Basics,
Part 7
Negotiation
We proceed from an understanding of the vanguard-to-mass relationship
between the communists and the working class, where the latter are organised in trade unions primarily for
self-defence, and not primarily for revolutionary purposes.
We included the Rules of Debate that are applied
within those and other mass organisations.
We now come to the practical means by which trade unions do
their business: Negotiation.
Negotiation is what two parties must always do in order to
arrive at an agreement to exchange one thing for another, or in other words, to
arrive at a common contract. In the
case of trade union negotiations with employers, the two sides are trying to
arrive at a bargain for the exchange of Labour-Power for money (wages).
Inflation (a rise in the money prices of all commodities)
makes it inevitable that the price of Labour-Power must also be re-negotiated
at frequent, often annual, intervals. Contrary to what is often written about
negotiations, there is no presumption of dispute about this process. On the
contrary, the invariable aim on all
sides is to arrive at a bargain.
On the way to the bargain, there may be “failure to agree”,
and sometimes there may be a “withdrawal of labour”, but there is no attempt to
upset the relationship of boss and worker. The boss/worker relationship is
confirmed, and not threatened, by the process of negotiation.
So long as there is “failure to agree”, people will talk of
a “wage dispute” and sometimes they will use military language to describe what
happens. Yet even in military terms, as Clausewitz wrote in his book “On War”: “The Result in War is Never
Absolute”. In other words
the combatants will inevitably have to live together in peace again, after the
war.
Negotiation is a
skill that can be learned. The attached document is a very good short
introduction to wage negotiation. It comes from the MIA Encyclopedia of Marxism.
- The above is to introduce the original reading-text: Negotiations, MIA.
