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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 3, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------What is Marxism all about?
Part 1: Is Marxism dead?
By Deirdre Griswold
The revolutionary view of society first put forward in the middle of the 19th century by two young Germans--Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels--is most appreciated today not in Europe or the United States but in the countries of the developing world. That is where the brutal capitalist industrialization that so transformed Europe 150 years ago is being repeated with even more ferocious consequences.
A young woman stitching together sneakers in Indonesia for pennies apiece, if she finds the energy to read after working 12 hours, can discover in Marx's "Wage Labor and Capital" the economic laws that drive bosses to squeeze every drop of profit from her unpaid labor. A worker assembling baseballs in Haiti would instantly recognize in Engels' "The Condition of the Working Class in England" the same wretched conditions that confront him every day. So would a miner in Russia, now living under capitalist rule for the first time since the 1917 revolution.
But why should a worker in the United States be interested in Marxism? Hasn't U.S. capitalism moved on to a prosperous "post-industrial" era in which such ideas as the class struggle are irrelevant? Hasn't work itself become unrecognizable in the information age? And didn't the collapse of the Soviet Union prove that Marxism is dead and capitalism is the only "natural" economic system in the world?
That is what people hear every day from the media and the other institutions of this society. It's the prevailing view. And the prevailing view of any period, said Marx, is the view of the ruling class.
It certainly serves the interests of the super-rich that people should think this way. And just to be sure no dangerous thoughts creep in, they pour billions of dollars--tax-deductible, of course--into think tanks, universities, political parties, churches, and television and radio to be sure that what is said conforms to their general view.
Nevertheless, Marxism is not dead--not by a long shot. If it were, its enemies would not be spending so much energy still trying to refute it. It doesn't make much sense to flog a dead horse, as the saying goes.
In their earthshaking book, the "Communist Manifesto," Marx and Engels warned in 1848 that a ghost was haunting Europe, "the specter of communism." Yes, even way back then the rulers thought they had buried the idea of a society where the workers own and share the wealth they have created. But then this idea came back from the grave to haunt the propertied classes in the form of a militant workers' movement that shook the very pillars of their power.
We all have a mental picture of the working class of those times. Strong men who worked with their hands at gritty and dangerous jobs--and who fought together to form the early labor unions. Their class consciousness often went along with a socialist ideology.
But how do you define the working class today? There are still many who fit the categories traditionally thought of as the workers. But what of the millions of white collar employees whose tools are computers and telephones? What of the millions of service workers, mostly women, whose output can't be measured in so many yards of cloth or tons of steel? What about the millions of men and women behind bars, many of them producing profits for the prison-industrial complex?
Yes, they are all part of the working class, and what they do contributes to the overall social product.
You can't put just one face on the working class of today. It is as diverse as the population of this country. In recent years, women and people of color have joined the work force in great numbers, changing forever the idea of what labor looks like.
Generally, these workers are more exploited and they bring with them a greater eagerness to organize. The most successful organizing drives of the union movement in recent years have been in industries with lots of underpaid women--most of them Black and Latina.
Nevertheless, all workers, be they women or men, gay or straight, living in small towns or cities, have some things in common. They don't own the plants, stores or offices where they work. They live from wages, not from dividends or interest or any other token of ownership.
And, in most cases, the work they do gives value to something that's for sale. The process of production is so broken up into tiny segments today that often it's hard to see what each worker contributes to the final product. But whatever is required in the process--from sweeping the floor to parking the boss's limo--is ultimately factored in to the value of something to be sold: a commodity.
Marx looked very carefully at commodities and at the relations between worker and boss in the production process. What he discovered about the system of capitalism and its tendency to drive down workers' wages is of the greatest interest to all workers.
Rich get richer while workers get poorer
So many people are working overtime or two jobs in this country that a very basic fact may not seem obvious. For the last 30 years or so, wages haven't increased. In fact, if you consider inflation, they've actually declined. At the same time, profits and executive salaries have shot up like a rocket.
And so has productivity. With the aid of the new technology, one worker can often do what three or four did just a few years ago.
We're always being told that greater production and the resulting increase in wealth will raise everyone's standard of living. Well, yes, they'll admit, the rich are getting a bigger share than ever, but they create the jobs and in the long run everyone benefits.
But it's not true. And the recent period has proved this once again. While millionaires have become billionaires and wealth has ballooned at the top of society, wage rates have actually dropped for most workers. It takes several people working in a family today to be able to afford the lifestyle that one stable wage earner used to provide.
Under capitalism, it's quite "natural" for the rich to get richer while those who do all the work get poorer. And the one who pointed this out long ago was Karl Marx.
In this series of articles, we're going to look at what Marxism has to offer all workers in the struggle for a better life. We'll look at why, in a country that prides itself on being the richest on earth, so many people find themselves in crisis, deprived of basic necessities like food, housing, health care, education, and a safe and clean environment.
We'll also consider how a Marxist approach to history helps explain why some people--those from downtrodden nations, women, lesbians, gays, bisexual and trans people--get a double or even triple dose of oppression and exploitation in this society.
And most of all, we'll look at how Marxist movements have brought together all the oppressed in the struggle to change society--not just to put Band-Aids on gaping wounds, but to eliminate class and national oppression altogether, so the full human potential can finally be realized.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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