Class, democracy and equality

Since 1890, workers across the world have been commemorating ‘May Day’ to pay tribute to the martyrs of Chicago who sacrificed their lives in the struggle to achieve 8 hours working day.

In 1886, in the American city of Chicago, unarmed protesting workers demanding an eight-hour working day were met with brutal force. May Day continues to symbolise the fight for the eight-hour day.

Often, the ruling class, capitalist media and intellectuals accuse the working class for resorting to violence to achieve their demands but history shows us it is actually the other way round.

It is really the capitalist class that resorts to violence to suppress the working people. As the events in Chicago proved, peaceful protest was met with brutal state force.

The labour movement in the US initiated the ‘Eight Hour Day Movement’ and attempted to secure the eight-hour day through legislation. Some states passed legislation to reduce working hours. An eight-hour working day was also introduced for federal government employees.

However, Big Business and the capitalist class refused to implement the laws and governments neglected to enforce them. In practice, working days became longer.

Trade unions came to the conclusion that an eight-hour day would only be achieved through broad-based coordinated action and strikes. Thus, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labour Unions (the forerunner of the American Federation of Labour) and the Knights of Labour decided to organize a nation-wide campaign of strikes and demonstrations on May 1, 1886.

The ruling class, however, were not about to concede shorter hours without a fight. In an effort to break the campaign, corporations resorted to provocation, intimidation and repression.

This day in today’s world reminds the working class that workers’ rights like right to form union, collective bargaining, eight-hour working day, minimum wage and others are the result of long and hard-fought struggles and sacrifices.

This day reminds us that the struggle between capital and labour is a permanent feature of the capitalist economic system. There is a strong tendency among the capitalist class to keep wages low and minimise other facilities. On the other hand, the working class wants to improve its living and working conditions. They want higher wages, better working conditions and decent living standards. This conflict between competing classes is of a permanent nature in a class-based society.

The working class movement doesn’t develop in a straight line. It suffers defeats and setbacks but also wins emphatic victories and successes. It went through periods of intensified struggles and lulls. It saw periods of mass struggles and movements but also saw periods of relative peace and silence.

It mainly depends mainly on the class forces in society. When the working class starts to organise and feels confident to take on the might of the capitalist state, the class struggle intensifies. The intensity of the class struggle and mass movements also depends on the consciousness, confidence and level of organisation.

Organisation is the key for the working class. Individual workers are just “raw material for exploitation”. What transforms them into a force for change is a collective understanding of themselves as a class with a conscious direction of where they are going, expressed through an organisation.

The existence of a strong organised labour movement is decisive. Not just because of the existence of actual organisations (with offices, strike funds, national and international structures) give strength, but above all because of what underpins the whole organisation – an understanding of the need to struggle collectively.

There lies the fundamental problem. Class consciousness has retreated and therefore organisations of the labour movement have declined. When the capitalist class feels threatened by the rising class consciousness and organised strength of the working class movement, it prefers to retreat and concede. But when the working class movement becomes weak, less organised and lacks the confidence to challenge the capitalist class; the struggles become isolated, and harder to win.

Today, only 10 percent of workers in the US belong to unions. One must go back more than a century to find such low numbers. Most of the union members are in the public sector. The rest are defenceless. Although work stoppages picked up slightly in 2018 and 2019, they are still below the levels that were normal before 2000, not to mention incomparably lower than between 1947 (when statistics first began) and 1980.

UK labour dispute statistics stretch back to 1891. There have never been so few disputes (in absolute terms) as in the last years. In almost all 36 OECD countries, trade union membership has declined in the decade since the crisis of 2008 and now stands at 12 percent.

Similarly, almost all the previously powerful workers parties have declined or disappeared. For the Communist parties that happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union. For social democratic parties, the process has been more long drawn out. The crisis since 2008 has not reversed that trend in most countries.

On the contrary, in the last years social democratic parties have received a proportion of votes that can only be compared to what they got when they were first establishing themselves in the electoral field more than a century ago.

Despite all their inadequacies, trade unions and political organisations such as social democratic parties and communist parties were the glue that held the class together. Today, they are a shadow of their former selves. This was no accident or merely the fault of the leaders. Big historical events pushed them into the abyss – such as the end of the post-war boom and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This again reduced many workers into raw material for exploitation by capitalists at work and politically. The socialist goal, in whatever form, has been lost for a broad section of workers. This is the fundamental problem of the epoch of neoliberal domination.

It has only been the labour movement that has guaranteed democracy. The slide away from democracy reflects the weakness of the labour movement. It is not a matter of capitalists losing the taste for democracy. The representation of the working class in legislatures has reduced significantly in the last 30 years. The quality of democracy has also fallen.

It is not a coincidence that both the quality of democracy and equality in the world has been on the decline since the decline of the working class movement. Both democracy and equality in society rise and fall with the rise and fall of the working class movement. Authoritarian tendencies and inequality have been on the rise in this period.

We have not seen such levels of inequality in the world before. The decline of the working class movement has enabled the capitalist class to increase their share in the wealth being produced. The share of working class people in the national wealth in most countries continues to fall.

This is what we are facing today. The working class, battered by neoliberalism and the crisis of 2008, was put in desperate straits by the present Covid crisis. Millions have lost livelihood. Millions are struggling to put food on the table every day. Poverty is on the rise. A working class response to this crisis is long awaited and due.

The writer is a freelance journalist.