Uprising or Class Struggle?

The concept of class has become popularagain. After the most recent globaleconomic crisis, even bourgeois newspapersstarted posing the question: “Wasn’t Marxright after all?” For the last two yearsThomas Piketty’s ‘Capital in the Twenty-FirstCentury’ has been on the bestseller list – abook which describes in a detailed way howhistorically, the capitalist process ofaccumulation resulted in a concentration ofwealth into the hands of a tiny minority ofcapital owners. In western democracies too,significant inequalities have led to anincrease in fear of social uprisings. Thisspectre has haunted the world in recentyears – from riots in Athens, London,Baltimore, to the revolts in North Africa,which at times got rid of whole stategovernments. As usual during these timesof unrest, while one faction of the rulers callfor repression and weapons, the otherraises the ‘social question’, which issupposed to be solved by reforms orredistribution policies.

Global crisis has de-legitimated capitalism;the politics of the rulers and governmentsto make the workers and poor pay for thecrisis has fuelled anger and desperation.Who would still dispute that we live in a‘class society’? But what does that mean?

‘Classes’ in the more narrow sense of theword only emerge with capitalism - but thedisappropriation from the means ofproduction on which the property-less stateof the proletarian is based, has not been a

singular historical process. Disappropriationis a daily reoccurrence within theproduction process itself: workers produce,but the product of their labour does notbelong to them. They only get what theyneed for the reproduction of their labourpower, or that according to the livingstandard that they have claimed throughstruggle.

In principle, class societies don’t recogniseany privileges by birthright, rather theownership of money determines one’sposition in society. In principle capitalismmakes it possible to have a career thatstarts from being a dishwasher to becominga stock market speculator (or at least asmall entrepreneur, which is the hope ofmany migrants). At the same time,members of the petty bourgeoisie orartisans can descend into the ranks of theproletarians. Climbing up the social ladder israrely the result of one’s own labour, ratherof the ability to become a capitalist and toappropriate other people’s labour. (Themafia, as well, possesses this ability.)

In actual fact, a process of class polarisationtakes place, which Marx and Engels hadalready grasped as an explosive force andprecondition for revolution. “Theproletarian movement is the self-conscious,independent movement of the immensemajority, in the interests of the immensemajority.” (Manifesto) ImmanuelWallerstein declared Marx’s thesis of classpolarisation to be his most radical one,which – once related to the world system –has been proven to be true. Polarisation

means, on one hand, proletarianisation, onthe other hand bourgeoisification.

Capital is not simply wealth accumulated inthe hands of a few. Capital is theprecondition and result of the capitalistprocess of production, in which living labourcreates value, which is appropriated byothers. For capitalism is not typically the‘exploitation’ of a single worker by anartisan master, but the exploitation of a bigmass of workers in a factory. It is a mode ofproduction based on the fact that millionsof people work together although theydon’t know each other. They produce valuetogether, but together they can also refusethis work and question the social division oflabour. As labour power, workers are part ofcapital; as the working class, they arecapital’s biggest enemy within.

Generations of ‘scientific management’researchers have tried to expropriateworkers' knowledge of how to produce inorder to become independent from them.They have established parallel productionunits in order to be able to continueproduction in case workers go on strike.They have closed down and relocatedfactories in order to be able to increaseexploitation of, and control over, newgroups of workers. But they were not ableto exorcise the spectre. During the strike-waves of 2010, for the first time it hauntedall parts of the globe simultaneously. Thesestruggles are currently in the process ofchanging this world. Even academia hasbecome aware of it and after a long timehas turned the working class into an object

of their research again – as numerouspublications, new magazines and web-pages demonstrate, through which left-wing social scientists try to create linksbetween workers in different continents. InGermany for the last 25 years, workers wereleft alone with their struggles – here, aswell, social movements and intellectualshave started referring to them again.

Retrospective 1978 – the workingclass at the height of their power

Up to 1989, we were able to explain toourselves what was happening in this world,or rather, the class struggles were able toexplain it to us. The revolutionaryawakening around 1968 led to a new surgeof workers’ struggles in most countries, andbrought forth a comprehensive critique ofthe factory system and culture of workbacked by the trade unions in themetropolis. At the end of the 1970s theworking class was at the height of theirpower. Wages and incomes were secured bycollective bargaining and permanent andrelatively secure employment was still thenorm. In the industrial nations, the materialconditions of workers within the frameworkof their total social wage were better thanever before in history. And their struggles inthe industrial core sectors enforced betterconditions for everyone.

As early as during the crisis of 1973/74,their productive power had started to beundermined through the relocation oflabour intensive mass production to

Southeast Asia and restructuring within thefactories. Capital wanted to get rid ofworkers who had become combative andconfident. The coup in Chile in 1973 and theascent of the ‘Chicago Boys’ indicated thedirection the counter-revolution of 1979/80would take, which was identified with thenames of Thatcher and Reagan, and whichlead to secular defeats of what was, up untilthat point, central parts of the working class(defeat at FIAT in 1980; the military coup inTurkey; the 1979-81 counter-revolution inIran after the workers’ council had beensmashed; military rule in Poland at the endof 1981; the 1985 defeat of the miners inEngland…). Direct attacks in the form ofmass redundancies and segmentation of theworkforce followed. The working class on anational level [nationale Arbeiterklassen]barricaded themselves behind theirworkplaces and was able – though with bigdifferences according to each country – tofight off direct deteriorations of conditionsfor a substantial period of time.

For people at the time, the 1980s inWestern Europe were contradictory times:on the one hand massive attacks, on theother hand, radical social movements. Butseen from today’s perspective it was adecade of dramatic defeats. Austeritypolitics lead to a dismantling of welfareentitlements and/or these were moretightly linked to actively seeking work.Images from the US showed long queues ofunemployed people in front of recruitmentagencies, portraying the new dimension ofimpoverishment of the US working class - aworking class that used to be so powerful.

In Germany during the mid 1980s, tradeunion mobilisation for working-timereductions (to combat unemployment!) inreturn for the flexibilisation andcasualisation of ‘normal permanent workcontracts’ marked a watershed. The 1980sare represented by military dictatorshipsand economic decline in large parts of LatinAmerica, state bankruptcy in Mexico, thedebt crisis and IMF dictates to enforce‘structural adjustment programs’.

Since the mid-1980s, the high economicgrowth rates of the four young ‘tiger-states’,Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and SouthKorea, turned old assumptions ofdependence theory upside-down. Themassive strike movements of 1984 focusedeveryone’s attention on South Korea. Underthe ruling conditions of a western-orienteddevelopmental dictatorship, which hadmassacred a workers’ uprising only sevenyears earlier, a working class had emergedthat challenged South Korea capital and its'factory regime with radical forms ofstruggle. Thanks to high wage increases,within the span of a few years, workerswere able to catch up with theircounterparts in the west. During the late1980s in Europe, as well, a new classcomposition seemed to develop within aseries of struggles (the nurses’ movement,nursery strikes, train drivers in Italy andFrance, truck drivers in France, the wildcatstrike at VW…) – but then a crisis and warfollowed, and a massacre that changed theworld...

Crisis and surge inproletarianisation in the 1990s

In June 1989 the army opened fire onTiananmen Square mainly because massesof workers appeared in support of thestudents. Not students, but workers’ leaderswere given the death penalty or long prisonsentences. Unofficial unions wereimmediately declared illegal and theirleaders thrown into jail.

This example did not repeat itself in Berlinor Leipzig. There the regime surrendered.When the wall fell in 1989, Wildcatapproached the collapse of real existingsocialism optimistically. In 1988/89 classstruggles in West Germany had intensifiedand in the course of the regime-change inthe east we witnessed mass debates in localworkplaces and on the streets about asocial future beyond capitalism and GDRsocialism - which today has been longforgotten. The economic devastation of theformer GDR initially triggered a broadmovement of struggle against factoryclosures and the deterioration of socialservices.

Following the massacre of the Gulf War in1991 and the onset of the economic crisis,which was delayed in Germany due to thepost-reunification boom but then kicked ineven harder in 1993, we saw a massivecollapse of existing conditions in the metalindustry in the former West Germany. Tradeunions did their bit to rescue Germany asthe ‘export-nation’, for example in 1994 theIG Metall (metal union) accepted an

intensification of work and massiveflexibilisation of working times in the'Agreement of Pforzheim'. In addition,welfare benefits were attacked across theboard.

Struggles that were hoped for - mainly inthe factories that were in the process ofbeing dismantled in the former east ofGermany - largely did not materialise. Themigration of high-skilled workers from eastto west worked as a safety valve for socialpressure - and resulted in wages droppingfor the first time in the west during thepost-war period. Mass unemployment inthe east was buffered through variousmeans e.g. companies would send workerson training programs continuously becausethey wasn't any work, hours of work werereduced, sometimes to zero-hours. At thesame time, when we pointed out that theworkmate next to us earned double asmuch as we did for the same work, wewould suddenly start hearing comments onthe shop-floor like, "The main thing is thatwe have a job". The 'industrial reserve army'was back! From then on they wereincreasingly able to divide workers on theshop floor through the massive use of tempwork and short-term contracts.

In West Germany in the 1970s, we hadlearned that, to a large extent, the functionof the unemployed 'reserve army' to buildpressure on employed workers had beenundermined: as long as it was no problemto find a job, you could enjoy paidunemployment as a welcome break.Therefore, we were cautious of using terms

like 'reserve army' and, above all, arguedagainst a premature capitulation. We thenalso witnessed a rapid deterioration ofconditions for unemployed workers. TheHartz laws (unemployment benefit reformsin 2004/2005) resulted in a much largerdrop of income in cases of (longer term)unemployment.

The dissolution of the 'Eastern Bloc' wasalso a rupture in regards to triggering a newboost in proletarianisation of the globalpopulation. While in the Eastern Europeancountries, a type of 'primitive accumulation'took place with former political officialsrobbing and amassing huge financial wealththrough wild privatisations and the massesof workers losing their entitlements to land,accommodation and pensions, which hadpreviously been mediated through thesocialist state. On a global scale all regimesshifted towards 'neoliberalism', in additionto increased war scenarios - and for the firsttime since WWII, also in Europe itself.

Return of the proletarian condition

When the threatening image of'globalisation' was manufactured inGermany during the early/mid-1990s (after'lean production' and 'Toyotism' in previousyears), Wildcat, on one side, tried toemphasise the trump card workers stillpossessed ("they need workers'knowledge", "they face high costs fortransport and transactions"), and on theother side, to analyse the potentials that layin the socialisation of production. If thewhole world has become capitalist, then

there are no non-capitalist sectors availableanymore that could provide capital with areserve of fresh labour power, which meansthat at some point, capital faces a globalworking class.

"Instead of consolidating the mirage of theover-bearing power of capital andsubjugation of workers, we have to askwhere the new dependencies of capital onthe working class are situated… And doesthe fact that workers cooperate acrosscontinents bear new potentials of fightingcapital on a global scale." [1]

Similarly, we did not regard the formation ofthe EU immediately and automatically as adeterioration of the possibilities forstruggles. These were thoughts, which, atthe time, only few wanted to share. Ourproposal of militant research on a Europeanscale of various sectors – the automobileindustry, hospital work, migration,casualisation - petered out. For most of theleft, other questions had higher priority: theend of the 'socialist bloc', the new wave ofnationalism and racism; migrants; thecreation of alternative trade unions…

With his publication of, 'The return of theproletarian condition' in 1993, Karl-HeinzRoth called upon the left to engage with thequestion of 'work' again. Countering thepropagandists of a postmodern society, hesketched out the "tendency towards ‘one’new proletariat in ‘one’ capitalist world". Hesaw a " homogenisation of employmentrelations towards casualisation, contractwork and 'dependent' self-employment ".His idea though that a left milieu, which was

subjected to casualisation itself, shouldhave a specific interest in the militantresearch of class relations, contained a basicflaw: On one side the dissolution of left-wing (infra-)structures and the tendencytowards individualisation had alreadyprogressed considerably, and on the otherside, left academics were still able to findsome financial support from universities orresearch foundations. The traditional leftcriticised Roth in a rather harsh anddogmatic manner, because he had allegedlygiven up on central parts of the workingclass prematurely; his vision of 'proletariancircles' as nuclei for organisation werediscarded as sectarian.

His prophecies made at the time areastonishingly accurate once they are relatedto today's conditions. This is despite the factthat, at the time, the changes that hementioned with regard to the "globalisationof production" were just about to becomevisible and access to the internet andelectronic communication was barelyavailable to the common user. Many hopesregarding an expansion of social revoltshave since then been disillusioned andmany of his preliminary proposals - mainlyformulated in response to his critics - toform international associations were nottaken up, or rather, are still waiting to beturned into practice. The main reasonthough why such proposals were notgreeted with a broad-based agreement wasthe fact that the 1990s in Europe was adecade of defeats, internalised inpreemptive obedience by the left throughpostmodern and poststructuralist theories

and its search for the right kind of identities.All attempts of generalisation weredestroyed from within.

Since its origin, Wildcat’s role has been tospread the word of worldwide classstruggles in its local surroundings, but afterthe dissolution of the Eastern Bloc this didnot work anymore. Many readers, as well,resigned, facing the declared victory ofcapitalism. Wildcat did not want to justcontinue as normal and to keep the flagraised high. In 1995 the editorial collectiveput the publication of the magazine on haltfor several years and continued the debatein the form of the Wildcat-Zirkular.

Anti-GlobThe emergence of the EZLN in the LacandonJungle during the beginning of the NAFTAagreement in 1994 put revolution back onthe agenda again and opened the way forcompletely new discourses and high hopes.Even more so when an 'anti-globalisationmovement' came together with theorganised labour movement in response tothe WTO conference in Seattle in 1999.

Radical struggles seemed to be taking placein the 'global south' and in the countryside,in the form of struggles against 'enclosures'and 'valorisation', rather than in the globalfactories. In the factories people were putunder pressure, their jobs were cut back,they were supposed to work more etc. - andthen read newspaper articles whichexplained to them why things were like theywere: globalisation means increasedcompetition and we are only able to stay

afloat if we lower our wages. That soundslogical, right? Finally, these are allassumptions that confine you to the role ofa victim of all-powerful developments.Therefore we made an effort to criticise thenotion of globalisation and itspropagandistic application: The debateabout 'globalisation' tries to, "on anideological level, sell a 30-year phase ofcapitalism’s global stagnation as a triumphalseries of victories". [2]

Instead of using the terms 'globalisation' or'neoliberalism' we continued writing aboutcapitalism and referred to the tumultuousdevelopments in Asia.

Asia is where it’s at…

The term 'global working class'(“Weltarbeiterklasse”) appeared for the firsttime in Wildcat Zirkular no.25 (April 1996).The article 'World in a Radical Change' [3]described the process of proletarianisationfrom Bangladesh to Indonesia to China,which was accompanied by intensestruggles and riots and the emergence of anew workforce migrating from thecountryside to the urban world: youngwomen, who prefer factory work to thepatriarchal rule in the village. These youngworkers are declared as being a vanguard ofthe making of a new working class, which isa reason to give us hope again. The articleassumes that an "explosion ofneeds/desires" is the material basis of‘neoliberalism', which dissolved workers'rigidity in the old industrial nations andwhich now initiates a global transformation

of class relations starting from Asia. Theworkers in the old industrial centres willsoon lose their position of being the onlyworkers able to manufacture cars. Thearticle was a call for inquiry of thesechanges in Asia, Latin America, and Africa -and for a reconsideration of theoretical“ballast" e.g. in the form of theories about"the new enclosures" or the "end ofdevelopment".

What followed was an intense debate inWildcat Zirkular about the validity ofseemingly self-explanatory press releasesabout workers' unrest and the significanceof the working class in East Asia. Parts ofthe editorial collective denied the "crisis ofcapital" und relocated all revolutionaryhope towards the "new" working class inAsia:

"What is it that we want to hint at: theglobal working class recomposes itself in anunprecedented scope and speed. This hastwo aspects and both improve thepotentials for communism.

1. The proletariat has become thequantitative majority of the globalpopulation or put another way: thedeparture of the masses in search of theirluck is a step towards the completion [4] ofdeveloped capitalism. Only now can whatMarx and Engels postulated 150 years agoin the 'Communist Manifesto' become true.

2. The 'old' working class, which issynonymous with social-democracy, tradeunions, communist parties, blue overalls,workers' pride, company-based interests…loses significance worldwide and dissolves

itself in equal measures through escapefrom the factories, being thrown out of thefactories and in defensive struggles. Inprinciple this process is the same here as itis, for example, in China. But in turn thereemerges a new working class consisting ofyoung workers, and above all, firstgeneration female workers. And it is whollyunnecessary to explain why a seventeen-year old girl embodies more revolutionaryhope than a 35-year old family man." [5]

A different part of the editorial collectivemerely saw a repetition of the mass-workers' history, but no new quality, andinsisted on a theoretical grounding of thenotion of 'global working class':

"The emergence of a 'global working class'is based on the question of whether a realsocialisation through a global productivecooperation takes place, meaning, thequestion of to what extent the globalproduction of capital opens the possibilityof communism. [...] To answer this questionwe first of all have to understand the innerconnection between exploited peoplearound the globe, namely, that they alreadyproduce this (inverted/upside-down) world -and that they are therefore able to changeit." [6]

" One of the main problems of revolutionarypolitics today lies in its inability to criticisetheoretically and practically the globalproduction process in such a radicaldemystifying way." [7]

Worldwide proletarianisation andsupply shock

In January 1998 Karl-Heinz Roth, too,claimed that 150 years after the Communistmanifesto, the proletariat has constituteditself for the first time objectivelyworldwide - and that contrary to RosaLuxemburg's presumption, non-capitalistsectors have been completely integratedtoo. " For the first time in history theproperty-less, who have to offer and selltheir labour power in order to live,quantitatively constitutes the majority ofthe world population" . [8]

This assumption raises questions on at leasttwo levels: Do we understand this processas a first step in the constitution of a classwithout the means of subsistence, followedby a second step in the form of thetransition of landless proletarians intowaged workers? Or does a universe ofdifferent relations of exploitation develop?What does this mean for the developmentof struggles? [9]

Throughout the 1980s the autonomous leftin Germany related more to the subsistenceeconomy (or to what one read into it) andriots by those who had been excluded fromthe capitalist production process than to'wage workers'. In 1983 Wallerstein hadalready pointed out that the large majorityof the world population today works harderand longer and for less income than 400years ago. This process of increasingdependency on wage income we could call,in Marx's sense, 'proletarianisation'. This

means: an increase of real purchasingpower; it is therefore in the long-terminterests of capital, but against the interestsof individual capitalists who are interestedin low reproduction costs of their workers,meaning, they are interested in a 'semi-proletarianisation': a household economybased on income from different sources andthe subsistence economy or in-house-work.[10]

In contrast, full proletarianisation (meaning:both wife and husband are free wage-labourers and buy all of their means ofsubsistence) is desired rather by theproletarians. Full proletarianisation requiresa 'welfare state', which transfers income tothose who don't work. East Germany was arole-model case for 'full-proletarianisation' -which solved its labour shortage problemswith migrants from Vietnam andMozambique. Based on Luxemburg's thesisthat capitalism is not able to reproduce theworkforce it exploits, Wallersteindemonstrates that large parts of the globalpopulation never achieves full-proletarianisation, but rather thathouseholds stay dependent on subsistenceproduction and self-employed activities ofall kind.

Forces of Labor

Wildcat pointed out the vulnerability of thenew transport chains within the new globallandscape, which were otherwise difficult tocomprehend due to rapid changes andshifts. We focused our attention on the newlocations of production - during the 1990s,

automobile factories not only emerged inAsia, but also in Eastern Europe.

Helpful in this regard was the book 'Forcesof Labor' by Beverly Silver, who, within theframework of world-systems analysis,positioned working class unrest at thecentre of her research. She was able topoint out that, historically, wherever capitalgoes, struggles follow: in reaction to theworkers' revolts in the 1970s capital builtnew car factories in South Africa and Brazil -and thereby triggered a new dynamic ofpowerful workers' struggles. During the1980s the car industry boomed in SouthKorea - which lead to similar persistentstruggles by a new generation of workers.

What was important was that Silver lookedat the entire globe and established the factthat 'fixes' were only temporary repair jobsof the system and that capital time andagain had to confront resistance - becauselabor unrest is endemic to capitalism.Though her schematic categorisation into'Marxian' struggles and 'Polanyi-type'struggles were less helpful.

Silver assumed that the weakening ofworkers' 'bargaining power' in the countriesof the global north would only betemporary. Her empirical data initially onlyreached up to 1990, but was then extendedto 1996 - and up to 1990 her analysis doesfit the picture. In Eastern Europe though,wages are still significantly lower than in theWest. Automobile workers have ceased tobe the best paid workers, at least this is nottrue for all places around the globe. Silverhas a cyclical picture of the world, crisis is

always cyclical, always followed by phasesof development and boom. From herperspective a big crisis would mean thatfundamental transformations, instabilityand a new hegemonic force in the worldsystem would emerge. She does not posethe question of how workers' struggle mightlead to communism and she has 'notnoticed' the long phase during whichworkers in Southeast Asia did not pose arevolutionary threat to capitalism. Today,Silver explains the deep crisis of the globallabour movement by the fact that the'financial fix' was combined with a 'de-making' of the established working classes.Capital has been removed from production,the destructive side was dominant.Nevertheless, she states that the financialfix was effective only temporarily and hasalso shifted the crisis geographically - andhas finally lead to a new and deep crisis oflegitimisation of capitalism. [11]

And it is true that there has hardly everbeen as much organised resistance againstinfrastructure projects, dams, power plantsetc. - particularly in the more recentlyindustrialised countries like India, Indonesiaor China. Whether we grasp them asstruggles against 'commodification' - orsimply as against the destruction of thebasis of livelihood: by now a globalexperience has emerged that 'technicalprogress' does not automatically lead to'development', but is going hand in handwith destruction - and that we can getorganised against this.

This is contrasted by the fact that capitalhas never before, during a process ofindustrialisation, encountered so littleresistance from workers as during the phasebetween 1990 and 2005. It was able todeteriorate workers conditions continuouslywithout being seriously threatened by theircollective resistance. The compensation ofindustrial jobs with high-quality service jobsthat had been predicted vanished into thinair. During this period workers' strugglesglobally - in China, too - had a largelydefensive character, lead by the 'oldworking classes' against closures oroutsourcing/re-locations. (That alsoexplains why, during the same period, theleft threw the notion of class overboard.)

The opening of the labour markets in Indiaand China during the 1990s led to a 'supplyshock': almost overnight the supply oflabour power doubled. There were doubleas many workers employed in industry inChina compared to the G7 states puttogether. China became the factory of theworld and main export location forindustrially produced consumer goods, inparticular of those with high productvolumes. The consequences for a part ofthe global working class were - as predicted- catastrophic: the garment industry leftMexico and shifted to Asia. China joiningthe WTO in 2002 and the Multi FibreAgreement 2005 was supposed to be thepeak of this development - but then thingschanged: in China workers in the newfactories started to fight and their strugglesexpanded...

What has changed in the last 40years

Since the 'oil crisis' in 1973 there have beenchanges with long-term impacts: today overseven billion people live on this planet.Between 1950 and 1970 the annual growthrate of the global population was 2 per cent,since then the growth rate has sloweddown, in particular in those areas whereproletarianisation takes place.

In the 'developing countries' the labourforce has been increasing by 2 per cent,which means that the total labour force hasdoubled in 30 years, while in Europe thisprocess took 90 years. Proletarianisationtakes place at a much more rapid pace thanthe capitalist economy is able to absorb:many do not find wage labour that paysenough to live on. A huge number ofproletarians end up in the informal sector.The share of women as part of the total thelabour force increases. Unemployment ratesare high, particularly amongst youngpeople, even higher amongst migrants, orrather, minorities. (This aggravates theruling class' fear that was previouslymentioned: there is a correlation betweenhigh levels of unemployment amongstyoung men and frequency of social unrest;'social unrest' has hiked after 2009, with anincrease of 10 per cent of recordedincidents - mainly in the Middle-East, NorthAfrica, but also in Southern Europe, theformer Eastern Bloc and a little less in SouthAsia.)

Employment in agriculture has shrunkdramatically; only in the poorest regionsdoes more than half of the population stillwork on the fields. The concentrationprocess in the agro-industry continues andpeasants turn into agricultural labourers,some of who live in towns rather than thecountryside. In East Asia the flight from thecountryside leads, to a large extent, directlyinto industrial work, while in Latin Americaand Africa it is mainly the service sectorthat registers growth. Since 2007 (morethan) half of the global population lives inurban areas. In the developing countries inparticular the mega-cities grow, 80 per centof the inhabitants live in slums. Slum citiesare an expression of the fact that peoplewant to become part of the global workingclass. They are starting-points and transit-stations for a better life - in the respectiveor a different country, wherever labour isneeded.

In the worldwide process ofproletarianisation 'mobile labour' (or'migrant labour') has become the mostgeneral form of labour, as much in the formof migration to a different country (e.g. theEU) or as internal migration (e.g. in China,where the government estimates that thereare 130 million migrant labourers, out ofwhom 80 million have migrated from thepoorer inner regions towards the coastaltowns). The number of internationalmigrants today (2013) is higher than everbefore: 232 million (in 2000 there were 175million), out of which 20 to 30 million arewithout papers. Their share as part of thetotal population increased between 2000

and 2013 from 2.9 to 3.3 per cent. The largemajority are labour migrants, not refugeesor asylum seekers.

A noteworthy development is the increaseof a proletariat of migrant workers, who -mediated through the internationalrecruitment agencies - engage in 'simple'work in different countries for low pay, butwho are not supposed to settle down there:construction workers from India, Pakistan,Bangladesh who work on the bigconstruction sites in the gulf states, who livein camps and whose collective situation hasfrequently resulted in strikes and rebellion -confronted with draconian repression.Millions of domestic workers from thePhilippines or Indonesia etc. who work inrich or better-off households in the gulfstates, but also in Hong Kong. Care workersfor elderly people, who move from EasternEurope to the West, in order to work inhouseholds that cannot afford to hire a localcarer. Increasingly industrial workers, aswell, are recruited to work in faraway 'freeproduction zones', in order to underminethe local working class.

Peoples' living conditions are largelydetermined by where they live - but theworking conditions of 'simple' workers inthe global north and south are becomingstructurally more similar. In the assemblyplants for the production of complex mass-consumer goods in China and India, too,machinery of the most modern standard isused. Simple manual labour takes place atthe fringe-parts of the supply-chain in theslums' backyards, but also in the

warehouses of the distribution centres inthe heart of Europe or the US. Within thesame value chain absolute and relativesurplus value production are combined.

Up until the crisis of 1973/74, persistenteconomic growth had more thancompensated for productivity increases andfor successful 'rationalisation', meaning, theemployment rate did not decrease and thewelfare state was expanded. Since then,growth of industrial production hasstagnated - currently it is around 3 per cent,in the near future around 1.5 per cent?

Employment in manufacturing (includingconstruction) has increased globally, butrates of industrialisation like we saw 50 or100 years ago are not reached anywhereanymore: capital leaves places much fasterthan in the past, relocates production to'cheaper' areas or transforms it locally intoa 'service' - or stops investing at all. In manyof the newly industrialised countries theshare of industrial workers has alreadyreached its peak at 20 per cent of the totalworkforce.

In the old industrial nations a process of de-industrialisation takes place - though we canmake out major differences: in the US 11per cent work in industries, while Germanyis at the top of the list in the EU with 22 percent (2007). In 1970 industrial workers stillaccounted for 37 per cent (while today,work outsourced to 'industry-relatedservice providers' does not count asindustrial work anymore). [12]

Globalisation has resulted in a newpolarisation between higher and lower

qualified jobs. In the older industrial nationsany jobs that require a medium level ofqualification are reduced, new jobs tend tobe temporary and less well paid. The'service sector' grows globally - and here, aswell, these two poles are replicated: both'simple work' (cleaning, care-work) and'non-routine' jobs of higher skill-levelsincrease, whereas routine jobs of mediumlevel qualifications (accountant, officeclerks) decrease: the introduction ofcomputers has made many aspects of thiswork redundant or it was able to berelocated more easily. This is one of thereasons why the wage gap within the sectorwidens.

Unequal incomes

During the 19th and 20th century thedifferences in income levels betweendifferent countries were the mostpronounced. Over the years thesedifferences decreased due to the workingclass struggles within the countries. In thelast 20 years this tendency towards equalityhas changed again: while conditionsbetween different nations become moresimilar, income differences within countrieshave sharpened drastically.

In the newly industrialised countries thewage gap is similarly high as in Europe 100years ago. In the US wage differences werethe least stark during the period between1950 and 1970 - during the 1960s they wereless pronounced compared to France,where only after 1968 were the lowerincome levels able to catch up. Since the

neoliberal counter-revolution the incomedisparity has exploded, which has beenfurther aggravated since the global crisis -especially once we look at take-home wagesafter tax and transfer-incomes. Between1970 and 2010 the average value of privateassets in money-terms increasedsignificantly, particularly in Japan andEurope. This increase of the 'savings rate'translated into a decrease in growth -companies stopped investing. Financialassets owned by the nation state decreasedand state debt grew. (Not only) in theformer state-capitalist countries, extremeplundering and amassing of assets intoprivate hands took place during the processof privatisation. [13]

Different Sectors - different conditionsfor struggle

Mining: Formerly, mining workers and theirfamilies lived close to the pits, their villageswere also communities of struggle. Here amajor process of restructuring is takingplace, particularly when it comes to open-cast mining: now, miners are oftenemployed as temporary contract workersand they live in container settlements (orother forms of arranged accommodation)far away from their families.

Textiles/Garments/Shoes: These are themost important sectors in developingnations. Mainly young women areemployed - similar to the situation in 19thcentury Europe. The 'new internationaldivision of labour' during the 1970s had itsorigins in these sectors. Factories can be

relocated more easily, machinery is notparticularly expensive. The sector ischaracterised by small and medium sizecompanies, the profit margins are low.Companies largely depend on supply-contracts with big fashion brands or retailchains. Design and (sometimes) cutting isdone separately from the more labour-intensive (outsourced) productiondepartment. In 2005 and 2008 globalimport barriers that were meant to protectlocal industries were abolished. Today,China (or rather 'companies in China') is thebiggest manufacturer worldwide, employing2.7 million people. Companies withheadquarters in Taiwan run factories inMexico and Nicaragua, companies fromChina open new plants in Africa.

Automobile: Are still the most complexconsumption good. A few transnationalautomobile corporations dominate thesector with long-term planning for localproduction units and high demandsconcerning infrastructure. The sectordepends massively on state subsidies.Modern factories make use of expensivemachinery and increasingly only employworkers with technical qualifications. Theworkforce is segmented into permanents,people with temporary contracts, agencyworkers, contract workers, all divided bysignificant wage differences. This is a globalphenomenon.

Consumer electronics: Partly skilled labour,but also a big share of workers trained onthe job. The quality levels demanded ofthese products are high, because the

products tend to be expensive. According tothe machine equipment we mainly seelonger-term investments, therefore alsovery minute planning of where to establishproduction. The sub-contracted productionfor various brands in mega-factories, mostof all in China, has become common(Foxconn etc.): their production capacity isextensive enough to produce mobilephones for the whole globe.

Construction: During the last decades thesector has played an increasingly importantrole, due to the fact that real estate andgigantic construction projects were a meansto inflate speculative bubbles. Mainlymigrants from the countryside or fromabroad are employed on construction sites.Largely male workers. Major constructionprojects are often developed outside urbanareas, meaning that workers are placed incamps.

Logistics: Alongside the global relocation ofproduction the amount of transport workhas increased drastically, while there was asignificant drop in transport costs. Besides afew highly paid professional groups, thesector consists mainly of simple manuallabour, often done by migrants in semi-legalconditions. In distribution centreseverywhere around the globe newconcentrations of mass work are emerging.

Service work: Everything that is notagriculture, mining or direct manufacturingwork. While formerly service work wasdone wherever the actual service wasneeded, today much of the office work,such as back-office, accountancy, call centre

work etc. can be performed anywhere inthe world, as long as it has internetconnection.

The segmentation of workers throughdifferent employment relations is a bigchallenge for common struggles, the oldhabitual formulas have become ineffective.(After the strikes at the beginning of the1970s the 'guest workers' (Gastarbeiter)have struggled their way into the tradeunions and became the reliable foundationfor all future mobilisations. In contrast, thenew migrants are mostly contract or tempworkers.)

But only in Stalinist or social-democraticstorytelling did the working class used to bea homogeneous block. In reality it was veryheterogeneous in the 19th century or in1920, too - and not only in terms of thedivisions between male and female workersor locals and migrants. We cannot equateworking class with industrial workers! Evenin England in the 19th century half of theworkforce was employed outside thefactory system. And we could also find wagedifferences of 300 per cent between factoryworkers with German passports. Historicallythe working class learnt time and again tostruggle (together) under suchcircumstances.

The end of the peasant question

In autumn 2008 an article was published inWildcat no.82, which engaged with theromantisation of the peasantry by the anti-globalisation movement. The main thesis

was that today there is no separate 'peasantquestion' anymore and that it is ratherabout the recomposition of the globalworking class from below.

"In earlier phases of history humans used toproduce their means of subsistence in smallcommunities and they were dependent onthe natural fluctuations of production. Incontrast to that capitalism created theworld market right from the start, and itsmain productive force (machinery) is itself aproduct of human labour. The generalcontext of a global society becomes thebasic condition of our existence andreproduction ("Second Nature") and in thissense it is the real human community. Onlysince humans' livelihood started to dependon social rather than on individual labourhave we been able to raise the question ofcollective appropriation of the means ofproduction at all – and nowadays actuallyon a global level!" [14]

Contrary to this Samir Amin [15], amongstothers, continues to present a classic anti-imperialist position. He still divides theglobe up into the triad (EU, Japan, US) andthe periphery, in which 80 per cent of theworld population live, half of them in thecountryside. Without finding a solution forthese people, no 'other world' would bepossible. Amin reckons that the processwhich other people call globalisation isactually an ongoing implosion of theimperialist system. He discards the notionof the anti-glob movement to change theworld without taking power as naive - asnaive as the idea of an ecological

compromise with capital. He alleges thatthe 'imperialist rent', from which the socialmiddle-strata in the global north benefit, isa barrier to the path for common struggle.In order to establish socialism orcommunism, workers and peoples have tofind offensive strategies on three levels,already pointed out by Mao: the people,the state, the nation. A return to theKeynesian post-war model is impossible -history doesn't have a reverse gear. Butaccording to Amin the peasant question isstill central: access to land for all peasantsand development of a more productiveagriculture, opposed to peasant folklore.Building of industry and development of theforces of production.

These political proposals are as antiquatedas the analysis stuck in the past: by now inChina the third generation of migrantworkers are working in the global factories.In the process of exodus of millions ofuprooted peasants from the rural areas, anindustrial working class has been formed inclassical ways. The division between urbanand rural dwellers has not been overcome,but the former villagers have largelydissolved their ties to the land and, aboveall, they don't want to return to it!

More interesting though is Amin's argumentagainst the idea that the developingcountries in the 'emerging markets', e.g. thenew Tiger states, Brazil, Turkey etc., couldbecome the new centres of capitalism:according to him the necessary 'securityvalves' for that to happen are missing inthese regions. Proletarianisation in Europe

in the 18th century had migration toAmerica as a security valve. Today it wouldneed several Americas for similar processesof industrialisation to happen in the'emerging market' countries. Therefore theydon't have a chance to catch up. Thisargument has to be further sharpenedtowards the following question: Whathappens in the actual and current processesof industrialisation once struggles cannot bechanneled into social democracy on onehand or mass migration on the other?

Proletarianisation translates intoclass struggle

Often, we only realise in hindsight if andwhen a qualitative shift took place. In 2004the first 'global traffic jam' was reported.The strikes in the Chinese Pearl River deltain 2004 at the peak of the boom marked thefirst big cycle of struggles in the 'newfactories'. Through offensive struggles theygained significant wage increases and hadan effect on the situation in factories in thewhole of East Asia. In Vietnam, Cambodia,Bangladesh, Bahrain, workers' strikeserupted and with the bus drivers' dispute inIran in 2006, the first important strike since1979 took place! A worldwide groundswellof workers' struggles can be retraced from2006, meaning before the global economiccrash. This groundswell transformed into awave reaching its peak in 2010, whenstrikes took place in nearly every country inthe world, and which opened the way forthe political revolutions and protestmovements on the streets to come. The

latter attracted more media attention, butwithout the strikes in the phosphateindustry in Tunisia and the mass strikes inthe textile industry in Mahalla in Egyptbetween 2006 and 2008, the uprisings inthese countries would not have taken place.

The waves of protests 2006 – 2013

The years 2006 to 2013 were characterisedby a wave of mass protests on the streets,strikes and uprisings on an unprecedentedscale. According to the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung New York [16] the wave is onlycomparable to the revolutionary upheavalsof 1848, 1917 or 1968 - the think-tankanalysed 843 protest movements in totalbetween 2006 and 2013, in 87 countries,which cover 90 per cent of the worldpopulation. Protests of all kinds, againstsocial injustice, against war, for realdemocracy, against corruption, riots againstfood price hikes, strikes against employers,general strikes against austerity. (Lesspositive were e.g. the clerical mobilisationsagainst abortions in Poland).

Noteworthy is the large number of proteststaking place in 'high income' countries andthe fact that 48 per cent of violent proteststake place in low-income countries; in mostcases they target high food and energyprices. 49 protests demanded agrarianreform, 488 were targeted against austeritypolicy and demanded social justice, while376 protests had 'real democracy' as theirproclaimed aims. Many protests wereexpressions of the complete loss of trust in'Politics'. Nevertheless, in most cases the

protestors aimed their demands at thestate: the responsible politicians weresupposed to act. Often the forms ofstruggles went beyond traditionaldemonstrating or striking and were act of'civil disobedience', such as blockades andoccupations. In particular the occupationsof public squares and the commonorganisation of daily life as a form ofstruggle impacted on the entireMediterranean region and the US.

The comparison with '1968' disguises morethan it is able to clarify: 1968 stands for aglobal revolutionary movement, but 1968was not the peak year of strikes - on thecontrary, these began in the early 1960s andonly reached their peak in the mid-/end-1970s.

The wave of struggle since 2005 has verydifferent facets:

Food Riots

Since the beginning of the global economiccrisis speculative, capital has fled towards'secure' assets, such as raw materials, staplefood and agricultural land and thereby,within a short span of time, has triggered amassive hike of basic food prices; thesereached historical highs first in December2007 and then again in 2010. Betweenautumn 2007 and summer 2008proletarians in large parts of Africa andChina reacted with strikes and uprisings andforced their governments or employers tocontinue subsidising basic foodstuffs.

The movement of the squares

On the 'squares', revolutionary groupingsand tendencies were active, but as aminority. Most of the participants were'active on the streets' for the first time anddemonstrated considerable ability to self-organise daily life and reproduction - butthey were not 'political'. The media pictureof these movements were largelyinfluenced by the social middle-strata, maybe because journalists are best atcommunicating with people from their ownsocial background. And a mass protest inthe capital is more visible than a strike inthe provinces. Due to this, the participationof proletarians was largely underestimatedalthough many of them took part andfought the cops on the front lines. But thesemovements were, in most cases, aimedagainst the government, against corruptionand for 'real democracy' and not for the'cause of the workers'. [17] The movementseemed to have a global character butremained trapped within the framework oftheir respective nation states. Many ofthese movements had 'two souls': on oneside, poorer proletarians and migrants whohad become unemployed, on the otherside, precarious academics who regarded awell-paid job as a human right. The middle-strata were particularly affected by interestpolicies, state debts and austerity measures- some became more radical and acted. Attimes they managed the leap into politicsand into participation in power throughelections - like the Podemos in Spain.

Global strike wave

In Wildcat no.90 Steven Colatrella in histext, 'In Our Hands is Placed a Power',highlighted that the struggles formedthemselves into a global strike wave duringthe last third of 2010. In 2010 strikesreached a geographical and quantitativescope unprecedented in history. Heattributes this to the end of neoliberalismand the re-constitution of the working class.According to Colatrella the expansion of'traditional strikes' can provide struggleswith power and direction and help toovercome the weaknesses of the 'IMF riots'.

"But the shifting of production globally didnot produce new working classes, [...] butrather this global shifting created newstructural power for large sectors ofworkers that had rarely had such powerexcept perhaps at the strictly nationallevel." [18]

Workers in the textile, shoe, automobile orother factories were now able to attack theworld economy both on a national andglobal level. Closer integration into theworld economy and the simultaneousattacks on their living standards through thecapitalist crisis has increased both theirstructural and organisational power. Thestrike wave is part of class formation, it linksup struggles and politicises the struggleagainst capitalist globalisation. Workers whodefend their economic interests are directlyconfronted with political power. Theirstruggles are therefore political.

Colatrella conceptualises the global strikewave since 2007 as 'strikes against globalgovernance', meaning, as a worldwide andsimultaneous action of workers in manycountries against the same enemy. Butsimultaneity does not create commonalityas such and a common enemy does notnecessarily create links amongst those instruggle.

BRICS, MINTS - the hotspots of thestrike wave

Facing stagnating growth rates in the oldcore countries, capital's hope focused onthe so-called BRICS states (Brazil, Russia,India, China, South Africa - where 40 percent of the world population resides; theabbreviation is an invention of the USinvestment bank Goldman-Sachs in 2001),which (apart from Russia) contain a young,ascending, industrial workforce who wantto claim a better life. Brazil's state presidentpromised everyone a promotion into the'middle class'. Initially it seemed that theBRICS-states were not affected by the globalcrisis and state-controlled economies likeChina seemed 'immune' against it. Idlecapital flew towards these regions, thegrowth rates at first continued to increase,though slower than in the preceding years.But particularly in these 'championed'countries of capitalism, workers managed toenforce considerable wage increasesthrough hard struggles.

Their strikes have many things in common:they mostly happen in the central sectors of

the respective economy, the affectedcompanies operate on a multinational level,in their struggles workers get intoconfrontation with existing unions, theylook for alternative unions or make use oftheir own forms of organisation. In manycases the state attacks the strikers violently,at the same time workers use violenceagainst managers or strike-breakers. [19]

In 2014 these strikes continued, although inthe case of India, against the background ofa massive devaluation of the local currencyand a decrease in sales in the automobilesector. Since 2013 a lot of capital has beenwithdrawn from the BRICS states andtransferred to the so-called MINTS-statesMexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, Turkey andSouth Korea - these states, as well, have alarge and very young population and atleast some of them have been sites of hugeprotest movements during recent years. InJune 2013 an uprising took place in Turkey('Gezi Park protests') and in May 2015 theentire automobile sector was shaken by astrike wave, in the course of which workerschased away their old trade unions.

In Iran, 2014 was the year with the highestamount of industrial disputes and workers'protests. The peak moment was the strikeof 5,000 workers in the iron ore mines ofBafgh where workers managed to stopprivatisation. They walked out for nearly 40days until the last arrested worker had beenreleased - it was the longest dispute sincethe revolution in 1979.

In the newly industrialised countries,workers' movements emerged that are

noticeably similar, despite their culturallyand politically very different respectivesurroundings - and these movements haveenforced considerable wage gains withinthe span of a few years. [20] Workers madeuse of their position in the internationalproduction chains e.g. during the Hondastrike in China. [21]

In many struggles egalitarian demands wereput forward to act against the segmentationwithin the workforce, which employersnowadays try to enforce in all companiesaround the world with a higher share ofskilled workers (Examples: car workers inIndia, mining workers in South Africa). [22]

Workers and state

How do workers' struggles becomerevolutionary? Revolution evades derivationfrom objective conditions. If in a societycharacterised by patriarchal relationsfemale workers fight collectively for theimprovement of their living and workingconditions, if they take risks in struggle,cross boundaries, discover new potentialsand want to find out more about the world,then this process is probably 'revolutionary'.What kind of notion of 'communism' doworkers have in a country where thecapitalists are organised within the CP?They will have to develop something new instruggle. This will surely not only start fromthe factories alone, it needs externalimpulses e.g. from youth movements thatput any- and everything into question.

'Global working class' is a counter-thesis tothe idea of a 'national working class'. Itassumes that the conditions for anintegration of the working class into thestate through a (social democratic) labourmovement no longer exist. In 1848 workersdid not yet have a 'fatherland', a proletarianartisan did not care whether he worked inCologne, Paris or Brussels. Only statewelfare policy and the orientation of theworkers' parties towards 'fighting itself intothe state' have tied the workers to thenation. Since 1968 a broad and long-termre-orientation of proletarian movementsaway from the state - and from concepts ofthe state - has taken place. Since the 1980sthe dismantling of welfare has caused acertain 'alienation' of large parts of societyfrom the state, but for the 'central workingclass' the state still functions: just considerthe massive state interventions since 2008to rescue the automobile industry inGermany, the US and in France. For thetraditional left the state is the political fieldwithin which the capitalist system can bechanged, or rather, its worst consequencescan be 'reigned in'.

Historically capital was a global relation,mediated through the world market, rightfrom its beginning. But without the stateand the law (enforcement) and the nationallabour markets, capital would not havebeen able to survive and to develop. Thewelfare state guarantees certain socialsecurities only for its own population andthereby turns proletarians into 'citizens'.But capital was only able to develop byaccessing an industrial reserve army in the

form of agricultural labourers, peasants,under-employed proletarians in othercountries. Today, in nearly all industrialnations there are multinational workingclasses without deeper ties to the state inwhich they live - while the 'local' and'naturalised' workers and descendingmiddle-strata cling to the state and wantspecial protection.

During the last 20 years the class enemy hasdismantled state structures wherever theywere not able to cope with class struggle:private armies, mafia and civil war rule. Thisdestruction of social security systemscaused large-scale flight movements. Insuch threatening situations 'strong states' or'controlled democracies' (Russia, China)become more attractive as islands ofstability. Where does the working class usethe absence of the state to build their ownstructures? What's the score with aglobalisation from below?

Global learning processes

Today it is possible for workers to establishdirect contacts between themselves across,even far distances, without having to rely onmediators. Thanks to digital networks it hasbecome much easier, even in remote areas,to know what is going on in the worldcompared to three, four decades ago.Struggles become contagious if workers inone company see that other workers take arisk and are successful - as for example thestrike in the shoe factories of Yue Yuen in2014 in which 40,000 workers took part. In2015 around 90,000 workers of the same

company walked out in Vietnam, whilesimultaneously 6,000 workers again wenton strike in China. Since the 2014 disputehardly a month has passed in China withoutat least one shoe factory being affected byworkers' industrial actions. Workers noticetheir respective struggles, also acrossnational borders - even without visibleorganisational contacts. Workers ofdifferent factories report on conditions anddiscuss them e.g. on internet forums.

Migrants

The most obvious links between theproletarians of all countries are migrants.There were historical moments whenmasses of militant workers left theirrespective countries to avoid repression -like Spain and Greece in the 1970s or Turkeyin the 1980s - and brought with them theirexperiences of struggle and of how toorganise. In the struggles in the factories inGermany they often became the vanguard.Another example is the migrants fromMexico, who left to find work in agriculturein the US and who organised strikes there.(Not all labour migrants are or remainproletarians - self-employment is often theonly way out of misery and the network offellow country(wo)men the organisation ofchoice. Migrants often belong to thosegroups of people who want to progress andget on in life come what may and are ableto mobilise a reservoir of badly paid labourfrom within their communities for this aim.Therefore such networks are hardly of useas an organisational foundation in classstruggle.)

" The proletariat thus seems to disappear atthe very moment when the proletariancondition becomes generalised." (SamirAmin)

For four decades the speed of classmovements was not able to match thespeed with which capital roamed the globein search for valorisable labour power. Nowthis situation has turned around. Workers inEgypt, China, Bangladesh, Mexico, SouthAfrica etc. make use of the new technicalpossibilities for their own interests; theirstruggles quickly attract a global audience.For the first time a global working classemerges, which has the ability to organiseglobal production and reproduction - andcan therefore transform this world. In theglobal north this 'new condition' is moredifficult to detect because since the 1980scapital has used the threat of relocation toblackmail people. (While at the same time asmall part of the working class - 'mediumstrata' - was able to make money fromfinancialisation and speculation at leasttemporarily, sometimes more than throughwork.)

The role of the left

What role can left activists or left-wingacademics play? Since the big strike wave in2010, left-leaning social science around theglobe has rediscovered the working classand researches their movements. But evenif sociologists interview individual workersthey tend to become frustrated, becausethese people only think about themselvesand their families. Are they " a different

type of human species " once they are atwork or when they struggle together? E.P.Thompson wrote in 1963 that if you stopsocial history at any given moment you willfind only individuals. 'Class', in contrast,defines people who live their own history -therefore a sufficiently long period ofhistory has to be analysed. 'The Making of...'is a development within political andcultural history at the same time as withineconomic history. " The working class madeitself as much as it was made." [23]

And why should workers tell social scientistsanything at all?

In 'Junge Welt', [24] the Hungarianphilosopher Gaspar Miklos Tamas recentlysaid that for the first time in history we facethe grotesque situation of a Marxistintelligentsia without a Marxist movement.This brings with it two dangers: on one side,the danger of vanguardism that speaks inthe name of a passive proletariat - aproletariat, however, that does not know itis being spoken for and which does notshare the vanguard's values that tell theproletariat what it is supposed to feel, thinkand do. Mainly small radical left groups facethis danger. The other danger is that theradical left fuses with the general,democratic, anti-fascist and egalitarianmovement - which would cause the Marxistcritique to disappear.

Both these tendencies exist in relation tothe new class struggles. Some want tofound a 'new International' as early as now -while there are so many of them already!Others refuse to criticise the working class

and only want to support workers in theirstruggles. They want to make use ofdecentralised networks organised by NGOsor they make a beeline for the unions.International conferences deal with thequestion of how workers can get in touchon a global level. In addition there is still thetraditional 'workers' internationalism' that isorganised in centralistic and hierarchicalways with little open debate. Atinternational conferences delegates pretendthat everywhere, manual or office workerswith life-long employment in one companystill exist, whose trade union or workers'party still obtain a share of the growingwealth for them. [25]

But there are also efforts by left activistswho are critical of the trade unions toorganise contacts between differentlocations of multinational corporations -though it is very difficult to go beyondmutual visits and to actually struggletogether or organise solidarity strikes.

Over the last five years a different part ofthe radical left that wants to abolish thestate placed their hope in uprisings. The'movement of squares' in 2011 overtook thedebate about the 'coming insurrection'. ButGreece in 2008, Indignados, Gezi Park,Stuttgart21, Hong Kong etc. were allmovements with hundreds of thousands ofparticipants - but which, in the end, werenot able to enforce anything! Thesemovements made visible the potentials thatsimultaneous uprisings on a global scalehave - but also brutally demonstrated theirlimitations: from the commune of Tahrir to

the military dictatorship. The manymovements since Seattle, the massuprisings in Argentina in 2001 and lastlyOccupy Wall St. etc., have shown with theutmost clarity that an overturning of theexisting social order is only possible onceworkers take part in the uprising as workers.It is not enough that they take part indemonstrations, but don't go on strike. Incapitalism, strike is the ultimate weapon,where real power develops and collectivesubjects form themselves.

Even the Invisible Committee, which up tonow didn't care much for workers, startedto approach them (at least verbally) [26] -this is an interesting development: becausewhoever wants to abolish the state,whoever wants revolution won't be able todo it without the workers! Proletarians arethe vast majority of the population andtheir struggles push things forward.Nevertheless most leftists still don'tcritically analyse the struggles that areactually taking place, but in an immediatereflex raise the question of 'classconsciousness' instead. They imagine aproletariat organised in a party and union,which has not existed in such a way sincethe 1950s. "What else do we expect?" anarticle in Wildcat-Zirkular no.65 askedpolemically. " The emergence of proletarianworld organisations? Solidarity strikes?Copycats? A worldwide political movement?The new and interesting phenomenaregarding world revolution is the very factthat no one has got parameters, criteria oreven answers to tackle that question.Criteria could be whether commonalities

develop during different struggles - and upto now this does not seem to be the case.Workers struggle, but they don't struggletogether... Rather the opposite is true: theyjust fight for themselves and only rely ontheir own strength. They don't even wait fortheir colleagues in the neighbouringcompany." [27]

Workers ignore old organisations andparties; new ones are not yet visible. Thereisn't any idea of a new society yet, whichtakes hold of the masses. In the strugglesthemselves we can see some newdevelopments though. In Asia and beyondworkers have proven extraordinarycapabilities to organise their struggles andcoordinate them beyond the boundaries oftheir respective regions. They haveunderstood that they can only wincollectively. They raise egalitarian demandsagainst the divisions that capital introduced.They don't let unions hold them back, whowant to control them. They don't shy awayfrom hard confrontations. They address andcreate problems for which the system hasno solutions.

In their struggles they get into conflict witha social system, which hasn't got anythingto offer the large majority apart fromausterity politics - a system, which is nolonger able to transform the struggles into'development'. A social system that steerstowards its next crash, under the leadershipof its 'last superpower', which fights againstits economic and political demise by allmeans necessary. The strongest militarypower in the world is no longer able to win

wars, not to mention to create new stablestates, but can only destroy. By doing this itwill further undermine the legitimacy of thisworld order and mobilise more and morepeople against itself.

Who will shape the coming socialconfrontations? The global middle classeswho follow nationalist mobilisations out offear of losing their social acquis? Or theglobal proletariat, on whose labour theirwealth and power depends? The collectiveintelligence of the rebellious proletariat issuperior to the narrow-minded experts ofthe institutions; their ability to organiseproduction and to self-organise canguarantee the supply of necessary goodsand services for the people - the variousmovements of the squares and against biginfrastructure projects have proven this.They are the only force that can oppose thedestructive potency of capital.

In Wildcat we've often voiced hope of an'encounter of the workers' movement andsocial movement' - in order to define therole of the social-revolutionary left. As if itwas just about an addition of forces, whichdoes not have to hurt anyone. A 'side-by-side' on the 'squares', under conditions ofmutual indifference. This won't cut it infuture - if we want to get things moving.

A new revolutionary subject won't just bean outcome of 'homogenisation' (even lessof an 'alliance!'), but rather of processes ofpolarisation and divisions within theworking class. The political discussion andpractice of the left will have to come toterms with this.

Footnotes

[1] "Vom Klassenkampf zur 'sozialen Frage'"["From class struggle to the 'social question'"],Wildcat Zirkular 40/41

[2] "Vom schwierigen Versuch, diekapitalistische Krise zu bemeistern" ["On thedifficult effort to deal with the capitalist crisis"],Wildcat Zirkular no.56/57, May 2000

[3] "Note: There is no simple translation for theGerman word "Umwälzung". It meanstransition, transformation, turning upsidedown, in some circumstances circulation - infact: radical change."

[4] "Voll-Endung": insinuates 'completion' and'end'

[5] "Globalize it!", preface to Wildcat-Zirkular38, July 1997

[6] "Asien und wir" [Asia and us"], Wildcat-Zirkular no. 39, August 1997

[7] "Open letter to John Holloway", Wildcat-Zirkular no.39, August 1997http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/zirkular/39/z39e_hol.htm

[8] "Die neuen Arbeitsverhaeltnisse und diePerspektive der Linken" ["The new workrelations and the perspective of the left"],Wildcat-Zirkular 42/43, March 1998

[9] "Chiapas und die globale Proletarisierung"["Chiapas and the global proletarianisation"],Wildcat-Zirkular no.45, June 1998

[10] "Historical Capitalism", ImmanuelWallerstein, 1983

[11] "Forces of Labor - Workers' movementsand globalization since 1870", Beverly Silver,2003https://libcom.org/files/Beverly_J._Silver-

Forces_of_Labor__Workers'_Movements_and_Globalization_Since_1870_(Cambridge_Studies_in_Comparative_Politics)__-Cambridge_University_Press(2003).pdf

[12] Peter Dicken, 'Global Shift, Mapping thechanging contours of the world economy'. 6thedition. 2011

[13] Goeran Therborn, 'Class in the 21stCentury', NLR 78, 2012

[14] 'Beyond the peasant international',Wildcat no.82, Autumn 2008http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/82/w82_bauern_en.html

[15] Samir Amin, 'The implosion ofcontemporary capitalism', New York 2013

[16] Isabel Ortiz, Sara Burke, MohamedBerrada, Hernan Cortes, 'World Protests 2006 -2013', FES New York Office 2013

[17] Compare the article on Hong Kong byMouvement Communiste:http://mouvement-communiste.com/documents/MC/Letters/LTMC1439%20ENvG.pdf

[18] Wildcat no.90, summer 2011http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm

[19] Joerg Nowak, 'Fruehling der globalenArbeiterklasse. Neue Streikwelle in den BRICS-Staaten, 2014'Massenstreiks und Strassenproteste in Indienund Brasilien', Peripherie 137, 2015'Massenstreiks in der globalen Krise',Standpunkte 10/2015, online auf rosalux.deTorsten Bewernitz, 'Globale Krise - globaleStreikwelle? Zwischen den oekonomischen unddemokratischen politischen Protesten herrschtkeine zufaellige Gleichzeitigkeit'. Prokla 177,

12/2014Dorothea Schmidt, 'Mythen und Erfahrungenie Einheit der deutschen Arbeiterklasse um1900. Prokla 175, 6/2014

[20] Beverly Silver sees her thesis verified bythe struggle waves in 2010: the relocation ofcapital towards China has created a new andgrowing combative working class. She stillthinks in categories of pendulum movements:Making - unmaking - remaking of the workingclass, and currently the pendulum is swingingback. According to Silver this time in history it isneither possible, nor desirable, to respond tothese struggles in form of Keynesian socialpartnership. Beverly Silver, 'Theorising theworking class in twenty-first-century globalcapitalism', in: Workers and labour in aglobalised capitalism (Palgrave Macmillan);edited by Maurizio Atzeni (2014)http://krieger.jhu.edu/arrighi/research/socialprotest/

[21] See article on China in this issue of Wildcat[no English translation available]

[22] In Germany only workers at Daimler inBremen have tried to respond to managementplans of outsourcing work to 'service providers'by going on wildcat strike, but they were notable to put a halt to the scheme

[23] E.P. Thompson, The making of the Englishworking-class, 1963

[24] 'Die zwei grossen Gefahren' [The two bigdangers'], conversation with Gaspar MiklosTamas, 4th of June 2015

[25] Global Labour Journalwww.escarpmentpress.org/globallabourGlobal Labour Institutewww.globallabour.infoGlobal Dialoguewww.isa-global-dialogue.net/volume-4-issue1/

[26] Invisible Committee, 'To our friends'"To say that plainly: so long as we can’t dowithout nuclear power plants and dismantlingthem remains a business for people who wantthem to last forever, aspiring to abolish thestate will continue to draw smiles; so long asthe prospect of a popular uprising will signify aguaranteed fall into scarcity, of health care,food, or energy, there will be no strong massmovement…What defines the worker is not his exploitationby a boss, which he shares with all otheremployees. What distinguishes him in apositive sense is his embodied technicalmastery of a particular world of production.There is a competence in this that is scientificand popular at the same time, a passionateknowledge that constituted the particularwealth of the working world before capital,realizing the danger contained there andhaving first extracted all that knowledge,decided to turn workers into operators,monitors, and custodians of machines. Buteven there, the workers’ power remains:someone who knows how to make a systemoperate also knows how to sabotage it in aneffective way. But no one can individuallymaster the set of techniques that enable thecurrent system to reproduce itself. Only acollective force can do that....In other words: we need to resume ameticulous effort of investigation. We need togo look in every sector, in all the territories weinhabit, for those who possess strategictechnical knowledge. Only on this basis willmovements truly dare to “block everything.”"

[27] 'Das Ende der Entwicklungsdiktaturen'['The end of the developmental dictatorships',Wildcat-Zirkular no.65, February 2003]

'Global working class' is a counter-thesis

to the idea of a 'national working class'.

It assumes that the conditions for an

integration of the working class into the

state through a (social democratic) labour

movement no longer exist. In 1848 workers

did not yet have a 'fatherland', a proletarian

artisan did not care whether he worked in

Cologne, Paris or Brussels. Only state welfare

policy and the orientation of the workers'

parties towards 'fighting itself into the state'

have tied the workers to the nation.