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Unions have forever been a socialists friend, often at the centre of exciting periods of revolutionary activity such as Red Clydeside or the Spanish revolution.  However today’s unions seem a far cry from the revolutionary militancy of yesteryear and so it is worth asking the question, why should socialists and radicals today care about unions?

As part of getting volume 2 of An Anarchist FAQ, sections I and J have been revised. This invoked fixing typos, although quotes by Proudhon are now sourced (when possible) to the new anthology of his writtings Property is Theft! (AK Press, 2011). The revised sections are:

In order to create a better world we, the working class, need power.  Such power can only come through collective organisation around the one thing that unites all members of our class – work.  But trade unions, the bodies with which we socialists attempt to create such collective organisation, are in decline.  If we are serious about building trade unions and winning them to socialist ideas then we need to come to the table with ideas of how to reverse this downward trend.

The traditional left wing approach has often been to argue for greater militancy, an approach which has been discussed elsewhere on this blog.  However there are other less obvious but perhaps even more important possibilities for trade union renewal.

A report released this week by the Associated Press detailed extensive Tritium leaks at Nuclear Power facilities across the U.S., bolstering some critic’s arguments that Nuclear power is not a viable means of providing safe, sustainable energy.