Nation or Class?

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These are dangerous and unpredictable times. Ten years after the global financial meltdown the world economy still isn’t fixed. After decades of promoting globalisation, which has produced only fortunes for the few and misery for the many, our rulers are beginning to lose their grip. A growing number are turning to so-called nationalist “populism”. ... this is the sign of a system which lacks real solutions. 

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Dangerous times

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Introduction

Globally and in South Africa, the capitalist system is becoming more and more unstable. Over the last period, the responses of the ruling classes in many parts of the world to this growing crisis has been a turn to authoritarianism. This has been done to hold onto power and to increase their control over wealth. Factions within ruling classes, in countries such as South Africa, are also engaged in a battle over shrinking opportunities to accumulate wealth. Competition between factions within ruling classes is, therefore, also intensifying. This too is feeding into an intensification of imperialist rivalries. The consequences are that over the last few months the threat of large scale war globally, as part of a show down between imperialist powers, has become an awful possibility.

The only force capable of changing this situation is the working class locally and internationally. Yet to do so, struggles need to come together, new forms appropriate to combating a rampant and growing authoritarian form of neoliberalism are needed; and such struggles need to be infused with a revolutionary progressive politics. While struggles are taking place in different parts of the world, none as yet have come to hold these three ingredients on a large scale.

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The Ruling Class Reserve Tag

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One of the many irritating things about the dominant United States corporate media is the way it repeatedly discovers anew things that are not remotely novel. Take its recent discovery that Donald Trump isn’t really the swamp-draining populist working class champion he pretended to be on the campaign trail.

The evidence for this “news” is solid enough.  His cabinet and top advisor circle has been chock full of ruling class swamp creatures like former Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn (top economic adviser), longtime top Goldman Sachs partner and top executive Steve Mnuchin (Secretary of the Treasury), and billionaire investor Wilbur Ross (Secretary of Commerce). Trump has surrounded himself with super-opulent and planetarily invested financial gatekeepers – the very club he criticized Hillary Clinton for representing.

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YET ANOTHER MAJOR SUPERMARKET EXPLOITS ITS WORKERS

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On 28 February, 2017, 58 workers who make baked goods for Pick ‘n Pay embarked on a protected strike, demanding to be made permanent Pick ‘n Pay workers, wages of R10 000 per month and an end to victimisation by the company. Although the strike is connected to one of the country’s biggest retail giants, barely anyone in the public has even heard about it. This, the striking workers argue, is largely because they have been rendered invisible by Pick ‘n Pay’s cynical use of a chain of third-party employers called Assist Bakeries.

On the first day of the strike the management brought in scab labourers and gained a court interdict to prevent the strikers from picketing anywhere within view of the factory premises. Production continued, and life continued almost as if they did not exist. But as the strike continues on, this group of workers are fighting to be seen and heard.

The story that the striking workers tell is one that looks to expose the questionable labour practices of Pick ‘n Pay — a company with a squeaky-clean public image. Workers claim that Pick ‘n Pay uses supposedly independent companies as a front to carry out its dirty work. But this also appears to be a story belonging to millions of other precarious workers in South Africa that have been rendered invisible, expendable and left without access to basic rights due to the growth of different forms of third-party employment. These are workers who have been ignored by the trade union movement and left to organise themselves.

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