Working Class and the Oppressed Under the Conditions of Imperialist Globalization
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Expropriation and Quantitative Expansion of Proletariat

 

From the point of view of the working class and the laborers, imperialist globalization means the following: taking working class under encirclement of chronic mass unemployment, worsening their work and life conditions through usurping their gainings, weakening their organization capability, developing the culture of bourgeois competition among the workers, mass expropriation of petty and middle peasantry, declination of rural population with a high speed against the urban population, devastation of city petty bourgeoisie, widening of ranks of working class, expansion and exacerbation of the antagonism of rich-poor in the cities.

Expropriation in the rural is one of the main sources of the quantitative growth of the proletariat. Capitalist transformation of the agriculture accelerated in the era of imperialist globalization. Population of the world was almost doubled since 1970 until 2010 by increasing from 3 billion 685 million to 6 billion 924 million. In the same period, while the rural population increased approximately 1,5 times by rising from 2 billion 329 million up to 3 billion 347 million; the urban population grew more than 2,5 times by rising from 1 billion 340 million to 3 billion 522 million. In another words, the rural population which was constituting 63.47 percent of the world population in 1970, receded to 48.52 percent in 2010. And the urban population increased from 36.53 percent to 51.48 percent respectively.

Again, the total number of working in the agriculture declined from 37.9 percent to 30.6 percent between the years of 2000 and 2010. This rates even fell down to 5.2 percent for OECD countries, 1.6 percent for USA and Germany and 1.2 percent for England.

Capitalist transformation of the rural and the devastation process of the laboring peasantry cause its wide masses to throng to the cities due to expropriation. At the same time, these bring the laboring peasants to confront directly with the imperialist capitalist world order, big capitalist companies and in most cases with the world monopolies. The fact that all of the required products to sustain the agricultural production from seeds to manure are included in the relation of dependence on the monopolies, is one side of it. Another problem is the ravaging of nature and life areas through countless forms like energy supplying, naturally harmful mining and processing, spoiling the agricultural fields with bio-fuel etc. production and making them unusable for the production of other crops. Almost all the peasant riots in the last decades unfolded in these two axes.

These phenomena, unequivocally canalize the rural poor to the ranks of proletariat by melting them and also strengthen the basis of other stratas' tying their interests with the interest of proletariat through confronting them with the capital order. Rural petty bourgeoisie and rural poor weakened quantitatively and the objective conditions for them to wage a struggle with an independent program also politically weakened as a result of the rural social life's binding to the imperialist capitalist order. They have become more inclined than in any other period to be an ally of the struggle led by the proletariat.

An expropriation process with a similar scale is also experienced in the cities. It happens through the centralization of the capital and its accumulation in fewer and fewer hands, and even through the wrecking of the middle sized enterprises. Mass bankruptcies are especially denser in the periods of crisis. Countless small business become the attachments of the big monopolies, their production is dependent on it.

The result is individual laborers' and small business owners' closing up to the working class in the cities, whose life conditions are no longer different than workers due to the devastation and proletarianization of small property owners.

 

Industrial Proletariat

 

As the productivity of the labor progresses, the number of industrial workers has the tendency to decrease. New production technologies and tools, advanced machines provide the conditions which the work done by twenty workers in the past can be done now by one worker. Correspondingly, as the manual labor is losing its importance, the importance of mental labor increases. It has always been like that throughout the whole history of society, but it has become more distinctive in the capitalist society in which the escalation speed of labor productivity has gained a great acceleration. The weakening of the return of the accumulated capital to the expanded reproduction also strengthens the tendency of decrease in the number of industrial workers.

Along with that, despite the decrease in the escalation rate, industrial proletariat has grown in number and in quantitative rate.

The tendency of increasing the volume of production for higher profit mass in order to guarantee the maximum profit which is the basic purpose of the capitalist production, cause the diversifying of the production of the material commodities and the increase of the number of industry workers.

Yesterday, under the circumstances in which the world market was constituted of the sum of the single capitalist markets, the data from Europe and North America which were leading the imperialist world order was carrying the feature of crystallized examples of the general one. However, their evaluation must be based on the wholeness and multi-directionality of the international conditions under the circumstances in which the world market has integrated, all the processes of realization of capital, commodity and production (contribution of labor power) have internationalized, the international division of labor has been shaped in the form of enabling the swift shifting of the capital towards the appropriate fields, especially for the labor power. Yesterday, imperialist countries were like the industrial centers of the world and the new colonies were like the rural of the world. Today, as financial-economic colonies are gradually turning into industrial bases, imperialist countries are growing into the financial centers.

While there is a declination of the number of industrial workers either absolutely or in ratio in almost all of the developed capitalist countries, the number of working in industry all around the world is increasing both absolutely and in ratio.

For example, in USA, the ratio of the workers in industry to the all workers decreased from 23.2 percent in 2000 to 16.7 percent in 2010. This ratio changed from 26.9 percent to 22.4 in total of OECD in the same period. On the other hand, in the same years, it increased from 22.5 percent to 28.7 in China, and from 16 percent to 22.4 in India. It rose from 21.9 percent to 26.3 in East Asia and Pacific countries, and from 21.6 percent to 24.2 in all world.

According to ILO data, the number of people working in industry in all world increased from 490 million 343 thousand in 1991 to 714 million 704 thousand in 2013. The working population on the other hand rose up from 2 billion 258 million 247 thousand to 3 billion 102 million 558 thousand. (The data covers only a section of working and non-registered ones.)

Moreover, if one way to secure the maximized profit is expanding the volume of production for higher mass of profit, the other one is the tendency of raising the absolute and relative surplus value for higher rate of profit. This, is a tendency which brakes off the development of technology. Today mankind reached the scientific-technological expertness level which can provide the same amount of production of the needed material commodities with much less shorter time of working of everyone. However, the capital tends towards the mode of production by which it can exploit the labor power in the wildest way in order to keep its rate of profit high. The gravity of the industrial production slides from the technology condensed imperialist centers to the labor condensed regions which have extremely long working hours and extremely cheap labor conditions. And this affects the declination trend of the industry proletariat adversely.

The transformation process of new colonies into financial-economic colonies is the primary assurance of this flow. Thus, while science, technology and mental laboring oriented production fields are augmenting in the imperialist centers, this development is relatively slow in the financial- economic colonies.

 

Expansion of Extent of Proletariat

 

Proletariat is also expanding regarding the extent of wage laborers it includes.

In the stage of imperialist globalization, countless fields from education, to health, from cleaning to various branches of art which are integrated with the entertainment sector, have turned into fields of capital investment. The production of surplus value has expanded well beyond the production of material commodity. Many work, which had been previously handled by spending from the state income in order to supply the ideological or political needs of the bourgeois state, is now being carried out by the capitalist businesses which contribute the production of surplus value directly or indirectly. Likewise, miscellaneous services used for personal consumption which are provided either on the basis of domestic individual labor-domestic consumption or through personal income by paying others to do them are handled in the same way. Lots of laborers working in these fields are also in position of mediating the capitalist boss to take share from the surplus value. The use value of labor power is not the production of the service, but it is giving the service to the shareholders in order them to grab more value than they pay for providing this labor power. Regarding this, many work fields, such as doctors, educators, dancers, lawyers and so on, have now changed feature.

As the productivity level of the society develops, relative status of the production of material commodities and their significance in sustaining the social life get weaker. The needs for spiritual-mental development come to the fore. As the productivity regarding the production of the commodities increases, mental labor gets dominant and the gravity of manual labor gets weakened. The elements of consumption which the society requires, “the use values”, get diversified and enriched together with both material and spiritual-mental components. One factor why lines of business defined as the service sector have gained weight is this natural result of the progress of the society and this tendency has accelerated in the stage of imperialist globalization. (For instance, while the poor in the developing countries share 60-80 percent of their income for food, the people from  USA share less than 10 percent.)

Besides, the condensation and centralization of capital means higher level of socialization of the production and higher level of accumulation of the private property in the hands of even lesser property owners. Higher level of socialization means higher collectivization of the production, higher complexity and diversification of division of labor, distribution/division of production of a single commodity to much more stages/work fields, emergence of countless new production branches, higher binding of production branches to each other (such as mining, digital technology, mechanical engineering, transportation, agricultural product processing, computer programming) integration of them even during the production cycle of a single commodity. This division of labor is also diversified and deepened at an international level due to gaining of international feature of the realization of production process in the stage of imperialist globalization.

Workers, too gain a social character in capitalism. At this advancement level of today's capitalist production on the other hand, collective feature of worker has gained an international quality by exceeding the borders of factories. For this reason, in many lines of businesses, the class position of the working is not defined by checking the situations of each worker, rather it is defined regarding the production cycle as a whole and gradually their holding positions in the capitalist world economy through the contribution of their labor power. On this basis, today, it is even more important than yesterday to set out from the “collective worker” for the definition of class position of the wage laborers.

While many researchers, let's say focusing on trying to technically lay down how many percent of the teachers are proletariat, how many of them are in position of petty bourgeois officers; how many wage laborers working in the field of transportation can be defined as workers, how many of them can be in other strata or which section of sector of services an be included to which classes, they are losing sight of the essence of the matter. On contrary, the thesis claiming all the wage laborers working in these sectors are roughly constituting the working class does not represent a correct picture of the social alignment axis and the social dynamics. It gives a result meaning just standing still against the strategic question of “who will win the substitutes?”. These are the signs of approaching the situation of the working class with an academic interest, but not with the aim of revolution.

What is essential here, is the status of teachers as collective workers in the capital order. Throughout his/her life, a teacher's becoming a petty bourgeois officer while working at a state institute for some time and becoming a worker while working at a private institute for another period, his/her wondering from class to class, changing from one color to another is not a conclusion that a serious social analysis reaches. What is significant is not the genuine or singular things in the education field, it is the general thing which is the transformation of any kind of “education” into a service commodity, its being a subject of capital investment. And it is that the main body of the teachers are in position of workers who have to sell their labor power to live by and who take a share from the surplus value of the capitalist through this way which causes the raising of capital of the capitalists. Once it gains a general character, the price of the commodity of a teacher who gives a private education service at the capitalist's home in return of the income spent for private consumption is determined in the capitalist market. Thus, once the teachers left being a part of the state bureaucracy, the general character becomes decisive, not the positions of singular workers; education is a commodity and a teacher who has nothing but his/her labor power to sell belongs to the working class, he/she works here today, and there tomorrow.

Engineers, lawyers, nurses, doctors, literature authors who are being absorbed by the entertainment sector turning into a great investment-profitability field, artists, scientists and researchers, mental laborers from different professions have been included in the labor-capital relation through leaving being individual laborers.

A class decomposition has taken place among the working as this kind; while a small section who are binding their class interests and fates to the fate of world monopolist bourgeoisie in the form of representatives of state bureaucracy, company managers and etc., wage laborers in general are filling the ranks of working class and expanding its social base.

Hence, as the wide segments of wage laborers are getting proletarian, transitivity between the other oppressed-laboring stratas and the working class has increased including the segments of wage laborers who can not be defined in the proletariat. And the interests of these segments are also tied to the proletariat. Even though the transformation in the consciousness follows the transformation of the life conditions and the social relations from behind, the trend of narrowing-closing of the differences has escalated.

For the student youth, paid education, unemployment after graduation, internship exploitation, being a cheap educated labor power after school, severe anxiety for the future have become generalized. Education has no longer been an opportunity of separating one's fate from working class, from the poor and approaching the upper classes. The student youth has objectively got closer to the working class because of both prevalence of directly taking place in the work/production and narrowing of possibilities and dreams of a different future.

All of these are also feeding the intellectual accumulation, the development of political and social struggle and the leadership skill.

 

Chronic Mass Unemployment

 

In spite of great amount of accumulation of capital, constant declination of average profit rates causes increasing detachment of financial capital from the production and flow to the speculative field in the era of imperialist globalization. World monopolies and international monopolies tend much more to the speculative field than flowing to the expanded reproduction and the constant capital investments.

Because of this, even though the dissolving of the small property owners of the rural and urban has  been accelerating, ever widening segments of the society have nothing left but their labor power to sell for living by, the speed of employment does not gear up with the same rate. The increase in the labor productivity also feeds this.

This situation causes the unemployment and poverty to be chronic, it causes the emergence of the phenomenon of chronic-mass unemployment. Thus, firstly, there occur the mass of long-term, short-term unemployed as a fixed component of the working class and the ranks of proletariat.

 

Regression in Gainings and Organizing of the Class

 

The stage of imperialist globalization means the conditions of frantic attacks to the all gained rights of the working class.

Depending on the raising of the organic composition of capital, due to the decreasing of profitability in the process of expanded reproduction of capital, big capital entered into the path of balancing the decrease of profits by intensifying the exploitation of the absolute surplus value, instead of balancing it by developing technological investments. As a result of this, the general level of the wages was pulled down, social rights were scythed down, worker aristocracy started to lose its former privileges. Extension of work day, decrease in real wages, deletion of insurance and any kind of employment guarantee, flexible working, subcontracting, weakening of the trade union organizations and usurpation of the union rights are spread on a worldwide scale.

New type of organization of capitalist production at the international level is one of the factors of this situation.

Chronic mass unemployment is among the main factors conditioning the fear of unemployment and acceding of the workers with this fear, even competing with each other for being exploited under the heaviest circumstances.

The economic and political barriers in front of the international circulation of labor power give rise to the conditions of accumulation of drastically cheap labor power in specific countries or specific industry regions, in competition for working under the severest exploitation circumstances, without any kind of social or union rights and in a reachable position by the world monopolies and the international monopolies whenever they need this cheap labor power.

Liquidation and transfer of the old factories, reactionary political conditions and the problems about politic subject accompanying the stage of imperialist globalization have weakened the possibilities of delivering the experiences of the working class struggle from generation to generation. Very wide, young masses of workers lack of experiences of organizing, trade union and political struggle of the former generation have opened to the exploitation of world monopolies in different countries with totally different conditions from yesterday, either as subcontracted or without any employment guarantee. This situation also conditions a spontaneous development of a working youth struggle detached from the previous generation in regard of their demands and qualities.

Quality circles, conditions like gathering of workers assigned by many subcontractor bosses with different contracts in the same production band are provoking the competition within the working class and tearing the class consciousness and identity apart. They are creating alienation and objectively preventing the solidarity and the common struggle.

Traditional trade unions can not be a reply to new conditions due to both the incompatibility of their current organizational structures with the formation of today's production and labor power, and their political/class related stances. The European and North American trade unions became a part of ideological, social, military and economical organization of the cold war after the 2. Re-division War. They became carriers of the ideological discourses like “anti-totalitarianism” and “theory of Hitler-Stalin”. They behaved like a council of settlement between the bourgeoisie and worker's aristocracy. They were in a position of a direct tool of bourgeois politics and were shaped according to the limited role undertaken in order to take part in distributing the social investments of social state, as if they were kind of a “trade union for services”. These were the main problems of these trade unions on the basis of the gainings of working class. Liquidation of social state and the economic, political, social arrangements after the cold war just removed the basis under the feet of these kind of trade unions. Collaborative trade union organizations functioned as means of class reconciliation did not have a different situation in other countries. Collaborative trade unions are desiring to overcome the congestion they went into and generate tons of words about the new kinds of trade union models. However, they want to do that by keeping their current positions, even for actually keeping this positions. For example, they act to sustain their status under conditions of subcontracting instead of struggling for pushing it back, they tend to organize on a limited scale among the unemployed and preserve their conditions and privileges instead of organizing struggles against dismissals.

Since 1970 until 2003, the rate of workers organized in trade unions decreased from 23,5 percent to 12,4 in USA, from 31,6 percent to 28,4 in Canada, from 35,1 percent to 19,7 in Japan and from 32 percent to 22.6 in Germany.

Fragmentation of work processes, subcontracting, employing conditions in tens of different statuses and with different contracts are liquidating the basis for physical gathering like the kinds of gathering used to be. While the workers, each one of whom are working for a different subcontractor, are gathering with a deeper alienation around the same machine in big factories, factories, too, are fragmenting to countless countries and countless establishments. On the other hand, workplaces are composing on a new level and taking the form of organized industrial sites or worker's basins. Organizing based on the current sectoral orders and current workplace rules, and getting legal authorization, in other words a trade union grow framed by the current laws becomes impossible under these conditions. Let alone the usurpation of current union rights, the frameworks of today's legal trade unions as their non-usurped state are also inappropriate for union struggle.

Practical legitimate militant struggle is taking place as the main axis of the economical union struggles of the working class which have the tendency to politicize more quickly or develop directly as political struggles today. Base initiatives, strikes in basins and organized sites, searches for organizing shaped on this axis, neighborhood assemblies, base trade unions organized on basis of common employees and practical legitimate resistances for getting legal status for new kinds of organizations of these are representing the progressing new tendency.

 

Labor of Women

 

While the joining of women labor to the social production in the imperialist centers has increased linearly from the inequality conditions and got close to the line of equality quantitatively, the labor of women and children in the financial-economic colonies is attending to the capitalist production as the cheapest labor power with slavery conditions. Such that, there returned to the conditions of cruel exploitation like before the protection laws had been passed.

Body of women has turned into a field of capital investment, trade of children started to be monopolized and reached large scales.

Feminist reform programs within the framework of bourgeois order have reached their logical boundaries. The boundaries of women liberation has become apparent within the order of capital.

Imperialist globalization also means limitless authorization right on the labor and body of women and children.

The liberation struggle of the oppressed women masses under these circumstances tends to be more inclined to integrate with the struggle of working class against the exploitive capitalist order and to sharpen this struggle.

 

Strengthening of the International Character of Proletariat

 

Production processes have gained an international feature with all of its phases in the stage of imperialist globalization. There is no way of limiting the struggles and organizations of proletariat within the national borders under these circumstances. The basis of international identity of proletariat has strengthened.

The activities of world monopolies and international monopolies are gathering the workers from different countries together under the production chain of same commodity. The production of Honda or Nokia branded products is being carried out in a world factory whose single cells are spread to countless countries. This situation is weakening the physical conditions of class identity, consciousness and common struggle, but on the other hand, it is empowering the interaction conditions of international struggle and organizing.

Moreover, the development level of communication technologies are strengthening the possibilities of interaction of the working class and the oppressed all over the world. “Consciousness” and “experiment” are no longer matters of local conditions and become extremely more open to the effects and shaping of international base. This puts itself forward for all the confrontations of boss-worker, oppressor-oppressed and rich-poor.

Today's internationalization level of production, circulation of capital and commodity, wide scale opening of rural of financial-economic colonies to monopolies, thickening of national borders in order to keep the cheap labor power in specific pools are increasing the trend of labor migration. This results in acquiring of working class in the migrated centers to be multinational and have multi-identity. This transition conditions that workers of countries which are migrated from are getting more direct and closer relations with the class struggles in the imperialist metropolises and vice-versa the class struggles of the imperialist countries with the political and social struggles of the countries which are migrated from. Besides, it also strengthens the objective basis of binding of oppressed migrant workers and laborers to the fate of working class.

Capital's waging its attacks to the working class and other oppressed through regional unions and integrations is empowering the conditions of regional struggles.

“Centralization of capital on an international scale, raising of organization of production process to international level inevitably matures the conditions of turning revolutions o single countries into regional revolutions and waves of world revolution. These strengthen the possibility of simultaneous revolutions in couple of countries or revolutions as triggering each other.”

 

Proletariat and Its Allies

 

There are multiple reasons why the democratic tasks of proletariat have been more entangled with its socialist tasks or why the anti-capitalist struggle has been more integrated with the anti-imperialist struggle. There is no economical and political conditions left for a relatively stable independent capitalist development. Bourgeoisie has lost its tactical flexibility against the working class and other oppressed. Conditions for social settlement have gone weaker and even the most regressive political programs of bourgeois reformism can not find any applying field. As can be seen in the example of Syriza, even the tiniest reforms are kept under attack of imperialist bourgeoisie and under the threats of harshest embargo and wildest aggression. The margin of bourgeoisie about even the most limited concessions has extremely narrowed.

Ravaging of nature and life areas has grown threatening for the existence of humanity in both cities and rural. The contradiction of capitalism with the nature has turned into one of the main axes of the social and political struggle.

The quantitative and qualitative development level of working class does not mean the extinction of other laboring classes and all laboring population have proletarianized. Yet, while the social basis of working class is expanding, the social basis of bourgeoisie is narrowing. Laborers of services, self-employed professionals are aligning at the pole of proletariat, not as “new or old middle classes”. With all these developments, the ability of liability of proletariat, whose position as the decisive force producing material commodities has become more apparent, gains a much clearer appearance as the most consistent defender of all oppressed sections against all kinds of political-economical suppression, exploitation and plundering of capitalism.

Since other laboring classes and stratas have lost their decisive roles in capitalist economy, conditions for applying bourgeois reformist projects and their raising of an independent revolutionary program have weakened. They have narrowed in number and teemed with the working class in terms of life conditions, thus their transitivity to working class has increased. Power of proletariat for managing and unifying them under its own political program against capitalism has improved. Meaning that, non-proletarian oppressed and exploited laboring stratas have got closer to each other, proletarian and toiling character of the struggle has become more distinctive.

Hopelessness from future is growing enormously among the ranks of all exploited and oppressed classes and stratas except for ruling class. Student youth whose hope for building a different life through education falls away, women's liberation struggle standing up to the limits of reforms, peasants resisting against expropriation and threatening of their life conditions due to the devastation of natural environment, people of dependent small countries whose poverty and misery are multiplied by the oppression of imperialist globalization, colonized people whose regional seeking is developed depending on the narrowing of the basis of national independence program, immigrants uprising against outsiderdom and poverty, oppressed religious sects and national communities which are blamed for the reason of impoverishment and unemployment in order to weaken the tendency of common struggle of the oppressed, lgbtis who are at the bottom of gender oppression pyramid, intellectuals, artists, scientists whose creative labor is stuck in between the economical pressure of monopolies and the political pressure of states, self-employed professionals who lose their opportunity to obtain better life conditions by leaning on their own individual labor are all coming together in countless riots and resistances.
 

 

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Working Class and the Oppressed Under the Conditions of Imperialist Globalization
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Expropriation and Quantitative Expansion of Proletariat

 

From the point of view of the working class and the laborers, imperialist globalization means the following: taking working class under encirclement of chronic mass unemployment, worsening their work and life conditions through usurping their gainings, weakening their organization capability, developing the culture of bourgeois competition among the workers, mass expropriation of petty and middle peasantry, declination of rural population with a high speed against the urban population, devastation of city petty bourgeoisie, widening of ranks of working class, expansion and exacerbation of the antagonism of rich-poor in the cities.

Expropriation in the rural is one of the main sources of the quantitative growth of the proletariat. Capitalist transformation of the agriculture accelerated in the era of imperialist globalization. Population of the world was almost doubled since 1970 until 2010 by increasing from 3 billion 685 million to 6 billion 924 million. In the same period, while the rural population increased approximately 1,5 times by rising from 2 billion 329 million up to 3 billion 347 million; the urban population grew more than 2,5 times by rising from 1 billion 340 million to 3 billion 522 million. In another words, the rural population which was constituting 63.47 percent of the world population in 1970, receded to 48.52 percent in 2010. And the urban population increased from 36.53 percent to 51.48 percent respectively.

Again, the total number of working in the agriculture declined from 37.9 percent to 30.6 percent between the years of 2000 and 2010. This rates even fell down to 5.2 percent for OECD countries, 1.6 percent for USA and Germany and 1.2 percent for England.

Capitalist transformation of the rural and the devastation process of the laboring peasantry cause its wide masses to throng to the cities due to expropriation. At the same time, these bring the laboring peasants to confront directly with the imperialist capitalist world order, big capitalist companies and in most cases with the world monopolies. The fact that all of the required products to sustain the agricultural production from seeds to manure are included in the relation of dependence on the monopolies, is one side of it. Another problem is the ravaging of nature and life areas through countless forms like energy supplying, naturally harmful mining and processing, spoiling the agricultural fields with bio-fuel etc. production and making them unusable for the production of other crops. Almost all the peasant riots in the last decades unfolded in these two axes.

These phenomena, unequivocally canalize the rural poor to the ranks of proletariat by melting them and also strengthen the basis of other stratas' tying their interests with the interest of proletariat through confronting them with the capital order. Rural petty bourgeoisie and rural poor weakened quantitatively and the objective conditions for them to wage a struggle with an independent program also politically weakened as a result of the rural social life's binding to the imperialist capitalist order. They have become more inclined than in any other period to be an ally of the struggle led by the proletariat.

An expropriation process with a similar scale is also experienced in the cities. It happens through the centralization of the capital and its accumulation in fewer and fewer hands, and even through the wrecking of the middle sized enterprises. Mass bankruptcies are especially denser in the periods of crisis. Countless small business become the attachments of the big monopolies, their production is dependent on it.

The result is individual laborers' and small business owners' closing up to the working class in the cities, whose life conditions are no longer different than workers due to the devastation and proletarianization of small property owners.

 

Industrial Proletariat

 

As the productivity of the labor progresses, the number of industrial workers has the tendency to decrease. New production technologies and tools, advanced machines provide the conditions which the work done by twenty workers in the past can be done now by one worker. Correspondingly, as the manual labor is losing its importance, the importance of mental labor increases. It has always been like that throughout the whole history of society, but it has become more distinctive in the capitalist society in which the escalation speed of labor productivity has gained a great acceleration. The weakening of the return of the accumulated capital to the expanded reproduction also strengthens the tendency of decrease in the number of industrial workers.

Along with that, despite the decrease in the escalation rate, industrial proletariat has grown in number and in quantitative rate.

The tendency of increasing the volume of production for higher profit mass in order to guarantee the maximum profit which is the basic purpose of the capitalist production, cause the diversifying of the production of the material commodities and the increase of the number of industry workers.

Yesterday, under the circumstances in which the world market was constituted of the sum of the single capitalist markets, the data from Europe and North America which were leading the imperialist world order was carrying the feature of crystallized examples of the general one. However, their evaluation must be based on the wholeness and multi-directionality of the international conditions under the circumstances in which the world market has integrated, all the processes of realization of capital, commodity and production (contribution of labor power) have internationalized, the international division of labor has been shaped in the form of enabling the swift shifting of the capital towards the appropriate fields, especially for the labor power. Yesterday, imperialist countries were like the industrial centers of the world and the new colonies were like the rural of the world. Today, as financial-economic colonies are gradually turning into industrial bases, imperialist countries are growing into the financial centers.

While there is a declination of the number of industrial workers either absolutely or in ratio in almost all of the developed capitalist countries, the number of working in industry all around the world is increasing both absolutely and in ratio.

For example, in USA, the ratio of the workers in industry to the all workers decreased from 23.2 percent in 2000 to 16.7 percent in 2010. This ratio changed from 26.9 percent to 22.4 in total of OECD in the same period. On the other hand, in the same years, it increased from 22.5 percent to 28.7 in China, and from 16 percent to 22.4 in India. It rose from 21.9 percent to 26.3 in East Asia and Pacific countries, and from 21.6 percent to 24.2 in all world.

According to ILO data, the number of people working in industry in all world increased from 490 million 343 thousand in 1991 to 714 million 704 thousand in 2013. The working population on the other hand rose up from 2 billion 258 million 247 thousand to 3 billion 102 million 558 thousand. (The data covers only a section of working and non-registered ones.)

Moreover, if one way to secure the maximized profit is expanding the volume of production for higher mass of profit, the other one is the tendency of raising the absolute and relative surplus value for higher rate of profit. This, is a tendency which brakes off the development of technology. Today mankind reached the scientific-technological expertness level which can provide the same amount of production of the needed material commodities with much less shorter time of working of everyone. However, the capital tends towards the mode of production by which it can exploit the labor power in the wildest way in order to keep its rate of profit high. The gravity of the industrial production slides from the technology condensed imperialist centers to the labor condensed regions which have extremely long working hours and extremely cheap labor conditions. And this affects the declination trend of the industry proletariat adversely.

The transformation process of new colonies into financial-economic colonies is the primary assurance of this flow. Thus, while science, technology and mental laboring oriented production fields are augmenting in the imperialist centers, this development is relatively slow in the financial- economic colonies.

 

Expansion of Extent of Proletariat

 

Proletariat is also expanding regarding the extent of wage laborers it includes.

In the stage of imperialist globalization, countless fields from education, to health, from cleaning to various branches of art which are integrated with the entertainment sector, have turned into fields of capital investment. The production of surplus value has expanded well beyond the production of material commodity. Many work, which had been previously handled by spending from the state income in order to supply the ideological or political needs of the bourgeois state, is now being carried out by the capitalist businesses which contribute the production of surplus value directly or indirectly. Likewise, miscellaneous services used for personal consumption which are provided either on the basis of domestic individual labor-domestic consumption or through personal income by paying others to do them are handled in the same way. Lots of laborers working in these fields are also in position of mediating the capitalist boss to take share from the surplus value. The use value of labor power is not the production of the service, but it is giving the service to the shareholders in order them to grab more value than they pay for providing this labor power. Regarding this, many work fields, such as doctors, educators, dancers, lawyers and so on, have now changed feature.

As the productivity level of the society develops, relative status of the production of material commodities and their significance in sustaining the social life get weaker. The needs for spiritual-mental development come to the fore. As the productivity regarding the production of the commodities increases, mental labor gets dominant and the gravity of manual labor gets weakened. The elements of consumption which the society requires, “the use values”, get diversified and enriched together with both material and spiritual-mental components. One factor why lines of business defined as the service sector have gained weight is this natural result of the progress of the society and this tendency has accelerated in the stage of imperialist globalization. (For instance, while the poor in the developing countries share 60-80 percent of their income for food, the people from  USA share less than 10 percent.)

Besides, the condensation and centralization of capital means higher level of socialization of the production and higher level of accumulation of the private property in the hands of even lesser property owners. Higher level of socialization means higher collectivization of the production, higher complexity and diversification of division of labor, distribution/division of production of a single commodity to much more stages/work fields, emergence of countless new production branches, higher binding of production branches to each other (such as mining, digital technology, mechanical engineering, transportation, agricultural product processing, computer programming) integration of them even during the production cycle of a single commodity. This division of labor is also diversified and deepened at an international level due to gaining of international feature of the realization of production process in the stage of imperialist globalization.

Workers, too gain a social character in capitalism. At this advancement level of today's capitalist production on the other hand, collective feature of worker has gained an international quality by exceeding the borders of factories. For this reason, in many lines of businesses, the class position of the working is not defined by checking the situations of each worker, rather it is defined regarding the production cycle as a whole and gradually their holding positions in the capitalist world economy through the contribution of their labor power. On this basis, today, it is even more important than yesterday to set out from the “collective worker” for the definition of class position of the wage laborers.

While many researchers, let's say focusing on trying to technically lay down how many percent of the teachers are proletariat, how many of them are in position of petty bourgeois officers; how many wage laborers working in the field of transportation can be defined as workers, how many of them can be in other strata or which section of sector of services an be included to which classes, they are losing sight of the essence of the matter. On contrary, the thesis claiming all the wage laborers working in these sectors are roughly constituting the working class does not represent a correct picture of the social alignment axis and the social dynamics. It gives a result meaning just standing still against the strategic question of “who will win the substitutes?”. These are the signs of approaching the situation of the working class with an academic interest, but not with the aim of revolution.

What is essential here, is the status of teachers as collective workers in the capital order. Throughout his/her life, a teacher's becoming a petty bourgeois officer while working at a state institute for some time and becoming a worker while working at a private institute for another period, his/her wondering from class to class, changing from one color to another is not a conclusion that a serious social analysis reaches. What is significant is not the genuine or singular things in the education field, it is the general thing which is the transformation of any kind of “education” into a service commodity, its being a subject of capital investment. And it is that the main body of the teachers are in position of workers who have to sell their labor power to live by and who take a share from the surplus value of the capitalist through this way which causes the raising of capital of the capitalists. Once it gains a general character, the price of the commodity of a teacher who gives a private education service at the capitalist's home in return of the income spent for private consumption is determined in the capitalist market. Thus, once the teachers left being a part of the state bureaucracy, the general character becomes decisive, not the positions of singular workers; education is a commodity and a teacher who has nothing but his/her labor power to sell belongs to the working class, he/she works here today, and there tomorrow.

Engineers, lawyers, nurses, doctors, literature authors who are being absorbed by the entertainment sector turning into a great investment-profitability field, artists, scientists and researchers, mental laborers from different professions have been included in the labor-capital relation through leaving being individual laborers.

A class decomposition has taken place among the working as this kind; while a small section who are binding their class interests and fates to the fate of world monopolist bourgeoisie in the form of representatives of state bureaucracy, company managers and etc., wage laborers in general are filling the ranks of working class and expanding its social base.

Hence, as the wide segments of wage laborers are getting proletarian, transitivity between the other oppressed-laboring stratas and the working class has increased including the segments of wage laborers who can not be defined in the proletariat. And the interests of these segments are also tied to the proletariat. Even though the transformation in the consciousness follows the transformation of the life conditions and the social relations from behind, the trend of narrowing-closing of the differences has escalated.

For the student youth, paid education, unemployment after graduation, internship exploitation, being a cheap educated labor power after school, severe anxiety for the future have become generalized. Education has no longer been an opportunity of separating one's fate from working class, from the poor and approaching the upper classes. The student youth has objectively got closer to the working class because of both prevalence of directly taking place in the work/production and narrowing of possibilities and dreams of a different future.

All of these are also feeding the intellectual accumulation, the development of political and social struggle and the leadership skill.

 

Chronic Mass Unemployment

 

In spite of great amount of accumulation of capital, constant declination of average profit rates causes increasing detachment of financial capital from the production and flow to the speculative field in the era of imperialist globalization. World monopolies and international monopolies tend much more to the speculative field than flowing to the expanded reproduction and the constant capital investments.

Because of this, even though the dissolving of the small property owners of the rural and urban has  been accelerating, ever widening segments of the society have nothing left but their labor power to sell for living by, the speed of employment does not gear up with the same rate. The increase in the labor productivity also feeds this.

This situation causes the unemployment and poverty to be chronic, it causes the emergence of the phenomenon of chronic-mass unemployment. Thus, firstly, there occur the mass of long-term, short-term unemployed as a fixed component of the working class and the ranks of proletariat.

 

Regression in Gainings and Organizing of the Class

 

The stage of imperialist globalization means the conditions of frantic attacks to the all gained rights of the working class.

Depending on the raising of the organic composition of capital, due to the decreasing of profitability in the process of expanded reproduction of capital, big capital entered into the path of balancing the decrease of profits by intensifying the exploitation of the absolute surplus value, instead of balancing it by developing technological investments. As a result of this, the general level of the wages was pulled down, social rights were scythed down, worker aristocracy started to lose its former privileges. Extension of work day, decrease in real wages, deletion of insurance and any kind of employment guarantee, flexible working, subcontracting, weakening of the trade union organizations and usurpation of the union rights are spread on a worldwide scale.

New type of organization of capitalist production at the international level is one of the factors of this situation.

Chronic mass unemployment is among the main factors conditioning the fear of unemployment and acceding of the workers with this fear, even competing with each other for being exploited under the heaviest circumstances.

The economic and political barriers in front of the international circulation of labor power give rise to the conditions of accumulation of drastically cheap labor power in specific countries or specific industry regions, in competition for working under the severest exploitation circumstances, without any kind of social or union rights and in a reachable position by the world monopolies and the international monopolies whenever they need this cheap labor power.

Liquidation and transfer of the old factories, reactionary political conditions and the problems about politic subject accompanying the stage of imperialist globalization have weakened the possibilities of delivering the experiences of the working class struggle from generation to generation. Very wide, young masses of workers lack of experiences of organizing, trade union and political struggle of the former generation have opened to the exploitation of world monopolies in different countries with totally different conditions from yesterday, either as subcontracted or without any employment guarantee. This situation also conditions a spontaneous development of a working youth struggle detached from the previous generation in regard of their demands and qualities.

Quality circles, conditions like gathering of workers assigned by many subcontractor bosses with different contracts in the same production band are provoking the competition within the working class and tearing the class consciousness and identity apart. They are creating alienation and objectively preventing the solidarity and the common struggle.

Traditional trade unions can not be a reply to new conditions due to both the incompatibility of their current organizational structures with the formation of today's production and labor power, and their political/class related stances. The European and North American trade unions became a part of ideological, social, military and economical organization of the cold war after the 2. Re-division War. They became carriers of the ideological discourses like “anti-totalitarianism” and “theory of Hitler-Stalin”. They behaved like a council of settlement between the bourgeoisie and worker's aristocracy. They were in a position of a direct tool of bourgeois politics and were shaped according to the limited role undertaken in order to take part in distributing the social investments of social state, as if they were kind of a “trade union for services”. These were the main problems of these trade unions on the basis of the gainings of working class. Liquidation of social state and the economic, political, social arrangements after the cold war just removed the basis under the feet of these kind of trade unions. Collaborative trade union organizations functioned as means of class reconciliation did not have a different situation in other countries. Collaborative trade unions are desiring to overcome the congestion they went into and generate tons of words about the new kinds of trade union models. However, they want to do that by keeping their current positions, even for actually keeping this positions. For example, they act to sustain their status under conditions of subcontracting instead of struggling for pushing it back, they tend to organize on a limited scale among the unemployed and preserve their conditions and privileges instead of organizing struggles against dismissals.

Since 1970 until 2003, the rate of workers organized in trade unions decreased from 23,5 percent to 12,4 in USA, from 31,6 percent to 28,4 in Canada, from 35,1 percent to 19,7 in Japan and from 32 percent to 22.6 in Germany.

Fragmentation of work processes, subcontracting, employing conditions in tens of different statuses and with different contracts are liquidating the basis for physical gathering like the kinds of gathering used to be. While the workers, each one of whom are working for a different subcontractor, are gathering with a deeper alienation around the same machine in big factories, factories, too, are fragmenting to countless countries and countless establishments. On the other hand, workplaces are composing on a new level and taking the form of organized industrial sites or worker's basins. Organizing based on the current sectoral orders and current workplace rules, and getting legal authorization, in other words a trade union grow framed by the current laws becomes impossible under these conditions. Let alone the usurpation of current union rights, the frameworks of today's legal trade unions as their non-usurped state are also inappropriate for union struggle.

Practical legitimate militant struggle is taking place as the main axis of the economical union struggles of the working class which have the tendency to politicize more quickly or develop directly as political struggles today. Base initiatives, strikes in basins and organized sites, searches for organizing shaped on this axis, neighborhood assemblies, base trade unions organized on basis of common employees and practical legitimate resistances for getting legal status for new kinds of organizations of these are representing the progressing new tendency.

 

Labor of Women

 

While the joining of women labor to the social production in the imperialist centers has increased linearly from the inequality conditions and got close to the line of equality quantitatively, the labor of women and children in the financial-economic colonies is attending to the capitalist production as the cheapest labor power with slavery conditions. Such that, there returned to the conditions of cruel exploitation like before the protection laws had been passed.

Body of women has turned into a field of capital investment, trade of children started to be monopolized and reached large scales.

Feminist reform programs within the framework of bourgeois order have reached their logical boundaries. The boundaries of women liberation has become apparent within the order of capital.

Imperialist globalization also means limitless authorization right on the labor and body of women and children.

The liberation struggle of the oppressed women masses under these circumstances tends to be more inclined to integrate with the struggle of working class against the exploitive capitalist order and to sharpen this struggle.

 

Strengthening of the International Character of Proletariat

 

Production processes have gained an international feature with all of its phases in the stage of imperialist globalization. There is no way of limiting the struggles and organizations of proletariat within the national borders under these circumstances. The basis of international identity of proletariat has strengthened.

The activities of world monopolies and international monopolies are gathering the workers from different countries together under the production chain of same commodity. The production of Honda or Nokia branded products is being carried out in a world factory whose single cells are spread to countless countries. This situation is weakening the physical conditions of class identity, consciousness and common struggle, but on the other hand, it is empowering the interaction conditions of international struggle and organizing.

Moreover, the development level of communication technologies are strengthening the possibilities of interaction of the working class and the oppressed all over the world. “Consciousness” and “experiment” are no longer matters of local conditions and become extremely more open to the effects and shaping of international base. This puts itself forward for all the confrontations of boss-worker, oppressor-oppressed and rich-poor.

Today's internationalization level of production, circulation of capital and commodity, wide scale opening of rural of financial-economic colonies to monopolies, thickening of national borders in order to keep the cheap labor power in specific pools are increasing the trend of labor migration. This results in acquiring of working class in the migrated centers to be multinational and have multi-identity. This transition conditions that workers of countries which are migrated from are getting more direct and closer relations with the class struggles in the imperialist metropolises and vice-versa the class struggles of the imperialist countries with the political and social struggles of the countries which are migrated from. Besides, it also strengthens the objective basis of binding of oppressed migrant workers and laborers to the fate of working class.

Capital's waging its attacks to the working class and other oppressed through regional unions and integrations is empowering the conditions of regional struggles.

“Centralization of capital on an international scale, raising of organization of production process to international level inevitably matures the conditions of turning revolutions o single countries into regional revolutions and waves of world revolution. These strengthen the possibility of simultaneous revolutions in couple of countries or revolutions as triggering each other.”

 

Proletariat and Its Allies

 

There are multiple reasons why the democratic tasks of proletariat have been more entangled with its socialist tasks or why the anti-capitalist struggle has been more integrated with the anti-imperialist struggle. There is no economical and political conditions left for a relatively stable independent capitalist development. Bourgeoisie has lost its tactical flexibility against the working class and other oppressed. Conditions for social settlement have gone weaker and even the most regressive political programs of bourgeois reformism can not find any applying field. As can be seen in the example of Syriza, even the tiniest reforms are kept under attack of imperialist bourgeoisie and under the threats of harshest embargo and wildest aggression. The margin of bourgeoisie about even the most limited concessions has extremely narrowed.

Ravaging of nature and life areas has grown threatening for the existence of humanity in both cities and rural. The contradiction of capitalism with the nature has turned into one of the main axes of the social and political struggle.

The quantitative and qualitative development level of working class does not mean the extinction of other laboring classes and all laboring population have proletarianized. Yet, while the social basis of working class is expanding, the social basis of bourgeoisie is narrowing. Laborers of services, self-employed professionals are aligning at the pole of proletariat, not as “new or old middle classes”. With all these developments, the ability of liability of proletariat, whose position as the decisive force producing material commodities has become more apparent, gains a much clearer appearance as the most consistent defender of all oppressed sections against all kinds of political-economical suppression, exploitation and plundering of capitalism.

Since other laboring classes and stratas have lost their decisive roles in capitalist economy, conditions for applying bourgeois reformist projects and their raising of an independent revolutionary program have weakened. They have narrowed in number and teemed with the working class in terms of life conditions, thus their transitivity to working class has increased. Power of proletariat for managing and unifying them under its own political program against capitalism has improved. Meaning that, non-proletarian oppressed and exploited laboring stratas have got closer to each other, proletarian and toiling character of the struggle has become more distinctive.

Hopelessness from future is growing enormously among the ranks of all exploited and oppressed classes and stratas except for ruling class. Student youth whose hope for building a different life through education falls away, women's liberation struggle standing up to the limits of reforms, peasants resisting against expropriation and threatening of their life conditions due to the devastation of natural environment, people of dependent small countries whose poverty and misery are multiplied by the oppression of imperialist globalization, colonized people whose regional seeking is developed depending on the narrowing of the basis of national independence program, immigrants uprising against outsiderdom and poverty, oppressed religious sects and national communities which are blamed for the reason of impoverishment and unemployment in order to weaken the tendency of common struggle of the oppressed, lgbtis who are at the bottom of gender oppression pyramid, intellectuals, artists, scientists whose creative labor is stuck in between the economical pressure of monopolies and the political pressure of states, self-employed professionals who lose their opportunity to obtain better life conditions by leaning on their own individual labor are all coming together in countless riots and resistances.