Corporatism

According to Marxism-Leninism, corporatism exists in capitalist society when independent trade unions representing the economic interests of the working class have been replaced by "corporations" of which both capitalist managements and employed workers are members.

In Nazi Germany the Labour Front was a classic "corporation". It included

"... the members of all the previous trade unions, the previous salaried workers' associations and the previous employers' associations".

(R.A. Brady: "The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism"; London; 1937; p. 125).

In the words of the Leader of the Labour Front, Robert Ley:

"The management of the Labour Front is in the hands of the National Socialist German Labour Party".

(R. Ley: Address to the Foreign Press, March 7th., 1935, in: R.A. Brady: ibid.; p. 124).

The result of Nazi corporatism was:

"Employers have practically complete control over workmen in regard to wages, hours and working conditions...Collective bargaining is completely abolished".

(R.A. Brady: ibid.; p. 41).

Since the Soviet management personnel now form a new capitalist class and are members of the same "trade unions" as the workers they employ (and may dismiss), these Soviet "trade unions" are, in fact, "corporations" similar in every respect to the Nazi Labour Front -- except that they are led by a political party which calls itself the Communist party instead of the National Socialist Labour Party.

Like the Labour Front, too, the Soviet "trade unions" do not participate in collective bargaining on such important questions as wage levels, since -- as has been demonstrated in Section 12: "The Price of Labour Power" -- these are determined by the state.

As in the later days of the fascist regime in Spain, Soviet workers are responding to Soviet "corporatism" by setting up independent trade unions to defend and improve their conditions of work:

"Soviet workers have been forcibly confined to mental hospitals for nothing more or less than exercising some of the most fundamental rights of working people anywhere. The astounding accounts of fourteen workers, hospitalised since January 1977 for displaying such 'symptoms' as appealing against unfair dismissal, complaining about poor working conditions and helping to form a free trade union, reached Amnesty International in March...

With the news of the imprisoned workers came an appeal to Amnesty form the Association of Free Trade Unions of Workers in the Soviet Union, already more than 200 strong, to forward their application to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Geneva to be given ILO recognition".

("USSR Jails Trade Unionists", in: "British Amnesty", No. 25; April 1978; p. 1).

This represents a political development of great significance. In the years following the Breznhev "economic reform" the majority of "dissidents" -- at least of those who have managed to communicate to the world outside the Soviet Union - have been intellectuals who have, in most cases, criticised the contemporary Soviet regime from the right. Now, as Amnesty International points out:

"The addition on the Soviet human rights map of a substantial area of protest from... workers, then, is one of signal importance".

(ibid.; p. 1).

On the workers' struggle for freedom of trade unionism, official Soviet publications are -- at least as yet -- silent. But a fair idea of the difficulties and struggles which face Soviet workers may be gained from those which face French workers employed by a Soviet "subsidiary" in Besancon:

"Employees of Slava -- one of the many faces of the multi-tentacled Russian Mashpriboringtorg conglomerate -- are forcing he company to accept... a 40-hour week, a £250 a month minimum wage, five weeks' holiday and an extra month bonus pay...

A strike last year reduced the working hours. And for the past week workers have been picketing the factory to force the ten Soviet bosses to come to the negotiating table. True to board room form the bosses are refusing to comment, but the strikers sense victory because the managing director has just made a secret trip to Moscow, presumably to discuss the effects of the dispute on the dividend".

("Striking Out", in: "The Guardian", April 27th., 1978; p. 15).

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