THE SUBVERSION OF EVERYDAY LIFE
1 [Work]
2 [Capital, Gender, the State]
3 [Class Struggle]
4 [Tendencies]
5 [Revolution]
6 [Revolutionary Struggle]
Who is that told you that life is yet to begin? Or are you already waiting for your pension?
Monday morning - get up, go out, call in sick, can't do anything else, don't want to do anything else, just keep going. Get up again, go out, school, work, get back, knackered, cook, wash. Time or money, stomach-ulcer-skin-inflammation, just keep going. Friday, disco, cinema, friends, Sunday family walks. It is enough! Let's not (!) just grin and bare it!
We spend out time in the smoke filled workshops and humanised factory halls, in be-palmed offices and steak-herb reeking kitchens. We sweat scrap-metal back together and magic the sick well again. For our children there is only the new-deal-work-fare-training-schemes, where they solder platinum for washing machines and anti-blockage-drainage-systems.
We get up every morning. We do it! Even if we have partied the whole night through. Even with the squeezed disc in the back, relationship stress in the head and love-sick in the heart, we just keep going. They have prepared us for this. This is real life. No one ever promised us anything else.
What the fuck is wrong with us? Whose madness is this? Who forces us? The society? The state? The media? The patriarchal nuclear family? The temptation of being able to have a part of the supposed riches? Mama? The weapons? The capitalists?
Is there not something else other that waiting-within-the-machine-rhythm-for-the-pause with the boredom of Coronation Street-romanticism, the professional-development-further-training-scheme, the now-I-discover-myself-workshop and thrill-addiction-parties. We need the challenge, the adventure, the yearning, the struggle, the will to change all that. We are searching for the subversion, the rebellion, the possibility of revolt. And we search for it in this everyday life, in the offices, the factory halls, the hospitals, in Tescos.
We need the movement that does not hesitate, that lets our collective power
be visible!
We wrote and discussed drafts of this paper for almost a year and a half.
It was planned as a for our friends, work mates and interested people, with
whom we could see a common starting point for revolutionary organisation.
It seemed quite difficult to bring together our fundamental critique on the existing relations with our longing to have practical action and to write that all down. So we came to the point where some discussions in our group could not go further. The language that we wanted; precise, clear and analytically sharp seemed to be missing. And so it went on and on...
What you now have in your hands is a discussion paper. This paper was a process,
it reflected the actual stage of our group discussions. In it we refer to
revolutionary currents of Marxism, Workerism, a revolutionary critique of
feminism and discussions with Wildcat.[1]
The first part is about the basis of the exploitative society: work and the
division of labour.
In the second part we describe how the relations of capital, gender and the state originate from the specific practical relationships of people to each other and from their position in the capitalist production process.
In the third part we bring that together with our power to change things: class struggle. In the fourth part we try to make an approximation of the current social changes, the conditions for a revolutionary development: crisis, proletarianisaton, flexibilisation.
In the fifth and final part we sketch out our notions for revolution and communism and our tasks in the revolutionary struggle.
1 Work
It is not a natural situation, that we live in an exploitative, unjust society, with hierarchies and divisions between men and women, nationals and foreigners, rich and poor, with exploitation and oppression. This situation is created! It is not based on natural power-craziness and egoism of people. It is also only indirectly to do with bourgeois ideology, tradition, manipulative mass media or the super control of the system.
The situation is based on the concrete practice of six billion people: work.
Work is not simply comparable with concrete activities like pudding making,
suspension bridge building or beats sampling. We can do all these things with
out working. It doesn't matter if it is paid or not, these activities become
work if we cannot determine how, for how long, what for and with whom we do
them.
Work is; having to slave for the banal things of life, because, although the
technical means of doing our work are possible, their development promises
no profits.
Work is; not deciding collectively and thereby being productive, but slaving
away in our own households where we cook-clean-comfort or inside the walls
of factories and offices.
Work is; to be restricted to defined activities: Brick laying, dispensing
soul comfort, day-in day-out washing other people's floors...
Work is; division of labour. We are not allowed to do everything, live out
the variety of activities - acting in theatres, attic building, philosophy
etc. - that the constitutes the whole of society.
Through the division of work, it seems that society consists of lots of single
producers slaving away independently of each other in different companies,
departments, households, schools and potato plantations. Everyone seems to
be responsible for their own fate and to be independent from others. In order
to live in capitalism we are dependant on the work of the majority of the
workers of this planet: from miners in South Africa, HGV drivers in Spain,
car manufacturers in Korea, textile workers in China, programmers in India
to farmers in France.
All together, the way that we produce this society is the basis of the divisions between people and creates the total splintering of our lives that makes us so sick: The national borders that fence us in, the prisons of genders, the roles of citizen, workers or consumer, the separation of young and old, trainee and qualified, the stress of free time and everyday work... The division of labour produces these divisions between us and thereby creates the basis for exploitation and oppression. Whoever can determine the work and work products of other, whoever can use for themselves the dependence of people on the work of others, has social power.
2 Capital, Gender, the State In the following chapter we will describe how a fixed specific practice of
people creates a relationship that then governs them. How relations or connections
to one another, to the means of production and the work products face them
as something that controls them. Capital, Exploitation and Crisis
We produce this world together, be we do not decide in what way we do it.
We don't have contact to the people who make our clothes, whose CNC machines
we build etc. The connections come about mostly through the capitalist forms
of the market, money, companies etc. Through this, these forms achieve a seemingly
independent existence, that defines our days: "Money rules the world", "the
state does this, VW does that". Through our separated co-operation our products
seem to take on a power over us: we turn into dependants of machine-time or
victims of inflation... The fact that we stay separated from the means of production and from the
products of our work, has to be enforced over and over again. This happens
through the production process itself that isolates us, the relentless rhythm
of the machine that wears us down, the boss that stands behind us and controls
us. And where the violence of work is not sufficient, a 'direct' form of violence
is used: foremen, company security guards, shift bosses and department heads
drive us to work harder and threaten rebels with dismissal. The capitalists
try to divide us along the lines of the work divisions using different working
conditions, wage levels etc between foreigners/ nationals, educated / uneducated,
men / women. The hierarchy between the exploited is supposed to make joint
struggle against the exploitation seem impossible. Gender roles are a practical relation that both 'genders' produce, but it
is also a relation of violence and dependence, the daily experience of women.
Is someone tries to break out of this relationship, and doesn't act like a
'real man' on the building site, will often become isolated, or worse.
If the idyllic little family turns out to be an isolation chamber, if women
refuse to let their little worker be the 'little boss' at home, concentrate
only on him, protect him from the loneliness of masculinity, she often finds
herself confronted with violence. Out of fear of not being able to have close
human relationships without female assistance, and the fear of being bottom
of the heap without being able to have dominance over the house worker, many
men try to keep women being functional through restrictions and the threat
or practice of violence. In order to get rid of these relationships of need
and violence, we need to get rid of gender itself.[7] Feminine and masculine proletariats became separated from each other and
women increasingly become stuck into the isolated - unpaid - housework in
the nuclear family.[8] Men played a central role, due to wage work and the
associated control over the income, and the fact that places of production
became the centres of social change in capitalism. The exclusion of women
from organising and struggling meant their social degradation. The gender divisions will always be used for this, to change the composition
of wage workers - to weaken struggle, to put pressure on wages and to divide
the workers. In wage work the particular capabilities of women are exploited
- communication, emotional sympathy, skilled finger work, due to women having
to learn this during their particular upbringing and disciplining. And then
the wage work is often just the continuation of their house work: the caring
for the sick in hospitals, the work as child minders or in nurseries, as cleaning
women or secretary in service to their boss. The relationship between the genders has changed considerably in the last
few years due to the rebellion of women against their subordination - the
images of typical roles are changing, same gender love is almost accepted,
the new jobs break down the gender divisions and many women have become self-reliant
in their relationships, at work, in their organisational efforts, refusing
to accept everything and are choosing a single life over nuclear family stress.
The liberation from gender, the struggle against oppression based on physical
characteristics, is part of the class struggle. Only the class of exploited
producers is able to destroy the gender roles. Not because the 'women' don't
have power without the 'workers', but because gender is a part of the entire
social practice.
Almost everything that we need to live, we produce in ways, in which we face
our co-operation and the means of work as capital, as a force outside of ourselves.
But not all the work in capitalism can be organised along the lines of a 'factory',
not all the labour necessary for the reproduction of labour power can be exploited
within a capitalist relation.[11] Through the capitalist ways and means of
producing this society, we don't only create the production units of factory,
the office and the hospital, but also of the household. The state presents itself as a 'neutral political institution' that exists
independently from the 'economic' sphere. This has the following results:
Union people request that the state regulates the undemocratic businesses;
socialists lament that the state is just for the rich parties and not the
'little people'; anarchists present the state as all-encompassing power, without
which the society would be free. Whether as a an operational partner or as
the main enemy, the state offers itself as the focal point for our struggle,
in order to integrate and diss-empower it. The state is part of the capitalist
exploitative relations. It is the political and violent form of enforcing
and preserving capitalist exploitation. What is sold to us daily as the 'achievements of the welfare state' are
actually the states means of keeping us all as wage slaves, of controlling
our working lives and getting us ready for exploitation. Social aid and unemployment
benefits keep us being exploitable labour power, during the times when our
wage work can't be valorised. We get the money, but only if we show willingness
to work and give the state the chance to have insight and intervention into
our living situation. In school we learn the things that are required from
a labour force, particular qualifications, arse licking and obedience. When
working life finishes us off, the hospitals and nut houses make us able to
cope with life again. In conflicts between workers and capitalists the state
appears as a mediator: it offers the workers state-approved unions or its
employment laws for isolated conflicts and so ensures 'orderly relationships'.
Apart from that it tries everything to get the conflicts to take place within
the working class: its 'migration and family policies' are always creating
new divisions and hierarchies amongst the exploited, the existence of individual
'nations' offers the possibility of diverting the workers struggles down nationalistic
tracks.
However, the state is not merely a 'service' for capital. Its existence is
simply materially tied to profitable exploitation and work: without profit,
without the valorisation of capital there would also be no money for the state.[12]
The struggle with the exploitation changes the form of the state and how
the state tries to maintain the conditions of exploitation. Whether as military
dictatorship, workers and peasants state or a parliamentary democracy - neither
our demands, nor 'politics' changes the state, but rather our struggle against
the capitalist everyday life.[13]
The state is also not a 'thing' that exists unchanging and
independently from humans. In our everyday material practice we have
to face and deal with the state and capital in the forms of
'politics' and 'economics'. We seem dependant on the state and on
the 'politics', because we are dependant on particular social
activities that the 'state' carries out.[14]
Due to the separation into
isolated 'owners' labour power, small families, in companies, in the
town and country etc, we don't organise these activities together and
don't create unmediated connections between ourselves.[15]
state planning, laws to regulate social conflict etc seem to be
necessary.
3 Class Struggle
This is our starting point: out of specific practical relations of people
between themselves and to the production conditions, capital, the state and
gender arises as oppressive relations. Now to the deciding question: how can
we destroy these relations and create a different way to live together? We
look for the possibilities of change, for liberation from the power and find
it in everyday exploitation itself. The isolation within the capitalist society gives us the daily experiences
of facing powerlessness in the relationships: we stand alone in front of the
boss and colleagues looking either like big girls blouses or as macho: the
police catch our foreign girlfriend in a raid and deport her; our dole money
gets cut and cut because the state supposedly has no more money; the bosses
close down the companies, because they can allegedly get more work for less
wages somewhere else etc. We can seize and destroy the state, because it does not produce its own apparatus,
but rather is dependant on capitalist exploitation, from 'orderly' relations
in its schools, universities, prisons and offices. The state would disintegrate,
if the movement of the exploited jumped over the school walls and liberated
knowledge; if we take our conflicts out of the courts and rule ourselves;
if take a break from the job centre waiting rooms because we are no longer
a permanently available labour force; if we tear down the border fences, because
without exploitation there would also be no need for 'national labour market'
or 'locations'.
We can destroy gender, because it is a practical social relation that changes
through class confrontation and in capitalist development. Within the struggle
we can develop desires that no longer have to be in the form of gender divisions.
In the struggle we can break out of our isolation and together hit back at
the sexist attacks. In revolutionary struggle we can destroy the material
basis of gender division, the isolation of households, the different forms
of house and wage work, the private ownership of knowledge about our own bodies.
If we talk about class, we are coming from the view that, the work of people
creates the private property of the means of production - and thereby the
basis of themselves as property-less and exploited proletariat. The class
is not a club that people belong to or not. It is also not a category, in
which people can be ordered in 'objective attributes'. Class originates as
a movement, if the exploited use their productive relations against the exploitation.
4 Tendencies
The chance of overthrowing capitalism can not be explained through isolated
struggles or movements. Historical changes of the ways that we produce this
society, i.e. how we are exploited in capitalism, does not result automatically,
or through a plan of the exploited class, but through the class struggle and
the contradictions of capital. The development of capital has limits: the
struggle of the class does not only change the social mode of production,
through that it also creates the conditions for a world wide revolution. We
have to reveal these conditions in the current social changes make them the
starting point of struggle. Here is a rough example: Asia, until 1996 the promised land of capital, that dreamed of everlasting
boom on the backs of a compliant proletariat, has had it's bubble burst in
the last few years. In Indonesia the rage of the proletariat broke out in
flames. In Russia, where the new businessmen and old 'soviet' company chairmen
are making big money, while many workers are not getting any wage at all,
and so are continually going on strike, bankruptcy threatens. In the 80s the
IMF and the World Bank let Central and Latin America off their debt, in order
to improve the exploitation conditions. Today millions of dollars have to
be pumped into the region, just to make sure the currency does not totally
crash. Uprisings in the last few years like the Chiapas-Mexico after 1994 and in
Indonesia 1998, daily strikes in the (newly-) industrialised Asian states
like China, South Korea etc and protest movements in the boom countries of
Latin America: that are struggles by workers in the new development centres,
whose increasing demands come up against the results of the worldwide capitalist
exploitation.
The question is whether these class movements widen out and radicalise or
whether they let themselves, due to the crisis, be bound up into a new development-focused
dictatorship. After the exploitation model of the east block toppled, we find
ourselves facing a fairly open situation.
The strikes of the miners in Russia and Romania and the uprising in Albania
in 1997 are just the strongest examples of confrontation by workers, who don't
want to let themselves be a cheep labour force for a new elite or western
investors. The ruling class tries to use sharper state measures against the proletariat
to solve the situation of crisis and blockade. In the European Metropolises
these attacks are mediated by the 'socialist' and social democrat governments.
These governments try to solve the blockade in the direction of 'more work
- less money' by increased pressure on both working and unemployed proletariat.
By doing this the 'labour parties' play on their having good relations with
the union apparatus and pull together for the implementation of 'more work'.
The instrument of the state against the class struggle has also been modernised
on a worldwide level: In the face of the crisis, the IMF has to make even
clearer to the credit dependant governments, that they can only get more credit,
if they enforce intensified exploitation against the local workers. In the
EU, member states no longer have the possibility, with the new unified currency,
the Euro, to avoid the struggles in their lands by currency manipulation.[19]
So the ruling class is having to challenge the struggles to a greater extent
than before, and seize hold of the workers and their work conditions in order
to lower the cost of wages, extend the work time etc. The immigration conditions
for workers from non-EU countries are further intensified. Workers are supposed
to immigrate as cheep labour in the wished for amounts, but otherwise should
be available for exploitation in the various regions of investment from the
Ukraine to Morocco. The Yugoslavian war was a sign for the proletariat world wide: if we can't
solve the crisis through rationalisation measures and work discipline, we
still have a few bombing arguments for you. The exploited class have to get
into the offensive in the coming struggle, otherwise the ruling class, in
their desperate search for a way out of the crisis, will use the conflicts
such as between North and South Korea, China and Taiwan, India and Pakistan
etc at a reason for a war against the workers. In recent years, Capital had got stronger in the 'three continents' (Africa,
Asia and Latin America) and has really gone after Asia and Latin America,
because it has the hopes of realising higher profits there. The construction
of industry is only possible because there - especially in Asia - millions
of people leave the country for the city, leave their piece of land and have
to sell their labour force to the factory boss or corporation boss. They have
had enough of the traditional land based forms of exploitation and expect
betterment for themselves from the wage work and live in the city - information,
consumer goods, chances of more mobility... After the world wide factory struggles of the 60s and 70s the relations in
production have changed enormously. In order to break up of the core of militant
workers in the industrial countries and intensify the exploitation, new computer
based technologies and new forms of work organisation (e.g. group work) were
introduced in the factories. Whole sectors e.g. in administration, maintenance
and cleaning have been outsourced by large companies. Thought the attacks
on the power of the workers, the companies can lower the wages, i.e. the labour
costs. From the same reason subcontractors are given whole branches of production
and so the number of workers in factories is driven down. Using temporary
agency workers, temporary contracts etc new hierarchies of wages and contract
terms are introduced, to further divide the workers. That has been made possible,
because at the same time more people were trying to escape from the 40-hour-normal-working-week.
From then on they keep themselves above water by working hear and there, or
by using the state benefits and cash in hand work. 5 Revolution
In the last two years is has become clear in all corners and ends of the
world: capitalism has not triumphed, it is in crisis. The current crisis shows
that capitalism is not a superior social form, that the free market is a liberal
fantasy and that the political class only seem be have the possibility to
be able to predict and determine social developments. Some of the world wide tendencies described give hope to these changing times
and are signs that the exploited class can, through their struggles, change
the world and create a different one. The class struggle does not only intensify
the capitalist contradictions, it also changes the conditions under which
we produce our lives: we work more and more closely together; we are less
and less directly dependant on ploughing our fields or selling our products;
productive technologies are no longer concentrated in the metropolis; ever
more wealth is created (disregarding which sort), while ever less labour time
is necessary for the production of particular goods,[27] production is ever
more dependant on common knowledge, the communication and co-operation of
millions of workers worldwide. When the crisis and confrontation comes to a head and the search for a revolutionary
movement becomes ever more pressing, the reformists from the left try everything
to diffuse the situation. Many fighters against neo-liberalism want to sell
us the old welfare state as a benevolent papa and they want to take action
against the evil world market together with the state and the unions. In the
fight against fascism, the violence of the state is happily overlooked, the
schools or universities are accepted, so long as there are not fascists running
around there.
6 Revolutionary struggle - organisation of the revolutionaries
Clearly - the movement, the offensive struggles are missing in our region.
So we have to ask all the more, how can we bring forward revolution? If the
revolutionary movement is weak, it is not because there is no political organization,
strong union or communist party. The origins of the weakness lie in the actual
conditions within the sphere of exploitation. We have to ask why the exploited
do not find a militant, liberating expression of their productive power in
this current situation. We have to find those situations where this defensive
position can be broken up. Therefore, we need revolutionary organizing. Firstly, we need to take the actual conditions of class struggle, the current
changes in the world as the starting point.
This means to analyse the restructuring of capital and the new composition of
the working class. In our region (Ruhrgebiet, Germany) we need to look at what
happened to the leftovers of the heavy- and metal-industry and which new sectors
and production chains have arisen. In order to contribute to the workers' discussions and struggles we need
to understand the issues of conflict in the different places of exploitation
and listen to the workers there. In our region there were strikes by assembly
workers at Opel Bochum, Turkish cleaners of railway cars and call centre-workers,
which we could have responded to. * How can a struggle be self-organized, how can the means of
production be appropriated as means of struggle?
For all this we need to get an inside view into the different relations of
exploitation, and it is necessary be able to react immediately to worldwide
changes. The relative silence in face of the war in Yugoslavia shows our weakness.
We need to be able to circulate information on struggles in Korea and against
social democratic/green party wars faster within the sphere of exploitation
and to organize actions. In theoretical discussions we have to gain the ability to criticise the conditions
radically and profoundly. We need to teach each other the practical abilities,
from lay-outs to sit-downs, everything we need to take part in and intervene
into the class struggles around us. Notes 1 You can get a list of the texts from us - [email-]address at the end of
the paper.
We concentrate here on capital, state and gender, which are not, however,
structures that stand side by side that can be fought against singly. If we
talk about Capitalism, we mean the entire relationship. If we talk about class
struggle, we mean the struggle that directs itself against that relationship.
Capital describes the relationship within which we co-operate in a world-wide
division of labour.[2] We seem dependant on capital,because it brings together
our divided work under it's command. That is the basis of capitalist power,
the basis therefor, of a small class holding the means of production in their
hands, being able to force us to work and exploit us.
We don't stand up for eight hours in stuffy factories and punch out small
parts for Smarts or Playstations because we think that society has a need
for this crap. We go into the factories or offices and sell our labour power,
because we don't have any other way of sustaining ourselves. We need the wage
because we don't posses anything other than our labour power. We have no riches,
no means of production and, through the capitalist organisation of work, no
possibilities of coming together with the world wide producers independently
of capital. We have to graft away in isolated households, because otherwise
other people wouldn't be able to work or would have to spend so much on snack-fodder,
laundrettes and touchy-feely workshops, that the money would not be enough
to live on.
However, not only are we robbed of our means of production, but we don't end
up getting the products that we produce every day. We don't determine what
we produce and the ways and means that we do it. The means of production and
means of subsistence that we produce stay in the hands of the owners of the
means of production. By this separation of us from our products they are thus
always able to force us to work for them.[3] Through this process, we daily
(re)produce the pre-condition of having to work, the basis of our exploitation.
The bosses want to present the theft of the products of our work as 'free
and fair exchange' - wages for work. The exploitation is hidden behind the
wage, being forced to work hidden behind the 'free exchange'. The capitalists
only gives us the wages, because otherwise we would starve and couldn't work
for them any more. In a much shorter time than our working day, we produce
the equivalent of our wages, the equivalent of the things that are necessary
for the subsistence of us and our families. Most of the time in the day we
are working solely for the profit of the small class of capitalists. This
profit, and not our needs, is the determining factor of capitalism.
However just a small part of the profits go on the luxury hampers of whichever
fat-cat. The capitalists themselves are forced to turn a large part of the
profit back into capital, i.e. to invest in yet more machines, office blocks
and labour power. They don't do this because they can't stuff their faces
full enough, but because otherwise they would go bankrupt and wouldn't be
capitalists any more. What presents itself as the law of competition for the
individual capitalist, is the law of capitalist accumulation: Capital has
to become more capital through the exploitation of labour power.[4]
A social mode of production that does not arise from the need and collectivity
of billions of producers, but has as its only sense and purpose the increase
of capital; that for this purpose reduces the daily lives of most people to
(wage) slaves and thereby produces rage a-billion-fold; such a mode of production
also produces inevitable crises. These crises are not accidents of capitalism,
they are part of its contradictory organisation of production, its need for
accumulation, for the expansion of exploitation.[5]
Gender[6]
Ones gender determines which tasks we carry out in the social division of
labour. It does that from fixed 'gender specific' wage work in production
up to practical characteristics and activities for example 'men' having to,
or wanting to, protect. Gender arises as a relation within the social mode
of production of capitalism, in the association and the acting out of fixed
activities, roles and identities. The development of the forces of production
- the expansion of social co-operation and the development of technical means
to lighten physical work - determines the character of the gender division
of labour.
Capitalism found the existing gender division of labour, turned it into the
basis of isolating the form of reproduction of labour power and thereby used
it to bring down the capital expenditure. Giving birth and the rearing of
children was from then on synonymous with the production and reproduction
of labour power. The gender division of labour and the reduction of women
to the reproduction of labour power makes the divisions between men and women
fixed. That did not appear for the first time with capitalism, but the shift
in production from houses (farming or handicraft) into families in factories
and offices has fundamentally changed the social position of men and women
and created new patriarchal relationships.
The dependence of women on the income of men, ensured through marriage and
violence, built a framework within which women were supposed to perform particular
work for the capitalist accumulation: to produce the commodity of labour power;
take care of the reproduction, ideological disciplining and initial training.
Housework is part of the social co-operation, without which the capitalist
machinery won't function. In families and in the disciplining state institutions
girls and boys are introduced to the skills that needed to be developed for
later exploitation in house and wage work.
Proletarian women as wage workers always play the role of the industrial reserve
army: where they can be exploited for the capitalist valorisation process
they are sent to the assembly lines - whether in the development zones of
South China, the Maquiladora sweatshops on the US-Mexican border or the electronic
hell-holes in central Europe.[9] Where struggle and the revolution of the
social modes of production demands dismissals, they are supposed to just back
to the kitchen, e.g. in the ex-DDR (East Germany) and other former eastern
block states.[10]
As a rule, this work is paid worse than equivalent work by men. In Germany
alone millions of women work in insecure working situations like 320 Euro
jobs (under the tax and national insurance level), part time work etc. All
in all the situation for most women is characterised by insecurity, low wages,
poverty and a 16 hour day for the boss, the husband and the children.
Women are fighting against exploitation at work, refusing to do housework
and children rearing and telling their husbands to fuck off. The mechanisation
of households and the conversion unpaid housework into paid work (fast food,
caring...) was a reaction to this refusal. For many women paid work is the
first chance they get to overcome the isolation of the family and take part
in social life. On the other hand they only end up in a different form of
exploitative relationships.
Where women and men attack the gender divisions, they have to be re-enforced
again. Women have to be forced into the fulfilment of their 'duties' with
violence, men get drilled in the conscripted army and other 'men schools'.
With child benefits, marriage laws and personnel management strategies, men
and women are further forced into defined jobs, defined roles and learned
behaviours. But at the same time the division only works, because we reproduce
it over and over again as men and women - amongst ourselves and in relation
to the 'other gender'. Where new identities are created, as gay and lesbian,
as part of the women's or men's movements, there is an attempt to reintegrate
these forms into the capitalist process: equalities officers, funds for subcultures,
gay insurance policies, lesbian politicians.
House and wage work are both dependant on one another as existing parts of
the relations of production, within which we (re)produce our life in the forms
of class and gender. From this point, class struggle is the struggle against
work, against social modes of production, that create the exploitative relations
of capital as well as creating gender.
The State
Fundamental for the exploitation in capitalism is a mass of labour power,
that can only live by selling its labour power, or, does not have access to
its own means of production. The state makes sure that people stay divided
from their means of production on a daily basis, through wars and expulsion
from the countryside. Development aid, migration and population politics are
used to be able to control the new proletarians.
The separation from the means of production has to permanently maintained
through threats and the use of violence: soldiers against autonomous actions
by landless people, police against factory occupations. State protection of
private property is protection of the owners of the capitalist class, protection
from the appropriation of the means of production by the producers and thereby
the preservation of the condition of exploitation.
The of social activities in the form of the state has to be re-enforced daily:
the police and teachers have to become accepted as such, the state has to
get its own material apparatus produced etc. In times of heavier struggle
or crisis it becomes apparent that the state is not necessarily a given. Particular
tasks that are not organised by the state any more, the people have to, or
can, carry out communally again. E.g. in parts of Russia, where due to the
crisis, the state stopped undertaking particular social care duties, or during
the struggles in Albania, that reduced the state to its role as military power.[16]
Our Power to Make Changes
The possibility of liberation from this powerlessness is in our daily social
practice. It is the world-wide co-operation of work, that create capital,
the state, the gender relations every day a-new. In struggles we can break
out of those relations and get to know that we are not isolated individuals,
but that, together with all the exploited in the world, we form cohesion of
divided labour. This can turn into the material power of a movement, within
which we liberate ourselves from these relations:
We can destroy capital, because money will become old paper and machines become
scrap metal, if we don't use them or they are not used. The power of capital
over living labour has an end, if the struggle overcomes the apparent divisions
of social production in house holds, companies, nations etc.
That is the struggle against work. The struggle against a social activity
that is the basis for exploitation and oppression. It is the revolutionary
critique and the power to make changes. This critique is not born on a desk
or in a lefty seminar, but where we come together every day, where through
our work, we create the power of capital over the producers. in dingy backyard
workshops, in kitchens and canteens, at the assembly line and street corners,
behind fast-food counters, in hi-tech offices, university lecture halls and
in coffee plantations, the confrontations take place that embody the possibility
of a movement that can change everything. The rage expresses itself in conflicts
large or small, in the refusal to put up with the drudgery and disciplining.
Calling in sick, working slowly, taking longer breaks, nicking stuff and annoying
the 'little boss' are forms of the daily little wars by individual workers.
These conflicts are permanent. There is no consensus over the exploitation.
It stays a part of the capitalist development, or could be diffused in biannual
balloted union-lead half-day work-to-rule actions, if the isolation of the
conflicts does not break out into common struggle.
Revolutionary situations arise, if the exploited turn their daily divided
co-operation around, and into organising their struggle: if the office workers
don't work away to the rhythm of some other workers PC-inputs, but rather
use the intranet to co-ordinate the strike; if the assembly line workers don't
have to try to catch up with the assembler before her, but rather use the
co-operation to bring the whole assembly to a stand still; if the struggle
in the schools ruins the a whole coming generation of workers; if joint proletarian
rent strikes or mass-shoplifting was organised in the play-groups and parent
and toddler groups.
The struggle develops a material power, because it suspends the capitalist
accumulation and undermines the state.
The self-organisation of the struggle by the strugglers is only possible in
those conflicts that result from the daily structures of forced co-operation.
In these conflicts the relationships and needs change. In this way we get
to know, the means and possibilities are there to create an-other non-capitalist
community. In these struggles there is the chance to 'out' as paper tigers,
the supposed supremacy of capital, the seeming independence of the state and
naturalness of gender relations. Because the practical relations to each other
and to the means of production change and because in struggle they can be
developed and created without capitalist mediation. This real movement within
capitalist exploitation we call
Class Struggle
This process is class.
The material conditions of production and the form of how the class fight
against these conditions, are directly interrelated and always changes through
the confrontations. Every collective activity, every struggle impels the capitalists
and their 'little bosses' to appoint or dismiss new people (with different
'qualifications'), to introduce new technology, different 'teaching methods',
wage systems or work organisation, to invite or deport immigrants. These changes
within capitalist production also change the ways we can fight and gives a
new face to the class struggle. Self employed long distance lorry drivers
will find other ways to struggle than call-centre workers or care workers.
New immigrants bring different experiences to the struggle from workers who
have worked for the same company for years. The revolt will hit the capitalist
accumulation more directly in a Maquiladoras factory tied in the world wide
production chain as in a backyard workshop in Haywards Heath that is only
locally economically active.
Revolutionary initiative has to be based on these concrete material conditions
and the already existing organisational endeavours of the class, if we intervene
in struggle. The usual organisational suggestions, valid for all sectors,
points in time and situations of struggle, like those made by parties, workers
councils or syndicalist unions can only hinder the self-movement of the class.
Class struggle is in very few cases a 'attack on capitalism', but rather struggle
against concrete exploitative situations. It does not require the unity of
the exploited, but rather in itself, tackles the hierarchy between the workers.
The divisions and splits within the proletariat is re-created daily through
the ways and means of capitalist production. It often comes to confrontation
between workers, if the varying positions of workers in the production process
is attacked along with the attack on the organisation of work. The possibility
of breaking out of the divisions, the chance of real change can only be found
in these struggles.
In confrontations most unions use the slogan "unity of all the exploited"
in order to get the conflict under control or to stifle it: "We can only fight,
if everybody joins in, but not everyone is joining in... There are so many
differences between the workers, so we need a strong union organisation here...
You can't beat up the headmaster, he is also just a wage dependant..." Those
parts of the proletariat who are fundamentally attacking the work and the
resulting hierarchies and divisions are at the forefront of driving the process
forward.
We have to support even those struggles that are against another part of the
proletariat: The struggle of school kids, if it has to be enforced against
the orderly parents and teachers; the revolt of black factory workers, if
their foreman stands against them; the strike of skilled workers, if they
can't stop unskilled workers from strike breaking; the self-organised women
in the factory, if they would be sabotaged by the male union.
Within these daily confrontations we look for the tendencies that do not let
themselves be absorbed by capitalist development, but that burst open and
go beyond it. These tendencies can seldom be clearly recognised by their 'external
form' of struggle: the stated demands, the 'official' leaders, the questions
of whether a conflict is peaceful or violent, initially says very little about
the 'revolutionary content' of the struggle. The strugglers may experience
less collective power and liberation in a union institutionalised general
strike for 15 percent more wages, than in a wildcat strike for 2 percent.
Whether revolutionary tendencies of self liberation from the existing relations
of production/learning/living arise in the struggles depends upon whether
the strugglers
* find forms of self organisation, that bring forth new collective relationships,
and within the struggle undermine the hierarchical divisions of labour.
* take possession of the means of production in such a way that they can no
longer be used as a means of enforcing work, but rather become means of abolishing
work.
* break out of the divisions of everyday work such as professional and language
groups, department, housing estates and company walls etc.
* hit capital and the state through the struggle and so can be an example
of workers power for other proletariats.
Crisis
The basis of this crisis does not lie, as defenders of capitalism often maintain,
in adventure capital speculation, faulty management or corrupt governments.
These explanations are only there to raise the hope that the crisis can be
overcome through a 'better policy'. The causes of crisis is not reformable.
It is caused by the reactions of the workers against the exploitation and
the consequential sharpening of the contradictions of capitalist relations
of production.
The crisis of capital is the crisis of valorisation: that for the exploitation
of the workers, the invested capital does not bring enough profit, that is
needed for the exploitation process.[17] Strikes, working slowly, refusing
new work models and enforcement of better living standards, without consideration
for the internal deficit or company benchmarks, leads to sinking profits.
If capital can not break these workers (re)actions and impose increased exploitation,
it increasingly goes looking for other regions with better valorisation conditions
- which is increasingly difficult, as there almost no regions left today where
the people don't know what capitalism means. Or else the ruling class try
to buy time needed for the enforcement of new exploitation conditions, but
taking out more credit, or with financial speculation.
This does not succeed for them - when the profit from the increased production
doesn't cover the credit - it ends in a crash, like we have seem recently
in Asia, Russia and Latin America. That shows that today's 'Globalisation'
is not a sign of the power of capital, but primarily that it globalises its
crisis.
Struggles and Confrontations
The strikes in UPS and General Motors in the USA and of the Spanish and French
transport workers are examples of more openly led class confrontation in the
capitalist metropolises. Apart from that, the situation seems to be one of
a blockade: there are almost no struggles against the increasing stress of
work, but also that capitalism, is not able to implement any new profitable
exploitation regimes by its attacks.[18]
There can't really be any talk of a global struggle. Many struggles start
from a position of weakness: company closures, defending against deteriorations
etc.. Many confrontations take on nationalist or of other forms of violence
within the working class.
The New Crisis Regime
Besides some 'welfare state measures', the ruling class [20] have recently
had only the most brutal of all state deeds left, to solve the class confrontation.
The was in Yugoslavia in 1999 shows a new quality of the crisis regimes: The
left governments sold the bombing as a humanitarian action and, NATO wanted
to demonstrate, with this ideological motivation, their ability to reduce
every spot on this earth to rubble.
Above all the war had an enormous effect on the class situation in the Balkans:
* The bombs on the Serbian big industrial plants managed to push through what
the Serbian regime had not managed after years of attacks: The fastest mass
redundancies since the Treuhand.[21] The 600,000 workers whose firms were
flattened by the bombing, will probably never now come together again in their
old work groups, in which they fought for such a long time against wage reductions
and redundancies. The war created a dispersed labour force, the basis for
the intensification of exploitation, as we can see, for example, from the
new work from VW or the Italian outsourced textile fleapits in Bosnia.
* The struggle of students and workers against the repression and 'welfare
state politics' of the Serbian state, has for the time, being, become side-tracked
down democratic-nationalistic lines, as a result of the war.
* In Kosovo millions became separated from their land and occupations and
had to flee. Many of them, whether 'Albanian' or 'Serbian' have to work somewhere
else, often as low paid competitors to the indigenous workers.
* The new 'ethnic' borders and the selective EU policies of 'rebuilding' the
profitable regions like Croatia, Slovenia, and now maybe Montenegro separate
and favour certain regions, thereby creating the basis for new nationalistic
violence within the working class.
* The Balkans are under military occupation. In this region, characterised
by the mobility of the workers, is now controlled by NATO troops and UN organisations,
who are the ones who now do the moving around. When the Albanian population
armed themselves in 1997 and brought vast areas of land out of state control,
the 'Blue-helmets'[22] didn't venture into the
country. Today Albania is a NATO base.
Proletarianisation [23]
This proletarianisation means that the experiences of workers in Kuala Lumpur,
Kapstadt, Gaza, Sao Paulo, Lyon and Gelsenkirchen increasingly run in parallel:
factory work, computer entry, measures to combat rebellions, democratic rule
- we have to put up with similar conditions. Moreover, millions of workers
migrate in the oil regions, the industrial zones, in the construction sites
and in the households of this earth, fleeing from the situation in there regions
of decline and/or on the search for a better life. They are part of the global
co-operation and offer us the possibility of exchanging experiences and learning
from the struggles in other regions of the world.
In Asia and Latin America the increase of paid work for women has provide
many women with their own income. Moreover the refusal of women to refuse
to graft away as unpaid and isolated housewives, drives forward the socialisation
of housework. It is doubtful as to whether the work at a McJob is actually
more pleasant than the home and hearth, however it takes them out of the isolation
of the house or the farm plot and creates better conditions to fight together
against exploitation and sexist laws. The crisis of housework undermines the
old gender division of labour, for without female house work, you're gonna
get pretty crap miners. The gender relations are in flux, because the new
jobs do not prop up and reproduce the fixed roles and rigid divisions that
have existed up to now. In many of the new jobs the old gender divisions tend
to be superseded and that changes the gender relations entirely. Similar experiences
simplify - together with the new technological possibilities of worldwide
communication - the exchange and co-ordination of struggle.
And: The defence of individual handicrafts or small pieces of land in view
of the proletarianisation tendency often means nothing more than then defence
of poverty and hardship. Proletarianistaion means, more and more being dependant
on the work of millions of others, in order to be able to set the means of
production going. Through the increased introduction of machines, work is
often no longer individual skill or ability.
Through this we see other producers less and less as a mere 'function', who
stands in contrast to ourselves by being able shoe our horse, or find the
right herbs against our illnesses (so represent that function that we need),
but rather simply a person, with similar skilled or unskilled abilities, like
ourselves.
That is not only the prerequisite for increased capitalist exploitation and
competition, but also for a global revolution, not to liberate the work, but
to destroy it - for a class free society of free individuals.
Flexibilisation
One the one hand this means that we have much more varying experiences today.
Lots of workers have worked in a few different sectors and can be 'flexible'
in how they organised their work and entertainment. They have worked in other
countries, learned languages, built up contacts and got to know different
forms of struggles. Many have tried out the beginnings of self organisation
far away from the family, state benefits and unions. This could be the basis
for a new struggle, that is characterised by mobility, stores of experiences
for different exploitation situations and little respect for a career for
life.
On the other side we need to put up with the insecurity, the so-called precarious
work conditions - part time, temp-agency, fixed term contracts... many of
us are forced to always hunt around for whatever jobs, that further shrink
our control over our own lives. And, the pressure to work was increased: by
wage cuts, by raising social contributions such as health insurance[24] etc.
that always leads to more "working poor", and by direct pressure from the
Benefits Agency or the Job Centre, who use the threat of cutting, or totally
stopping, benefits if you don't take a shit job or 'training scheme'.
Here in Germany the red-green government has seriously taken on the reconstructing
the welfare state: Compulsory training schemes for young people are already
running, other plans are still in the wings: further cuts to benefits and
other outcomes through the introduction of a guaranteed income, the tying
of unemployment money to neediness - so no longer as insurance, where you
supposedly get back the cash you have paid in at some point, the introduction
of forced labour for those who refuse work etc..[25] All these developments
have contributed to a weakening of workers struggles in the core industrial
sectors in the last few years.[26]
The outsourcing has also lead to increased significance of the communication
and transport sectors. Especially through the Just-in-time production, where
the suppliers have to supply their components in an exact time to the assembly
line, the production chain has become extremely susceptible to malfunctioning.
The strikes of HGV drivers in France and Spain, the car suppliers Johnson
Controls and the parcel deliverers UPS in the USA very quickly brought the
lines in the factories to a stand still, because the parts were missing. The
new production relations has made capitalism more vulnerable!
Times of crisis are times of radical social change, of changes within a exploitative
society. In these times the searching and questioning after a different social
perspective becomes louder from all sides, struggles and confrontations take
place with a new intensity. Therein lies the possibility of the class finding
a common ,liberating answer within the struggle.
If the revolutionary perspective fails, the crisis will be the beginning of
a new exploitation regime. The ruling class has to enforce an increased expansion
of capital by squeezing the workers, until the pips squeak. Our role is to
emphasis, in the discussion within the coming class confrontations, that capitalism
and crisis are inseparably connected to one another, that the effects of the
ever intensifying crisis cannot be overcome through 'scrimping and saving',
but through the destruction of this absurd system.
Communism and Revolution
The coming movement of the working class will be situated within these conditions.
It will decide whether in the future, the increasing social productivity will
be directed against us in the form of capitalist machinery. Or whether we
use our productive collectivity as weapons in the struggles and as the basis
of communism, a society without exploitation and drudgery.
Communism is neither some far-off utopia or a planned out society, but is
part of the struggle, in which the existing mode of production is changed,
new relations and new needs arise and the means are appropriated for the fulfilment
of those needs. The process will get violent if those who profit from the
existing relations, fight back against those who have had enough. The revolution
won't be some power coup, no taking over the power of the state.
The existing organ of state violence will be destroyed, but the deciding question
of the struggle is whether the producers appropriate in this process the conditions
of production in a way, that makes the survival of a state or capitalist control
un-necessary and impossible. Whether they lead the struggles through self-organisation
and thereby create the basis for a society in which our needs are placed in
the centre and decide for ourselves how we meet those needs.
In the revolutionary process the basis of the divisions of labour, company,
gender and 'international', must be demolished and the knowledge of the production
and the means to make it automatic must be socialised. Only then can the struggles
create being together without mediation through institutions, identities,
money and machinery to become in practice a society of free individuals.
... or the Wretchedness of Reformism?
Instead of making an end to the misery of work, much of the left calls for
fair distribution of work or even demand more of it. Guaranteed income and
other 'give-us-crumbs' demands turn us into solitary victims, who are supposed
to beg the nation state for higher benefits or whatever other 'rights'.
The red-green government builds on the fact that the left controlled protests
give them fitting ideas for their crisis management: guaranteed income, kombilohn[28]
etc. protects the workers in times of short McJobs, the 'work for all' wailing
creates the atmosphere for various work programmes. The youth should look
for their future perspectives in the sweat shops, the unemployed be thankful
for their new low-wage-daily-life... The 'Autonome' in times of crisis unpack
an Leninism that already smells of decay: the victims of the social 'exclusion'
should unite behind easily understandable demands and little by little become
accustomed to a supposed revolutionary consciousness. Along the lines of the
slogan 'follow us, we know the way to fight'.
Revolutionary organizing has to support the self-liberation of the exploited.
It cannot take the form of mass organizations which go out on demonstrations
pretending to represent the demands of workers, students, etc. There cannot
be a "revolutionary policy" within union and political frameworks because
it is not the "issues" or "leadership" of unions or political organizations
that makes them reformist. The whole character of these representing bodies
makes them reformist from the start. The attempt to overcome the divisions
within capitalist production through "grassroots organizing of other workers"
in "all-encompassing" structures (neighborhood-centers, rank-and-file-groups,
etc.) or under generalised demands, will also, sooner or later, end up in
the politics of representation. The organizing of the class can only be the
result of the struggles within the capitalist organization of work, in firms,
universities and schools. Only in these attacks on the actual divisions the
organizing can be all-encompassing. The organizing of the class struggle only
takes place through and within the actual collective struggles. All attempts
to maintain it beyond that, end up as institutions.
Revolutionary organising is not "organising of other workers" but of revolutionaries
who know their way in the sphere of exploitation and together look for tendencies
of a revolutionary movement. Their relation to other exploited workers is
neither "tactical" - as between functionaries and a revolutionary subject
- nor "enlightening". We know that we can only liberate ourselves in those
struggles where the exploited destroy everyday-capitalism and capitalist relations
between people. We cannot instigate struggles but we can summarize the most
advanced discussions, the weak points of capitalist control and the critique
the workers. And we can generalise these experiences and circulate them within
the sphere of exploitation. The relation between revolutionaries and workers
is that of a collective process: where is the possibility of workers' power
and self- liberation in the daily experience of exploitation?
What we have to do
* Where does a changing organization of the exploitation, of the organization
of work, technology, etc. lead to the weakening of workers' power and where
can we see weak points in the capitalist command?
* Which effects do these changes have on the qualification, the migration
and mobility of workers and the labour-market? What is the role of the state
in this context?
* What do the workers, students, etc. do about this situation, what do they
discuss? Where do forms of organizing and chances already exist that they
can use in the struggle?[29]
We need to find out, whether the skilled worker in the coal- and steel-industry
or the home- and part time-worker will loose their central position and whether
a new typical worker, highly mobile, working in the electronics sweatshops,
outside-suppliers and "service companies" will develop. This investigation
is necessary in order to understand the material basis for the upcoming class
struggles.
Secondly, in actual struggles there is neither need for cheerleading nor for
moralizing and patronizing but for information on self-organizing:
* Where could a struggle have the most material power, where could it interrupt
the capitalist production and co-operation most effectively?
* What kind of experiences are there around certain management strategies
(flexibilisation of working hours, teamwork, etc.)?
* What forms of organizing were developed by workers in similar situations?
* Where on the world are similar confrontations taking place?
Thirdly, it is not enough to supply the right information for class struggle
and apart from that stay passive observers. When we have an analysis of the
situation we need to actively intervene in the struggles, offer a critique
of them and support their revolutionary tendencies:
* How can a struggle widen out over the firm- or branch-limits
without ending up in the hands of unions or other institutions?
* Where are hierarchies and divisions of the process of production
being kept up? Where does the everyday division of work along gender,
racism and qualification stay untouched?
* Where does the state ideology of war, racism, etc. catch on and how
can that be substantially attacked?
We will prepare for the upcoming struggles and build contacts outside of "our
sectors of exploitation" in order to get away from the dependency on 'their'
information apparatus.
2 Capital is not merely a collection of "production circumstances"
- of machines, work materials, labour force - that economics so often bores
us with.
3 This work often only exists because capitalist exploitation exists - in
order to make this possible: millions of car workers produce millions of cars,
so millions of workers can drive to work, in order to produce entertaining
articles, medicaments, holiday complexes in Majorca and soap operas, that
draw us in during our 'free time', in order to forget the work i.e. to be
fit for work again.
Thousands of job centre workers, hospital dogs bodies, research and administration
workers also come along on the ride, to provide us with even more jobs, to
inject us healthy or to research into new work. Millions of unemployed work
at finding a new job - i.e. at avoiding it. Prison wardens, cops, soldiers
and foremen carry out the disciplining of the worker themselves.
The 'organisation' of production is also absurd: the social production arranges
itself over thousands of separately producing companies, through the division
of production and circulation, mediated by money.
That also makes any amount of additional work: Various commodities are shipped
twice round the globe, not because otherwise it would not get to a particular
place, but because through the sale, despite a hundred times more transport
workers, more profit is realised. In house building, most of the work arises
because the workers of the different firms only have to do their own specific
assignments. What do I care about co-ordinating with those working after me
etc. (i.e. avoiding that they don't have any annoying extra problems created
because I was not working with them in mind) if the boss is on my back to
get to the next construction site.
4 The separation of the producers from the means of production can only be
maintained, if the producers are confronted with ever more capital - in the
form of machinery and co-operation with other workers. Earlier making twenty
workers graft away with hand tools was sufficient, so today CNC-Machines and
world wide production chains have to be implemented, in order to make proletarians
to work 'efficiency' enough. See more in the section on Crisis.
5 For more detail on crisis see under 'tendencies'.
6 This is an attempt. We noticed in our discussion that we still have to go
a bit further in order to be able to really explain: the changes within the
classes, and the gender relations in the context of the development of, and
the confrontations around, the social mode of production. Only if we know
these developments as interrelations, can we point out the revolutionary tendencies
that lie within them.
7 Gender also means limitations. Much work is still done in purely female
or male departments. Only rarely does work allow for real and intensive relations,
and moreover we can't really live out and enjoy our desires for closeness,
openness etc, because we hide those desires behind the 'I'm a lad's lad and
not gay' wall, or they get lost in the competition amongst women. In our 'free
time' the other gender - normally one person - is supposed to remove our experienced
absence of feeling and sensuality.
8 This was not an clear process: In the first factories in the 18th century,
initially the women and children were exploited...
9 If, as in north Mexico or the development centres of China, mostly women
are going into the factories and doing wage work, while men don't have a job,
or do 'housework', then accordingly the gender relations change entirely.
10 Here the contradictory situation of women is particularly clear: After
decades of being bound to both wage and house work, many women wan