If workers shut down a factory or a whole sector of the economy
in the course of waging the struggle for their rights they soon
find that their struggle reaches the limits imposed by the
capitalist system. These limits are based on the private
ownership of property and the political power it wields. These
limits ensure that while certain rights exist, such as the right
to strike, they do so only to the extent that they do not
threaten the right of the capitalists to maintain their control
of the situation. At the stroke of the pen these rights are taken
away - as in the case of back-to-work legislation which has been
used against workers in important sectors of the national
economy such as the railway and post office. These limits also
ensure that rights exist entirely within the context of the
supremacy of private property. Thus, in a strike or other
struggle workers often find themselves facing the courts or
labour boards which dictate what will be the boundaries to any
struggle. For example, the courts routinely intervene to grant
injunctions limiting the right to picket, and the right of
workers to organize (and also to maintain their organizations)
falls within the limits determined not by the workers, but by the
labour laws and labour boards.
Contrast this to a situation in which thousands of workers
are laid off as the result of a single decision by a corporation
or a government, or the anti-social offensive, which has seen the
governments at all levels launch their attacks on social programs
and the most vulnerable, all in the name of protecting the
profits of the monopolies and the financial oligarchy. There is
no limit to these rights enjoyed by the monopolies and financial
oligarchy. In fact, they become policy through actions taken by
the governments at every level to recognize that paying the debt
and deficit cutting are a priority over providing for the social
needs of the people. Privatization of existing social services is
another measure which goes hand in hand with the anti-social
offensive.
In other words, the cards are all stacked against the
working class. The limits imposed can only lead to the
intensified exploitation of the working class. The crisis of
unemployment is one example. Another is the anti-social
offensive. Such things are happening because the working class is
confined to the limits acceptable to the present ruling class of
the monopolies and financial oligarchy and its political
representatives.
What it is clearer with each passing day and each new
struggle is that the working class must act in a new way. Whether
it is the deepening economic crisis or the anti-social offensive
which is eliminating any responsibility of society to provide and
care for the well-being of its members, the necessity is for the
working class to change the situation. It has to advance its
pro-social program on the basis that society must provide for the
interests of all working people. It has to enter the political
arena not on the basis of electing this or that political party
but from the consideration of electing its own representatives to
defend its interests and set the pro-social agenda.
TML DAILY, 12/2/97
Shawgi Tell
Graduate School of Education
University at Buffalo
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
