It is often argued that social struggle, by resisting the powerful and the wealthy, will just do more harm than good. Employers often use this approach in anti-union propaganda, for example, arguing that creating a union will force the company to close and move to less "militant" areas.
There is, of course, some truth in this. Yes, social struggle can lead to bosses moving to more compliant workforces — but, of course, this also happens in periods lacking social struggle too! If we look at the down-sizing mania that gripped the U.S. in the 1980s and 1990s, we see companies down-sizing tens of thousands of people during a period where unions were weak, workers scared about loosing their jobs and class struggle basically becoming mostly informal and "underground." Moreover, this argument actually indicates the need for anarchism. It is a damning indictment of any social system that it requires people to kow-tow to their masters otherwise they will suffer economic hardship. It boils down to the argument "do what you are told, otherwise you will regret it." Any system based on that maxim is an affront to human dignity!
It would, in a similar fashion, be easy to "prove" that slave rebellions are against the long term interests of the slaves. After all, by rebelling the slaves will face the anger of their masters. Only by submitting to their master can they avoid this fate and, perhaps, be rewarded by better conditions. Of course, the evil of slavery would continue but by submitting to it they can ensure their life can become better. Needless to say, any thinking and feeling person would quickly dismiss this reasoning as missing the point and being little more than apologetics for an evil social system that treated human beings as things. The same can be said for the argument that social struggles within capitalism do more harm than good. It betrays a slave mentality unfitting for human beings (although fitting for those who desire to live of the backs of workers or desire to serve those who do).
Moreover, this kind of argument ignores a few key points. Firstly, by resistance the conditions of the oppressed can be maintained or even improved. After all, if the boss knows that their decisions will be resisted they may be less inclined to impose speed-ups, longer hours and so on. If they know that their employees will agree to anything then there is every reason to expect them to impose all kinds of oppressions, just as a state will impose draconian laws if it knows that it can get away with it. History is full of examples of non-resistance producing greater evils in the long term and of resistance producing numerous important reforms and improvements (such as higher wages, shorter hours, the right to vote for working class people and women, freedom of speech, the end of slavery, trade union rights and so on).
So social struggle has been proven time and time again to gain successful reforms. For example, before the 8 hour day movement of 1886 in America, for example, most companies argued they could not introduce that reform without doing bust. However, after displaying a militant mood and conducting an extensive strike campaign, hundreds of thousands of workers discovered that their bosses had been lying and they got shorter hours. Indeed, the history of the labour movement shows what bosses say they can afford and the reforms workers can get via struggle are somewhat at odds. Given the asymmetry of information between workers and bosses, this is unsurprising. Workers can only guess at what is available and bosses like to keep their actual finances hidden. Even the threat of labour struggle can be enough to gain improvements. For example, Henry Ford's $5 day is often used as an example of capitalism rewarding good workers. However, this substantial pay increase was largely motivated by the unionisation drive by the Industrial Workers of the World among Ford workers in the summer of 1913 [Harry Braverman, Labour and Monopoly Capitalism, p. 144]. More recently, it was the mass non-payment campaign against the poll-tax in Britain during the late 1980s and early 1990s which helped ensure its defeat (and the 1990 poll-tax riot in London also helped and ensured that the New Zealand government did not introduce a similar scheme in their country too!). In the 1990s, France also saw the usefulness of direct action. Two successive prime ministers (Edouard Balladur and Alain Juppe) tried to impose large scale "reform" programmes that swiftly provoked mass demonstrations and general strikes amongst students, workers, farmers and others. Confronted by crippling disruptions, both governments gave in. Compared to the experience of, say Britain, France's tradition of direct action politics proved more effective in maintaining existing conditions or even improving on them.
Secondly, and in some ways more importantly, it ignores that by resistance those who take part can the social system they live in can be changed. This radicalising effect of social struggle can open new doors for those involved, liberate their minds, empower them and create the potential for deep social change. Without resistance to existing forms of authority a free society cannot be created as people adjust themselves to authoritarian structures and accept what is as the only possibility. By resisting, people transform and empower themselves, as well as transforming society. In addition, new possibilities can be seen (possibilities before dismissed as "utopian") and, via the organisation and action required to win reforms, the framework for these possibilities (i.e. of a new, libertarian, society) created. The transforming and empowering effect of social struggle is expressed well by the Nick DiGaetano, an one time Wobbly who had joined during the 1912 Lawrence strike and then UAW-CIO shop floor militant from the late 1930s to the 1950s. By fighting their bosses for union recognition what the workers gained was not only better conditions and pay but also a changed mentality:
"the workers of my generation from the early days up to now [1958] had what you might call a labour insurrection in changing from a plain, humble, submissive creature into a man. The union made a man out of him . . . I am not talking about the benefits . . . I am talking about the working conditions and how they affected the men in the plant . . . Before they were submissive. Today they are men." [quoted by David Brody, "Workplace Contractualism in comparative perspective", pp. 176-205, Helson Lichtenstein and Howell john Harris (eds.), Industrial Democracy in America, p. 204]
Other labour historians note the same radicalising process elsewhere (modern day activists could give more examples!):
"The contest [over wages and conditions] so pervaded social life that the ideology of acquisitive individualism, which explained and justified a society regulated by market mechanisms and propelled by the accumulation of capital, was challenged by an ideology of mutualism, rooted in working-class bondings and struggles. . . Contests over pennies on or off existing piece rates had ignited controversies over the nature and purpose of the American republic itself." [David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labour, p. 171]
This radicalising effect is far more dangerous to authoritarian structures than better pay, more liberal laws and so on as they need submissiveness to work. Little wonder that direct action is usually denounced as pointless or harmful by those in power or their spokespersons, for direct action will, taken to its logical conclusion, put them out of a job! Struggle, therefore, holds the possibility of a free society as well as of improvements in the here and now. It also changes the perspectives of those involved, creating new ideas and values to replace the ones of capitalism.
Thirdly, it ignores the fact that such arguments do not imply the end of social struggle and working class resistance and organisation, but rather its extension. If, for example, your boss argues that they will move to Mexico if you do not "shut up and put up" then the obvious solution is to make sure the workers in Mexico are also organised! Bakunin argued this basic point over one hundred years ago, and it is still true — "in the long run the relatively tolerable position of workers in one country can be maintained only on condition that it be more or less the same in other countries." If, for example, workers in Mexico have worse wages and conditions than you do, these same conditions will be used against you as the "conditions of labour cannot get worse or better in any particular industry without immediately affecting the workers in other industries, and that workers of all trades are inter-linked with real and indissoluble ties of solidarity," ties which can be ignored only at your own peril. Ultimately, "in those countries the workers work longer hours for less pay; and the employers there can sell their products cheaper, successfully competing against conditions where workers working less earn more, and thus force the employers in the latter countries to cut wages and increase the hours of their workers." Bakunin's solution was to organise internationally, to stop this undercutting of conditions by solidarity between workers. As recent history shows, his argument was correct [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, pp. 306-7]. Thus it is not social struggle or militancy which is bad, just isolated militancy, struggle which ignores the ties of solidarity required to win, extent and keep reforms and improvements. In other words, our resistance must be as transnational as capitalism is.
The idea that social struggle and working class organisation are harmful was expressed constantly in the 1970s. If we look at the arguments of the right in the 1970s, we also find evidence that the "struggle does more harm than good" viewpoint is flawed. With the post-war Keynesian consensus crumbling, the "New Right" argued that trade unions (and strikes) hampered growth and that wealth redistribution (i.e. welfare schemes which returned some of the surplus value workers produced back into their own hands) hindered "wealth creation" (i.e. economic growth). Do not struggle over income, they argued, let the market decide and everyone will be better off.
This argument was dressed up in populist clothes. Thus we find the right-wing guru F.A. von Hayek arguing that, in the case of Britain, the "legalised powers of the unions have become the biggest obstacle to raising the standards of the working class as a whole. They are the chief cause of the unnecessarily big differences between the best- and worse-paid workers." He maintained that "the elite of the British working class. . . derive their relative advantages by keeping workers who are worse off from improving their position." Moreover, he "predict[ed] that the average worker's income would rise fastest in a country where relative wages are flexible, and where the exploitation of workers by monopolistic trade union organisations of specialised workers are effectively outlawed." ["1980s Unemployment and the Unions" reproduced in The Economic Decline of Modern Britain, p. 107, p. 108, p. 110]
Now, if von Hayek's claims were true we could expect that in the aftermath of Thatcher government's trade union reforms we would have seen: a rise in economic growth (usually considered as the means to improve living standards for workers by the right); a decrease in the differences between high and low paid workers; a reduction in the percentage of low paid workers as they improved their positions when freed from union "exploitation"; and that wages rise fastest in countries with the highest wage flexibility. Unfortunately for von Hayek, the actual trajectory of the British economy exposes his claims as nonsense.
Looking at each of his claims in turn we discover that rather than "exploit" other workers, trade unions are an essential means to shift income from capital to labour (which is way capital fights labour organisers tooth and nail). And, equally important, labour militancy aids all workers by providing a floor under which wages cannot drop (non-unionised/militant firms in the same industry or area have to offer similar programs to prevent unionisation and be able to hire workers) and by maintaining aggregate demand. This positive role of unions/militancy in aiding all workers can be seen by comparing Britain before and after Thatcher's von Hayek inspired trade union and labour market reforms.
As far as economic growth goes, there has been a steady fall since trade union reforms. In the "bad old days" of the 1970s, with its strikes and "militant unions" growth was 2.4% in Britain. It fell to 2% in the 1980s and fell again to 1.2% in the 1990s [Larry Elliot and Dan Atkinson, The Age of Insecurity, p. 236]. So the rate of "wealth creation" (economic growth) has steadily fallen as unions were "reformed" in line with von Hayek's ideology (and falling growth means that the living standards of the working class as a whole do not rise as fast as they did under the "exploitation" of the "monopolistic" trade unions). If we look at the differences between the highest and lowest paid workers, we find that rather than decrease, they have in fact shown "a dramatic widening out of the distribution with the best-workers doing much better" since Thatcher was elected in 1979 [Andrew Glyn and David Miliband (eds.), Paying for Inequality, p. 100]
Given that inequality has also increased, the condition of the average worker must have suffered. For example, Ian Gilmore states that "[i]n the 1980s, for the first time for fifty years. . . the poorer half of the population saw its share of total national income shirk." [Dancing with Dogma, p. 113] According to Noam Chomsky, "[d]uring the Thatcher decade, the income share of the bottom half of the population fell from one-third to one-fourth" and the between 1979 and 1992, the share of total income of the top 20% grew from 35% to 40% while that of the bottom 20% fell from 10% to 5%. In addition, the number of UK employees with weekly pay below the Council of Europe's "decency threshold" increased from 28.3% in 1979 to 37% in 1994 [World Orders, Old and New, p. 144, p. 145] Moreover, "[b]ack in the early 1960s, the heaviest concentration of incomes fell at 80-90 per cent of the mean. . . But by the early 1990s there had been a dramatic change, with the peak of the distribution falling at just 40-50 per cent of the mean. One-quarter of the population had incomes below half the average by the early 1990s as against 7 per cent in 1977 and 11 per cent in 1961. . ." [Elliot and Atkinson, Op. Cit., p. 235] "Overall," notes Takis Fotopoulos, "average incomes increased by 36 per cent during this period [1979-1991/2], but 70 per cent of the population had a below average increase in their income." [Towards an Inclusive Democracy, p. 113]
Looking at the claim that trade union members gained their "relative advantage by keeping workers who are worse off from improving their position" it would be fair to ask whether the percentage of workers in low-paid jobs decreased in Britain after the trade union reforms. In fact, the percentage of workers below the Low Pay Unit's definition of low pay (namely two-thirds of men's median earnings) increased — from 16.8% in 1984 to 26.2% in 1991 for men, 44.8% to 44.9% for women. For manual workers it rose by 15% to 38.4%, and for women by 7.7% to 80.7% (for non-manual workers the figures were 5.4% rise to 13.7% for men and a 0.5% rise to 36.6%). If unions were gaining at the expense of the worse off, you would expect a decrease in the number in low pay, not an increase. [Paying for Inequality, p.102] An OECD study concluded that "[t]ypically, countries with high rates of collective bargaining and trade unionisation tend to have low incidence of low paid employment." [OECD Employment Outlook, 1996, p. 94]
Nor did unemployment fall after the trade union reforms. As Elliot and Atkinson point out, "[b]y the time Blair came to power [in 1997], unemployment in Britain was falling, although it still remained higher than it had been when the [the last Labour Government of] Callaghan left office in May 1979." [Op. Cit., p. 258] Von Hayek did argue that falls in unemployment would be "a slow process" but over 10 years of higher unemployment is moving at a snail's pace! And we must note that part of this fall in unemployment towards its 1970s level was due to Britain's labour force shrinking (and so, as the July 1997 Budget Statement correctly notes, "the lower 1990s peak [in unemployment] does not in itself provide convincing evidence of improved labour performance." [p. 77]).
As far as von Hayek's prediction on wage flexibility leading to the "average worker's income" rising fastest in a country where relative wages are flexible, it has been proved totally wrong. Between 1967 and 1971, real wages grew (on average) by 2.95% per year (nominal wages grew by 8.94%) [P. Armstrong, A. Glyn and John Harrison, Capitalism Since World War II, p.272]. In comparison, in the 1990s real wages grew by 1.1 per cent, according to a TUC press release entitled Productivity Record, how the UK compares released in March 1999.
Needless to say, these are different eras so it would also be useful to compare the UK (often praised as a flexible economy after Thatcher's "reforms") to France (considered far less flexible) in the 1990s. Here we find that the "flexible" UK is behind the "inflexible" France. Wages and benefits per worker rose by almost 1.2 per cent per year compared to 0.7% for the UK. France's GDP grew at a faster rate than Britain's, averaging 1.4 per cent per year, compared with 1.2 per cent. Worker productivity is also behind, since 1979 (Thatcher's arrival) Britain's worker productivity has been 1.9 per cent per year compared to France's 2.2 per cent [Seth Ackerman, "The Media Vote for Austerity", Extra!, September/October 1997]. And as Seth Ackerman also notes, "[w]hile France's dismal record of job creation is on permanent exhibit, it is never mentioned that Britain's is even more dismal." [Ibid.]
Moving further afield, we find von Hayek's prediction falsified yet again. If we look at the USA, frequently claimed as a model economy in terms of wage flexibility and union weakness, we discover that the real wages of the average worker has decreased since 1973 (the weekly and hourly earnings of US production and non-supervisory workers, which accounts for 80% of the US workforce, have fallen in real terms by 19.2% and 13.4% respectively [Economic Report of the President 1995, Table B-45]). If we look at figures from U.S. Bureau of the Census (Current Population Survey) we can see how increased flexibility has affected income:
Income Growth by Quintile
Quintile 1950-1978 1979-1993
Lowest 20% 138% -15% 2nd 20% 98 -7 3rd 20% 106 -3 4th 20% 111 5 Highest 20% 99 18
As can be seen, flexible wages and weaker unions have resulted in the direct opposite of von Hayek's predictions. Within the US itself, we discover that higher union density is associated with fewer workers earning around the minimum wage — "the percentage of those earning around the minimum wage are both substantially higher in right-to-work states [i.e. those that pass anti-union laws] than overall and lower in high union density states that overall" and "in right-to-work states . . . wages have traditionally been lower." [Oren M. Levin-Waldman, The Minimum Wage and Regional Wage Structure] If unions did harm non-union workers, we would expect the opposite to occur. It does not. Of course, being utterly wrong has not dented his reputation with the right nor stopped him being quoted in arguments in favour of flexibility and free market reforms.
Moreover, the growth of the US economy has also slowed down as wage flexibility and market reform has increased (it was 4.4% in the 1960s, 3.2% in the 1970s, 2.8% in the 1980s and 1.9% in the first half of the 1990s [Larry Elliot and Dan Atkinson, The Age of Insecurity, p. 236]). In addition, inequality in the US has dramatically increased since the 1970s, with income and wealth growth in the 1980s going predominately to the top 20% (and, in fact, mostly to the top 1% of the population). The bottom 80% of the population saw their wealth grow by 1.2% and their income by 23.7% in the 1980s, while for the top 20% the respective figures were 98.2% and 66.3% (the figures for the top 1% were 61.6% and 38.9%, respectively). [Edward N. Wolff, "How the Pie is Sliced", The American Prospect, no. 22, Summer 1995]
Comparing the claims of von Hayek to what actually happened after trade union reform and the reduction of class struggle helps to suggest that the claims that social struggle is self-defeating are false (and probably self-serving, considering it is usually bosses and employer supported parties and economists who make these claims). A lack of social struggle has been correlated with low economic growth, stagnant (even declining) wages and the creation of purely paid service jobs to replace highly paid manufacturing ones. So while social struggle may make capital flee and other problems, lack of it is no guarantee of prosperity (quite the reverse, if the last quarter of the 20th century is anything to go by!). Indeed, a lack of social struggle will make bosses be more likely to cut wages, worsen working conditions and so on — after all, they feel they can get away with it! Which brings home the fact that "to make their [the working class'] victory secure and definitive, it is necessary to destroy capitalism." [Errico Malatesta, Life and Ideas, p. 191]
Of course, no one can know that struggle will make things better. It is a guess; no one can predict the future. Not all struggles are successful and many can be very difficult. If the "military is a role model for the business world" (in the words of an ex-CEO of Hill & Knowlton Public Relations [quoted by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton in Toxic Sludge Is Good For You!, p. 47]), and it is, then any struggle against it and other concentrations of power may, and often is, difficult and dangerous at times. But, as Zapata once said, "better to die on your feet than live on your knees!" All we can say is that social struggle can and does improve things and, in terms of its successes and transforming effect on those involved, well worth the potential difficulties it can create. Moreover, without struggle there is little chance of creating a free society, dependent as it is on individuals who refuse to bow to authority and have the ability and desire to govern themselves. In addition, social struggle is always essential, not only to win improvements, but to keep them as well. In order to fully secure improvements you have to abolish capitalism and the state. Not to do so means that any reforms can and will be taken away (and if social struggle does not exist, they will be taken away sooner rather than later). Ultimately, most anarchists would argue that social struggle is not an option — we either do it or we put up with the all the petty (and not so petty) impositions of authority. If we do not say "no" then the powers that be will walk all over us.
As the history of the last 20 years shows, a lack of social struggle is fully compatible with worsening conditions. Ultimately, if you want to be treated as a human being you have to stand up for your dignity — and that means thinking and rebelling. As Bakunin often argued, human development is based on thought and rebellion (see God and the State). Without rebellion, without social struggle, humanity would stagnant beneath authority forever and never be in a position to be free. We would agree wholeheartedly with the Abolitionist Frederick Douglass:
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favour freedom and yet deprecate agitation are people who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. That struggle might be a moral one; it might be a physical one; it might be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will. People might not get all that they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get."