What should be the relationship between the trade unions and the State Power of the proletariat?
Let us recall what the bourgeoisie did in order to secure its greatest successes. It built up the system of State capitalism, associating all its other organisations more closely with the State Power, this applying in especial to its economic organisations (syndicates, trusts, and employers’ associations). The proletariat, which has to carry to a successful issue its struggle against capital, must in like manner centralise its organisations. It has its soviets of workers’ delegates, which constitute the instruments of State authority; it has trade unions; it has cooperatives. Manifestly, if their work is to be effective they must be mutually interconnected. The question now arises, with which organisation must the others be linked up. The answer is simple. We must select the greatest and most powerful of all. Such an organism is constituted by the State organisation of the working class, by the Soviet Power. It follows, therefore, that THE TRADE UNIONS AND THE COOPERATIVES MUST DEVELOP IN SUCH A WAY THAT THEY WILL BE TRANSFORMED INTO ECONOMIC DEPARTMENTS AND INSTRUMENTS OF THE STATE AUTHORITY; THEY MUST BE “STATIFIED.”
The social solidarians (those who continually overlook the significance of the class struggle), when considering the part that must be played by the trade unions in the epoch of the proletarian dictatorship, usually adopt the point of view of those who demand “independence” for the trade-union movement. The unions, these gentry assure us, are class organisations, and for this reason they must remain entirely independent of the State authority.