The Labor Movement in Postsocialist Russia

Abstract

In the countries of the classical development of capitalism the labor movement's essence is the struggle for better conditions for the sale of labor power. Hence in the West the labor movement and workers' social consciousness were formed mainly under the influence of the ideology of trade unionism. Of course, under certain conditions wage workers in these countries manifested an interest in solving sociopolitical problems; then labor parties became an element of the labor movement, and a specifically proletarian consciousness was formed. However, trade unions were always the foundation of the labor movement. They came into being earlier than parties and acted together with the latter in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century; they continue to function even now when the majority of former labor parties have dwindled to nothing or have become organizations reflecting the interests of the most diverse social categories. In some industrially developed countries,...