Editorial Note
For more than four decades, the Internationalist Workers Organization has consistently defended its class positions while critically confronting the political perspectives and practices of Stalinist, Maoist and Trotskyist currents.
The document presented here was originally published approximately twenty-five years ago in the context of a debate within the Iranian left concerning the International Labour Organization (ILO).
Since Issue No. 8 of the Political Courier of the Internationalist Workers Organization contains a critique of a joint initiative by sections of the Iranian left in protest against the congress of the International Labour Organization, we considered it important to republish this historical document. Its republication allows readers to examine a similar debate from a quarter of a century ago and to become acquainted with the critique that our organization advanced at that time.
The text below is reproduced as a historical document.
INTRODUCTION
Once again, on the eve of this congress, a flood of petitions and appeals seeking redress for the injustices and anti-working-class measures of the Islamic Republic has been directed toward the politicians and administrators presiding over this gathering.
Once again, social democrats, reformists, Stalinists and all the parties of the left wing of the existing order have transformed the International Labour Organization into a court of appeal against the injustices of capital.
A number of these left-wing groups and organizations, it is true, harbour no real illusions regarding the function of the International Labour Organization. Yet they regard the congress as an appropriate occasion and venue for political self-promotion.
In other words, their agitation around the demand for the expulsion of the Islamic Republic from the International Labour Organization is motivated not by any concern for the supposedly working-class character of this institution or by anxiety over the presence of “non-worker representatives” within it, but rather by political self-advertisement and the exploitation of a favourable publicity platform.
Internationalist Workers regard the congress of the International Labour Organization as an international action of capital aimed at consolidating the present miserable order. We condemn this congress and the entire carnival surrounding it.
Neither the delegates attending this congress are representatives of the working class, nor is the objective of its organizers the improvement of workers’ conditions. This congress and every one of its participants are sworn enemies of the working class and organizers of this infernal order.
All delegates who carry the title of “workers’ representative,” even those coming from the most “democratic” countries, are not genuine representatives of workers. On the contrary, they have actively and systematically collaborated with employers and their respective states in suppressing workers’ daily struggles. It is precisely because of these services rendered to capital that they have gathered there.
For the same reason, we strongly condemn the activities of trade unions and of those groups and parties which, in the name of communism, contribute to the whitewashing of this den of thieves.
The working class has no path other than reliance upon its own independent strength in its daily struggles. Recent events throughout the world have demonstrated how everyday struggles at the workplace can ignite immense social movements, as occurred in Tunisia and Egypt.
These events have likewise shown with complete clarity how states and their international institutions resort to every intrigue and deception in order to extinguish the flames of protest and revolution. Yet the most effective instruments at their disposal are the political and military organizations which intervene at the decisive moment in order to disperse and suppress the movement.
For this reason, workers have no alternative but to create their own independent organs in order to advance their struggles. In everyday struggles these organs are elected bodies enjoying the confidence of workers. In revolutionary situations and periods of general social upheaval they become organs capable of standing as an organized and independent force against the attacks of the forces of repression.
These are the organs that undertake the defence of the revolution and its institutions, opening the road towards the immediate abolition of the system of wage slavery and the exercise of workers’ own will over their destiny.
To embark upon this path, the working class requires its own international organization: the Internationalist Party. Either socialism or capitalism. There is no third road.
THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS
The One Hundredth Congress of the International Labour Organization opened in Geneva with delegates from more than 180 countries.
The Islamic Republic, like every other capitalist state, has dispatched a delegation composed of anti-working-class functionaries. The convening of this congress under present conditions is of particular significance.
Trade-union organizations in the peripheral countries have increasingly failed to play their role as safety valves capable of preventing independent workers’ uprisings and social explosions. Or, in the language of the experts of the International Labour Organization, the principle of tripartism — the continuous negotiation between the state, employers and officially recognized union bodies — has lost much of its social and political effectiveness.
Despite the efforts of the International Labour Organization to grant legitimacy to trade-union structures, workers’ movements in Egypt and Tunisia, and to a certain extent in Greece and Spain, increasingly tended toward independent street mobilizations and direct confrontation with official organizations.
For this reason, it is expected that the International Labour Organization will once again stress the importance of opening the way for legal trade-union activity and official recognition of union organizations.
Another important aspect of this congress concerns the role of the left wing of the opposition. Once again social democrats, reformists, Stalinists, Maoists and Trotskyists have flooded the organizers of this congress with petitions, complaints and appeals.
Some of these groups have even called for demonstrations outside the congress venue in Geneva.
A closer examination of the role of the International Labour Organization reveals the real nature of this bourgeois-left carnival surrounding the congress.
The delegations sent by the Islamic Republic to the International Labour Organization have traditionally included individuals drawn from the labour branch of its security apparatus. Since this has repeatedly drawn criticism from officials of the International Labour Organization, the Islamic Republic has this year attempted, in its own words, to select workers’ delegates in accordance with the “guidelines” of the ILO.
The High Centre of Islamic Labour Councils, the High Assembly of Workers’ Representatives, and the Centre of Labour Guild Associations have each dispatched two representatives to the congress.
The High Centre of Islamic Labour Councils and the Labour Guild Associations are well-known creations of the Islamic Republic. The so-called High Assembly of Workers’ Representatives, however, whose presence is intended to give the appearance of an independent workers’ body, possesses an obscure and uncertain origin.
It appears that the adoption of this grandiose title for two members of the delegation is merely the product of a political arrangement and compromise between the authorities of the Islamic Republic and the International Labour Organization.
THE INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANIZATION
The very rationale behind the existence of the International Labour Organization lies in the fact that police forces and mechanisms of repression, whether at the national or international level, have never been sufficient to control workers’ unrest or prevent the eruption of revolts by the exploited.
Following the experience of the Paris Commune, the general tendency of capitalist states was to create conditions for regulating labour relations, administering labour power, and guaranteeing a minimum standard of subsistence and social protection sufficient to ensure the reproduction of labour power.
As the global domination of capital became consolidated, international institutions responsible for regulating and administering the fundamental affairs of economy, politics and market relations became increasingly necessary.
Institutions such as the United Nations and its subordinate bodies, including the International Labour Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, all perform a definite function in maintaining the existing order as a global order.
The International Labour Organization, however, differs from other international institutions of capital in one fundamental respect.
Unlike those international bodies which are formally composed of representatives of states and international agencies alone, the International Labour Organization grants a place at the negotiating table to non-state actors as a third party alongside governments and employers.
This reflects a historical reality. With the October Revolution and the rise of mass workers’ parties, the daily demands for improved living conditions, resistance to capitalist barbarism, and the routine struggles of the workers’ movement became increasingly linked to broader social movements and ultimately to anti-capitalist revolution.
The reality was that workers’ elementary demands — higher wages, improved living conditions, freedom of workers’ organization, the right to collective agreements, unemployment insurance and social protection — became intertwined with anti-capitalist demands such as the abolition of the wage-slavery system, the transfer of power to workers’ councils, and the right of producers themselves to control production and the workplaces.
World capitalism was unable simply to withstand this immense wave of anti-capitalist movements and proletarian revolutions.
For the preservation of the existing order, every educational, cultural and political apparatus was mobilized. The formation of the International Labour Organization must be understood within this framework.
The formal recognition of a third negotiating party alongside governments and employers must be understood in this context. Capitalist states sought to incorporate demands such as freedom of workers’ organization, recognition of collective bargaining rights, the abolition of forced labour, the elimination of workplace discrimination, and equal pay for equal work into the framework of international labour conventions.
The principal objective of this process was the management of labour and the regulation of relations between workers and employers in order to guarantee the production and reproduction of labour power and commodities.
This is one of the fundamental conditions for the continued existence of the capitalist system.
THE PRINCIPLE OF TRIPARTISM IN THE INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANIZATION
One of the principal foundations of the International Labour Organization, codified as a constitutional principle of the institution itself, is the defence and promotion of what is known as the principle of tripartism.
For workers throughout the world, particularly in countries governed by some form of labour legislation, this principle is a familiar one.
In its simplest form, tripartism means that the organization and regulation of exploitative labour relations within each country must take place through the “participation” of representatives of the state, employers and officially recognized representatives of labour.
THE PRINCIPLE OF TRIPARTISM IN THE INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANIZATION
Tripartism constitutes one of the fundamental mechanisms through which capitalist states and employers seek to prevent the emergence of independent workers’ organizations and struggles beyond their control.
Whether in Sweden, Turkey or Iran, governments and employers invoke this principle in order to exclude from the arena of social activity those organizations or representatives who, in their view, are either incapable of participating in the management of labour relations or who create “disruption” instead of cooperating within the existing framework.
The principle of tripartism is implemented through national legislation, local agreements and sectoral contracts throughout industry, production and the service sector.
In Sweden, for example, it is widely known through the system of collective cooperation agreements between trade unions and employers. Whenever such agreements are violated by one of the parties, labour legislation and various state institutions intervene in order to impose sanctions and enforce compliance.
Among many workers, the language of tripartism has become synonymous with the suppression of independent action. It is one of the most hated expressions repeatedly invoked by trade-union officials whenever they seek to resolve disputes by bringing unofficial workers’ actions to an end.
The concept of tripartism presupposes the existence of three organized poles operating within the framework of the existing legal order and engaging in negotiation and compromise.
Yet two of these poles — the state and the employers — are the actual possessors of power and capital.
Employers own the means of production, factories and enterprises and exercise managerial authority over the labour process. The state functions as their political organization.
Legislative institutions and parliaments formulate and amend the laws governing society. Security forces maintain “order,” while the judicial apparatus deals with violations and disputes.
It is within this social order that governments and employers encourage the formation of officially recognized workers’ organizations whose role is to negotiate over labour relations within the framework of existing laws and to ensure the implementation of the resulting agreements.
TRADE UNIONS
Trade unions and similar occupational organizations constitute the clearest example of such institutions.
By granting privileges to a particular stratum of workers, the state and employers elevate them into officially recognized “representatives of labour” and transform them into instruments serving the existing order.
These representative bodies are expected to sit across the negotiating table from governments and employers, reach agreements within the legal framework of capitalist society, and subsequently function as the mechanism responsible for implementing and enforcing those agreements among workers.
The role of the International Labour Organization is to supervise precisely this process.
Tripartism represents one of the most important pillars of this arrangement, both internationally and nationally.
Everywhere in the world the practical consequences are essentially the same. The outcome is the stabilization of existing social relations and the institutionalization of agreements which are, in reality, the product not of tripartite negotiations but of workers’ struggles and direct confrontations.
Meanwhile, the principal function of these official organizations is the containment and control of workers’ independent activity.
It is on this basis that the International Labour Organization and capitalist governments advocate the formation of labour organizations capable of guaranteeing the operation of tripartism.
ILO Conventions 87 and 98 concerning freedom of association and collective bargaining must be understood from this standpoint.
These conventions oblige member states to remove obstacles to the establishment of trade unions and to provide legal recognition for their activities.
The essential point, however, is that the workers’ organizations envisaged by tripartism are organizations which, like the state and the employers themselves, possess substantial financial resources and enjoy extensive legal and institutional support.
Regardless of the name they bear, such organizations frequently constitute the labour branch of a much larger state apparatus.
In Iran, the House of Labour, the Islamic Labour Councils, the guild associations, the Ministry of Labour, the official labour parties and the informal security structures operating behind them all form parts of a broad political apparatus directed against the workers’ movement.
The major trade unions of Europe, with their vast financial resources and extensive bureaucratic structures, perform a similar role.
What unites them all is their loyalty to the principle of tripartism and their commitment to the existing legal order.
For this reason, no organization operating within the framework of tripartism can function as an independent workers’ organization in any genuine sense.
By accepting this principle, such organizations surrender the possibility of acting independently of the state and the employers.
Numerous parties and media outlets continuously promote the trade unions of Europe as organizations that defend workers’ interests and protect their rights.
This, however, is nothing more than a myth.
Like the House of Labour of the Islamic Republic and the Islamic Labour Councils, these organizations are engaged in controlling and suppressing workers’ struggles through their adherence to the principle of tripartism, adapted to the specific conditions of their respective countries.
The role played by the Swedish trade unions in containing and suppressing workers’ struggles provides a clear example of the function of European trade unions as a whole.
It is precisely because of the institutionalized principle of tripartism within the Swedish labour regime that, in the everyday experience of many Swedish workers, trade-union representatives at the workplace are often perceived as agents of the employer and the state, and even as their informers. As a consequence, they frequently find themselves isolated from the workers they claim to represent.
In Iran, the principle of tripartism is among the expressions most frequently repeated in the labour press and official media of the Islamic Republic.
For example, the website of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs stated on 7 November 2010:
“During a meeting with representatives of labour and employer organizations in Kurdistan Province, the Director-General of Labour and Social Affairs emphasized the implementation of the principle of tripartism between the state, workers and employers in the settlement of labour disputes. He stressed that tripartism has become a strategic and practical principle within the labour administration of Kurdistan. Our view is that there exists no contradiction or conflict between the interests of the state, workers and employers, and that the interests of all three parties are interconnected.”
THE LEFT WING AND THE INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANIZATION
Once again, on the eve of this congress, a flood of complaints, petitions and appeals concerning the injustices and anti-working-class measures of the Islamic Republic has been directed toward the politicians and administrators of the International Labour Organization.
Once again, social democrats, reformists, Stalinists and every tendency of the bourgeois left have transformed the International Labour Organization into a court of appeal against the injustices of capital.
Some of these organizations genuinely harbour no illusions regarding the nature of the International Labour Organization.
Yet they regard its annual congress as a suitable occasion for political self-promotion and public visibility.
In other words, their agitation around the demand for the expulsion of the Islamic Republic from the International Labour Organization stems not from any concern for the supposedly working-class nature of this institution, nor from anxiety over the presence of “non-worker representatives” within it, but from political self-advertisement and the desire to exploit a favourable propaganda platform.
The publicity-seeking actions of the various factions of so-called “Worker Communism,” designed primarily to attract media attention, belong to this category.
There are also other organizations which declare that they harbour no illusions concerning the International Labour Organization as an institution of world capitalism.
Yet, because of their continued adherence to the traditional Stalinist and Trotskyist defence of trade-union activity — and therefore their indirect defence of the principle of tripartism itself — they continue to perform their service to the ruling class while spreading illusions among workers.
Put simply, while proclaiming their lack of confidence in the International Labour Organization, they simultaneously cultivate confidence in the very mechanisms upon which that institution rests.
The joint action organized by five Iranian left-wing organizations against the presence of the Islamic Republic within the International Labour Organization provides a revealing example.
These organizations declared their support for a protest organized by several French trade unions outside the headquarters of the ILO in Geneva, arguing that such actions could exert pressure upon the Islamic Republic and expose the oppression suffered by workers in Iran.
Yet one must ask: is it not remarkable that these organizations seek to expose the crimes of the Islamic Republic by appealing to the institutions of world capital themselves?
They turn to greater thieves and more powerful criminals in order to seek justice against lesser ones.
Who, in fact, still harbours illusions concerning the anti-working-class and criminal nature of the Islamic Republic that such demonstrations are required in order to reveal it?
The brutality of this regime is known not only to workers in Iran but to workers throughout the world.
The cheap spectacle of denunciation and appeals for justice conducted by the bourgeois left is no less futile than the spectacle of the International Labour Organization itself. Both serve only to spread confusion among workers
CONCLUSION
Internationalist Workers regard the congress of the International Labour Organization as an international action of capital aimed at consolidating the present miserable order.
We condemn this congress and the entire carnival surrounding it.
Neither the delegates attending this congress are representatives of the working class, nor is the objective of its organizers the improvement of workers’ conditions.
This congress and each of its participants are sworn enemies of the working class and organizers of this infernal order.
All those who appear under the title of “workers’ representatives,” including those arriving from the most “democratic” countries, are not genuine representatives of workers.
On the contrary, they have actively and systematically collaborated with employers and their respective states in suppressing the daily struggles of the working class.
It is precisely because of these services rendered to capital that they have assembled there.
For the same reason, we strongly condemn the activities of trade unions and of those groups and parties which, in the name of communism, contribute to the whitewashing of this den of thieves.
The working class has no road other than reliance upon its own independent strength in its everyday struggles.
Recent events throughout the world have demonstrated how workplace struggles and daily acts of resistance can ignite vast social movements, as occurred in Tunisia and Egypt.
These events have likewise demonstrated how states and their international institutions resort to every intrigue and deception in order to extinguish the flames of protest and revolution.
Yet the most effective instruments at their disposal are the political and military organizations which intervene at the decisive moment to disperse, divert and suppress the movement.
For this reason, workers have no alternative but to create their own independent organs in order to advance their struggles.
In the course of everyday struggles these organs take the form of elected bodies enjoying the confidence of workers.
Under revolutionary conditions and in periods of general social upheaval they become organs capable of standing as an organized and independent force against the attacks of the forces of repression.
These are the organs which assume responsibility for the defence of the revolution and its institutions.
They open the road toward the immediate abolition of the system of wage slavery and the direct exercise of workers’ power over their own destiny.
In order to embark upon this path, the working class requires its own international organization: The Internationalist Party.
Either socialism or capitalism. There is no third road.
7 7 June 2011
Internationalist Workers Organization
