( By Naser Paydar )
Strike in general and independent of its reformist or radical application , anyway , it´s an approach to exercise power and its degree of validity and importance to the extent that could be able to play this role . The effectiveness of the strike to play this role , even regardless of its approach , is still not a constant , dogmatic matter and outside the scope of the specific conditions of the class struggle in different periods . During the last decades of the twentieth century and continues to this day , the capitalist system has gone through a ful maze process of change which has had a decisive of effect on the strenght of the strike . In this regard , we can briefly point to some components . The constant and very rapid course of capital accumulation internationally and a completely leap increase of the average organic composition of capital on a global scale has reduced the need for labor force in relation to the fixed capital sector . This situation´s not only true of the social capital of Western countries but it has a global and general aspect . Over the past three decades , the volumme of capital exported to Asian countries , Latin America and Africa has exceeded 30 times the previous but this huge and completely unprecedented historical accumulation hasn´t only alleviated the employment problem of the labor force of these three continents but has multiplied the number of the umemployed . Global capital in all continenttal realms and with the ability of its organizing itself , has reduced the need for labor force relatively on a remarkable scale . In the sphere of production , sommetimes the fixed capital volume of companies even medium and perhaps small companies , has increased several hundred times , and however , a part of the variable capital or so-called labor force of these industries hasn´t reached 3 times as much as before too . These changes have also occurred at a different and naturally lower levels in the realms of commodity trade . Many monopolies have shut down or severely curtailed their product sales network and the employed labor force of these companies has largely joined the army of the unemployed and all of their work is done with minimal labor force through Internet and postal distribution networks . By the way , the giant growth of technology and the expansion of the IT industry worldwide , has accelerated the process of replacing specialized and complex activities with simple tasks , and this , in turn , has had profound effect on the employment of the labor force . Until the 1960s and 1970s , capital exporting to the three continents of Asia , Africa and Latinn America were accompanied by factory construction and extensive employment of new workers . During the same decades , in the Iranian society the inhabitants of 80,000 villages , large and small , were evicted by capital and most of them in the big cities became the mass-selling of labor force withing the factories . Global capital doesn´t do this in today´s world and tens times more than that time it´s exported to different countries of the same continents or accumulated by domestic capitalist . But instead of setting up factories and hiring workers in the factories , it takes stright path to the residential ruins of housewives and the masses of unemployed , and turns the dilapidated homes of Chinese and Bengali , Singaporean and Vietnamese or African women into factories and making the labor force as gratuitous as possible without any audit and without creating a common roof for collective work , exploits them in the most brutal ways . this process has long been started by capital and it has spread rapidly in a large part of the three continents . All these kinds of changes have seriously affected the role of the strike in the struggle of the workers of the world . The direct result of these developments is , on the one hand , the emergence of a huge population of one billion unemployed workers in the four corners of the world , and on the other hand follows the development of the process of dispersal of the employed labor force instead of their community under a common roof of collective labor force . The diminishing role of specialization along with the waves of unemployment has created this opportunity for capital that in a blink , the widest possible alternatives will be implemented . It dismisses a German worker at full speed and assigns their role to a Chinese worker or replaces an Italian worker with an Afghan workers .
In addition to the mentioned events above , it has added a more decisive component to the day-to-day conditions of global capital reproduction . The leap forward of the average increase in the organic composition of capital on a global scale , the historical unprecedented spread of the danger of actuality and absolutization of the tendency of declining interest rates and the structuring of the capitalist crisis , has put the entire global capital in a position that to continue its reproduction process sees no other way than slaughtering the livelihood of working masses of the world in the moment . The capitalist system as a whole is in a acute and insane state in preparing for reducing the labor force price level of the employed workers and crushing all their livelihoods in order to prevent from falling into the abyss of crisis . Nowhere in the world does capital show any desire to tolerate the protest and demands of the workers , and it sees attack on the lives and livelihoods of workers and the further reduction of labor force prices in favor of the further increase of surplus value such as a vitality issue for own survival , and in the same direction , in the face of the danger of the struggles and strikes of the working class , enters the field of action in different ways than in the last century . The above components have seriously changed the role of the strike for the different approaches within the global labor movement in different ways . This mechanism of acting for right-wing reformist syndicalism has not only historically had no sign of exercising power against capital which has been essentially a platform for distancing the working class from the exercise of real class power and anti wage-labor . This approach has typically used the strike as a safety valve in time of observing the explosive atmosphere in the daily movement of the working masses ,not to exercise the class power of the workers against capital but in the obedience of wage slavery hang it on negotiational gallows . These developments have made the role of labor strikes affected by syndicalist reformism much more discredited and uncharacteristic than ever before , and will do much more in the future . The union or syndicalist movement is the movement of surrendering the working class to capitalism and inevitably , in each period , it has to adapt its existential mechanisms to the requirements of the permanence of the relation of sale and purchase of labor force . The ascending of global capital to the highest stage of preparation for making livelihood conditions much worse and reducing the price of working-class labor force in countries , has driven unions and syndicates into a position which should empty the strike as much as possible of the same reformist role of moderating the barbaric pressure of capital too , and also preventing it from happening and wherever it´s inevitable , they plan to defeat it . This is an event that has actually happened and over the last few years we´ve witnessed it happen in all countries with large trade unions and syndicates .
The role of strikes in the radical anti wage-labor approach within the global labor movement has also changed dramatically , the changes that in turn are deepening and developing . Strike for this anti-capitalist approach is the weapon of the exercise of the class power of the proletariat against the foundations of wage labor , and its role in imposing the economic, political and social demands of the working class on the owners of capital or the capitalist state is inseparable from the real foundation of the class struggle for the abolition of wage labor . In a situation where one billion of the working population on earth is deprived of any kind of work and employment , in a situation where exported capital to new realms of capital accumulation and instead of factory establishment and collecting wage slaves under one common roof , rushes to ruined houses of the large population of labor force vendors , in the days when thousands of German and French workers are instantly replaced with the Chinese and Singaporean workers , at a time when the massive Western industrial monopolies to hunt down the almost free labor force of Filipino and Bengali workers are rapidly pouring all their capital into those lands , and finally , in a phase of the history of the evolution and degeneration of capitalism , in which the foundation of the strategy and all the solutions of the capitalist revolve around the unrelenting reduction of the price of labor force and the livelihood of the working masses all around the world , yes , in such circumstances , the strike does not play the role such as the past for the radical anti wage labor approach of the working class .
Naser Paydar
Aug. 2008