Whatever Happened To The “Class Struggle”?

Ed. note: While cleaning out my email inbox I came across this blog, which Steve sent me back in November when I was in Mixing Hell, and which I neglected to post for him. Please accept my apologies for my tardiness in getting this posted, it is perhaps more relevant now than it was 3 months ago when it was written.   – Sangemon

By Stephen Fleischman

Class Struggle. Now, there’s an expression with clout. You don’t hear it much, anymore. Don’t fool yourself. It’s there. It’s like an underground stream. It surfaces now and then.

You can call it the war between the haves and the have-nots. It’s been going on since the beginning of human endeavor. But it was Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels who pinned it down. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle,” they said.

There are nodal points in history, called revolutions. The industrial revolution, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, were nodal points, where quantitative change turned to qualitative change, where political and economic systems that no longer met the needs of people changed to fit the new conditions. The slave system to feudalism. Feudalism to Capitalism. Capitalism to –?  Â

Marx defined an economic class by its relationship to the means of production–its position in the social structure that characterizes capitalism–two classes, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, otherwise known as the working class and the capitalist class.Â

In a free labor system, under capitalism, you pay your worker a wage (that represents only a part payment for the value he produces). You have only to extract the surplus value that the worker contributes to the making of the product. You call it profit and say it is derived from entrepreneurial skill, reward for taking risks, from the machinery, the land, or other such gibberish. Once you extract the surplus value the worker creates, let him be free to go his own way and the devil take the hindmost. There is always a plentiful supply of labor to be had.

That’s not the end of the story. What happens is that eventually, the worker wises up and starts to demand the full value of his work, or maybe settle for a larger slice of the pie. That’s when the fur begins to fly. That’s called the class struggle.

Throughout economic history that struggle has gone on. It’s an old, old fight between the haves and the have-nots. It pushes capital on to heights of glory, monopoly and war. We’re in such a period right now.

We need to keep production high and labor costs low to keep the system afloat, they tell us. The EPA notwithstanding, production and profits trump the environment. Take a look at us now. Shop until you drop, the propaganda organs shout. “But with what?” asks the underpaid and the unemployed. The productivity of labor is at its height. The purchasing power of the working class is low.

Under capitalism, the assault on labor has been overwhelming, continuous, inhuman and destructive from the beginning of the industrial revolution to this very day. No wonder unions are dysfunctional and chaotic. So are most of their leaders. If they’re not coerced, co-opted or corrupted, they’re framed, jailed or neutralized in some way. Only when capitalism is in the throes of crisis, deep depression and near collapse can labor leaders like Eugene V. Debs or John L. Lewis emerge.

Debs organized the American Railway Union, an industrial union for all railroad workers in 1893, became a confirmed Socialist while serving time in prison for refusing to comply with a federal court injunction, ran for President of the United States four times on the Socialist Party ticket, the last time from prison in 1920 and received nearly 1 million votes.

John L. Lewis led the United Mine Workers in organizing most of the coal industry, was one of the organizers of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1936 and joined the Reuther brothers, Walter and Victor, in organizing the United Auto Workers’ sit-down strikes against General Motors at their Flint, Michigan plants.

For 44 bitterly cold winter days the auto workers in Flint held out, eventually inspiring more than two-thirds of General Motors l45 thousand other production workers to strike as well, at dozens of other plants. The strikers in Flint seized, shut down and occupied one, then two, and then three of the key GM plants. Suddenly, workers everywhere were sitting-down. There were 477 sitdown strikes by the end of 1937, involving more than half a million workers.

Mighty GM had vowed publicly that it would never allow the UAW to represent its employees. But the General Motors Corporation ended up granting that crucial right–and more–to the union. It was a stunning victory for the United Auto Workers. It led the way–and swiftly–to the unionization of workers throughout heavy industry and, ultimately, to unionization in all fields. It certainly was the high water mark of labor power in America.

The class struggle goes on. One day, it will reach a turning point, again. With computers and digital technology, a planned economy is not only more feasible but inevitable in a future socialist society.

It took capitalism four hundred years to hone its skills. It’s a trial and error process. The system served its purpose and is now ready to leave the stage of history, or “dig its own grave” if you prefer Marx’s expression. There’s a new one waiting in the wings. Socialism. Only been around about a century. Made a couple of mistakes but learning.