The Capitalists' Class War

Too often the class struggle is conceived as only the actions taken by workers for working class interest, overlooking the significant fact that the class struggle is also organized and directed by the ruling class and the state. The capitalist class have taken Karl Marx’s dictum that ‘class struggle is the motor force of history’ in a much more meaningful manner than the labour movement and its bureaucratic officials. They have been better students of Marx. Class struggle is waged in board-rooms and in parliaments. Class struggle from above is directed at maximizing the collective power of capital via restrictive laws on labor organisations, social movements and public workers’ collective bargaining rights, lowering social expenditures for pensions, health and education for workers families. It is about selectively enforcing regulations and enhancing the concentration of wealth in the ruling class through bail-outs and tax rules.

The capitalists’ class struggle is veiled largely because they as the ruling class controls the decision-making institutions from which to impose its class policies. Nevertheless, when institutional power does not suffice the capitalist class will engaged in extra-parliamentary intimidation such as lockouts and the mass firing of workers. During a recession an all-out class war is declared to save capitalist interests by impoverishing workers. In time of capitalist crisis with declining economic wealth, growing threats of bankruptcy there is no basis for sharing wealth – no matter how unequally – between and workers. Whatever gains and concessions the working class have achieved in the past are reclaimed and rescinded by the rich.Competition over the shrinking surplus product intensifies conflict over shares of a shrinking pie. Ruling class warfare defines who pays for the crisis and who benefits from the recovery of profits.

Capitalist class warfare dismantles the social safety net and undermines the entire legal and ideological underpinnings of the ‘welfare state’ without any regard for its social consequences. ‘Austerity’ is the highest form of class struggle from above because it establishes thepower of capital to decide the present and future division between wages and profits, employment and unemployment.

The organisations of the workers – trade unions, pensioners’ associations, etc. – are ill-prepared to confront the aggressive all-out war of the ruling class. For decades they were accustomed to ‘collective bargaining’ and occasional strikes of short duration to secure incremental improvements. Their reformist labour or social democratic parties are deeply embedded in the capitalist order .They have long ago abandoned labour, proclaiming their loyalty to profits, and embraced and imposed their own versions of austerity. The trade unions too can be faulted for , narrowly focusing on the everyday issues of their immediate membership, ignored the mass of unorganised workers. The workers’ class struggle lacked the organization and stae resources, which the ruling class possesses, to launch a counter-offensive and has been entirely defensive; to salvage fragments of labour contracts that protected pay and conditions, to save jobs and reduce firings. The fundamental problem in the ongoing class struggle is that the trade unions and many workers failed to recognize the changing nature of the class struggle. The ‘total war strategy’ ofthe ruling class has gone far beyond pay and is a frontal attack on the living, working, housing, pension, health and educational conditions of labor. The politics of compromise and social pacts between unions and employers is totally discarded. The ruling class demand unconditional surrender.

Under these conditions the workers’ class struggles, in many cases, have been sadly unsuccessful efforts. Trade unions, even in the most militant instances, engage in almost ritualistic mass protests, which are totally ignored by the ruling class. Each defensive struggle, at best, only temporarily delayed reversals. New employment contracts concentrate greater shares of wealth in the hands of the capitalist class for the foreseeable future. The much bragged about reform welfare programmes and social contracts are now seen as what they were - temporary, tactical concessions to be discarded when they threaten business returns. The capitalists launched the most intensive assault on the working class in modern history. They have jettisoned decades of social legislation and wage and employment gains. They have dramatically lowered living standards and deepened the divide of wealth for generations to come. The sustained class-war by the rich shows no limits, no constraints and no compassion.

The deteriorating conditions of the working class cannot be altered by workplace trade union activity or by ‘collective bargaining’ but only by a political solution- a change of economic and political system - socialism. Any further efforts to attempt to reform capitalism will be a futile enterprise. Now is the time for action directed at mobilising the working class for the political and economic revolution. The future lies in building bridges within and between the millions of exploited, excluded and dispossessed who have lost everything and have finally recognized that only via their class struggle can they recover their humanity and enjoy a dignified life.

Freely adapted from here