Workers’ Power is Workers’ Democracy
Labor and the Capitalist Republic
Brief History from the Depression to Joe Biden
There is a new wind in America today, something considered stale a decade ago. All around the country when a conversation is struck about our future - no matter the community, the divide among the ruling parties - inevitably the conversation will talk about the future of workers in the US. There are plenty of reasons why that is, and they can be summed up to, the widening divide between the working class and the capitalist class. The consequences of this divide play out as an anxiety within both ruling parties that forces them to reckon with labor. The “Democratic” Party is forced to deal with an emerging reformist class consciousness among their base, exemplified by the rise of Bernie Sanders and interest in unions generally - organized labor oriented toward the political and economic advancement of the working class. The “Republican” Party is forced to deal with the right-wing populist and economic protectionist rhetoric of the outgoing demagogue, Donald Trump. The overall political situation is one in which the “Democrats'' must court the union worker; The “Republican” Party on the other hand, too beholden to the capitalist class to rethink its partnership with labor, must double down on the distractions that aided them for years in appealing to the petty resentments and frustrations of individuals - immigration, “law and order”, culture wars.
We, class conscious workers, must see the situation for what it is - opportunity. Biden’s presidency is shaping up to be one which will make big concessions to the Labor movement. Whether it is Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act), Infrastructure, or National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decisions; Labor is poised to make gains. It is not unusual in this context for us, incensed by the previous heavy handed anti-union administration, to let sleeping dogs lie. This would be a mistake. Not only do we need to march for the gains to be made, but to transform what remains the hidden background of Labor’s difficult situation, to expose the man behind the curtains.
In our Democracy is a hidden Dictatorship, one that the PRO Act exposes bare. The PRO Act amends existing federal labor law - the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). This legislation was made in 1935 in the midst of the Great Depression. The aim was to alleviate tensions between Capitalists and Workers, to create grounds for a new national cooperative framework between classes. The passage of this act reflected the tensions of the time and the power that the Labor Movement had. After America’s involvement in World War 2 in the years 1941-1945, the situation of Labor became compromised. Heavy diplomatic antagonism emerged against the Soviet Union as a world rival power to the United States of America. The Soviet Union presented a threat to global capitalism, bringing its system into the heart of Europe and Asia. In this environment, the Labor movement and its co-opted leadership purged from its ranks the class warriors associated with socialism, anarchism, and communism, and settled for a new “labor peace“ under the dictatorship of the capitalists. This culminated in the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 with a revanchist Congress even overriding the recently victorious Atomic Bomb dropping President, Harry S. Truman.
The conditions of the new “labor peace” were one in which labor unions’ freedom of association and speech were severely curtailed, strengthening the dictatorship of the capitalist class. The law made the “open shop” possible, it reduced the power of workers to strike by giving notice in advance to the employer, it gave power to the President to break workers’ strikes (as Reagan had done against Air Traffic Controllers in the 80s), it made it impossible for workers to target capitalists’ other business interests (through secondary boycotts).
From that moment emerged half a century of more losses than wins for the union movement. Labor didn’t immediately understand this impact, and the emergence of traitorous forces within our leadership, despite the feeling of strength and power among us. However, the emperor was exposed with no clothes once the “labor peace” became unnecessary with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the capitalist class wanted to extend its exploitation deeper all over the world against the international working class helped by an old adversary, “Communist” China, as a new emerging global sweatshop and hangman for their workers.
Throughout times of boom and bust of Wall Street’s gambles, the workers lost power. While money capital was profiting without producing in the USA, China carried out massive accumulation off their workers’ backs to develop a national economy capable of competing in the global capitalist system. The year 2007 exposed the American Dream’s lie: a wealthy country without wealthy workers, an economy in decay. Obama first rose as a possible savior, but failed on his Labor agenda in complicity with the 1%. Trump rose as the demagogue, seemingly existing in opposition to what common folk see as the “dirty politician,” and thus utilized this perceived relatability only to be exposed as a cretinous fake. This should have been expected as, despite Trump’s perceived opposition to “politicians,” he is still a member of the class which produces those very politicians, the capitalist class, NOT the working class. Now Biden steps in the role of commander-in-chief, and reconciliation with labor is of paramount concern for the “Democratic” party if they wish to retain stewardship over the country.
Labor vs. Capital
Today Labor stands subservient to Capital under its all-encompassing dictatorship. There is no type of association, no type of political speech more criminalized in America - with exception of directly insurgent speech - than that of Labor. The PRO Act is merely a means of redressing inadequacies decades in the making of the legal code of this capitalist system. It is no secret that this has always been the package of capitalism. Every capitalist strives towards a private dictatorship over those organized to work under his mastery, his ownership of the land, the tools, the capital. It is a right given by capitalist law, written by a ruling class possessed of all the implements of life over a working class which has nothing but their resourceful hands, bodies, and minds to put into use all the means of production.
Production can only extend from labor. Without labor the hammer has no motion, the trucks remain idle, the grapes rot on the vine, everything falls into disrepair. Capital is only a manifestation of Labor in the form of productive wealth owned privately by those who have managed to dispossess the majority through the wage system.
It was not always perceived this way. Class societies had various types of bonded relationships between Master and Slaves, Craftsman and Apprentices, Lords and Subjects. Relations took on a different appearance than the relationship of money. Brute force, divine right, and instructional discipline all provided a basis for social relations that were determinative over production. Prior to these there were, for hundreds of thousands of years of human existence, no class relations at all; people labored directly for themselves and their communities.
The coming into existence of Capitalism has stripped all social relations into material calculation. Our social labor becomes measured directly as abstract numerical units, money. It has prostituted everyone and lays bare this reality in front of our face. Cash rules everything around me. That rule is only a discipline if labor accepts wage slavery. If labor can organize itself, will itself to power, it can command capital.
Capitalists know this and fear such an event. Hence every measure to keep Labor disorganized, to keep it powerless, to hold it in restraint. Capitalism revolutionized the world by giving everything a price through its markets, and now the prices are determined to a fraction of pennies every millisecond in correspondence to the account of social demand for the products of social labor. Transformation of ownership and accounting of the productive capacity created by generations of social labor is the logical and rational destination of democratic and republican virtue.
A Workers’ Democracy, A Workers’ Republic. From the Shop Floor to the Commanding Heights of Industry
All that exists as the professional managerial and bureaucratic institutions of the government and the private dictatorships of the capitalist businesses are the commanding powers that are an alien repressive force against the power of Labor. It is for this reason that Labor must not simply contort itself to the will of Capital, to naively forge another “labor peace”. It was the foundational notion, uttered as common sense by those who created this republic in 1776, that their value should not be extracted through taxation by an alien King without “representation.” This is what happens for the vast majority of humanity in their waking hours under capitalism. The value of our work is extracted through a wage system by the private owners of our hourly labor, or we face destitution despite an incredibly productive abundance of social labor.
In line with the logic of common sense that moved the age of enlightenment into the age of revolution, we must form a more perfect union based upon the union of Labor. Not a utopia of the brotherhood of man born from God's Kingdom, but from the existing scientific potential that is already made for Labor to take control.
The defensive organization of Labor against Capital can be turned into an offensive mode that can seize control over industry and institute a new republican model based upon citizenship that is not derived from mere accidental relationship of birth to a specific land, but service of social labor to the common good, consumption, desires, and happiness of all peoples.
Organization of a Worker’s Republic extends from principles of constitutional construction of vertical and horizontal relations of power. Power of a government alienated from production is no longer what we desire. Our government extends directly from production. The shop is not merely the lowest level of democratic organization, but the foundation of the Republic. Such shops will have vertical relationships to union organizations that reflect their industrial basis - i.e. construction shops relate to an industrial construction union, manufacturing shops to industrial manufacturing unions, agricultural shops to industrial agricultural unions. The industrial unions respectively control each of their industrial sectors. The unity forged between such industrial unions through a common council will be responsible for the commanding heights of the economy. All bureaucratic elements within the apparatus of industrial control are directly recallable and accountable to the workers that form these industrial unions. In encouragement of the continued development of productivity and skill of labor as free associative labor, it is admissible and the right of laborers to form dual unionist societies in relationship to their industrial outfit on the basis of craft. It likewise would be admissible for cooperative-joint ownership ventures among workers to be struck out, accountable to the Industrial Unions.
A Workers’ Republic will be based on the dominance of industrial unions as the organization of governance. It will control the commanding heights of the economy and is directly accountable to the vast majority of the people, the workers. In accounting for particular claims that stem from the unevenness of development, primarily, and other matters of local concerns and demands upon production, organizations of inter-communal councils should be organized to redress themselves to the Industrial Workers’ Republic.
This system of organization of production, this system of governance has no place for the exploiters, the grifters, the layabouts, and other parasites to labor. Labor directly standing in relationship to its social product furnishes itself with its own means for consumption. Such a system can furnish to each worker their allotment of the products of social labor based upon their work and, in the conditions of more heightened productivity, to all simply on the basis of need.
From Few to Many
The only means possessed to us are modest. At this moment we are the militant minority of workers. To qualitatively transform the situation and to realize the conquest of power we must become organized and poised for class combat. We must have a coordinated and organized body which will handle the logistics, composed of our brightest and most capable to utilize all the means to mobilize fellow workers to conquer power for the working class. As has been stated, Labor's position in this country is one faced with the most restrictions on free speech. While the wealthy are free to pillage this country and raze others for the enrichment of their coffers with impunity, workers cannot band together to withhold their labor in the protest of blatant exploitation. Why is this so? It is because profits can only be realized from the labor of others, and this is the basis of power in this country, in which all social control stems from. Should the workers unite to challenge this and begin to acquire the taste for this power, then a serious upheaval in the social order is at hand.
Most workers understand they are exploited, many have unfortunately accepted this and feel they are powerless to do anything about it. Among the multitude there are also those who would resist had they had the means and support to do so, organizing this advanced section would inspire the multitude who are alienated from their position in life. We seek these people out. We seek these leaders and captains of our class who would break the chains, who would light the match, and who would dedicate their lives to the liberation of their class. We are for every favorable condition for the working class, for every condition which seeks to give them a larger concession from the capitalist class. Through even the most minimum of reforms and the victories of these there emerges a surge of enthusiasm which must be seized upon and built up. We answer our vocation and take up our post to achieve this with the understanding that from a few must come many. At first a few, then many!
Workers of the World Unite!
