The aim here is to assess workers’ struggles for their potential to undermine capitalism. Suppose we start with the strike. Does a strike help to undermine capitalism? That’s a difficult question, because it depends on what the strike is intended to achieve or, in other words, how it fits into the wider picture. This suggests that it is not so useful to start with a type of nonviolent action. It is more useful to look at the purpose of a workers’ campaign.
Wages and conditions
Let’s begin with a familiar campaign: for higher wages and better conditions. The better conditions might include improved lighting, safer machinery, clean toilets, greater flexibility in working hours, employer-provided child care facilities, and any of a host of other items. Better wages and conditions are certainly beneficial to workers. The question is, what potential do campaigns for better wages and conditions have for transforming capitalism? The check list is a good place to start.
1. Does the campaign help to
• undermine the violent underpinnings of capitalism, or
• undermine the legitimacy of capitalism, or
• build a nonviolent alternative to capitalism?
To begin: does a workers’ campaign for better wages and conditions undermine the violent underpinnings of capitalism? Capitalists can rely on the power of the state to back up private property. Does such a campaign challenge this? In nearly all cases, the answer is no.
Next, does a workers’ campaign for better wages and conditions undermine the legitimacy of capitalism? This is more difficult to answer, since capitalism’s legitimacy is not a fixed entity, but varies from person to person, issue to issue and in other ways. A few examples may help. Imagine a highly exploitative industry, with low wages and horrible conditions. The industry’s practices, if widely known, might discredit capitalism more generally. A campaign to improve wages and conditions could contribute to this by publicising the industry’s practices. On the other hand, if the campaign leads to improved wages and conditions, then capitalism as a system may appear not so bad.
This points to a general feature of legitimacy: if problems due to capitalism are fixed up promptly and fairly, this actually increases capitalism’s legitimacy. That means, ironically, that workers’ campaigns that succeed quickly without much fanfare can lead to an increase in system legitimacy. In contrast, drawn-out campaigns, especially those that fail, or conspicuous problems where there is no campaign at all, can reduce system legitimacy.
To take a somewhat different example, the world’s most serious industrial accident was in 1984 at Bhopal, India, where release of poisonous chemicals from a pesticide plant killed thousands of people and injured hundreds of thousands.[2] This was bound to be bad publicity for capitalism, but it was seriously aggravated by the failure of the owner Union Carbide to make prompt and fair restitution. Quite the contrary: Union Carbide made every effort to minimise responsibility. This means that Bhopal is a “running sore” for the image of capitalism.
Consider a different sort of campaign: some very highly paid and privileged workers — such as doctors or lawyers — take industrial action to improve their salaries even further. This does nothing to undermine capitalism’s legitimacy and in fact may increase it, because the “normal” salaries, before the campaign, might be perceived as due to the fair operation of the market.
Thus, whether a campaign undermines or strengthens the image of capitalism depends on perceptions of fairness as well as on how the campaign is carried out. This is further complicated by the fact that the operation of capitalism has a big impact on whether people perceive particular wages and conditions to be fair.
In general, campaigning for better wages and conditions does not challenge the legitimacy of capitalism at its foundations, including private ownership, the boss-employee relationship and the market. Improved wages and conditions are important, but occur within capitalism rather than against it.
Finally, does a campaign for better wages and conditions help build a nonviolent alternative to capitalism? Except in special cases, the answer is no. So for point 1 on the check list, it can be concluded that campaigns for wages and conditions seldom satisfy any of the options, except sometimes helping undermine capitalism’s legitimacy.
2. Is the campaign participatory?
The answer to this depends on the campaign. A strike or a work-to-rule, to be effective, needs as many workers as possible to participate. But sometimes a strike can be effective if just a few key workers, in vital positions, take action. So sometimes a workers’ action can achieve immediate goals with relatively low participation.
Another aspect to participation is in planning and decision making. Is the campaign plotted by a few trade union bosses and announced to the members, or are all planning meetings open to all members, with special efforts to involve members from all sectors of the workforce?
Some trade unions are more autocratic and corrupt than the corporate executives they confront. Union-led campaigns in such circumstances are seldom fully participatory.
A further dimension to participation is involvement of others besides the immediate workers, including customers, workers elsewhere, other organisations and the public at large. If teachers go on strike for higher pay, that does not by itself generate participation by anyone else. But if the campaign involves rallies and teach-ins with involvement by students, parents, administrative staff and prospective employers, the participation level is far higher.
One group often overlooked in workers’ struggles is the unemployed. A campaign for higher wages can result in job losses. Trade unions typically look after their members and neglect others.
3. Are the campaign’s goals built in to its methods?
The answer here is “not very often.” A campaign to improve wages seldom has any potential to use improved wages as the method! Quite the contrary: going on strike, especially for an extended period, reduces wages.
For improving conditions, there are some possibilities. Requests for rest breaks could be pursued by taking the breaks, as a form of disobedience on the job. Demands for safety measures could be pursued by workers bringing in equipment, organising their own training and taking time on the job to follow the desired procedures. A push for procedures to protect against unfair dismissal could be accompanied by establishing a “workers’ tribunal” to judge the evidence for a dismissal, set up alongside existing procedures. However, these sorts of initiatives are the exception. Most campaigns for improved conditions rely on methods such as bargaining with management or strikes, which as methods have little in common with the goal.
4. Is the campaign resistant to cooption?
