to the spirit of the workers and tends to crush the very spirit that enabled them to endure nine months with such exemplary unity. The need for the union to hold firm on the issue of protecting militant workers who gave their all against the company ranks equally with the economic issues.
In the long run the economic issues don’t even have the same lasting effect as does the spirit of the workers when they all come back together and united, undaunted by the terror of the local police authorities, the scabs and hired goons of the company. Maintaining unity and solidarity at the termination of a strike at this particular period in the struggle where many workers are waging struggles against employers has more lasting significance than most of the economic demands. Here it is necessary to again show what Marx said with regard to the economic victories that the workers may win.
“They,” meaning the workers, said Marx, “ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects (economic) but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerrilla fights incessantly springing up from the never-ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market.”
Marx’s analysis is particularly pertinent to the situation today when galloping inflation literally eats up a wage increase long before the contract on which it is based expires. Today’s capitalist economy is so full of falsely built-in supports of a war-oriented character that gives all economic gains a purely transient and temporary character, which at any time can quickly evaporate. The fostering of unity and solidarity among the workers is most important because from this ultimately develops the political class consciousness necessary for the final emancipation of the working class which, in turn, will only come as the result of the overthrow of the entire capitalist system.
Last updated: 11 May 2026