International Centre for Trade Union Rights

More documents

Recommendations

Info

PHILOSOPHY OF TRADE UNION RIGHTS ❐ KANT Kant and Trade Unions Kant’s ideas help us to understand what it means to think unselfishly about the ways people are used as employees rather than treated as autonomous agents in their own right NINA POWER, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Roehampton (with thanks to Tom O’Shea) What relation do or should trade unions have to morality? How can we theorise the duties that unions have to their members (and vice versa)? The philosophical ideas of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) may seem at first glance rather distant from the day-to-day practical concerns that unions and their members have, but Kant’s moral theory can help us to think well not only about the obligations that come from a shared set of principles but also, via his political writings, what it might mean to defend the idea that the freedom to think is dependent on the freedom to communicate publicly. This short essay will examine Kant’s “duty ethics” before examining what Kant had to say about participation in public and political life. While Kant operates with somewhat strict ideas about reason, universalism and moral will, there is much that is important here in trying to think about how unions can practically extend rights to their members and beyond, and what it means to think unselfishly about the ways in which people are often used and abused as employees rather than treated as autonomous agents in their own right. Kant’s rather austere approach to morality is based around the idea of the “categorical imperative”: here his idea of duty emerges. As implied in the wording, a categorical imperative is one that has an unshakeable quality about it, and is not simply something we might hypothetically choose to do (or not do). Although there are different ways of phrasing this imperative, there is ultimately only one imperative in Kant’s moral thought: ‘Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law’. What does this mean? If I promise you something I know I cannot deliver upon, for example, I cannot logically extrapolate from this false promise to argue that everybody should make false promises, not least because then I wouldn’t be able to make false promises in the safety that this would be a rare occurrence and therefore disguisable. Kant argues that for our morality to be rational and vice versa, and that if we cannot universalise our behaviour (i.e. want anyone else in our position to do the same thing), then we are probably doing something immoral. Kant’s universalism is based on a shared notion of human reason that has perhaps become unfashionable, but nevertheless we can understand the point that if you do something moral, there follows a kind of expectation that others would have done, or will do, the same thing: we are capable of putting ourselves and acting in such a way as to understand things from the point of view of another in an unselfish way. Kant doesn’t deny that, as individuals, we have particular interests, but that sometimes these interests come second to our desire to do the right thing, to act universally: when, in a split-second, someone decides to jump into a pond to rescue a stranger, he or she is not thinking about personal interests (safety) or about reward (acknowledgement for performing a heroic act). Rather, the potential rescuer is acting because he or she can and feels they should act, because it is the right thing to do. This is what moral freedom means for Kant, and what means for him that we are not simply puppets blindly operating in a determinist universe. When questioned, people who have acted to save others in dangerous situations will often say ‘anyone would have done the same,’ echoing Kant’s unselfish vision of universal morality. Kant is not particularly concerned with consequences, but only with intention: if the rescuer had drowned in the attempt to save someone, we would hardly regard their action as less heroic, as less moral, and on that point Kant seems correct. Trade union membership How does this discussion of moral life relate to the duties and rights bound up with union membership? While Kant would not have encountered trade unions as we understand them today, and was highly sceptical of organised political activity and suspicious of secret societies, there is something rather Kantian about the famous trade union slogan: ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’. Similarly, Kant’s idea, related to the categorical imperative, that we should treat people not as means to an end but as ends in themselves (‘Always treat humanity, whether in your own person or that of another, never simply as a means but always at the same time as an end’) is highly compatible with the 1944 Aims and Purpose of the International Labour Organisation which include the claim that ‘Labour is not a commodity’. Capitalist labour relations of course entail the exact opposite, which is to say that one has to make one’s labour precisely a means to an end (the ‘end’ here being the wage), and there is an argument we could take from Kant regarding the unmoral or immoral nature of the current system. Unions attempt to protect workers from their increasing instrumentalisation in the name of profit, by fighting for better working conditions, shorter hours, better pay, to protect pension rights and so on, and as such uphold the dignity and moral character of the worker as an autonomous being, insofar as this is possible in a system predicated on the necessity for the majority to have to treat themselves as means rather than ends. The feeling of having to do something we don’t want to do (work ever harder, or get up early, for example) is a negative realisation of our freedom, but an inkling nonetheless. INTERNATIONAL union rights Page 8 Volume 18 Issue 4 2012
PHILOSOPHY OF TRADE UNION RIGHTS ❐ KANT Unions have sometimes been criticised for their exclusivity and the ways in which they might fracture or divide the shared interests of all workers (not to mention those without work). Certainly, any union that treated its members’ interests in isolation from broader working class struggles and the situation of those without work would be doing a disservice to those not belonging to any particular union, and it is encouraging in this regard to see recent initiatives to extend union membership to include students and the unemployed (I’m thinking here of Unite’s recent ‘community membership’ scheme, which allows these members access to financial and legal services for 50p a week). Len McCluskey’s statement at the time of the announcement is important for thinking about how unions can become more universal, particularly at a time when the attacks on so many are so organised at the top: It is time now for those on the margins to organise, to come together to challenge the decisions made by the elite in the interests of the few. This is the real Big Society - ordinary people organising for themselves - in action. But what about forms of collective political action? Kant’s vision of morality seems to be predicated on individual behaviour, rather than mass movements or uprisings. Although sceptical about forms of political organisation, fearing that the differences between wills would divide people more than it would unite them, Kant was nevertheless supportive of the French Revolution (albeit as an enthusiastic bystander, rather than a bloodthirsty class warrior), and, above all, committed to the importance of freedom of thought and expression against repressive governments. Again, looking at the aims and purposes of the 1944 International Labour Organisation declaration, we see the clear, Enlightenment-tinged statement: ‘Freedom of expression and association are essential to sustained progress’. For Kant the freedom to think is entirely dependent on the freedom to communicate publically: in that sense, although public freedoms can be removed by tyrannical governments, leaving only the freedom to think one’s own thoughts, Kant argues that without a community in which to freely express these thoughts, we would be bereft. In an essay entitled ‘What Does it Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?’ (1786), Kant argues the following: The freedom to think is opposed first of all to civil compulsion. Of course it is said that the freedom to speak or to write could be taken from us by a superior power, but the freedom to think cannot be. Yet how much and how correctly would we think if we did not think as it were in community with others to whom we communicate our thoughts, and who communicate theirs with us! Thus one can very well say that this external power which wrenches away people’s freedom publicly to communicate their thoughts also takes from them the freedom to think—that single gem remaining to us in the midst of all the burdens of civil life, through which alone we can devise means of overcoming the evils of our condition. While Kant doesn’t talk here specifically of freedom of association or collective bargaining, it is not difficult to extend Kant’s defence of public organisations into a more practical demand that would address the ways in which workers could devise ‘means of overcoming the evils of our condition’. Reason for Kant is nothing without its continued public examination and exercise. Combining Kant’s respect for individuals as ends in themselves, rather than means, and reflecting on his defence of moral freedom, we can see several ways in which Kant’s ideas have implications for any thinking about the form and content of trade union organisation and rights: while his argument does not engage with the reality of labour as later writers such as Marx will do, Kant clears the ground for trying to imagine what equality and universality would look like in practice, and not just in theory. Education International Promoting quality education for all and defending human and trade union rights in our unions, in our schools and in our societies EI is the global union federation representing 30 million teachers and education workers in 171 countries and territories around the world. To learn more, please visit: www.ei-ie.org While Kant was sceptical of organised political activity his idea that we should treat people as ends in themselves is highly compatible with the claim that labour is not a commodity Page 9 Volume 18 Issue 4 2012 INTERNATIONAL union rights
Page 1: INTERNATIONAL union rights Volume 1
Page 4 and 5: IUR ❐ EDITORIAL Editorial: the ph
Page 6 and 7: PHILOSOPHY OF TRADE UNION RIGHTS
Page 14 and 15: ICTUR IN ACTION ❐ New website ICT
Page 16 and 17: REPORT ❐ ICTUR TRIAL OBSERVATION
Page 28 and 29: worldwide Business and human rights
Page 30 and 31: BOOK PROMOTION ❐ PROTEST STRIKES
Page 32: Plus: ■ The legality of protest s

International Centre for Trade Union Rights

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?