Beyond A Rigged Game

Overcoming Divide and Conquer Strategies

Lebowitz writes:

The reserve army of labor

45. If productivity increases dropped from the sky, the falling cost of producing commodities could permit workers to buy more with their existing money wages; in this case, workers could be the principal beneficiaries of productivity gains. But, they don’t drop from the sky; to the extent that productivity increases are the result of changes initiated by capital, the effect is to increase the degree of separation among workers and thus to weaken workers. For example, every worker displaced by the introduction of machinery adds to the reserve army of labor; the unemployed worker competes with the employed worker. Not only does the existence of this reserve army of unemployed workers permit capital to exert discipline within the workplace but it also keeps wages within limits consistent with profitable capitalist production. Displaced workers, for example, may find jobs—but at much lower wages.

This last line is an important principle in Marx, a point he argued over and over again. In capitalist society, people believe this myth that the loss of a job is an opportunity for something else out there. And, certainly, that kind of luck can happen for individual people. But the nature of the system is that people are not going to be laid off to increase profits and then find they are, as a group, even the majority of the group, going to make more money in their new jobs. As a class of people's positions are devalued by the system, their new toeholds in the system are, in the main, going to be of less value.

I've seen this illustrated over and over again, admittedly anecdotally, in my experience. For every person I know who lost a job and found something better, I can list a dozen others who are either not fully employed or who have had to adjust to a lowered standard of living. Of course, as we've seen the loss of industry in the Rust Belt and in Southern California, in particular, we've seen lots of high dollar jobs disappear. The service industry work that has taken its place has been generally at lower wages with less security. At some point, the evidence of recent history outweighs (and validates) all the proofs Marx could muster.

46. The same thing is true when capital moves to other countries or regions to escape workers who are organized—it expands the reserve army and ensures that even those workers who do organize and struggle do not succeed in keeping real wages rising as rapidly as productivity. The rate of exploitation, Marx believed, would continue to rise. Even with rising real wages, the “abyss between the life-situation of the worker and that of the capitalist would keep widening.”

This is some acknowledgment of the points Isaac made in his last post. Not only have nationalist union slogans failed workers worldwide, but it's clear that Lebowitz recognizes that the worldwide market for capital ensures that organized labor (as it exists) cannot win in the long run. And note that he quotes Marx--"the life-situation of the worker and that of the capitalist would keep widening." This is why Marx saw capitalism collapsing and, ultimately, a need for revolution beyond a moral choice regarding the exploitation of the worker.

The next session takes this point even further and deals with the point more explicitly. And this is not simply Lebowitz's updating of Marx. It is Marxist theory as opposed to the doctrine of another era or the program of a political party from some past era.

Exploitation is not the main problem

This concept rallied workers to build trade unions and gain reforms, but the deeper issues become more clear every day.

47. It is a big mistake, though, to think that the main problem with capitalism is inequitable income distribution—i.e., that the basic reason that capitalism is bad is that workers receive less income than they produce. If this were the only problem, the obvious answer would be to focus upon changing the distribution of income in favor of workers, e.g., strengthen trade unions, regulate capital through state legislation, follow a full employment policy (that reduces the effect of the reserve army)—all such measures of reform would shift the balance of power toward workers.

Again, as I noted in my response to Isaac's post on the previous section, these were adequate strategies for an era of expanding economy. Today, as worldwide globalization begins to find its limits and as once prosperous economies begin to collapse, none of this reform has any leverage. Some say there are no more reforms left in the system. It's easy to see that there aren't enough reforms left to get at the hemmorhaging of jobs and the value of labor being driven down to zero. (I'm not saying it's there yet; I'm not saying we'll ever be so labor free as to get there; I am saying that's the direction.)

48. But only for the moment. Because it is essential to understand that capital never sleeps. It never stops trying to undermine any gains that workers have made either through their direct economic actions or through political activity. It never stops trying to divide workers, to turn them against each other, to intensify work, to drive wages down. Even when workers have had the strength to make gains (as in the period after the Second World War), capital looks upon those gains as temporary barriers to go beyond. It uses its essential power to decide how to invest and where to invest in order to regain the offensive (as it did in the so-called Golden Age). That inherent power of capital put an end to the “welfare state” and the “import-substitution” models that were introduced in many countries as a basis for economic development.

Again, this analysis is classic Marxism, and it further underscores why the trade union movement is inadequate to face the new era. Many of us may still be in unions (I certainly am), and I will not quit fighting for what ground we are able to hold on that front. At the same time, I have to go outside of my union structure and work with others--adjuncts, part-timers, the unemployed, students, etc.--to explore the potential for new organizational structures. And whatever my union does, it will strategically only be on the right side of history if it keeps these potential alliances in mind. My guess is that it will eventually end up very clearly on the wrong side of history, and then I'll have to cast my lot with those it's fighting instead of the real power trying to divide and conquer.

As far as I'm concerned, this is when the analysis begins to get really interesting--when we are forced to talk about strategy for dealing with new conditions in the context of this history and theory.

49. The problem is not that gains in reducing inequality and exploitation are only temporary. Whether workers’ wages are high or low is not the issue—any more than whether the rations of slaves are high or low. Rather, we need to look at the process of capitalist production itself—to see the nature of the workers that capitalism produces.

What I like that Lebowitz is doing here is that he is establishing the necessity of this analysis for understanding just what we are up against and what we must do.

To sum up--

For most of us, the loss of a job will lead to a lower income and less job security;

Globalization only means that the gap will continue to rise between those workers who continue to be employed and the handful of people running things;

Capital tirelessly (systematically, not even consciously) organizes offensively against workers--to pit them against each other and to turn each worker victory into a "temporary barrier" before it regains its offensive;

None of this can be changed by simply reforming the system.

As we move through this, I find myself wishing that we were digging into more of the math that drew these conclusions. Much has been done over the past 150 years or so, but one thing we can continue to do is offer our own perspectives, experiences and anecdotes that validate and/or challenge these conclusions. Eventually, I'd like to take this discussion into the methodology itself, but maybe we get some of the way there by simply talking about our experiences and insights.

Your thoughts?