Thus, whether a campaign undermines or strengthens the image of capitalism depends on perceptions of fairness as well as on how the campaign is carried out. This is further complicated by the fact that the operation of capitalism has a big impact on whether people perceive particular wages and conditions to be fair.
In general, campaigning for better wages and conditions does not challenge the legitimacy of capitalism at its foundations, including private ownership, the boss-employee relationship and the market. Improved wages and conditions are important, but occur within capitalism rather than against it.
Finally, does a campaign for better wages and conditions help build a nonviolent alternative to capitalism? Except in special cases, the answer is no. So for point 1 on the check list, it can be concluded that campaigns for wages and conditions seldom satisfy any of the options, except sometimes helping undermine capitalism’s legitimacy.
2. Is the campaign participatory?
The answer to this depends on the campaign. A strike or a work-to-rule, to be effective, needs as many workers as possible to participate. But sometimes a strike can be effective if just a few key workers, in vital positions, take action. So sometimes a workers’ action can achieve immediate goals with relatively low participation.
Another aspect to participation is in planning and decision making. Is the campaign plotted by a few trade union bosses and announced to the members, or are all planning meetings open to all members, with special efforts to involve members from all sectors of the workforce?
Some trade unions are more autocratic and corrupt than the corporate executives they confront. Union-led campaigns in such circumstances are seldom fully participatory.
A further dimension to participation is involvement of others besides the immediate workers, including customers, workers elsewhere, other organisations and the public at large. If teachers go on strike for higher pay, that does not by itself generate participation by anyone else. But if the campaign involves rallies and teach-ins with involvement by students, parents, administrative staff and prospective employers, the participation level is far higher.
One group often overlooked in workers’ struggles is the unemployed. A campaign for higher wages can result in job losses. Trade unions typically look after their members and neglect others.
3. Are the campaign’s goals built in to its methods?
The answer here is “not very often.” A campaign to improve wages seldom has any potential to use improved wages as the method! Quite the contrary: going on strike, especially for an extended period, reduces wages.
For improving conditions, there are some possibilities. Requests for rest breaks could be pursued by taking the breaks, as a form of disobedience on the job. Demands for safety measures could be pursued by workers bringing in equipment, organising their own training and taking time on the job to follow the desired procedures. A push for procedures to protect against unfair dismissal could be accompanied by establishing a “workers’ tribunal” to judge the evidence for a dismissal, set up alongside existing procedures. However, these sorts of initiatives are the exception. Most campaigns for improved conditions rely on methods such as bargaining with management or strikes, which as methods have little in common with the goal.
4. Is the campaign resistant to cooption?
A campaign for better wages and conditions, far from being resistant to cooption, can be interpreted as an attempt to be coopted. After all, it is not a campaign for workers to own and manage the enterprise themselves. Improvements to wages and conditions are changes within the capitalist framework.
In summary, campaigns for better wages and conditions are unlikely to be effective means for transforming capitalism into a nonviolent alternative, especially because they do not challenge the foundations of capitalism and are an open invitation to cooption. That said, such campaigns are vitally necessary for the many poor and exploited workers of the world.
Of course, campaigns for better wages and conditions can be part of wider struggles to transform capitalism. But they are unlikely candidates to be prime movers.
This very general analysis of these campaigns suggests two areas of potential strength. First, participation can be broadened as much as possible, both among workers and others, and include planning and decision making. This is a good prescription for a broad-based workers’ movement in any case. Second, in some cases campaigns for better conditions can incorporate ends within means.
Jobs
For most workers in a capitalist economy, jobs are necessary to escape poverty and sometimes just to survive. This is not universally true. Some jobs are so poorly paid that those holding them remain in poverty. On the other hand, in some countries unemployment payments are ample enough to provide a decent life. Finally, of course, owners of capital do not require jobs in order to make a lot of money. Still, for many people a job is seen as absolutely essential for income. Furthermore, having a job is often crucial for self-esteem.
Individuals seek jobs and so do trade unions for their members. For governments, creating jobs is seen as a fundamental goal. Nonviolent action is possible at any of these levels but is most commonly pursued by trade unions, through strikes, rallies, work-ins, work-to-rule and the like. Campaigns for jobs have a high priority, but do they provide a challenge to capitalism?
Consider now some other goals for workers’ struggles. One important goal is the right to organise legally, especially to form trade unions. Going through the check list, it turns out that the answers are much the same. The campaign doesn’t do much to challenge the violent underpinnings or legitimacy of capitalism, nor much to build a nonviolent alternative. Participation often has to be high in order to be successful, but it might only be to vote in favour of having a union. Cooption is a big risk, because with legal recognition of workers’ organisations, there is a greater possibility that trade union officials will act to dampen worker radicalism. The officials often find that their power is greater when workers “play by the rules,” namely obey all laws and regulations governing worker organisation.
There is one question for which the answer could be different: Are the campaign’s goals built in to its methods? The goal in this case is an official worker organisation. One way to seek this is to set up a “shadow” or parallel organisation — namely, an organisation that is run the same way a legal one would be. This is often a powerful way to proceed, since it gives participants ideal training for running an organisation.
1. Does the campaign help to
• undermine the violent underpinnings of capitalism, or
• undermine the legitimacy of capitalism, or
• build a nonviolent alternative to capitalism?
The answer to this question is almost always “no.” Having jobs or creating jobs does not provide any challenge to the violent foundation of capitalism.[3] Campaigning for jobs is little threat to the legitimacy of capitalism, since allocation of work and income via jobs is the standard way that capitalism is supposed to operate. If there is massive unemployment, the legitimacy of capitalism can come under threat, as occurs during periods of economic depression or crash. A campaign to maintain or increase the number of jobs does not question the job system. Quite the contrary, it endorses it. Finally, campaigns for jobs, since they are built on the job system, seldom do much to build an alternative to capitalism.
3.
It is possible to imagine rare exceptions, for example jobs in designing nonviolent alternatives to the military.