Fragmentation and segmentation of the production process and scattering of global production locations have brought before class-oriented trade union movement dimensional challenges. The Global South has become intermediate manufacturing or assembling hubs as these being the global hunting ground for extreme exploitation of labour. But brand value addition is controlled by MNCs of the Global North. Side by side, growing precarity of the job market is used as a tool by the capitalist class to vilify the doctrine of class struggle.  

Precarity of jobs

According to one of the most widely accepted definitions “precarity is a state of persistent uncertainty or insecurity with regards to employment, income and living standards”. As a result of technological developments and consequent fragmentation of the production process, various types of precarious employment have become weapons at the disposal of the capitalist class to extract more and more surplus value.

Today a global phenomenon is the destruction of permanent jobs and imposition of contractualisation, casualisation, traineeship, apprenticeship and all other forms of non-regular labour relations with continuous decrease in wage-share are part and parcel of the capital’s evil designs to reduce the fighting capacity of the working class. 

Precarity of Jobs and Class Struggle

Aggravating precarity in employment is surely a huge challenge to the trade union movement worldwide. But the attempt by vested interest to miss-utilise this development by floating rubbish formulation that the working class are losing their class character due to precarity of jobs and hence class struggle is no longer a practical proposition. We must fight both precarity of jobs as well as motivated campaigns centering round job precarity.

In this connection it would be befitting to recall that Frederick Engels dealt with the question of precariousness of job in his book titled, “The Condition of the Working Class in England” 1945. Marx and Engels also dealt with this issue in this same context in The Communist Manifesto, and it later became a key element in Marx’s analysis of the industrial reserve army in volume I of the Capital. It was to gain added significance in the 1970s, in the work of theorists such as Harry Braverman and Stephen Hymer, who explored the relation of surplus labor to the conditions of monopoly capitalism and the internationalization of capital.

Contradictions between Labour and Capital is Antagonistic 

The above developments are interpreted by masquerade Marxists to distort Marxism–Leninism and infuse confusion and frustration amongst the adherents of the doctrine of class struggle and vilify the role of the working class as the vanguard in overthrowing capitalism. With ulterior motives they are categorising and segmenting the international working class between the Global North and the Global South; between centre and periphery. They are floating slanderous slogans like ‘disillusionment with Western working class’, ‘is working class dead; ‘farewell to working class’, ‘future shall be determined by a non-class of non-workers’ and many more malicious maneuvers to further their counter-revolutionary agendas. 

Neo-Marxists and reformists of various hues refute the very existence of the industrial proletariat as the advanced contingent of the working class. They accuse the trade unions of being prisoners of history and not giving due attention to the proliferated forms of working class such as the unorganised, self-employed, platform workers, domestic helpers or scheme workers. 

Menace of fragmentation of production process and precariousness of employment or so-called incidence of labour aristocracy, differentiating working class between the Global North and the Global South and so on cannot wither away class contradictions and the imperative of class struggle. Antagonistic contradictions between labour and capital can be resolved only with revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.

Omnipotence of class struggle

The ruling class through their intellectual agents and class collaborationist yellow trade union leaders are carrying out conspiratorial campaigns to dilute the very existence of “class” as the building block of our reality. They are attacking at the very core of Marxist philosophy. Let us recall what Marx and Engels said in the ‘Communist Manifesto’: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”

The obnoxious campaigns deny the definite and concrete presence of class who (the capitalist class) by virtue of their control over the means of production and with their control in the relations of production, exploit the wealth producing class by extracting, inter alia, surplus value generated by the toiling people. Thus the eternal truth is one class stands in opposition to another class. And this is the root cause of class struggles. 

It is nothing but to deny the definite composition of classes, to deny the contradictions inherent between them, to deny the specific role of class struggle and specifically that of the working class in the social transformation. In political and organisational terms, it leads to liquidation of the class organisation. 

After the end of the primitive society of mankind, the class struggle is born within the womb of the class-divided society. Marx pointed out that for the advancement of this society, the inherent class struggle has to be sharpened to ultimately transform this class-divided society into a classless society. Thus class struggle acts as the motive force for social advancement.

Dictatorship of Proletariat

Discussion on class struggle cannot be complete without discussing the doctrine of dictatorship of proletariat. “Class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and achieve a classless society. (Marx to J. Weydemeyer, March 5, 1852). 

Lenin has further crystallized and ideologically strengthened the doctrine of dictatorship of the proletariat. In his epic work ‘The State and Revolution’ Lenin wrote, “Those who recognize only the class struggle are not yet Marxist; they may be found to be still within the boundaries of bourgeois thinking and bourgeois politics. To confine Marxism to the doctrine of the class struggle means curtailing Marxism, distorting it, reducing it to something which is acceptable to the bourgeoisie.”

Fight the Onslaught of Revisionism

Narrating Lenin’s attempt to restore Marxist principles in trade union arena, working class historian Sukomal Sen in his internationally famous book, ‘Dynamics of Class Struggle Vs Class Collaboration’ has written: “By the turn of the century the petty bourgeois and trade union bureaucrats of the Second International were becoming deeply infected with the poison of Bernstein revisionism, carried away by the illusive prosperity of the long upswing of capitalism.

The substance of revisionism is that the revisionists or opportunists enter into a partnership, open or implicit, with the bourgeoisie under different pretexts, disregarding the interests of the broad masses of the working class. The revisionists become what Lenin called them, agents of the bourgeoisie in the ranks of the working class. They serve as tools to induce or compel the workers to work and live at the lowest standards they will be submitted to.

In Conclusion 

Class-oriented trade union movement must continuously orient and re-orient the organisational technique and tactics to meet the challenges emanating from fragmentation of the production process and precarity of jobs. They must introspect as to whether the day-to-day struggles including strike struggles are being conducted according to the teachings of Lenin or they are prisoners of economism. Lenin noted, ‘Strikes teach the workers that they can struggle against the capitalists only when they are united with class; strikes teach the workers to think of the struggle of the whole working class against the whole class of factory owners. This is the reason that socialists call strike ‘a school of war’, a school in which the workers learn to make war on their enemies for the liberation of the whole people.”

Comrade EMS wrote, “For a revolutionary trade union movement the organization of workers as a class for immediate demands, in opposition to class of owners, is the terrain on which the working class gains political maturity graduating itself to lead all exploited classes and oppressed sections of the society. The theoretical struggle for the primacy of class is part of this larger struggle; working class is destined to form as a class and complete its historic tasks to overthrow capitalism.