- They have access to more capital, but they do not produce proportionately higher wages for their families. A worker with only a $5 broom cleaning a poor family’s $20,000 home or a $10 hammer and screwdriver, fixing cheap wares in $5,000 of industrial space, earning minimum wage or $15,000 annually, may produce 75%-200% of the value of the capital that they work with in the form of wages for their families and communities. A worker operating a $10 million machine in a $100 million facility who earns $100,000 only produces 0.1% of the value they work with for their families and communities. This Wages to Capital Employed Ratio far better measures the self-sufficiency of the workers than the absolute value of their income taken apart from other factors.
- Does this mean that they are better qualified to operate a $10 million machine, have better habits, and make that $10 million machine work better? No, they just have a separate deal with the capitalist to hand over the products in exchange for a much lower rate than the other workers. The labor aristocracy, the workers in key positions, have far more in common with scabs, who the capitalists recruit from lists of ex-convicts, ex-military, gangs, and perhaps the families of management, police, and military. These “workers” really provide security against revolutionary sentiment (not theft, trespassing, or vandalism) by using their salaries to support conservative causes while mimicking all the worst abuses of the bosses on a smaller scale.
- A very qualified worker actually faces the problem of “over-qualification” under capitalism. Investing their own time and money into their education, experience, and skills beyond the amount expected by the capitalists only threatens the capitalists control over their own capital. The capitalists’ (and their managers’) hiring or firing decisions, their policies on working conditions, etc. should never, in their opinion, come under criticism or supervision by more qualified experts than themselves. In fact, those most likely to work with expensive machinery will have likely reached a deal with the capitalists even before receiving their training or their experience. The necessary training would be provided only after a decision had already been made to position them against the working class as a whole.
- Why does the WSWS Nanobureaucracy, then, claim that the revolutionary party must orient itself and its organizing efforts towards these more privileged layers? If this must be attributed to an error in their theory rather than outright bribery and fraud, then we should see it in their failure to understand Marx’s theories on the economic cause of revolutions. Marx argued that the workers fought for economic gains as a class under capitalism by raising their share of the revenues from sales through raises in wages, reduction in prices, and redistribution of profits otherwise reserved for the capitalists. These gains, however, could never free the workers from wage-slavery and could not change the nature of the capitalist state and the system of class exploitation. All gains are hard-won and short-lived, as seen with the recent rapid growth in child labor violations in the United States, where the relatively small fines cannot deter their illegal hiring due to the economic benefits of hiring child labor. Due to the lack of funding for Labor Department Inspectors, no accurate measure of the extent of the problem exists, though some fear the real figure may have reached several hundreds of thousands.
- Disappointment in this failed strategy would naturally develop through the elevation of the consciousness of the workers of their history, that is through reflection, with the help of their revolutionary party, on their shared experience as a class. As a result, reliance on entirely economic means, something that labor aristocrats supposedly may also excel at due to their proximity to more concentrated capital, will always get in the way of a successful revolution. The necessary and decisive component of the revolution will be the armed insurrection to occupy the capital and replace the old capitalist government in the capital while preventing its return to power or any temporary consolidation of its power in any other city. Marxism, arguing that the workers have nothing to lose, could not for a second expect the workers in privileged positions to risk anything in this most important of tasks. The armed rebellion will not depend on the economic struggle but emerge from disgust with its limitless optimism in the face of the hopeless task it attempts considering its painfully, limited means.
- We can take this a step further by returning to the original Marxist analysis in Point 1 above of the two poles of the working class. Those in $20,000 or $5,000 workshops as compared to those in $100 million facilities or multi-billion dollar facilities, when they participate in industrial action, must then participate in far greater numbers and must appeal far more strongly for working class unity across all professions, nationalities, or other dividing lines. This widespread and profound unity built during the more backwards, purely contractual, economic struggle will contribute far more to an insurrectionary victory than the stopping of even the most valuable machines, such as power-plants, airports, shipping ports, etc.
- The Democratic Power Faction then proposes for the strategy of the revolutionary party a turn to the workers of the more oppressed sort who might otherwise even fall under the influence of religion or political reaction. From the standpoint of training the party, those few drawn to the party due to purely intellectual conclusions or a very emotional sympathy for the plight of the downtrodden who might possess certain talents that the capitalists have not tactically turned against the workers themselves, those members would gain far more as revolutionary leaders from the experience of gathering together and delivering the revolutionary message to this pole exploited by less-concentrated capital. It would also protect them from battle within the territory of the large, expensive facilities, where even a union rep might (and they have) physically attack a student, journalist, or political candidate leafletting for the cause.
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