We are the Working Class of the World

By Steve Halpern

Everyone in this country has been barraged with information concerning the so-called Presidential election. We can also say that the news media, the government, as well as most of academia has made a determined effort to ensure that issues essential to working people would never be discussed. One of those many facts is the issue that there exists in literally every nation of the world, a working class. That working class, along with farmers, consists of the immense majority of the world’s population.

Understanding this, we might also consider that workers around the world have essentially the same interests. We all need and want food, clothing, a place to live, health care, education, transportation, communication, and exposure to culture that includes, music, art, dancing, theater, film, sports, literature, and recreation. We also want to live in a world that is in basic harmony with the environment, where women and people of all nationalities are fully liberated.

However, when we think about these ideas, we might consider that politicians routinely argue that the interests of workers in this country are different from the interests of workers in other countries. Politicians from both parties argue that one of their top priorities is to deport immigrant workers. They do this, understanding that the economy of this country is totally dependent on the labor of immigrants. They promote their policy of deporting immigrants, understanding that one of the foundations of this country has been the genocide against Native Americans. 

From time to time, politicians argue that we need to go to war against workers in other countries. Those wars cost the lives of literally millions of people. When we think of all the destruction caused by those wars, we might think about how resources might have been used to eliminate poverty in the world. This is another issue the media isn’t interested in raising.

So, in order to think about how we can advance the interests of the international working class, we might look at our history. We have had many outstanding leaders. The capitalists, on the other hand, have been relying on Donald Trump and Joe Biden to support their interests.

Before we look at some of the leaders of the working class, we might look at some of the theoreticians who supported the capitalist system. When we begin to understand their arguments, we can learn why capitalism came into existence, and why this system routinely experiences one crisis after another. 

John Locke

John Locke was a physician and philosopher who lived at a time of the British revolutions of the 1600s. This was at a time after the writers Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare began to imagine the world in different ways.

Locke attempted to make sense of the transition from the systems of feudalism to capitalism. During the feudal epoch, the royal families had absolute power they shared with religious clerics. Most people were peasants who worked on farms or manors that were controlled by the royal families. This meant that peasants were not allowed to travel away from the manors where they toiled.

Feudalism became an obstacle to advancing the interests of humanity. There was little interest in developing large-scale manufacturing because the economy was based on agriculture. So, a new class emerged that worked towards developing enterprises that would be financed to produce commodities for profit. In order to advance this new capitalist class, revolutions erupted in the Western Hemisphere and Europe. 

John Locke understood that capitalism was an advance over feudalism. He argued that this new system needed to support the idea of giving everyone “life, liberty, and property.” Locke felt that the right to property was important because this wasn’t insured in feudalism, where power was centered with the royal families. This idea of Lock was similar to the slogan raised in the French Revolution, “liberty, equality, and fraternity.”  

Locke also argued that “All wealth is the product of labor.” This argument that all wealth comes from the labor of workers has been routinely rejected by people who have power in the capitalist world. 

Bernie Sanders and many of his co-thinkers argue for reforming health care with a single-payer system. If we think of John Locke’s argument, we see that health care always has been, and always will be, funded with a single payer. That single payer is the working class of the world. According to Locke, we are the ones who produce all wealth. Therefore, we are the ones who will always sustain the health care systems throughout the world. The problem is that workers don’t control how health care systems are organized.

David Ricardo and John Smith

David Ricardo and John Smith both developed a more comprehensive analysis of capitalism. They both took advantage of their understanding of the system and became wealthy. However, both Ricardo and Smith understood that because of capitalism’s routine functioning, the system would periodically experience profound crisis. 

Today, the mainstream economists reject this point of view. They argue that capitalism will continue indefinitely and has the capacity to overcome all obstacles. The current pandemic is teaching us that this confidence in capitalism is merely a matter of wishful thinking.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels drafted their Manifesto of the Communist Party in 1848. In this Manifesto, they argued that, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” With the emergence of capitalism, two new classes came into being. These were the capitalist class and the working class. 

As we have seen with the writing of Locke, the working class creates “all wealth.” However, in capitalism the owners of corporations, who produce nothing, are the ones who control the means of production. 

Frederick Engels lived in Manchester, England and wrote a study of the conditions of the working class there. Engels gave concrete evidence showing how capitalists profited from the horrendous conditions of working class in that city.

Looking at this reality, we might think about the so-called educational system in the United States. Boards of Education that routinely support the interests of corporations, and demand that teachers adopt to lesson plans that support capitalist interests.

So, teachers ask students to start their days by pledging allegiance a flag, they claim represents “liberty and justice for all.” Along those lines, many teachers tell students that we live in a “democracy,” and that this is the greatest nation in the world. These arguments are based on the idea that in one day every year many working people have the right to vote.   

Understanding this relationship, we see how capitalists always have had interests that are antagonistic to the interests of workers. The capitalist drive to maximize profits comes in direct conflict with the basic needs of workers. 

Since working people are the overwhelming majority, and we have no control over the means of production, there can be no genuine democracy in the capitalist system. Marx and Engels argued that, “the capitalist state serves as the managing committee of the bourgeoisie.” The state consists of the government, the media, as well as the academic community.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

In February of the year 1917 there was a revolution is czarist Russia. Millions of Russian soldiers died as a result of the First World War. In a nation that was a breadbasket for the entire region, the Russian people experienced famine. At that time, Czarist Russia had the reputation of being the most repressive nation in Europe. These conditions were so horrendous that the Cossacks, who normally broke up and murdered protesters in the past, refused to be used against the revolutionaries.

As a result, a Provisional Government took power. However, that government refused to end the war, or use its power to feed the people, or to institute a comprehensive land reform.

So, when Vladimir Ilyich Lenin returned to Russia from exile, his organization demanded all power to the workers councils known as the Soviets. In order to help politically arm his organization, known as the Bolsheviks, he wrote a pamphlet titled State and Revolution. 

In that pamphlet, Lenin quoted Frederick Engels and argued that the capitalist state is a “special instrument of repression.” In other words, governments were invented to be used in the capitalist system as a way of legally robbing workers of the immense wealth we produce.

In the same year as Lenin wrote his State and Revolution, he also wrote another pamphlet titled: Imperialism—The highest stage of capitalism. In this pamphlet, Lenin showed how capitalist cartels were dominating nations all over the world. This was not because of a mistake made by the owners of corporations. No, because of the nature of capitalism, corporations and banks need to obsessively work to dominate the entire planet. This is why war has become a constant feature of the capitalist system. This is another example of how capitalist governments can only be a, “special repressive force.”

Fidel Castro

Then, in the year 1959 the Cuban Revolution erupted, and a new revolutionary government took power. This new government issued a document titled, The Second Declaration of Havana. That document asked a question that was similar to Lenin’s thinking on imperialism. “What is the history of Latin America if not the history of imperialist exploitation?”

Because the corporate drive to maximize profits was no longer the priority in Cuba, the government advanced a course that is unthinkable in the capitalist world. This was in spite of the fact that Cuba is a relatively underdeveloped nation. 

Initially, the government organized a massive literacy drive aimed at teaching everyone on the island how to read. As part of that effort, many teenagers who lived in the cities volunteered to live with impoverished families in the countryside in order to teach people how to read. That literacy drive became the foundation for the Cuban health care system, as well as the Cuban initiatives in bio-medical research, agriculture, and energy conservation.

Today Cuba has more doctors, per capita, than any other nation in the world. With respect to the United States, Cuba has about three times more doctors per capita. Cuban doctors travel all over the world treating some of the poorest patients.

In the current pandemic, Cuban health care workers visited literally everyone on the island checking to determine who has symptoms of COVID-19. Cuban scientists have also developed a treatment called Alpha-2B that has been effective in preventing COVID-19 patients from getting the potentially fatal disease of pneumonia. Currently Cuba also developed vaccines that will prevent people from getting infected with COVID-19. Yet, the United States has a trade embargo against Cuba that prohibits people living here to have access to Cuban advances in medicine. 

By utilizing this approach, Cuba has been able to combat the pandemic in ways that were unthinkable to the ruling powers in the United States. When we look at the state of Pennsylvania, the nation of Sweden, and Cuba, we are talking about three places that have populations of between ten and twelve million. As of this writing, in Pennsylvania there were over 9,000 COVID-19 deaths. In Sweden there have been over 6,000 COVID-19 deaths. In Cuba there have been 132 COVID-19 deaths. Yet, while the Black and Latino communities were hit the hardest by the pandemic, 100% of the Cuban population is Latino, and about 40% are Black.

Malcolm X

Malcolm X lived his entire life in the United States while Black people were routinely denied citizenship rights. This was in full violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Malcolm’s father Earl Little was lynched and, as with thousands of other lynchings, the government made no attempt to prosecute his murderers. 

As a child, when Malcolm mentioned to a teacher that he wanted to be a lawyer, his teacher responded, “That’s no job for an n—word.” Because he was blocked from becoming a lawyer, he became something similar to a corporate lawyer. He became a thief. Then, after the authorities apprehended Malcolm, he received a longer prison sentence because he was Black and was in a relationship with a white woman.

While Malcolm served time in prison, he became a supporter of the Nation of Islam. After Malcolm was released from prison, he appealed to young Black people who also became justifiably enraged with the routine and systematic racial discrimination of this country.

Malcom argued that this discrimination didn’t only exist in the states where Jim Crow segregation was the law. He said: “Stop talking about the South. If you’re south of Canada, you’re in the South.” This statement was similar to the idea promoted by Engels and Lenin that the state is a, “special repressive force.” Understanding this reality Malcolm felt that Black people have the capacity to develop a political movement that can liberate humanity and do away with the systematic discrimination we see today.  

Why hasn’t capitalism been replaced already?

So, if humanity has been experiencing this history for many years, we might ask a question: Why does the working class of the world continue to allow a tiny minority, that produces nothing of value, to control the immense amount of wealth in the world? 

Aside from the revolutions in Russia and Cuba, there were many revolutions in the world. There were the Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese Revolutions where imperialist exploitation was blocked for a while. Then, there were revolutions in Algeria, Nicaragua, Grenada, and Iran. However, in those nations, capitalism managed to adapt to new environments. 

The facts are that after the Second World War, revolutions erupted all over the world. The wars against Algeria, Korea, and Vietnam were imperialist efforts to maintain control over the world.

In the United States the labor movement and civil rights movements succeeded in improving the standard of living in this country. However, capitalist enterprises are routinely driven to sell more and more commodities and cut costs. So, they invested huge amounts of money to build factories in nations where wages are between one and ten dollars per day. This not only cut the costs of manufacturing, those new manufacturing centers created new middle classes that became lucrative new markets.

One would think that this huge exodus of capital from the United States would have had a devastating impact on the standard of living. Well, the overall standard of living in this country has been in steady decline for about fifty years. However, there are two reasons why the standard of living in this country hasn’t plummeted even more.

Women have always worked in this country. This is especially true in the Black community where there has been systematic racial discrimination. However, there was a time when many women were homemakers and didn’t need to work because the wages of their husbands were sufficient. 

All of that has changed. For the past fifty years, women have had access to contraception and abortion. This means that they have some control over if and when they become mothers. As the standard of living deteriorated, there was more of a need for two breadwinners in the family. So, today women routinely enter the labor force, and families now have two bread winners. This is one reason why the overall standard of living hasn’t deteriorated even more than it has already.

The other reason why the standard of living hasn’t plummeted more is because of the massive debt of workers with respect to loans for homes, cars, education, and health care. Corporations are also in astronomical debt. 

The days of capitalist expansion are over

Because of the steadily declining rate of profit, corporations need to routinely sell more and more commodities and become obsessed with cutting costs. This has meant that in order to maintain relative capitalist stability the economy needs to grow at a rate of about three percent per year. 

However, even with this growth, recessions erupt about every four to seven years. This is one reason why layoffs are routine in the capitalist system. The pandemic became a reality at the same time as capitalism was due for another recession. However, the economy never fully recovered from the recession of 2008.

These facts underscore the current capitalist dilemma. Added to those problems is the fact that the pandemic, and the corporate drive for profits have meant that the economy has been shrinking from where it was in 2019. However, while the overall economy became smaller, the stock market grew significantly. The one reason for this growth was the decision by the government to print money and give that money to corporations that serve the interests of some of the most affluent people in the world. 

So, when we look at this history, we can begin to understand why people who have power are indifferent to those who are suffering during the pandemic. Millions of jobs were eliminated. This means that millions of people have no way of paying their rent or buying basic commodities. This means that sooner or later the numbers of people who experience homelessness and hunger will continue to increase.

The need to learn from the past

The purpose of this article is to show that when we look at the history of capitalism, we see that we need to escape from this system in order for humanity to make any basic advances. We can also say that during the past fifty years there has been no sustained working class movement anywhere in the world. Cuba is the one place that has resisted all efforts to compromise the interests of workers. 

Saying this, we can also see that capitalism in the world is in deep trouble. The only force that has prevented a total collapse has been massive government bailouts. Those bailouts cannot continue indefinitely.

While there have been many revolutions in the world during the capitalist epoch, only Cuba has been able to maintain a genuine workers government.

Given this history, we can anticipate a few things. Conditions will continue to deteriorate in capitalism. Sooner or later there will be a massive response by workers demanding a reversal of our deteriorating standard of living. Hopefully, working people will learn from the events of the past, and develop a political movement that will allow humanity to escape the clutches of capitalism for all time.