rararoadrunner
20th October 2010, 07:41
Class struggle involves a number of forms: political action, unionization, boycotts, strikes, foundation of worker-owned cooperatives…is there any relation between these forms of struggle?
Let me submit that class struggle exists in three distinct phases: engaging in the class struggle, embracing the class struggle, and transcending the class struggle.
1) Engaging in the class struggle.
The first phase consists of workers engaging capitalists in class struggle: prior to this, workers struggle only in the private sphere as consumers…and in the public sphere as voters: that is, in spheres they share with capitalists (and therefore, in a competition they can never win).
The minute workers struggle as workers, however…that is to say, when they organise into unions to collectively struggle against capitalists…they already elevate the level of struggle from competition to conflict. They have already begun to transcend capitalist relations of production…but in an unconscious, reactive way.
2) Embracing the class struggle.
This next phase involves putting the struggles of individual unions together, first by sweeping aside the craft unionism that was inherited from medieval guilds in favour of industrial unions…then by combining these industrial unions, such as was the original concept of the IWW, CIO, etc. (and that unions that refused to follow the CIO into its amalgamation with the craft-union based AFL, such as the UE, still follow).
Already, with industrial unionism, workers are at an advantage: they confront competing capitalists with united unions (which is why capitalists sided with AFL against CIO, and later supported the amalgamation, in which one shaking hand was “more equal” than the other).
When such industrial unions are combined…workers move from defensively engaging in class struggle that is imposed upon them by capitalists, to embracing the project of class struggle as their own.
3) Transcending the class struggle.
In this final phase of class struggle, workers move from being proletarians…that is to say, workers who own no means of production…to becoming the universal working class…that is, workers who own everything, hence transcending capitalist relations of production.
One way forward is the foundation of worker-owned enterprises, such as cooperatives: however, such cooperatives, competing against capitalist firms, still find themselves like Pinocchio, awaking on strings not of their own making.
In order for capitalist relations to be completely transcended, they must be utterly sundered: that is, there must be a general strike resulting in the replacement of capitalist with socialist relations of production (economic democracy, eliminating once and for all the conflict between capitalism and democracy with the triumph of the latter over the former).
Capitalists insist that only the workers go on strike…yet what is an economic crisis but a general strike of capital?
When workers go on strike, capitalists move to break it by forcibly reasserting the core capitalist employer-employee relation of production, by any means necessary.
Now that capitalists are going on strike via economic crisis, we workers, too, can move to smash this general strike…by smashing capitalist relations of production!
It is via this road…the road to economic democracy…that we can…and must…recover, not only economically, but everything we have lost to capitalism.
And: any attempt to “transcend” class struggle that doesn’t first pass through engagement, then embrace, of class struggle, is merely class collaboration: that is, our abject surrender to capital.
Therefore, by linking concrete examples of these three phases of class struggle…engagement, embrace, and then transcendence, together in their proper relation to one-another…we workers can, and must, advance on the road to the victory of economic democracy…and the end of class struggle via the triumph of the universal working class. We dare not stop until we achieve this!
Let me submit that class struggle exists in three distinct phases: engaging in the class struggle, embracing the class struggle, and transcending the class struggle.
1) Engaging in the class struggle.
The first phase consists of workers engaging capitalists in class struggle: prior to this, workers struggle only in the private sphere as consumers…and in the public sphere as voters: that is, in spheres they share with capitalists (and therefore, in a competition they can never win).
The minute workers struggle as workers, however…that is to say, when they organise into unions to collectively struggle against capitalists…they already elevate the level of struggle from competition to conflict. They have already begun to transcend capitalist relations of production…but in an unconscious, reactive way.
2) Embracing the class struggle.
This next phase involves putting the struggles of individual unions together, first by sweeping aside the craft unionism that was inherited from medieval guilds in favour of industrial unions…then by combining these industrial unions, such as was the original concept of the IWW, CIO, etc. (and that unions that refused to follow the CIO into its amalgamation with the craft-union based AFL, such as the UE, still follow).
Already, with industrial unionism, workers are at an advantage: they confront competing capitalists with united unions (which is why capitalists sided with AFL against CIO, and later supported the amalgamation, in which one shaking hand was “more equal” than the other).
When such industrial unions are combined…workers move from defensively engaging in class struggle that is imposed upon them by capitalists, to embracing the project of class struggle as their own.
3) Transcending the class struggle.
In this final phase of class struggle, workers move from being proletarians…that is to say, workers who own no means of production…to becoming the universal working class…that is, workers who own everything, hence transcending capitalist relations of production.
One way forward is the foundation of worker-owned enterprises, such as cooperatives: however, such cooperatives, competing against capitalist firms, still find themselves like Pinocchio, awaking on strings not of their own making.
In order for capitalist relations to be completely transcended, they must be utterly sundered: that is, there must be a general strike resulting in the replacement of capitalist with socialist relations of production (economic democracy, eliminating once and for all the conflict between capitalism and democracy with the triumph of the latter over the former).
Capitalists insist that only the workers go on strike…yet what is an economic crisis but a general strike of capital?
When workers go on strike, capitalists move to break it by forcibly reasserting the core capitalist employer-employee relation of production, by any means necessary.
Now that capitalists are going on strike via economic crisis, we workers, too, can move to smash this general strike…by smashing capitalist relations of production!
It is via this road…the road to economic democracy…that we can…and must…recover, not only economically, but everything we have lost to capitalism.
And: any attempt to “transcend” class struggle that doesn’t first pass through engagement, then embrace, of class struggle, is merely class collaboration: that is, our abject surrender to capital.
Therefore, by linking concrete examples of these three phases of class struggle…engagement, embrace, and then transcendence, together in their proper relation to one-another…we workers can, and must, advance on the road to the victory of economic democracy…and the end of class struggle via the triumph of the universal working class. We dare not stop until we achieve this!