The labor movement has to complete the role of strike with other radical anti-capitalist approaches . It´s very important to emphasize here that in all these debates we speak of the daily conditions of the class struggle between the working masses and the capitalist system . The dialogue so far isn´t at all about the days of the uprising and determination of the final destiny of the class combat , because the conquest of work and production centers for the radical movement of anti wage-labor of the working class is absolutely not a subject related to this or that particular period of mass uprising . The class struggle is , in its objective nature , a comprehensive alignment of opposing classes in all realms of social life against each other , and each social class , as much as its mights and in every field that is possible for it , brings its confrontational fighting force to the field . The proletariat has made no commitment to any institution , power , class or state that its war against capital and its class struggle against capitalist exploitation , crimes and barbarism are dedicated to certain days and date in history . The current existing divisions of the specific tasks of such like rise or fall, the different types of struggle of these periods , and the various forms of organizing for uprising or compromise and ascension , all of them are created by a left and right-wing reformism and a spectrum of bourgeois socialism . Occupying the factory is an ever-present approach of the anti-capitalist movement of the working class . Beyond this , the addressed words of the proletariat to the bourgeoisie and the system of wage slavery, always and in every moment, is that the vicious destructive existence of capitalism must be disappeared from the social realms of human life and the future of human being , and we will create a world in which , for the first time , human beings will discover the true meaning of being human in and during its establishment . The class struggle of the proletariat always rises with this flag and advances to and in this regard , there´s no place to deny any conceivable and potential offensive against capital at any time . What that makes the necessity of capturing the factory and agenda of the labor movement or the workers of a unit of work and production , not the existence of a revolutionary uplift statu in society , but the possibility of taking the factory or factories out of the hands of the capitalists and the planning and administration of them by the councils of workers , and using this leverage as an effective weapon to exert power against capital , and to turn it into an effective and complementary act to all other solutions in the general course of the labor movement for a stronger alignment and more conscious in the class struggle between the proletariat and the system of wage slavery . The tactic of the conquest of the factory does not produce any reduction in the validity and importance of other means of exercising the power of the proletariat , but coversely , it completes them and enters the process of class struggle as a necessary , vital and important condition for their effectiveness . What that places the question of the occupation of the factory as a necessary solution in the depths of the strategy of the class struggle of the proletariat and links to the defining tactical and identity articulation of this strategy in general and in summary , it´s as follows .
1. Occupation of the factory by workers´ councils is a positive alternative and it´s the practice of the workers´ movement against the capitalist system . The mere of occupation of the factory , the relation of sale and purchase of labor force and the basis of being capital tools of production and exchange are not completely lost , but the bourgeois private or state ownership of capital is abolished . Workers are still workers and sellers of labor force , despite being involved in administering and production planning , but the difference between them and the past is that they disrupt the process of producing surplus value , and make the process of disrupting the production of surplus value of capital as a trench of class struggle and resistance against the bourgeoisie and capitalist system .
2. The occupation and management of factory affairs by the workers’ councils has to some extent an effective credibility and place for disrupting the working process of capital which , realistically and practically , is a continuous link in the global chain of the movement against wage-labor . Otherwise , it loses its validity and relevance and at best as a capitalist cooperative or any other form of capitalist planning of work and production is dissolved in the dominant economic order of capital . This is exactly the basic problem facing labor councils in Argentina or other labor organizations in Mexico and elsewhere . In these areas the workers rightly set up their councils and occupied certain industries . They have used proportionately radical means to impose their demands on the bourgeois state and have done many other important things , but these councils and the workers’ movement within them were far removed from their proper place as a trench of the movement against wage-labor . The whole point of the Argentine workers uprising was that could be the beacon of the labor movement of this country or anywhere else for a nationwide union and organizing in-depth workflow of capitalism and being against the foundation of the relation of laborforce-selling . Conquer one or more factories and taking the legal form of their ownership out of the hands of the capitalist and the planning of work and production of these centers in the complex coil of the organizing of a country’s social capital or global capital in general has no special value for the movement of anti wage-labor . The whole point is that this correct and necessary rise will become a trench inlinked with other strongholds of working-class battle on the global arena of class struggle .
3. The takeover of factories and labor centers by workers’ councils whenever it is considered and practiced as an organic link in the chain of class struggle , it´s a very important , constructive and crucial arena in the growth and maturity of the movement of anti wage-labor of the working masses . It´s an arena within that the proletariat fights against capital , at the same time , the process of planning work and production and how to separate this process from the relation of wage-labor makes it a practice of its class struggle . In other words, the working masses practically the boundaries of the functional process of capital , getting paid , generating surplus value and capital , reproducing of the capitalist mode of production , surplus and necessary labor index line and put everything that is a symbol and indicator of wage-labor relations under the barrage of class attack and at the same time , they are linking their historic campaign to lay for building foundations of another form of the process of work , production and life to the current process of the struggle against wage labor .
4. In some cases , the occupation of the factory becomes the only way for the workers to exercise power . For example , the Argentine workers had no other effective way to continue the struggle against capital , and strike or any other tactic had lost its effectiveness . Some measures that in some cases forced the capital owners and the government to retreat and accept the demands of the workers had in fact the role of rusty and ineffective weapons . This has been the case for a long time now and in the case of the Iranian labor movement . More than 10 million workers in Iran have been unemployed for years and a large part of this unemployed were once exploited in this or that work center , they´ve been employed and today have no job . The factories where they were exploited have been closed by capital owners and their capital has been transferred to more profitable realms . The products of these units are in great need for the working masses . There are all possibilities for those closed factories to be set up by fired workers and these workers do not have any shortages in terms of knowledge of work process and production planning or expertise and technical information of working with existing machines and technology . The vast mass of unemployed workers have no decisive battlefield against capital . their street demonstrations do not cure their current pains , regardless of the repressed and bloodshed of their protests , the strike is meaningless for them because they have no place to strike and they´re not involved in any work or production that would be turn the wheel off . The closed factories are the crystallization of a world of capital that is the direct product of the labor and production of these workers and their predecessors . The capitalists tranfer the same capital to other spheres and continue to exploit the workers even more horribly . The logic of the class struggle dictates that the workers , instead of surrender to unemployment and becoming a crippled and desperate unarmed army and surrendered , take over all these factories and the planning of their work and production .
5. Workers that resorting to occupying closed factories , strikes and other means of exercising the power of the proletariat each play a much more decisive and important role and prestige . For example , in Iranian society , workers of the oil refinery , water & electricity company and transportation strike in support of the occupation of a factory or a large number of factories by other working masses , in practice , the labor movement of society revolves around the real axis of the class struggle against wage labor . In one place the factory is taken from the capitalist , and in another place the whole process of capital regenerating is disrupted by the power of the workers’ strike , and the relation of surplus value producing has been attacked everywhere and the workers´ union has achieved the real anti-capitalist class struggle . All protests and struggles will be centered on the struggle against wage slavery . The substrate of struggle everywhere is the context of the exercise of anti-capitalist power , awareness and dominance of how to use this power , and awareness for anti wage labor autopsy from capital and in a word , it´s the rising process of class struggle for the final battle with the capitalist system .
Naser Paydar
Agu. 2008