What was Trotsky’s advice for revolutionaries on unions?

The trade unions are the basic organisations of the working class. Trotsky, like all who follow the ideas of genuine Marxism, believed the working class was the only social force which can lead socialist revolution.

But the union leaders can be timid, or even hold back struggle by their members. And anyway, the working class today looks very different to working class in 1917.

So how did Trotsky see the unions in relation to the struggle for socialism? And are those ideas - and the unions themselves - still relevant to that struggle today?

This episode of Socialism looks at the organised working class: Trotsky on the trade unions.

Further reading

• Should Revolutionaries Work in Reactionary Trade Unions? (Lenin): https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch06.htm
• The Nature of the Trade Unions (Peter Taaffe): http://marxist.net/2019/12/11/the-nature-of-the-trade-unions/
• Trade Unions and Bolshevism (Trotsky): https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/britain/ch07.htm
• The Trade Unions in Britain (Trotsky): https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1933/09/unions-britain.htm
• Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay (Trotsky): https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/tu.htm