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How can workers struggle in the period of capitalism’s decline?Part I Discussion paper for meeting 11 September 2008
At the conclusion of the previous meeting, there was a tentative agreement that capitalism was in the throes of some form of historic decline. The precise nature of this decline was not too deeply examined and there are probably wide divergences in the participants concerning this.
The communist left defends an explicit concept of decadence. Capitalism has entered into an irreversible historic decline which poses both the possibility and the necessity for getting rid of it. Capitalism can no longer offer the relatively progressive development of its youth, when it threw off the shackles of feudalism, and revolutionised production to the point that it’s now possible to free humanity from the back-breaking labour of subsistence living.
Today capitalism is, instead, undermining the very positives that it has brought to humanity. Everywhere, the living standards of the working class are under permanent attack. War and economic crises wrack the globe, while every advancement seems to hasten society’s disintegration rather than arresting it. In such a society, the working class is no faced with the question of carving out a place in society or fighting for reforms that can improve its situation. The only thing a reformist struggle can wrest from capital’s corpse-like grip is a greater share of misery. The priority for the working class – and, indeed, all of humanity – is to destroy this putrescent social formation before it destroys humanity.
These conditions call into fundamental question previous forms of struggle from the past of working class and pose the necessity for new, wider forms of struggle.
Struggling effectively in decaying capitalism
In 1881 Friedrich Engels recognised the necessity for a new level of organisation to the class above and beyond simple trade unions, when he wrote: “More than this, there are plenty of symptoms that the working class of this country is awakening to the consciousness that it has for some time been moving in the wrong groove; that the present movements for higher wages and shorter hours exclusively, keep it in a vicious circle out of which there is no issue; that it is not the lowness of wages which forms the fundamental evil, but the wages system itself. This knowledge once generally spread amongst the working class, the position of Trades Unions must change considerably. They will no longer enjoy the privilege of being the only organisations of the working class. At the side of, or above, the Unions of special trades there must spring up a general Union, a political organisation of the working class as a whole.”1
Engels, at that point in history, could not predict the precise form this step-change in the class struggle could take. It wasn’t until 1905 in Russia that this historical question was answered by the struggle of the working class itself – the formation of the workers councils, or Soviets.
True Soviets can only exist in a revolutionary period, of course, but they reveal explicitly the tendencies of genuinely proletarian struggle in all periods of decadence. These include:
The Way Forward
In the struggles to come, we must begin to challenge the divisions imposed on us by capitalism. When the unions organise meetings to discuss or organise action, we must insist that other workers from outside the union are invited to speak and participate. We must invite them to support the strike, discuss the question of pickets and agree on the action to be taken.
We must resist the insidious pressure from both employers and unions to cross the picket lines when other workers are on strike. When asking a fellow worker to respect a picket, we must also respect the risk they take in striking outside the union – and promise our complete solidarity. In practice, this means refusing to allow our fellow workers to be sacked or disciplined because they choose to support a strike or refuse to cross a picket line. We must send a message to the bosses – any attempt to sack workers joining a strike will be met by further and intensified action. We must defend ourselves against all efforts to divide us!
We must send delegations to other work places where there are workers with similar problems and demands – instead of allowing each sector to struggle alone, we must join forces, electing committees to discuss common demands and concerns and to organise simultaneous strikes and demonstrations. As we invite workers to join our strike, we must also invite them to raise their own demands – and, more importantly, we must raise common demands that can be recognised by all workers. Instead of allowing strikes to melt away sector by sector we must show true solidarity by adopting each sector’s demand as a demand of the whole movement.
Decisions about returns to work, acceptance of offers should be discussed and debated in assemblies, and decisions made openly in those assemblies.
Taking even the simplest steps in this direction will be hard for many of us. Hard because it will mean challenging the way of thinking inculcated by every part of the political apparatus from union to employer association, from Socialist Worker Party to British National Party. Hard because it will mean resisting the constant pressure from the rest of society which wants us to turn on each other instead of uniting together.
Nonetheless, we must take these steps in order to defend our living conditions against the voracious capitalist state machine. As long as we remain corralled in the safe channels designated by the bosses, the state (which are the terrain par excellence of the unions) we are fighting like a man with both hands tied behind his back. We will be helpless and no matter how violently we thrash, defeat is inevitable.
Some Recent Examples
It is often claimed that the left-communist vision of class struggle is too abstract, too theoretical. We’re not interested in real struggles today, just what happened in 1917. But the tendencies identified above are not simply abstractions from 90 years ago. They were expressed in the great waves of struggles that began in 1968 and lasted until the mid-70s. They were expressed in the gigantic movement that shook Poland in the 1980-81 and in the other struggles that erupted throughout the 80s.
The increasing ferocity of the struggle was brought to an abrupt end in 1989 when the Eastern bloc began to implode. The intense ideological campaigns over the death of Marxism and the ultimate triumph of capitalism disorientated the working class even as it was searching for a politicisation of its struggle. “Democracy” was reinforced by the failure of totalitarian “communism” and found another whipping boy in the form of Saddam Hussein. The working class seemed unable to break free from this disorientation and such was the pressure on the class, (reinforced by a brutal recession which wiped out many of the most combative sectors), it became increasingly difficult for the proletariat to even see itself as a class.
Even in this bleak period, the struggle did not completely die. Large movements occurred in France, Denmark and Norway in the 90s but they although they confirmed the proletariat wasn’t yet dead, they did little to lift the general feeling of suffocation felt by the class.
But since around 2003, there have been signs that the working class is beginning to shake off the torpor that engulfed it at the beginning of the 90s. All around the world, struggles have begun to appear that embody some or all of the tendencies outlined above. They demonstrate what the working class can do when it manages to unify its forces.
The most important struggle in the past few years was the CPE Struggle in France2, Spring 2006. This movement began in protest over a new labour law that was intended to rob young workers of their job security – it effectively made it possible for employers to sack any worker under 26. In response, students – who realised right away that they would be the main target for this law once they graduated – began a series of demonstrations. The demonstrations quickly spread throughout the country, from campus to campus. General assemblies sprang up everywhere, pulling in thousands of students to discuss how to organise the struggle. Delegations were sent to other universities in an effort to co-ordinate protests and blockades on a national level.
As the movement began to grow, there was a clear desire on the part of the students to go to the working class. Delegations were sent to local workplaces, to try and draw them into the struggle. Eventually, after several massive marches involving over a million people, the Government was forced into a humiliating retreat and withdrew the law.
Comrades can be forgiven for not knowing too much about this struggle. It was virtually blacked out in the bourgeois media in Britain – the only coverage given was to the riots of young people from the desolate housing estates in urban France that occurred on the periphery of the movement.
A similar movement, albeit on a smaller scale occurred in the town of Vigo in Spain in 2006. Here, metal-workers initially went on strike in protest against a new law that made it cheaper to sack workers. The metal-workers held public general assemblies in the streets of the town that were attended by 10,000 people. The question was immediately posed of going to other workers. Later on, 15,000 workers surrounded a Citroen factory, calling on the workers to join the strike. The Citroen workers were initially divided – and after mass discussions they decided to go into work anyway. This hesitation didn’t last long – a few days later, strikes began to appear in the Citroen factories posing the question of linking up with the metal workers. 10,000 workers also descended on the local train station with the aim of discussing with passengers where they were brutally attacked by the police.
If the silence on the CPE in the media seems significant, the silence on Vigo is practically deafening. Even a search on Google revealed almost nothing about this strike3, how it ended or whether the workers achieved their goals.
In Germany, 2007 saw the highest number of strike days since 1993. 2008 has also seen significant struggles, one of the most important was the Berlin public transport strike in March. This struggle of 10,000 workers is one of the largest in Germany’s post-war history. The strike was triggered by an attempt by the German rail organisations to back out of previous commitments concerning wages. The fear of simultaneous struggles with train drivers on a national scale and a revolt in the public sector, forced the Government to intervene and make the rail companies back down.
Also worth mentioning is the link-up between workers in different sectors. The struggles against Nokia closures were, in part, a response to the calls from Opel car workers who had encouraged the Nokia workers to strike and to join in if they did.
There are also numerous other strikes, which haven’t reached quite the dramatic level as the struggles above but still contain one or more of the important elements of independent struggle. These include:
We can see that the tendencies identified and supported by left-communists are not simply appeals to history. They are part of the struggles of workers today and, moreover, they represent the best and most effective methods for the working class to defend itself against the incessant attacks of capital.
Part II
The Role of the Trade Unions in these Struggles
If we have identified these positive expressions of both combativity and a growing class-consciousness in all these struggles, we also have to examine the negative dynamics that accompany them, counter them and help break up struggles. All-to-often, the vector of these negative dynamics is the very organisation that is supposed to defend workers: the union.
It’s important to point out that most of those who join unions and do work in them intend to attack the working class. They usually join with the best of intentions and truly believe they are acting in the interests of the workers. (You could also say the same of those who join the police to do a service to their community). However, regardless of this or that individual’s perception of the unions or their own role within them, the union structure directly confronts all the positive dynamics we have identified so far.
In the CPE struggle, the unions were largely invisible, obscured by the mass assemblies established by the students. However, as the struggle began to spread to the working class as a whole, their constrictive role became more obvious. Initially they gave no support to the movement whatsoever – there were no union leaflets calling for support of the first demonstrations. At the later demonstrations, they called strikes at the last minute in some workplaces, in a strategy that appeared designed to maximise confusion with many workers not knowing if they were on strike or not. They certainly did not want any suggestion of workers forming their own assemblies, with the leader of the CGT saying workers didn’t struggle in the same way as students! Strangely, a great deal of effort was put in place to get transport workers out on the day of the demonstrations – a strategy that would have made it difficult for workers to get to the demos! It was only when it became clear that workers (such as those at Citroen) began organising spontaneously that the unions shook themselves out of their apparent torpor. They became involved in what became a “national co-ordination” that spent two days voting on whether they should be voting! Many workers and students bypassed the unions altogether, making their own banners and refusing to allow the unions to stand at the head of the demonstrations.
Likewise, in the German transport site, the workers were striking against a deal that had already been agreed by the union, one which it continued to defend. In desperation, Verdi – the main union in the sector – organised a day of protest. Again, workers ignored this and launched a 24 hour strike without involving the union at all. Despite the paralysis of the Berlin transport system, the German media managed to hardly mention the strike at all.
In the SEAT strike, once the union got control of the situation, workers from other workplaces were not allowed into meetings, even members of the same union! Those who hadn’t been laid off were refused entry to the union meetings of those who were.
In the Vauxhall strike, taking place while similar protests were taking place in Vauxhall factories across Europe and a real potential for a united struggle was present, the union instead suggested that redundancies should be spread even across Europe!
As far as the local struggles were concerned, with regard to the Police, the struggle was against an agreement that the union itself had negotiated, agreed and strongly supported. When the struggle broke out, they were completely sidelined and when, on local news, a union rep tried to take credit for the movement on behalf of the union an angry worker said quite openly, “you didn’t do this, we did”.
In the recent Plymouth strike, a union rep was parachuted in, called for an immediate return to work which some, but not all, obeyed. The movement thus dispersed, while the union negotiated a small financial settlement for the laid off workers. Later, on local news there were scenes of workers berating the union reps. One of the 16 who was laid off was also a union rep, telling them to go back to work! The workers were absolutely furious and the union official refused to talk to the cameras in front of crowd.
And lastly, in the Sowton postal strike, things took on an air of farce when the official at the centre of the dispute appeared in the Express & Echo condemning the very strike workers had started in solidarity with him!
We can also see, in a more general sense, how the role and structure of the unions today stand in direct opposition to the mass struggles that workers try to engage in.
And finally, given that our ultimate aim is to get rid of capitalism, the unions role in revolutionary situations has been dismal.
When the working class launched its insurrectionary struggles in Russia 1917 it was not through unions but through the workers councils. This pattern was repeated in Germany 1918 and all across Europe. These organs unified the political and economic struggles of the proletariat and were predicated on the regroupment of the entire class, rather than this or that workplace or this or that type of worker. In the more developed countries of Europe, the unions were already closely associated with the reformists of social democracy and posed visible obstacles to the workers’ revolutionary struggle just as they had cheerfully rallied to the defence of the state by supporting the First World War. At this point, they became instruments of counter-revolution, covert agents of social democracy’s efforts to drown the revolution in blood in unity with the bourgeois state.
The Historic Basis for the Failure of the Unions
The decadence of capitalism means the existence of permanent fetters on its economic expansion. Whereas once capital could expand and simultaneously enhance the living conditions of the proletariat, this is no longer possible. Without a permanent increase in the rate of profit, the system would enter into a permanent crisis. More and more, the expansion of capitalism has to come at the expense of the working class.
While the reforms that were won in the 19 th century tended to be retained across multiple economic cycles, creating an iterative advance for the class, today the opposite is the case. Reforms that were previously won are immediately lost in the face of a new crisis and usually accompanied by erosions of the more historic reforms. Thus we see an iterative degradation of working class conditions – the exact reversal of the pattern of the 19 th century.
In that sense, the non-revolutionary aspects of the class struggle (what was once called the “Minimum Programme”) has now been reduced almost entirely to a solely defensive struggle. The unions’ role as mediators of the buying and selling of labour power is thus largely limited to accepting what capitalism can afford which becomes less and less as time goes on.
In a period when the working class has truly become an outlaw class, where even the slightest pursuit of its own interests destabilises the entire system, there can no longer be any true accommodation between the bourgeoisie and the working class. Whereas once reformist and revolutionary currents could co-exist to a large extent because both could represent real possibilities for workers, today the reformist demands are reduced to a hopeless utopia that can only represent the interests of the bourgeoisie.
The working class, because of its nature as an exploited class and lack of any economic basis in society, has a problematic with regard to developing its class consciousness. Class consciousness tends to develop in heterogeneous forms. Only when the class moves on a massive scale, can this consciousness spread throughout the class. Most of the time, the mass of the working class submits to bourgeois ideology with class consciousness preserved by a tiny minority of revolutionaries.
Any organisation without an explicitly revolutionary consciousness is doomed in the decadent period to capitulation to bourgeois ideology, essentially becoming bourgeois organisations. The result of this condition is that the working class can no longer have any mass unitary organisations outside of a revolutionary period.
This is the natural tendency of all organisations within decadent capitalism, but we also have to take into account the Machiavellian nature of the ruling class. All ruling classes, to a greater or lesser extent, have a Machiavellian component to their class consciousness. Their position as exploiting classes forces them to contain the revolts of other social strata in order to preserve their power. In the ideological sphere a ruling class attempts to convince these strata that their own rule is in the interests of the whole of society.
For the bourgeoisie, this reaches entirely new heights as its consciousness expresses the dynamic of capitalist society, which is fundamentally based on competition and perpetual rivalry at all levels of society. History demonstrates the remarkable manoeuvres that different factions of the bourgeoisie indulge in when pursuing their internal rivalries both within this or that state and in the struggles between states: a history of lies, deception, conspiracies and coup d’etats. The ruling class employs this ruthless cynicism and cunning not only when in its internal struggles but also in its struggle against the working class. The bourgeoisie goes to great lengths to disguise this aspect of its nature, especially in the so-called “democracies”, but this doesn’t change the underlying reality.
The historic crisis has forced the capitalists to regroup themselves into a far more cohesive force and act far more at a class level than at any point in history. The ultimate synthesis of this cohesion is the state. The whole bourgeois class is now utterly interpenetrated by the state machine in its various forms and, although internal divisions can never be entirely suppressed in this class of Machiavellians, they confront the rest of society and especially the working class as a monolithic whole.
Thus, when this or that sector of the working class goes on strike, it no longer confronts the immediate capitalist in the factory or office. It is immediately forced into a de facto confrontation with the entire bourgeois class and its state, which cannot risk any challenge to its authority. This is why any struggle is either blacked out by ‘free press’ or where this is not possible, subjected to hysterical denunciation, distortion or cynical support offered in the name of embracing your enemy in order to hold him back.
Whatever form of state, the bourgeoisie does not simply leave the working class to “get on with it” in terms of the class struggle. It infiltrates all its organisations, monitors its activities, constantly assessing the potential for struggle and seeking to derail any struggles that occur. And the bourgeoisie, knowing its enemy all too well, has taken special interest in those organs with “working class” coloration. It actively recruits the unions to serve it, integrating them with the state in the form of union legislation, alliances with political parties and often giving them an explicit role in the political apparatus of some countries. It is the state that co-ordinates the legislative framework that governs the relations between classes and – in the name of social stability – has ‘legalised’ the class struggle in such a way as to make it impotent.
Unable to resist bourgeois ideology, the unions cannot help but pass under the aegis of the state. They retain their role of fighting for a “fair days pay” – a motto regarded as conservative by Marx, even in a period where the unions had a legitimate role – but in a period where a even a “fair days pay” is more and more impossible. They are thus reduced to nothing other than attempting to make the realities demanded by capitalism acceptable to the workers. In order to perform this role the union has to be legal and recognised by the employer. Because of this, workers are encouraged to be “reasonable” with their demands or else the employer might stop negotiating with the union. Nearly all union-controlled struggles, despite beginning with real material grievances, are deflected into struggles about union recognition and negotiation which quickly become an end in themselves.
Today, the unions are a central part of the overall management of capitalism. They are no longer the vehicles of effective class struggle – in fact, their role is thoroughly reactionary when faced with such effective struggles. It is impossible for any defence of working class interests to be taken up inside the union framework in the modern epoch. Whatever the motivations of those people who join unions or who militate within them, the structure and framework gradually absorbs them until they end up acting as the face of the capitalists and their state in the workplace. 1 Trades Unions, Part II, F. Engels, 1881, article in The Labour Standard. 2 For further information, a whole series of articles are available on the website of the International Communist Current, www.en.internationalism.org in the “French Student Movement” section in the site map. The ICC section in France was directly involved in the movement, attending demonstrations and speaking at some of the general assemblies at the invitation of the students. 3 There is a report from the ICC on their website, written while the movement was still going on. 4 For further details, check http://en.internationalism.org/wr/292_seat_strike.html |