Oh God, oh shit, I said I wasn't going to do it. I said I wasn't going to start a China struggle session. Already getting flashbacks to the Discord.

But something just doesn't sit right with me and wanted to get some clarification here...

My question is this: why does China ban labor organizing/unions?

Is this yikes/intentional/actually a good thing?

(Yeah, I do know that labor unions are not always unequivocally good and sometimes they act more like middle management than as representatives of the workers... but democratizing the workplace seems like a no-brainer for any socialist project.)

Thoughts?

  • KiaKaha [he/him]
    3·
    4 years ago

    China has the largest trade union in the world, the ACFTU.

    Now, there are some tensions, given it’s a tool of the party. It’s part of the Party’s control over industry, and has a stabilising role for labour disputes. It means it isn’t as strong of an advocate for individual workers as it could be, but it also serves other functions.

    This paper seems to have some fair analysis.

    Now, if we’re doing comparisons we need to consider what the role of unions in the west has been: to keep wage growth in line with productivity growth. That’s the big victory the militant unions had in the Keynesian era.

    I’ve only been able to find this graph going to 2012, but we can see the two have stayed relatively close, albeit with some divergence recently. That suggests that the combo of the CPC and ACFTU is achieving similar to what the unions of the 20th century did, at least on a macro level.