The Marxist understanding of the role and nature of Trade Unionism proceeds from the analysis of the laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production itself. Capitalism creates the proletariat by freeing the serf both from feudal rights and duties and from the ownership of any means of production. The proletariat, as a result can only acquire the necessities of life by selling its ability to work, its labour power.
The value of labour power, like that of any commodity, is determined by the amount of labour necessary to create it. In effect this means that the price of labour power (wages) tends always to equal the cost of sustaining the labourer, i.e. the cost of the means of subsistence. Marx's concept of 'subsistence', it must be stressed, was not one of a bare physical minimum. Marx noted of the proletarian, the number and extent of his so called necessary requirements, as also the manner in which they are satisfied, are themselves products of history and depend, therefore, to a great extent on the level of civilization attained by a country, in particular they depend on the conditions in which, and consequently on the habits and expectations with which, the class of free workers has been formed."1
Thus, unlike other commodities, the value of labour power contains a, "historical and moral element" in its determination. In addition, 'subsistence' must be taken to include the means necessary for the recreation of the labourer, the raising and training of children.
The capitalist is driven, by competition from other capitalists, to minimise the price he pays for labour power to its minimum or even below it. To reduce it below its minimum means to physically 'wear out' the working class more quickly than it can reproduce itself. Such a process occurred, as far as the majority of the working class was concerned, in the early period of capitalist production, and has recurred since, under Hitler or Pinochet, for example.
Capitalism, as a crisis ridden system, is incapable of involving the whole of the potential workforce in production on a continuous basis. As a result it creates, what Engels called in 1843; 'a reserve army of labour' the unemployed. This reserve army shrinks and swells with capitalism's booms and slumps, providing a source of blacklegs, and thus a further pressure on the wages of the employed proletariat. Marx further observed that the formal equality that existed between capitalist and individual worker was entirely bogus, concealing as it did capital's monopoly of the means of production and, therefore, of subsistence. Capital is a compact social force against which the individual labourer is powerless...............
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