people like to whip this one out at Sankara fans as well. In a command economy (or economies with a lot of planning eg china) you need to integrate the actual workers into the plan through the state trade unions. Having uniform workplace rules and regulations is important in preventing disputes and abuse. Europe basically does this with sectoral bargaining and bribing all the union officials. The only reason to make a independent trade union in that case is to cause trouble, which I mean you can if you want but the state is going to try to stop you. Our glorious American union system only exists because America got away with just shooting the trade unionists. Some of Boris Yeltsin's core supporters were coal miners in an independent trade union.
Ideally yes, that would be their function. However, imperialism has made this incredibly hard to carry out in practice since any time an independent trade union has popped up in a socialist country, the CIA has swooped in pretty quickly to try and use said trade union as a weapon to cripple or destroy the socialist system. Others have already brought this up, but Poland and Chile are the two biggest examples of places where this has happened.
If we get to a point where socialism in the dominant world system and there's no longer the threat of capitalist imperialism being able to destroy it, then I don't see a reason why independent trade unions couldn't be allowed to exist. But until we get to that point, independent trade unions are going to be used as a weapon by capitalists against socialism, just as socialists use them as a weapon against capitalism. So for now, any competent socialist government is going to suppress them, while hopefully also addressing the grievances that would cause workers to try and form independent trade unions in the first place.
people like to whip this one out at Sankara fans as well. In a command economy (or economies with a lot of planning eg china) you need to integrate the actual workers into the plan through the state trade unions. Having uniform workplace rules and regulations is important in preventing disputes and abuse. Europe basically does this with sectoral bargaining and bribing all the union officials. The only reason to make a independent trade union in that case is to cause trouble, which I mean you can if you want but the state is going to try to stop you. Our glorious American union system only exists because America got away with just shooting the trade unionists. Some of Boris Yeltsin's core supporters were coal miners in an independent trade union.
Another example: truckers (backed by the CIA) striking against Allende
Uhhh... what about to bargain for a better deal? You can't pretend that having a command economy simply addresses all legitimate worker grievances.
Ideally yes, that would be their function. However, imperialism has made this incredibly hard to carry out in practice since any time an independent trade union has popped up in a socialist country, the CIA has swooped in pretty quickly to try and use said trade union as a weapon to cripple or destroy the socialist system. Others have already brought this up, but Poland and Chile are the two biggest examples of places where this has happened.
If we get to a point where socialism in the dominant world system and there's no longer the threat of capitalist imperialism being able to destroy it, then I don't see a reason why independent trade unions couldn't be allowed to exist. But until we get to that point, independent trade unions are going to be used as a weapon by capitalists against socialism, just as socialists use them as a weapon against capitalism. So for now, any competent socialist government is going to suppress them, while hopefully also addressing the grievances that would cause workers to try and form independent trade unions in the first place.