The workers who wouldn't be persuaded
The workers who wouldn't be persuaded
By Peter Boyle
Since the collapse of the bureaucratic regimes in eastern Europe, we've been told that socialism is just another discredited 19th century philosophy. The whole world, supposedly, now accepts that capitalism is the best possible system and that there is no alternative to more privatisation, austerity and sacrifice by everyone (except the corporate bosses).
But the dramatic strikes by South Korean workers have shaken the official optimism of the capitalists. The working class of what was recently the model industrialising capitalist economy refuses to accept that its interests coincide with those of its bosses.
The British Economist editorialised that the problem was that the Kim Young-sam government didn't do a good job of persuading workers to accept the new laws that make it easier for the bosses of the chaebol (the large corporate empires that dominate the South Korean economy) to sack their workers.
The Kim government rushed the new legislation through an early morning session of the parliament from which opposition members were excluded. Its "persuasion" has consisted of tear gas, water cannons and truncheons.
The South Korean government's problem may be more dramatic, but it isn't unique. Capitalist governments generally are finding it harder to sell their policies as something "rational". "Economic rationalism" has become such a dirty word that they've decided to use "globalisation" in its place.
But new buzz words can't hide the fact that capitalist governments can only prescribe more pain, sacrifice and insecurity for the majority. Why, with all the dramatic advances in technology, should workers be forced to work harder for less; why should their lives become more insecure?
The capitalists know that the struggle between classes is far from over. Indeed, to maintain their profit rates, they have to escalate that struggle. That's what Kim Young-sam is doing in South Korea, and what the Howard government is doing here.
Karl Marx observed that history has consisted of struggles between exploited and exploiting classes. But with the development of capitalism, he concluded, the working class can no longer free itself from the class that exploits and oppresses it, the capitalist class, without at the same time freeing the whole of society from exploitation, oppression and class struggles.
On the basis of this, Marx and his close collaborator, Frederick Engels, launched a project for human liberation based on the political mobilisation of the working class. The working class, the great majority in a developed capitalist country, should wrest state power from the capitalists and build a society based on people's needs rather than on capitalist profits.
This socialist goal has inspired and involved millions of people over the last century and a half. Heroic struggles have been waged for socialism, and there have been notable victories as well as defeats.
Today, while contingents of the working class are fighting the bosses, their banners are not emblazoned with socialist slogans. They are fighting to defend their immediate interests, not to take power from the capitalists and fashion a new system.
But when the working class goes into sustained action in its own interest, the necessity of replacing capitalism tends to arise. The feelings of alienation and powerlessness that beset workers in periods of inaction and retreat begin to lift, and it becomes easier to wonder: "What if we ran society?".
So the attacks of the capitalists and their governments constantly provide new impetus for socialism. For that reason alone, socialism will be around as long as capitalism is — and somewhat longer.
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@ Xx@ [Peter Boyle is a member of the National Executive of the Democratic Socialist Party.]