In the long run even the most
honest trade union leader is only
able to resist the corruption of the
labour aristocracy by the support
of the communist party and the
consistent line of class struggle. In
the
original
revolutionary
communist party in Denmark – DKP
(1917-56) and its Marxist-Leninist
successor DKP/ML (1978-97) – it
was the rule that trade union and
parliamentary leaders should be
considered as party functionaries,
paid by the party. They would
deliver their bribe salary to the
party and keep a sum equalling an
ordinary worker’s pay.
Back in 1892 Friedrich Engels
spoke about an ‘aristocracy inside
the working class’ in England,
signifying a privileged minority of
the workers, as contrasted to the
great majority. This privileged
minority originated as a result of the
profits of Britain’s colonial
monopoly. Lenin broadened and
clarified this analysis in the light of
the emergence of imperialism,
stressing that the imperialist
bourgeoisie in a number of
countries is able to bribe a part of
the best-off workers on the basis
of imperialist super-profits.
Due to the special economic
position of the labour aristocracy
and its social position and
influence, it emerges that the class
interests of this social strata is
connected to the preservation and
survival of capitalist society.
The labour aristocracy is
better able to defend the politics
of class collaboration and thereby
the interests of the bourgeoisie
than the bourgeoisie itself. This
makes this social stratum the most
important class basis of the
reformist and revisionist parties, the
actual material and social basis of
their ideology, theory and politics,
along with petty bourgeois
intellectuals.
It has always been an
important principle for the Marxist-
Leninists not to make appeals to
8
this special stratum to uphold the
demands of the working class or
to nurture any illusions that they will
fight for them to the end. Every
struggle must be fought in spite of
them – at times in direct
confrontation, as many strikes and
labour struggles and protest
movements have experienced over
and over again.
The labour aristocracy does
not constitute a separate class,
also not in imperialist countries like
Denmark, where it is somewhat
larger than in the countries
exploited by imperialism. As a social
stratum it relates to different social
classes.
The strata of the labour
aristocrats in Denmark them-
selves may also be subdivided
The main figures are the
bourgeois politicians of the so-
called workers’ parties, the
parliamentary reformist and
revisionist organisations and the
heads of the trade union
leaderships and their consorts.
This upper segment belongs to the
monopoly bourgeoisie and includes
the managers of the big pension
and investment funds of the labour
unions. The Danish ATP (workers’
special pension) is the biggest
pension fund in Europe with a
value of one billion dollars, and is
an important economic force in
Danish society.
What once was created to
protect the workers from social
misery is now a business on purely
capitalist terms. Recently the LO
trade union leadership sold the
insurance company of the trade
unions, Alka, dating back to 1903,
to corporate vultures for more than
1.35 billion dollars.
The top leadership of the two
largest trade union federations
(one for workers in private
companies and one for public
employees) have for a long time
prepared to amalgamate into one
huge enterprise, expected to take
place by 2019.
The top layer of the trade
union leadership and labour
aristocracy is a part of both the
economic and political elite of
today. Together with various
bourgeois and social-democratic
governments and employers’
organisations, they are responsible
for the implementation of the
greater part of the neoliberal
labour policy and social policy of
the European Union and the
subsequent reforms, which are
endorsed in the main labour
contracts by negotiations among
the three parties – the state, the
employers’ organisations and the
trade union federations.
The middle layer of labour
aristocrats consist of the paid trade
union leaders and functionaries at
lower levels, the employees and
functionaries of the administration
of the unemployment funds,
consultants and paid staffs of the
so-called workers’ parties. Their
salaries and working conditions are
also much better than those of the
people they are supposed to
represent.
The lowest but still privileged
layer of labour aristocrats are paid
shop stewards, groups of highly
paid workers in certain key
functions and workers who have
been accorded leading functions in
the implementation of the concrete
work projects.
The characterisation of the
labour aristocracy by Lenin in
Imperialism
as
the
‘fire
extinguishers of the struggle of the
working class’ has been distorted
by certain elements into a claim
that the entire working class in the
imperialist countries is bribed and
bourgeoisified. Such radical
sounding ‘theories’ are sheer left
opportunist nonsense. Their
purpose is to pull the teeth out of
the working class struggle and
leave the workers by themselves
to the reformists and revisionists.
The other main social basis of
opportunism is the intellectuals, the
Class Struggle