“Class struggle is the motor-force of History”
Karl Marx
Introduction
One looks in vain among the writings of historians and social
scientists for any systematic study of the role of class
struggle in the determination of economic systems, class
structures and state power.
Yet social classes are everpresent in each and every
discussion of the distribution of income, the concentration of
property, representation in the state and in establishing the
lead actors in economic paradigms.
To move beyond ‘class analysis’ as simple points of reference
in static structures and to see classes as changing, dynamic
actors whose action shapes and reshapes the social, political
and economic institutions through which they act and react, we
have to turn from passive class analysis (seeing classes as
the ‘recipients’ of economic goods, state decisions and social
action) to classes-in-action, specifically class struggle. In
the course of our analysis of class struggle, we will extend
“class” to mean ‘social communities’, indigenous people,
unemployed and informal workers.
Conceptualizing Class Struggle
A survey of major professional political, sociological and
economic journals over the past half-century fails to turn up
a single theoretically informed study of class struggle
anywhere. Even the few publications which purport to study
“revolution” marginalize or omit the central role that class
struggle in its varied forms plays in the success or failure
of popular upheavals.
To approach the role of class struggle in a dynamic mitreux
we will focus exclusively on Latin America over the past two
and a half decades 1990 – 2014, a period of significant
changes in economic models, political regimes and class
structure.
To properly address the centrality of class struggle (CS) it
is important to clarify several misconceptions. CS is not
merely a phenomenon of the working or peasant class. Among the
most active, organized and combatative social class engaged in
class struggle are bankers, manufacturers, plantation owners,
commodity traders and other ‘owners of the means of
production’. In Latin America, some of the more militant
participants in the class struggle are ‘middle class’ public
employees: teachers, health employees and municipal workers.
To clarify the polarity of classes engaged in class struggle,
we refine it by distinguish between class struggle “from
above” and class struggle “from below”. CS “from above”
includes the principal owners’ of the major means of
production, distribution and financing. CS “from below”
includes both private and public employees, wage workers,
peasants, unemployed and afro-indigenous people.
In other words while class struggle is the “motor force” of
history, the direction and societal configurations are a
result of which “classes-in-struggle” succeed imposing their
class interests.
Moreover, we have to make a further distinction, especially
central to the present period: class struggle ‘from above’
includes two important sub groups: domestic and foreign
capitalists. So that we need to include Class struggle from
above and the outside since US-EU-Japanese multi-national
capitalists and the principal owners of the major means of
production, distribution and financing. CS “from below”
includes both private and public employees, wage workers,
peasants, unemployed and afro-indigenous people.
In other words while class struggle is the ‘motor force” of
history, the direction and societal configuration are a result
of which “classes-in-struggle” succeed in imposing their class
interests.
Our analysis of class struggle takes account of the
complexity and dynamism of changing class actors, the
intensity and changing context of class action, the ebbs and
flows of class struggle and the shifts in the correlation of
class forces.
We view the actions and composition of the regime and state
as both a product or outcome of class struggle and as
essential actor in determining the direction of class
struggle.
Imperial Globalization and Class Struggle
In the era of imperial globalization, international class
forces, political and economic, play a major role in the class
struggle. In Latin America the US Canadian and European
imperial states and multi-nationals and self-styled
international financial institutions play a major role,
especially in the “class struggle from above” by imposing
economic paradigms (“neo-liberal economies”) and policing them
via “structural adjustment policies”.
In opposition, the emergence of Latin American centered
regional organizations like ALBA, PETRO Caribe, MERCOSUR, and
serve as a counterweight to some aspects of imperial centered
international organizations.
Key Dimensions to Measure Class Struggle
Analytically, class struggle takes place along various axes:
1. Intensity: the frequency and degrees of class based
mobilizations and actions and their impact vary by time,
duration and place.
High intensity class struggle from below would include
insurrections, general strikes, large scale road blockages
extensive land and/or building occupations.
High intensity class struggle from above would involve
imperial invasions, military coups, employer lockouts, large
scale hoarding, repeated sabotage of vital infrastructure,
systematic disinvestment and prolonged austerity programs.
2. Scope of class struggle:
Class struggle from below or above can range from narrowly
based economic sectors, (a single enterprise or trade union)
in a limited regional area, over immediate demands through
limited actions (time bound strikes) to broad based national
collective actions of workers or employers engaging in economy
wide demands backed by sustained action.
3. Targets of Class Struggle:
Targets of class struggle can vary from single employers or
trade unions to the entire class, or the state. The objective
may vary for workers the objections range from simply
defending existing working conditions and wages, to reforming
labor codes and improving welfare benefits, to transforming
the social system. For capitalists the class struggle varies
from resisting wage increases, to imposing structural
adjustments which privatize public enterprise, reduce labor
costs and facilitate firings (so-called “flexible labor”) to
coups which overthrow populist, socialist and progressive
regimes.
4. Methods of Struggle and Outcomes:
Radical means of struggle, including popular uprisings,
coups, occupations and lockouts frequently but not always;
lead to an escalation of demands: “class consciousness” is
raised in the course of struggle and the political and social
horizon is extended. However, in other circumstances,
seemingly radical actions become ‘ritualized’ and lead to
negotiated settlements involving incremented changes. In some
cases radical political action is ‘co-opted’ by more moderate
electoral politicians who after some radical initial promises
adopt measures of co-habitation with existing elites. The idea
of an “inner logic” to class struggle which moves inexorably
toward large scale changes has been demonstrated to be false.
Class struggle does not move forward as a continuous
‘permanent’ process; it is contingent on a multiplicity of
internal and external circumstances which include
organizational and leadership capacity.
Evaluation of the Results and Perceptions of Class
Struggle
Our study will focus on a specified frame and select group of
country-experiences. This allows us to measure the degree of
success and failures of the opposing classes engaged in class
struggle. We can distinguish between total, partial and
marginal success or failures based on the objectives set by
the protagonists of the class struggle. We can specify several
levels of achievements. These include organizational, policy
and systemic achievements.
1. Strengthening of class organization, including
quantitative increases, participants’ quality – efficacy –
leadership and cohesion – unity of class in action.
2. Improvements in living and working condition (for
workers); and vice versa for capital; improvements for
maximizing profits, increasing market shares, easy access to
credits and low interest loans, lowering labor costs.
3. Policy Changes Favorable welfare and regulated
labor markets for wage and salaried workers and free market
policies, deregulated capital and labor markets for capital.
4. Structural Changes:
States with extensive public ownership social welfare
provisions, graduated progressive taxation for labor versus
privatized economy, low and regressive taxation with budget
allocations favoring large scale subsidies and tax incentives
favoring agro-mineral exporters for capital.
5. Strategic Changes:
Development strategy based on food security, agrarian reform,
redistribution of income, credit and loans for small producers
and deepening diverse domestic and regional markets versus a
strategy promoting agro-mineral exports, dependent on foreign
investment and finance.
6. Systemic Changes:
A state representing the interests of labor as reflected in
substantial equality of income, substantial public ownership
of key economic sectors and high levels of worker
representation in the state.
For a capital state which promotes private foreign and
domestic capitalist concentration of ownership, deepens social
inequality, limits social organization of labor, and is
exclusively responsive to and represents capital in the design
of economic strategy and budgeting and fiscal policy.
By examining the class struggle in the context of who gains
and who loses in terms of the distribution of goods, services,
legislation and organization we can develop operational
hypothesis about how effective class struggle is for capital
and labor in contemporary Latin America. And in the course of
concluding, test out Marx’s idea that “class struggle is the
motor force of history”.
Two Decades of Class Struggle in Latin America:
Heterogeneity, Advances, Retreats and Dynamic Equilibriums
Heterogeneity
Most of the most dynamic class struggles over the past two
decades have taken place ‘outside of the factory workplace’.
‘While tens of thousands of landless rural workers in Brazil
have occupied large estates, and Indian communities in Peru,
Ecuador and Bolivia have fought pitched battles with big
mining companies over contamination and dispossession of land
and water resources, no comparable workers occupation of
factories have taken place.
Between 1990 – 2005 advances in the class struggle from above
have alternated with substantial gains for the protagonists of
class struggle from below.
The period between 1990 – 2000 witnessed a major successful
advance in the class struggle from above. In most Latin
American countries – but not all – foreign and domestic
capitalist classes directly and via their neo-liberal state,
succeeded in transferring over 5,000 public enterprises into
private banks, including most strategic resources.
The capitalist class’s shares of income shifted drastically
in their favor … labor was in retreat, flexible, labor
policies were adopted, strikes and protests were violently
repressed. Structural adjustment policies were imposed via the
IMF – World Bank and IDF – which facilitated foreign takeovers
of national banks, telecommunications and other strategic
sectors at bargain basement prices. Ruling class “neo-liberal”
ideology promising free markets, free elections and prosperity
held over the middle class and enabled them to win elections
in Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Brazil and Ecuador. Structural
adjustment policies in Venezuela were imposed by blood and
fire – the Perez regime massacred several thousand protesting
unemployed and poor people.
The successful outcomes for local and foreign neo-liberal
capitalist classes during the decade of the 1990’s led to a
belief that this ‘model’ was the “end of history”, instead of
the product of a particular moment in the economic cycle and a
specific correlation of class forces.
This ruling class illusion would have profound consequences
in the next decade following the crises of 2000 the breakdown
and discrediting of the neo-liberal model and the upsurge of
the class struggle from below. The overthrow and defeat of the
neo-liberal regimes and the relative advance of the “popular
forces” established in most cases a new post-neo-liberal
configuration of regimes and changes in the correction of
forces.
The imperial powers, especially the US, Canada and the EU
refused to recognize and adapt to this new
configuration.Instead they adopted policies and strategies to
reverse this process and re-impose the 1990’s ‘neo-liberal
model’. As a result of this ‘nostalgia for the nineties’ they
suffered a series of defeats during the first decade of the
21st century in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Argentina. The
ruling classes only succeeded via a military coup in Honduras
and a civilian putsch in Paraguay. However, by the latter part
of the decade the capitalist class went on the offensive and
regained ground in some countries.
The ascendancy of the class struggle from above in the 1990’s
was not universal: in Colombia the armed class struggle of the
FARC advanced from the countryside to the periphery of major
cities. In Venezuela a military-civilian uprising in 1992 was
followed by mass mobilization from below leading to an
electoral victory for the popular classes in 1998 with the
election of Hugo Chavez.
The economic breakdown and crises of the neo-liberal model at
the end of the 1990’s, the gross pillage of the public
treasuries, the rising rates of impoverishment,deepening
social polarization and the massive rise of unemployment and
informal ‘employment combined to ignite large scale social
uprisings and mass movements. In a word the class struggle
from below went on the offensive: through popular uprisings
(Bolivia, Ecuador and Argentina), social mobilizations linked
to elections (Brazil, Venezuela, Uruguay and Peru), the
incumbent neo-liberal electoral regimes were toppled or
replaced.
The class protagonists (the ‘leading forces’) in these
struggles, however varied according to country. The political
and social composition of those engaged in the class struggle
from below differed significantly from the center-left
political parties and leaders who benefited from the struggle.
Moreover, the political-economic changes implemented by the
“post neo-liberal” regimes differed markedly from the programs
and demands that ignited the class struggle from below.
For example, in Bolivia the major popular social movements
which led to the overthrow of the Sanchez de Losada and Mesa
regimes were markedly different in composition and
progmatically from the leadership of the Movement to Socialism
(MAS) party- regime. Workers, the unemployed, informal
workers, Indian and peasants spearheaded the uprising. But
lower and upper middle class social liberals and technocrats
designed and implemented economic policy.Mass demands for the
nationalization of mines, radical agrarian reform and a class
based ‘constituent assembly’ were replaced by the MAS leaders
who promoted joint ventures with foreign capital, encouraged
agro-business and organized a constituent assembly based on
‘territorial constituencies’. Similar economic divergences
occurred in Argentina and Ecuador between the anti-neo-liberal
regimes composed of middle class leaders and the popular
classes. In summary, the political elites diluted the policy
outcomes of the class struggle from below.
The retreat of the capitalist class, the displacement of the
US backed neo-liberal regimes and their replacement by new
pro-capitalist social liberal regimes with political and
organizational ties to the popular class organizations, led to
a relative equilibrium of class forces (labor and capital) in
the cities and industries. Class Struggle from Below: The
Transition from ‘Advance’ to Equilibrium: 2010 -2014
The period 2010-14 witnessed a decline in class struggle from
below in several senses. The demands were narrow focused on
wages and salaries and not ‘structural’ changes. The modes of
struggle shifted to “tripartite” negotiations rather than mass
action. The popular struggles were fragmented by sectorial
interests (public-private, mining-industry, peasant-Indian)
rather than unified by class interests. Neither labor nor
capital were decisively defeated nor wholly victorious during
the ascendancy of the center left regimes. Class struggles,
extensive and intensive, persisted, but only for limited
moments, in few countries, and circumscribed circumstances.
In Bolivia, the capitalist class and the US imperial state
made an effort to destabilize the MAS regime by mobilizing the
Santa Cruz elite. They were defeated by mass mobilizations and
the military which remained loyal to the regime. Subsequently,
the MAS regime negotiated an economic pact with the national
and foreign capitalist class to promote ‘production,
investment and growth’ on the one hand, and a social pact with
labor union leaders (COB) to increase wages, especially the
minimum wage and other incremental changes. For all intents
and purposes, class struggle from above ended because the
regime incorporated the program of the capitalist class as its
own. The class struggle from below was confined to the
economistic demands of public sector workers and social
ecological struggles by a sector of the Indian-peasant
communities-the Tipnis conflict.
Venezuela is the exception. Class struggle from above and
below remained at the highest intensity. The capitalist class
and its US imperial backers launched major assaults on state
power. A military coup in April 2002, a lockout in December
2002 to February 2003; a referendum revoking the Presidency of
Hugo Chavez in 2004. Sustained disinvestment in production and
a sabotage campaign targeting infrastructure throughout the
decade and a half (2000-2014),culminated with a violent
terrorist campaign between February – May 2014. The “class
struggle from below” based on an alliance between mass
movements and the Chavez – Maduro governments, defeated and
rolled back the capitalist assault on popular power and went
on the offensive. From 2003 onward, the government backed by
the popular classes, nationalized enterprises and partially
redistributed oil rents from the overseas banks and
capitalists to massive social expenditures. Thousands of
community councils were organized to buttress the class
struggle from below.
In Venezuela the intense class struggle reflected the deep
social class polarization and political-social divisions. As a
result the kind of regime-multinational capitalist pact which
the MAS imposed in Bolivia was not possible. Venezuela’s
practice of class politics contrasted sharply with the MAS’s
double discourse: left rhetoric for the masses and long-term
lucrative pacts with the capitalist class.
The Transition from Intense to Limited Class Struggle 2000
– 2014
The intensity and scope of the class struggle varied in the
post-neo-liberal countries. During the ‘reformist phase’ of
the regimes and the start of the commodity boom – roughly from
2000 to the first half of the decade, class struggle was
intense, protracted and linked to major social advances.
Subsequently between 2006 - 2010 capitalists were ensured
protection from expropriation, granted subsides, export
incentives and tax relief. Labor received jobs, wage and
pension increases and access to cheap credit to finance
consumer purchases.
By the start of the second decade, the decline of the
commodity boom, the global economic crises, the growth of
consumer indebtedness, and the decline of large scale foreign
capital flows, the class struggle from above gained
importance. The capitalist class pressed for greater support
and incentives; labor strikes multiplied especially in the
face of rising prices and lagging wages.
In the most recent period, 2013-2014, the class struggle from
above has re-emerged as an influential determinent of regime
policy. In Argentina, the Fernandez government has signed off
on lucrative agreements with major agro-mineral companies;
effectively devalued the peso favoring agro-business
exporters; and turned toward greater concessions for foreign
debt holders. The right turn of the regime, its embrace of the
leading capitalist sectors, has provoked a general strike by
one of the trade union confederation (headed by Moyano) and
‘road blockages’ by dissident leftist union activists. The
Kirchner-Fernandez regime has come full circle: from
accommodating the demands of the unemployed workers for public
investments and wage increases in 2003-2006; to promoting
tripartite social pacts between labor and capital between
2007-2011; to a right-turn as the commodity boom limits public
resources and the capitalist class goes on the offensive.
In Bolivia, the MAS regime, came to power via mass
mobilizations from below and rhetorically adopted a
plurinational and nationalist agenda. However, by the
beginning of the second term (2008) it pursued and implemented
an open door policy to foreign agro-mining capital.
Incremental wage and pension improvements and extensive
cooptation of peasant and trade union leaders created a
quasi-corporate state structure embellished by ethno-populist
rhetoric. The class struggle from below was harnessed by the
MAS to beat back coup attempts by the Santa Cruz elite in
2008-09. Subsequently the MAS moved to reconcile the elite via
a political-economic pact based on mutual accommodation of the
regime and capital.
From the end of 2010 to 2014, the MAS regime has embraced a
‘developmentalist strategy’ based on attracting extractive
capital, orthodox fiscal policy and the accumulation of
foreign reserves managed by multi-national bankers.
Paradoxically the class struggle from below has, over the
past decade, led to regimes which are responding favorably to
the demands of the foreign and domestic capitalist class. The
Argentine and Bolivian experiences of the class struggle
follow a trajectory whereby class struggle from below gains
leverage over ‘center-left’ regimes for several years but then
gives way to class accommodation and demobilization. This is
followed by the revival of class struggle from above and the
conversion of the ‘center-left’ regimes into patrons and
promoters of capitalist interests via “developmentalist
policies”.
From Social Change to ‘Production Pacts’: Class Struggle
from Above 2014 - ?
Ecuador has embraced big oil and seeks World Bank loans to
finance its agro-mineral growth model while harshly repressing
the Indian movement (CONAIE) and dissident urban social
movements. Even Venezuela, after passing through a decade and
a half of expanded social spending and public ownership under
President Chavez, has turned toward a “production pact” with
capital under pressure from a violent capitalist class
offensive which was launched in February 2014. The Venezuelan
masses, via the “class struggle from below”, has responded to
the capitalist offensive but is largely dependent on the
Maduro government for leadership, the latter however has
attempted to divide the opposition, repressing the violent
sectors and offering concessions to “productive capitalists”
and the electoral opposition.
Conclusion
Over the last quarter of a century, the class struggle has
played a decisive role in the rise, consolidation and demise
of contrasting economic paradigms.
Class struggle has shaped the class system; the levels of
poverty and wealth; and the direction of public
policy,especially the relation between public and private
ownership of the means of production.
The advance of the class struggle from above in the 1990’s
led to the imposition of the neo-liberal model; the massive
shift from public to private ownership; the concentration of
wealth and an increase of poverty, unemployment and
informality.
The first decade of the 21st century witnessed the advance of
the class struggle from below. This led to the overthrow or
electoral defeat of neo-liberal regimes; increases of public
investments in social programs; a steady rise of wages and
salaries and the reduction of poverty; the organization of new
class- community based ethno-ecology movements; and the
selective renationalization of enterprises.
However, class struggle from below, lacking independent
political leadership relied on center-left electoral
politicians who ‘leaned’ in their direction when class
pressure was strongest and turned to the capitalist class when
the correlation of forces shifted.The class struggle from
below advanced furthest in Venezuela in terms of
socio-economic changes. However, in no country did it lead to
the transformation of the capitalist economy and state.
The class struggle brought to the fore new and old
protagonists on both sides of the class divide. Unlike earlier
periods, the industrial working class played a subsidiary
role, even in the more advanced industrial economies like
Argentina and Brazil. The major protagonists of class struggle
from below were a complex of urban and rural social forces
situated in different socio-economic locations.
Despite the shifting configurations of power between capital
and labor, neither has suffered a ‘historic’ victory or defeat
over the past quarter century as happened in the previous
decades. For example the revolution in Cuba in 1959 was a
decisive victory for the class struggle from below that
changed the social system, state and economy for a historical
epoch. The military coups in Chile (1973), Brazil (1964) and
Argentina (1976) smashed working class institutions,
organizations and imposed the neo-liberal economic model for
over 30 years.
The ‘historic defeats’ had a profound impact, even today, in
shaping the class struggle. The powerful role of workers’
organizations in occupying factories, self-managing
enterprises, convoking general strikes has diminished.
However, that has not meant “the end of class struggle”. New
dynamic classes have stepped forward and are leading the
struggle.
In Brazil, million person demonstrations have marched and
blocked streets, demanding that the “center-left” Workers
Party regime attend to basic social services, public
transportation and other essential needs. The urban mass
struggles demand nothing less than a fundamentalist shift in
budget priorities and allocations away from corporate
subsidies and sports extravagances to public needs.
In Chile mass struggles have been led by secondary and
university students demanding quality free public education
financed by progressive taxes on the corporate elite; slum
dwellers demand an end to the worst social inequalities in the
region.
In Argentina, entire communities adjoining agro-mineral
mega-corporations have engaged in class warfare resisting
toxic chemical farming by Monsanto, toxic mining by Barrack
Gold. Urban trade unions have engaged in class resistance to
the center-left regimes policies imposing the costs of
anti-inflationary policies on labor.
In Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia mass resistance is
based on rural communities, predominantly Indian, which
challenge the state-agro-mineral alliances which are
dispossessing them of land, water and clean air. They are
demanding state aid for local productive activity. The
traditional labor organizations which formerly were in the
forefront of class struggle have become, at best, the
rearguard of these mass struggles.
The most significant ‘labor presence’ in the class struggle
occurred in Argentina between 2002 – 2006 when hundreds of
thousands of unemployed workers organized ‘piqueteros’ (roving
pickets) and blocked major road arteries, seized work sites
and posed, temporarily, an alternative bases for political
power.
The new protagonists of class struggle from below represent
the principle source of resistance to the current capitalist
class offensive from above. They are in search of allies in
the cities, new political instruments, national co-ordinating
structures and a strategy for power.
What is clear is that the previous alignment of class
struggle movements with reluctant center-left regime allies,
has exhausted its progressive possibilities. The center-left
has embraced the agro-mining developmentalist model based on
the dispossession of peasants, Indians and small producers.
The center-left regimes, from being reluctant allies of labor,
have become accomplices of the new capitalist class offensive
from above. This political shift, however, has not detained
the class struggle from below nor lessened the underlying
socio-economic and political conditions motivating the
exploited, dispossessed and oppressed classes from organizing
and struggling for social and political liberation.
