From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Zionism Labor Zionism (Hebrew: תְּנוּעָת הָעַבוֹדָה, romanized: tnuʽat haʽavoda) or socialist Zionism (Hebrew: צִיּוֹנוּת סוֹצְיָאלִיסְטִית, romanized: tsiyonut sotzyalistit) refers to the left-wing, socialist variant of Zionism.
For many years, it was the most significant tendency among Zionists and
Zionist organizations, and was seen as the Zionist sector of the
historic Jewish labour movements of Eastern Europe and Central Europe,
eventually developing local units in most countries with sizable Jewish
populations. Unlike the "political Zionist" tendency founded by Theodor Herzl and advocated by Chaim Weizmann, Labor Zionists did not believe that a Jewish state would be created by simply appealing to the international community or to powerful nations such as the United Kingdom, Germany, or the former Ottoman Empire. Rather, they believed that a Jewish state could only be created through the efforts of the Jewish working class making aliyah to the Land of Israel and raising a country through the creation of a Labor Jewish society with rural kibbutzim and moshavim, and an urban Jewish Proletariat.
Before 1914, the growing alienation from Bolshevism on the one hand and the unification of the Jewish Labor Movement in Ottoman Palestine on the other hand made it possible for Zionism to gain a measure of recognition and legitimacy, particularly in the United States.
The Labor Zionists differed from other labor organizations at the time
since non-Zionist labor organizations were internationalist, therefore
opposed to Jewish nationalism. The leadership of the Jewish left
in the U.S. was drawn only from two distinct sources: the
internationalist and cosmopolitan line of thought of the founding
fathers who arrived in the 1880s, and the Jewish Labor Bund veterans who left the Russian Empire after 1905 and saw no contradiction between socialism and nationalism within the Jewish diaspora.
By the 1930s, the Labor Zionist movement had substantially grown
in size and influence, and eclipsed "political Zionism" both
internationally and within the British Mandate of Palestine. Labor Zionists predominated among many of the institutions of the Yishuv, particularly the trade union federation known as the Histadrut. The Haganah,
the largest Yishuv paramilitary, was a Labor Zionist organization. It
occasionally participated in military action (such as during The Saison) against certain radical right-wing Jewish political opponents and militant groups, sometimes in cooperation with the British Mandate administration.
Labor Zionism was one of the most mainstream forms of Zionism
prior to and following the establishment of the State of Israel. Labor
Zionism was responsible for the creation of institutions in Israel that
exist today, such as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The predecessors of the IDF began as underground militia groups to protect Jews during the Second Aliyah in 1904. A majority of the immigrants at the time were influenced by socialist ideals, because of the Marxist ideologies spreading throughout Russia. Additionally, the First Aliyah was met by backlash because of the Rothschild family’s funding of the settlements. The settlements were criticized by Nachman Syrkin and Ber Borochov, two of Labor Zionism’s founders, because Arab labor was preferred over Jewish labor.
They believed that this was because of the capitalist organization of
the settlements, and that a socialist solution would give priority to
Jewish labor and lead to a successful establishment of a Jewish state.
These values were implemented during the second Aliyah by using the
Hebrew language, only hiring Jewish labor, and the creation of Bar Giora and the Hashomer, to work towards independence in this new land. In April 1913, the Poale Zion,
the Labor Zionist Party, held a conference and published writing that
addressed the question of Jewish defense, nationalism, and Marxism, all
of which seemed to contradict. They resolved that their current
conditions necessitated defense in order to solidify a place for Jewish
workers, because that was being threatened. In addition, they claimed
that their defense was not of private property, but of their nation. In
order to establish a place for themselves, they prioritized national
solidarity over international.
The Bar Goria and Hashomer were Jewish self defense organizations to protect Jewish communities who were settling in Palestine. The Bar Giora was the first, and later absorbed into Hashomer.
Their establishment was in response to Arab nationalism, that they
believed would ultimately lead to clashes with the Palestinian Arabs.
They believed that they were the first line of defense against Arab
dissent, and wanted to establish a working class in Palestine. Hashomer
then became the Haganah, which was the first official military
organization in Israel, which was then turned into the IDF.
Establishment of Labor Zionism in the Mainstream
From its first meeting, the majority of the members of the Zionist Congress were considered General Zionists, who did not have specific political leanings or an agreed upon plan for Zionism. However, after the 1929 riots, there was a rise of Arab nationalism and resistance to Zionism. As a result, the Passfield White Paper
was published, indicating a withdrawal of support of the Zionist cause.
The combination of these tensions increased the necessity of having a
concrete plan and Zionist ideology to follow. As a competing ideology with Revisionist Zionism,
Labor Zionism gained popularity. The General Zionists began to lean
towards Labor or Revisionist Zionism. During the 17th Congress in 1931, a
vote would take place on whether or not the Zionist Congress would
pursue the 'ultimate objective' platform of the Revisionist Zionists.
During the 16 days of debate, a message was sent from Palestine,
relaying the message of fear of an Arab pogrom if the 'all or nothing
stance' of the Revisionist Party went through.
This resulted in the rejection of the proposal. After two years of
campaigning, the Labor Zionist party won the election to have leadership
of the Zionist Congress at the 18th Congress in 1933.
Ideology
Moses Hess's 1862 work Rome and Jerusalem: The Last National Question argued for the Jews to settle in Palestine as a means of settling the national question. Hess proposed a socialist state in which the Jews would become agrarianized
through a process of "redemption of the soil" that would transform the
Jewish community into a true nation in that Jews would occupy the
productive layers of society rather than being an intermediary
non-productive merchant class, which is how he perceived European Jews.
Ber Borochov,
continuing from the work of Moses Hess, proposed the creation of a
socialist society that would correct the "inverted pyramid" of Jewish
society. Borochov believed that Jews were forced out of ordinary
occupations by gentile
hostility and competition, using this dynamic to explain Jewish
professionals' relative predominance, rather than workers. He argued
that Jewish society would not be healthy until the inverted pyramid was
righted, and a substantial number of Jews became workers and peasants
again. This, he held, could only be accomplished by Jews in their own
country.
Jonathan Frankel in his book Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862–1917,
states that after 1905, Dov Ber Borochov, a Marxist Zionist and one of
the pioneers of the Labor Zionist movement suddenly rejected voluntarism
for determinism.
Prior to this, Borochov regarded Palestinian colonialization as a
preparatory mission to be carried out by an elite vanguard of pioneers;
he developed a theory after the revolution of 1905 that indicated how
inevitable Palestinian colonization by the Jewish masses was.
Another Zionist thinker, A. D. Gordon, was influenced by the völkisch ideas of European romantic nationalism, and proposed establishing a society of Jewish peasants. Gordon made a religion of work.[clarification needed] These two figures (Gordon and Borochov), and others like them, motivated the establishment of the first Jewish collective settlement, or kibbutz, Degania Alef, on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee, in 1909 (the same year that the city of Tel Aviv was established). Deganiah, and many other kibbutzim
that were soon to follow, attempted to realize these thinkers' vision
by creating communal villages, where newly arrived European Jews would
be taught agriculture and other manual skills.
Joseph Trumpeldor
is also considered to be one of the early icons of the Labor Zionist
movement in Palestine. When discussing what it is to be a Jewish
pioneer, Trumpeldor stated:
What
is a pioneer? Is he a worker only? No! The definition includes much
more. The pioneers should be workers but that is not all. We shall need
people who will be "everything" – everything that the land of Israel
needs. A worker has his labor interests, a soldier his esprit de corps, a
doctor and an engineer, their special inclinations. A generation of
iron-men; iron from which you can forge everything the national
machinery needs. You need a wheel? Here I am. A nail, a screw, a block? –
here take me. You need a man to till the soil? – I’m ready. A soldier? I
am here. Policeman, doctor, lawyer, artist, teacher, water carrier?
Here I am. I have no form. I have no psychology. I have no personal
feeling, no name. I am a servant of Zion. Ready to do everything, not
bound to do anything. I have only one aim – creation.
Trumpeldor, a Socialist Zionist, died defending the community of Tel Hai in the Upper Galilee
in 1920. He became a symbol of Jewish self-defense and his reputed last
words, "Never mind, it is good to die for our country" (En davar, tov
lamut be'ad artzenu אין דבר, טוב למות בעד ארצנו), became famous in the
pre-state Zionist movement and in Israel during the 1950s and 1960s.
Trumpeldor's heroic death made him not only a martyr for Zionists Left
but also for the Revisionist Zionist movement who named its youth movement Betar (an acronym for "Covenant of Joseph Trumpeldor") after the fallen hero.
Albert Einstein was a prominent supporter of both Labor Zionism and efforts to encourage Jewish–Arab cooperation. Fred Jerome in his Einstein on Israel and Zionism: His Provocative Ideas About the Middle East argues that Einstein was a Cultural Zionist
who supported the idea of a Jewish homeland but opposed the
establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine "with borders, an army, and
a measure of temporal power." Instead, he preferred a bi-national state with "continuously functioning, mixed, administrative, economic, and social organizations." In the November 1948 presidential election Einstein supported former vice-president Henry A. Wallace’s Progressive Party,
which advocated a pro-Soviet foreign policy – but which also at the
time (like the USSR) strongly supported the new state of Israel. Wallace
went down to defeat, winning no states.
Parties
"Two Zionist labor parties were established in Palestine in late 1905
by party organization veterans in the pale of settlement, one socialist
who was "Palestine's Jewish Social Democratic Labor Party"; the other
radical, "Ha-poel Ha-Tsair." In theory, shaping the ideologies that had
to generalize long-term strategic policy and day-to-day tactics from an
overarching world view was the role of the group. But in fact, without
the assistance of the parties or even their avowed principles, the
experiments that proved to be of decisive importance in the growth of
the labor movement were initiated.
Although each party formed its own newspaper, neither compelled
its contributors to pursue its own line of thinking. On the contrary,
Ha-ahdut, and still More, Ha-poel Ha-tsair, represented the highly
individualistic, disorganized and even anarchic essence of the second
Aliya in their pages.
Initially two labor parties were founded by immigrants to Palestine of the Second Aliyah (1904–1914): the pacifist and anti-militarist Hapo'el Hatza'ir (Young Worker) party and the MarxistPoale Zion party, with Poale Zion
roots. The Poale Zion Party had a left wing and a right wing. In 1919
the right wing, including Ben-Gurion and anti-Marxist non-party people,
founded Ahdut HaAvoda. In 1930 Ahdut HaAvoda and Hapo'el Hatza'ir fused into the Mapai
party, which included all of mainstream Labor Zionism. Until the 1960s
these parties were dominated by members of the Second Aliyah.
The Left Poale Zion party ultimately merged with the kibbutz-based Hashomer Hatzair, the urban Socialist League and several smaller left-wing groups to become the Mapam party, which in turn later joined with Shulamit Aloni’s Ratz to create Meretz.
The Mapai party later became the Israeli Labor Party, which for a number of years was linked with Mapam in the Alignment. These two parties were initially the two largest parties in the Yishuv and in the first Knesset, whilst Mapai and its predecessors dominated Israeli politics both in the pre-independence Yishuv and for the first three decades of Israel's independence, until the late 1970s.
Decline and transformation
A close relationship formed between the labor movement and the
liberal leftist branch of General Zionism, and between the labor
movement and the section of the Zionist leadership that bore direct
responsibility for the Zionist enterprise, prior to the fourteenth
Zionist Congress that met in Vienna in August 1925.
Ze'ev Sternhell in his book “The Founding Myths of Israel: Nationalism,
Socialism, and The Making of the Jewish state” states there was a close
relationship with Arthur Ruppin, a Zionist historian and leader who,
though in theory advocating capitalist agriculture, refused to entrust
market forces with the production of agricultural settlements.
Already in the 1920s the Labor movement disregarded its socialist
roots and concentrated on building the nation by constructive action.
According to Tzahor its leaders did not "abandon fundamental ideological
principles". However, according to Ze'ev Sternhell in his book The Founding Myths of Israel, the labor leaders had already abandoned socialist principles by 1920 and only used them as "mobilizing myths".
The middle class allowed itself the freedom to stand aside and
avoid any involvement in the political life of the Yishuv and the
Zionist movement because the nationalist socialism in Palestine served
to protect the private sector, They never felt the need for a single
political system parallel with the Histradrut. The middle class's
shortcomings emerged from the lack of any existential need to formulate
an alternative to the ideology of the workforce.
In the 1930s for Jews living in a restricted manner facing
various assimilation issues as well immense poverty in the United
States, the Labor Zionism movement influenced some of their socialist
ideals that some of them had hoped to live in. Jews in New York, during
the Great Depression were attracted to socialism echoed through the
liberalism of Roosevelt New deal. Beth Wenger,
illustrates the reactions of Jewish women to the economic downturn,
their contribution to the family economy, and the general tendency to
adhere only to the style of a wage-working husband in the American
middle class. Deborah Dash Moore
concludes in her book "At home in America", the generation influenced
by such socialist ideals reconstructed Jewishness, molded it to suit a
middle-class American mode, adapted it to the rigors of urban life,
imbued it with Jewish feelings learned from their immigrant parents, and
added it to the Jewish history chain.
Other prominent Labor Zionists, especially those who came to dominate the Israeli Labor Party, became strong advocates for relinquishing the territory won during the Six-Day War. By the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, this became the central policy of the Labor Party under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
What distinguishes Labor Zionism from other Zionist streams today is
not economic policy, an analysis of capitalism, or any class analysis or
orientation, but its attitude towards the Israeli–Palestinian peace process with modern Labor Zionists tending to support the Israeli peace camp
to varying degrees. This orientation towards Israel's borders and
foreign policy has dominated Labor Zionist institutions in recent
decades to the extent that socialist Zionists who support a Greater Israel ideology are forced to seek political expression elsewhere.
In Israel the Labor Party has followed the general path of other governing social-democratic parties such as the British Labour Party and is now fully oriented towards supporting a capitalist model, and some factions support centrist policies akin to the Third Way, though in the 2010s it has returned to a more social-democratic outlook under the leadership of Shelly Yachimovich and Amir Peretz.
The Israeli Labor Party and its predecessors have ironically been
associated within Israeli society as representing the country's ruling
class and political elite whereas working-class Israelis have
traditionally voted for the Likud since the Begin Revolution of 1977.
Shlomo Avineri,
member of the last Labor government, Israeli political scientist,
Professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who
has written on Hegel and translated some of Marx’s early writings
recognizes that Zionism is “the most fundamental revolution in Jewish
life” and stresses the revolutionary aspect of Zionism. In The Making of Modern Zionism: The Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State,
he believes it as a permanent revolution that aims for a radically
different and more just society in Israel after creating a new normative
and public focus for Jewish Existence. He is out to challenge Zionism's
consensus view as a religiously inspired movement sparked by outbreaks
of anti-Semitism and to create a rich, diverse intellectual lineage
important to the movement today.
In Israel, Labor Zionism has become nearly synonymous with the Israeli peace camp. Usually, Labor Zionist political and educational institutions activists are also advocates of a two-state solution, who do not necessarily adhere to socialist economic views.
In political science, the term class conflict, or class struggle, refers to the economic antagonism and political tension that exist among social classes because of clashing interests, competition for limited resources, and inequalities of power in the socioeconomic hierarchy. In its simplest manifestation, class conflict refers to the ongoing battle between rich and poor.
Class conflict can reveal itself through (a) direct violence, such as assassinations, coups, revolutions, counterrevolutions,
and civil wars for control of government, natural resources, and labor;
(b) indirect violence, such as deaths from poverty, malnutrition,
illness, and unsafe workplaces; (c) economic coercion, such as boycotts and strikes, the threat of unemployment and capital flight, the withdrawal of investment capital; (d) political machinations through lobbying (legal and illegal), bribery of legislators, voter suppression and disenfranchisement; and (e) ideological struggle by way of propaganda and political literature.
In the economic sphere, class conflict is sometimes expressed overtly, such as owner lockouts of their employees in an effort to weaken the bargaining power of the employees' union; or covertly, such as a worker slowdown of production or the widespread, simultaneous use of sick leave (e.g., "blue flu") to protest unfair labor practices, low wages, poor work conditions, or a perceived injustice to a fellow worker.
When Marxists speak of class struggle, they define a class primarily in economic terms, i.e., by its relationship to the means of production.
When anarchists like Bakunin speak of class struggle, they have a
broader definition of "social class" which encompasses "notions of
domination and privilege" in the political and cultural spheres as well
as the economic.
Bakunin believed the successful struggle of the dominated classes would
achieve a revolution to depose the ruling elites and create a stateless
or libertarian socialism, and that a prerequisite for successful revolution is class solidarity.
Marx's theory of history asserts that in the history of economic systems such as capitalism and feudalism, class struggle is "the central fact of social evolution." Indeed, the first sentence of Chapter 1 of the Communist Manifesto reads: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." Marxists view the struggle's resolution in favor of the working class to be inevitable under plutocratic capitalism.
Oligarchs versus commoners in Ancient Greece
Where
societies are socially divided based on status, wealth, or control of
social production and distribution, class structures arise and are thus
coeval with civilization itself. The rise of class structures eventually
leads to class conflict. It is a pattern that has repeated since at
least European classical antiquity as illustrated in the Conflict of the Orders and the slave revolt led by Spartacus.
Thucydides
In his History, Thucydides describes a civil war in the city of Corcyra between the pro-Athens party of the common people and their pro-Corintholigarchic
opposition. Near the climax of the struggle, "the oligarchs in full
rout, fearing that the victorious commons might assault and carry the
arsenal and put them to the sword, fired the houses round the
market-place and the lodging-houses, in order to bar their advance."
The historian Tacitus would later recount a similar class conflict in the city of Seleucia,
in which disharmony between the oligarchs and the commoners would
typically lead to each side calling on outside help to defeat the other.
Thucydides believed that "as long as poverty gives men the courage of
necessity, [...] so long will the impulse never be wanting to drive men
into danger."
Aristotle
In the Politics, Aristotle
describes the basic dimensions of class conflict: "Again, because the
rich are generally few in number, while the poor are many, they appear
to be antagonistic, and as the one or the other prevails they form the
government.". Aristotle also commented that "poverty is the parent of revolution",
but did not consider poverty to be the only cause of revolution. In a
society where property is distributed equally throughout the community,
"the nobles will be dissatisfied, because they think themselves worthy
of more than an equal share of honors; and this is often found to be a
cause of sedition and revolution."
Moreover, Aristotle said that it was wrong for the poor to seize the
wealth of the rich and divide it among themselves, but he said that it
is wrong for the rich to impoverish the multitude.
Moreover, Aristotle further discussed a middle way, between laxity and cruelty, in the treatment of slaves
by their masters, averring that "if not kept in hand, [slaves] are
insolent, and think that they are as good as their masters, and, if
harshly treated, they hate and conspire against them."
Socrates
Socrates was the first Greek philosopher to describe class conflict. In the Republic, by Plato,
Socrates said that "any city, however small, is in fact divided into
two, one the city of the poor, the other [the city] of the rich; these
[cities] are at war with one another." Socrates disapproved of oligarchies,
in which members of a small class of wealthy property owners take
positions of political power in order to dominate the large social class
of impoverished commoners; and used the analogy of a maritime pilot, who, like the power-holder in a polis, ought to be chosen for political office for his skill, not for the amount of property he owns.
Plutarch
This 6th century Athenian black-figure urn, in the British Museum, depicts the olive harvest. Many farmers, enslaved for debt, would have worked on large estates for their creditors.
The historian Plutarch
recounts how the Greek people participated in the class conflict
between the aristocrats and the common folk. Financially oppressed by
their indebtedness to the aristocrats, the mass of Athenians chose Solon to be the lawgiver to lead them to freedom from their creditors. The philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said that Solon's constitution of the Athenian popular assembly created a political sphere that balanced the competing socio-economic interests of the social classes of Athens:
The wealthy aristocratic party of the plain
The poor common party of the mountains
The moderate party of the coast
Participating in a war among the social classes of Ancient Greece was a dangerous political endeavour. In his book Parallel Lives, Plutarch wrote of two Spartan kings, Agis and Cleomenes,
who "being desirous to raise the people, and to restore the noble and
just form of government, now long fallen into disuse, [they] incurred
the hatred of the rich and powerful, who could not endure to be deprived
of the selfish enjoyment to which they were accustomed."
Patricians versus plebeians in Ancient Rome
It was similarly difficult for the Romans to maintain peace between the upper class, the patricians, and the lower class, the plebs. French Enlightenment philosopher Montesquieu notes that this conflict intensified after the overthrow of the Roman monarchy.
In The Spirit of Laws he lists the four main grievances of the plebs, which were rectified in the years following the deposition of King Tarquin:
The patricians had much too easy access to positions of public service.
The plebs had too little power in their assemblies.
Camillus
The Senate had the ability to give a magistrate the power of dictatorship,
meaning he could bypass public law in the pursuit of a prescribed
mandate. Montesquieu explains that the purpose of this institution was
to tilt the balance of power in favour of the patricians. However, in an attempt to resolve a conflict between the patricians and the plebs, the dictator Camillus used his power of dictatorship to coerce the Senate into giving the plebs the right to choose one of the two consuls.
Marius
Tacitus
believed that the increase in Roman power spurred the patricians to
expand their power over more and more cities. This process, he felt,
exacerbated pre-existing class tensions with the plebs, and eventually
culminated in a civil war between the patrician Sulla and the populist reformer Marius. Marius had taken the step of enlisting capite censi, the very lowest class of citizens, into the army, for the first time allowing non-land owners into the legions.
Tiberius Gracchus
Tiberius Gracchus
Of all the notable figures discussed by Plutarch and Tacitus, agrarian reformerTiberius Gracchus
may have most challenged the upper classes and most championed the
cause of the lower classes. In a speech to the common soldiery, he
decried their lowly conditions:
"The savage beasts," said he, "in Italy, have their
particular dens, they have their places of repose and refuge; but the
men who bear arms, and expose their lives for the safety of their
country, enjoy in the meantime nothing more in it but the air and light;
and having no houses or settlements of their own, are constrained to
wander from place to place with their wives and children."
Following this observation, he remarked that these men "fought indeed
and were slain, but it was to maintain the luxury and the wealth of
other men." Cicero believed that Tiberius Gracchus's reforming efforts saved Rome from tyranny, arguing:
Tiberius Gracchus (says Cicero) caused the free-men to be admitted into the tribes,
not by the force of his eloquence, but by a word, by a gesture; which
had he not effected, the republic, whose drooping head we are at present
scarce able to uphold, would not even exist.
Tiberius Gracchus weakened the power of the Senate by changing the law so that judges were chosen from the ranks of the knights, instead of their social superiors in the senatorial class.
Julius Caesar
Contrary to Shakespeare's depiction of Julius Caesar in the tragedy Julius Caesar, historian Michael Parenti has argued that Caesar was a populist, not a tyrant. In 2003 The New Press published Parenti's The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome.Publishers Weekly
said "Parenti [...] narrates a provocative history of the late republic
in Rome (100–33 BC) to demonstrate that Caesar's death was the
culmination of growing class conflict, economic disparity and political
corruption." Kirkus Reviews
wrote: "Populist historian Parenti... views ancient Rome's most famous
assassination not as a tyrannicide but as a sanguinary scene in the
never-ending drama of class warfare."
Coriolanus
Coriolanus, Act V, Scene III. Engraved by James Caldwell from a painting by Gavin Hamilton
The patrician Coriolanus, whose life William Shakespeare would later depict in the tragic play Coriolanus,
fought on the other side of the class war, for the patricians and
against the plebs. When grain arrived to relieve a serious shortage in
the city of Rome, the plebs made it known that they felt it ought to be
divided amongst them as a gift, but Coriolanus stood up in the Senate
against this idea on the grounds that it would empower the plebs at the
expense of the patricians.
This decision would eventually contribute to Coriolanus's undoing when he was impeached following a trial by the tribunes of the plebs.
Montesquieu recounts how Coriolanus castigated the tribunes for trying a
patrician, when in his mind no one but a consul had that right,
although a law had been passed stipulating that all appeals affecting
the life of a citizen had to be brought before the plebs.
In the first scene of Shakespeare's Coriolanus, a crowd of
angry plebs gathers in Rome to denounce Coriolanus as the "chief enemy
to the people" and "a very dog to the commonalty" while the leader of
the mob speaks out against the patricians thusly:
They ne'er cared for us yet: suffer us to famish, and
their store-houses crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to support
usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act established against the rich,
and provide more piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain the
poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and there's all the love
they bear us.
Landlessness and debt
The Secession of the People to the Mons Sacer, engraving by B. Barloccini, 1849
[T]he
plebeians of Rome [...] had been oppressed from the earliest times by
the weight of debt and usury; and the husbandman, during the term of his
military service, was obliged to abandon the cultivation of his farm.
The lands of Italy which had been originally divided among the families
of free and indigent proprietors, were insensibly purchased or usurped
by the avarice of the nobles; and in the age which preceded the fall of
the republic, it was computed that only two thousand citizens were
possessed of an independent substance.
Hegel
similarly states that the 'severity of the patricians their creditors,
the debts due to whom they had to discharge by slave-work, drove the
plebs to revolts.' Gibbon also explains how Augustus facilitated this class conflict by pacifying the plebs with actual bread and circuses.
The economist Adam Smith noted that the poor freeman's lack of land provided a major impetus for Roman colonisation, as a way to relieve class tensions at home between the rich and the landless poor. Hegel described the same phenomenon happening in the impetus to Greek colonisation.
It was with bitter sarcasm that Rousseau outlined the class conflict prevailing in his day between masters and their workmen:
You
have need of me, because I am rich and you are poor. We will therefore
come to an agreement. I will permit you to have the honour of serving
me, on condition that you bestow on me the little you have left, in
return for the pains I shall take to command you.
Rousseau argued that the most important task of any government is to
fight in class warfare on the side of workmen against their masters, who
he said engage in exploitation under the pretence of serving society.
Specifically, he believed that governments should actively intervene in
the economy to abolish poverty and prevent the accrual of too much
wealth in the hands of too few men.
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) led the U.S. as president from 1801 to 1809 and is considered one of America's Founding Fathers. Regarding the interaction between social classes, he wrote:
I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians)
which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely
greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European
governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law,
& restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among
the latter, under pretence of governing they have divided their nations
into two classes, wolves & sheep. I do not exaggerate. This is a
true picture of Europe. Cherish therefore the spirit of our people, and
keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but
reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to
the public affairs, you & I, & Congress & Assemblies, judges
& governors shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our
general nature, in spite of individual exceptions; and experience
declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I
can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the
general prey of the rich on the poor.
— Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Edward Carrington – 16 January 1787
James Madison
In his Federalist No. 10, James Madison
revealed an emphatic concern with the conflict between rich and poor,
commenting that "the most common and durable source of factions has been
the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and
those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in
society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a
like discrimination."
He welcomed class-based factions into political life as a necessary
result of political liberty, stating that the most important task of
government was to manage and adjust for 'the spirit of party'.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
In his Philosophy of Right, Hegel
expressed concern that the standard of living of the poor might drop so
far as to make it even easier for the rich to amass even more wealth.
Hegel believed that, especially in a liberal country such as
contemporary England, the poorest will politicise their situation,
channelling their frustrations against the rich:
Against
nature man can claim no right, but once society is established, poverty
immediately takes the form of a wrong done to one class by another.
Capitalist societies
Class
conflict is most commonly described as occurring within capitalist
societies. The conflict manifests itself as clashes between the
capitalist class and working class, and takes the form of disputes over
hours of work, amount paid in wages, division of profits, culture in the
workplace, cost of consumer goods, cost of rent, control over parliament or government bureaucracy, and economic inequality.
Even a seemingly benign humanitarian program such as
government-provided disaster relief can exacerbate class conflict if the
relief is seen as being unequally distributed depending on the
recipient's class.
Adam Smith
Inequality in the distribution of wealth
Like Rousseau, the classical liberalAdam Smith
believed that the amassing of property in the hands of a minority
naturally resulted in a disharmonious state of affairs. He said that
"avarice and ambition in the rich, in the poor the hatred of labour and
the love of present ease and enjoyment, are the passions which prompt to
invade property", requiring a government to protect property rights:
Wherever
there is a great property, there is great inequality. For one very rich
man, there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the
few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich
excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want,
and prompted by envy to invade his possessions. It is only under the
shelter of the civil magistrate, that the owner of that valuable
property, which is acquired by the labour of many years, or perhaps of
many successive generations, can sleep a single night in security. He is
at all times surrounded by unknown enemies, whom, though he never
provoked, he can never appease, and from whose injustice he can be
protected only by the powerful arm of the civil magistrate, continually
held up to chastise it.
Writing The Wealth of Nations, Smith's concern was the welfare of the ordinary workers who make up society and provide for it:
No
society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater
part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides,
that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people,
should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be
themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.
Regarding the extravagant consumption of the aristocracy, he remarked that:
All
for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the
world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.
Violence against commoners by feudal lords
In the third book of The Wealth of Nations, Smith explains that in the medieval period,
after the fall of the Roman Empire, governments were unable to protect
commoners, and their property, from the "violence of the great lords":
In
order to understand this, it must be remembered, that, in those days,
the sovereign of perhaps no country in Europe was able to protect,
through the whole extent of his dominions, the weaker part of his
subjects from the oppression of the great lords. Those whom the law
could not protect, and who were not strong enough to defend themselves,
were obliged either to have recourse to the protection of some great
lord, and in order to obtain it, to become either his slaves or vassals;
or to enter into a league of mutual defence for the common protection
of one another. The inhabitants of cities and burghs, considered as
single individuals, had no power to defend themselves; but by entering
into a league of mutual defence with their neighbours, they were capable
of making no contemptible resistance.
Residents
of the cities were able to establish their freedom and security of
property long before those of the country, which enabled a gradual
increase in their prosperity:
Order and good
government, and along with them the liberty and security of individuals,
were in this manner established in cities, at a time when the occupiers
of land in the country, were exposed to every sort of violence. But men
in this defenceless state naturally content themselves with their
necessary subsistence; because, to acquire more, might only tempt the
injustice of their oppressors. On the contrary, when they are secure of
enjoying the fruits of their industry, they naturally exert it to better
their condition, and to acquire not only the necessaries, but the
conveniencies and elegancies of life.
Distribution of incomes into wages, profit and rent
In Book I Chapter 6, Smith explained how income is distributed between workers and their employers:
The
value which the workmen add to the materials, therefore, resolves
itself in this case into two parts, of which the one pays their wages,
the other the profits of their employer upon the whole stock of
materials and wages which he advanced. He could have no interest to
employ them, unless he expected from the sale of their work something
more than what was sufficient to replace his stock to him; and he could
have no interest to employ a great stock rather than a small one, unless
his profits were to bear some proportion to the extent of his stock.
Smith
said that while a worker is paid wages in proportion to their
"dexterity and ingenuity", as well as for "superior hardship and
superior skill", this is not the case for the profit of their employers:
The profits of stock [capital], it may
perhaps be thought, are only a different name for the wages of a
particular sort of labour, the labour of inspection and direction. They
are, however, altogether different, are regulated by quite different
principles, and bear no proportion to the quantity, the hardship, or the
ingenuity of this supposed labour of inspection and direction.
He added that the work of management is often performed by other employees, rather than the business owner themselves:
In many great works, almost the whole labour of this kind is committed to some principal clerk.
His wages properly express the value of this labour of inspection and
direction. Though in settling them some regard is had commonly, not only
to his labour and skill, but to the trust which is reposed in him, yet
they never bear any regular proportion to the capital of which he
oversees the management; and the owner of this capital, though he is
thus discharged of almost all labour, still expects that his profit
should bear a regular proportion to his capital.
In Chapter 9, Smith notes that: "The increase of stock,
which raises wages, tends to lower profit. When the stocks of many rich
merchants are turned into the same trade, their mutual competition
naturally tends to lower its profit".
He says that "high profits tend much more to raise the price of work
than high wages", because "the rise of wages operates in the same manner
as simple interest", while "the rise of profit operates like compound interest". He concludes the chapter:
Our merchants and master manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price [of commodities],
and thereby lessening the sale of their goods, both at home and abroad.
They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits; they are
silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains; they
complain only of those of other people.
Wage negotiations and trade unions
Concerning wages, he explained the conflicting class interests between
the owners of capital and workers, who he said were often compelled to
form trade unions for fear of suffering starvation wages, as follows:
What
are the common wages of labour, depends everywhere upon the contract
usually made between those two parties, whose interests are by no means
the same. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as
little, as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to
raise, the latter in order to lower, the wages of labour.
It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties
must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute,
and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters,
being fewer in number, can combine much more easily: and the law,
besides, authorises, or at least does not prohibit, their combinations,
while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament
against combining to lower the price of work, but many against combining
to raise it.
Smith was aware of the main advantage of employers over workers, in addition to state protection:
In
all such disputes, the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a
farmer, a master manufacturer, or merchant, though they did not employ a
single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks,
which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week,
few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year, without employment.
In the long run, the workman may be as necessary to his master as his
master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate.
Conflict between classes
Smith
observed that, outside of colonies where land is cheap and labour
expensive, both the masters who subsist by profit and the masters who
subsist by rents will work in tandem to subjugate the class of workmen,
who subsist by wages.
Moreover, he warned against blindly legislating in favour of the class
of merchants and manufacturers who subsist by profit, since, as he said,
their intention is to gain as large a share of their respective markets
as possible, which naturally results in monopoly prices or close to them, a situation harmful to the other social classes.
In the conclusion of the first book of The Wealth of Nations, Smith assessed the knowledge and interests of capitalists in comparison to that of the landed aristocracy:
Merchants and master manufacturers are, in this order [those who live by profit],
the two classes of people who commonly employ the largest capitals, and
who by their wealth draw to themselves the greatest share of the public
consideration. As during their whole lives they are engaged in plans
and projects, they have frequently more acuteness of understanding than
the greater part of country gentlemen. As their thoughts, however, are
commonly exercised rather about the interest of their own particular
branch of business than about that of the society, their judgment, even
when given with the greatest candour (which it has not been upon every
occasion), is much more to be depended upon with regard to the former of
those two objects, than with regard to the latter. Their superiority
over the country gentleman is, not so much in their knowledge of the
public interest, as in their having a better knowledge of their own
interest than he has of his. It is by this superior knowledge of their
own interest that they have frequently imposed upon his generosity, and
persuaded him to give up both his own interest and that of the public,
from a very simple but honest conviction, that their interest, and not
his, was the interest of the public.
In the final words of the first book, he suggested how the public should consider the political agenda of this class:
The
proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this
order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought
never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined,
not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious
attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never
exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest
to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have,
upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.
Karl Marx
Karl Marx, 1875
Karl Marx (1818–1883) was a German born philosopher who lived the majority of his adult life in London, England. In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx argued that a class is formed due to changes in the mode of production. Members of a class may become aware of their position within it, achieving what is known as class consciousness. For the working classes this happens when their members become aware of their exploitation
at the hands of the ruling class. According to Marx, the working class
then takes action against the ruling class, and vice versa.
What Marx points out is that members of each of the two main
classes have interests in common. These class or collective interests
are in conflict with those of the other class as a whole. This in turn
leads to conflict between individual members of different classes.
Marxist analysis of society identifies two main social groups:
Labour (the proletariat or workers) includes anyone who earns their livelihood by selling their labor power
and being paid a wage or salary for their labor time. They have little
choice but to work for capital, since they typically have no independent
way to survive.
Capital (the bourgeoisie or capitalists) includes anyone who gets their income not from labor as much as from the surplus value they appropriate from the workers who create wealth. The income of the capitalists, therefore, is based on their exploitation of the workers (proletariat).
Not all class struggle is radical, violent or aggressive, as in the
case of strikes, lockouts and workplace sabotage. Class antagonism can
also surface in minor acts of pilferage, low worker morale, and
individual worker resistance to petty authority and hoarding of
information. On the employers' side, lobbying for anti-union laws and
against minimum wage increases, and hiring union-busting legal firms are
expressions of class antagonism. On a larger scale, workers engage in class struggle when they agitate for systemic change via socialist or populist parties.
But not every instance of class struggle from below constitutes a
grave threat to capitalism, or even to the authority of an individual
capitalist. A narrow struggle for higher wages by a small sector of the
working class, what is often called "economism", hardly threatens the
status quo. In fact, by applying the craft-union tactics of excluding
other workers from skilled trades, an economistic struggle may even
weaken the working class as a whole by dividing it. Class struggle
becomes more important in the historical process as it becomes more
general, as industries are organized rather than crafts, as workers'
class consciousness rises, and as they self-organize away from political
parties. Marx referred to this as the progress of the proletariat from
being a class "in itself", a position in the social structure, to being
one "for itself", an active and conscious force that could change the
world.
Marx focuses on the capital industrialist society as the source of social stratification, which ultimately results in class conflict.
He states that capitalism creates a division between classes which can
most clearly be seen in factories. The proletariat is separated from the
bourgeoisie because production becomes a social enterprise.
Contributing to their separation is the technology that is in factories.
Technological advances de-skill and alienate workers as they are no
longer viewed as having a specialized skill. Another effect of technology is a homogenous workforce
that can be easily replaceable. Marx believed that this class conflict
would result in the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and that the private
property would be communally owned. The mode of production would remain, but communal ownership would eliminate class conflict.
Even after a revolution, the two classes would struggle, but
eventually the struggle would recede and the classes dissolve. As class
boundaries broke down, the state apparatus would wither away. According
to Marx, the main task of any state apparatus is to uphold the power of
the ruling class; but without any classes there would be no need for a
state. That would lead to the classless, stateless communist society.
John Stuart Mill
Adam Smith was not the only classical liberal political economist concerned with class conflict. In his Considerations on Representative Government, John Stuart Mill observed the complete marginalisation of workmen's voices in Parliament,
rhetorically asking whether its members ever empathise with the
position of workmen, instead of siding entirely with their masters, on
issues such as the right to go on strike. Later in the book, he argues that an important function of truly representative government
is to provide a relatively equal balance of power between workmen and
masters, in order to prevent threats to the good of the whole of
society.
During Mill's discussion of the merits of progressive taxation in his essay Utilitarianism, he notes as an aside the power of the rich as independent of state support:
People
feel obliged to argue that the State does more for the rich than for
the poor, as a justification for its taking more [in taxation] from
them: though this is in reality not true, for the rich would be far
better able to protect themselves, in the absence of law or government,
than the poor, and indeed would probably be successful in converting the
poor into their slaves.
Max Weber
Max Weber
(1864–1920) agreed with the fundamental ideas of Karl Marx about the
economy causing class conflict, but claimed that class conflict can also
stem from prestige and power.
Weber argued that classes come from the different property locations.
Different locations can largely affect one's class by their education
and the people they associate with.
He also stated that prestige results in different status groupings.
This prestige is based upon the social status of one's parents. Prestige
is an attributed value and many times cannot be changed. Weber stated
that power differences led to the formation of political parties.
Weber disagreed with Marx about the formation of classes. While Marx
believed that groups are similar due to their economic status, Weber
argued that classes are largely formed by social status. Weber did not believe that communities are formed by economic standing, but by similar social prestige. Weber did recognize that there is a relationship between social status, social prestige and classes.
Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer
Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer argued that class struggle came from factions that managed to gain control of the state power. The ruling class are the groups that seize the power of the state to carry out their political agenda, the ruled are then taxed and regulated by the state for the benefit of the ruling classes. Through taxation, state power, subsidies, tax codes,
laws, and privileges the state creates class conflict by giving
preferential treatment to some at the expense of others by force. In the
free market, by contrast, exchanges are not carried out by force but by the non-aggression principle of cooperation in a win-win scenario.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, in What is Property?
(1840) states that "certain classes do not relish investigation into
the pretended titles to property, and its fabulous and perhaps
scandalous history."
While Proudhon saw the solution as the lower classes forming an
alternative, solidarity economy centered on cooperatives and
self-managed workplaces, which would slowly undermine and replace
capitalist class society, the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin,
while influenced by Proudhon, insisted that a massive class struggle by
the working class, peasantry and poor was essential to the creation of
libertarian socialism. This would require a final showdown in the form
of a social revolution.
One of the earliest analyses of the development of class as the
development of conflicts between emergent classes is available in Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid. In this work, Kropotkin analyzes the disposal of goods after death in pre-class or hunter-gatherer societies, and how inheritance produces early class divisions and conflict.
Fascists
have often opposed 'horizontal' class struggle in favour of vertical
national struggle and instead have attempted to appeal to the working
class while promising to preserve the existing social classes and have
proposed an alternative concept known as class collaboration.
However, many Marxists argue that unlike in capitalism, the Soviet elites did not own the means of production, or generate surplus value for their personal wealth as the generated profit from the economy was equally distributed into Soviet society. Even some Trotskyists like Ernest Mandel criticized the concept of a new ruling class as an oxymoron,
saying: "The hypothesis of the bureaucracy's being a new ruling class
leads to the conclusion that, for the first time in history, we are
confronted with a 'ruling class' which does not exist as a class before
it actually rules."
United States
Class
conflict was present in the earliest days of the U.S. with the
struggles between slaveowners and slaves. Since the abolition of
slavery, class conflict is more often noted in labor-management
disputes. As far back as 1933, representative Edward Hamilton of the Airline Pilot's Association used the term "class warfare" to describe airline management's opposition at the National Labor Board hearings in October of that year.
Apart from day-to-day forms of class conflict, there are also periods
of crisis or revolution when class conflict takes on a violent nature
and involves repression, assault, restriction of civil liberties, and
assassinations or death squads.
The investor, billionaire, and philanthropistWarren Buffett, one of the wealthiest people in the world,
voiced in 2005 and once more in 2006 his view that his class, the "rich
class", is waging class warfare on the rest of society. In 2005 Buffet
said to CNN: "It's class warfare, my class is winning, but they
shouldn't be." In a November 2006 interview in The New York Times,
Buffett stated that "[t]here’s class warfare all right, but it’s my
class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning."
Well, there’s always a class war
going on. The United States, to an unusual extent, is a business-run
society, more so than others. The business classes are very
class-conscious – they’re constantly fighting a bitter class war to
improve their power and diminish opposition. Occasionally this is
recognized... The enormous benefits given to the very wealthy, the
privileges for the very wealthy here, are way beyond those of other
comparable societies and are part of the ongoing class war. Take a look
at CEO salaries....
— Noam Chomsky, Occupy: Class War, Rebellion and Solidarity, Second Edition (November 5, 2013)
Class conflict intensified in the period after the 2007/8 financial crisis, which led to a global wave of anti-austerity protests, including the Greek and Spanish Indignados movements and later the Occupy movement, whose slogan was "We are the 99%", signalling a more expansive class antagonist against the financial elite than that of the classical Marxist proletariat.
In the speech "The Great American Class War" (2013), the journalist Bill Moyers asserted the existence of social-class conflict between democracy and plutocracy in the U.S. Chris Hedges wrote a column for Truthdig called "Let's Get This Class War Started", which was a play on Pink's song "Let's Get This Party Started." In a 2022 piece "America's New Class War", Hedges argues that increased class struggle and strikes by organized workers, often in defiance of union leadership, is the "one last hope for the United States."
Historian Steve Fraser, author of The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power,
asserted in 2014 that class conflict is an inevitability if current
political and economic conditions continue, noting that "people are
increasingly fed up [...] their voices are not being heard. And I think
that can only go on for so long without there being more and more
outbreaks of what used to be called class struggle, class warfare."
Arab Spring
Often seen as part of the same "movement of squares" as the Indignado and Occupy movements, the Arab Spring
was a wave of social protests starting in 2011. Numerous factors have
culminated in the Arab Spring, including rejection of dictatorship or absolute monarchy, human rights violations, government corruption (demonstrated by Wikileaks diplomatic cables), economic decline, unemployment, extreme poverty, and a number of demographic structural factors,such as a large percentage of educated but dissatisfied youth within the population. but class conflict is also a key factor. The catalysts for the revolts in all Northern African and Persian Gulf countries
have been the concentration of wealth in the hands of autocrats in
power for decades, insufficient transparency of its redistribution,
corruption, and especially the refusal of the youth to accept the status
quo.
Jobless black workers in the heat of the Philadelphia summer, 1973
Some historical tendencies of Orthodox Marxism rejectracism, sexism, etc. as struggles that essentially distract from class struggle, the real conflict.
These divisions within the class prevent the purported antagonists from
acting in their common class interest. However, many Marxist
internationalists and anti-colonial revolutionaries believe that sex, race and class are bound up together. Within Marxist scholarship there is an ongoing debate about these topics.
According to Michel Foucault, in the 19th century, the essentialist notion of the "race" was incorporated by racists, biologists, and eugenicists, who gave it the modern sense of "biological race" which was then integrated into "state racism". On the other hand, Foucault claims that when Marxists
developed their concept of "class struggle", they were partly inspired
by the older, non-biological notions of the "race" and the "race
struggle". Quoting a non-existent 1882 letter from Marx to Friedrich
Engels during a lecture, Foucault erroneously claimed Marx wrote: "You
know very well where we found our idea of class struggle; we found it in
the work of the French historians who talked about the race struggle." For Foucault, the theme of social war provides the overriding principle that connects class and race struggle.
Moses Hess, an important theoretician and labor Zionist of the early socialist movement, in his "Epilogue" to "Rome and Jerusalem"
argued that "the race struggle is primary, the class struggle
secondary. [...] With the cessation of race antagonism, the class
struggle will also come to a standstill. The equalization of all classes
of society will necessarily follow the emancipation of all the races, for it will ultimately become a scientific question of social economics."
W. E. B. Du Bois theorized that the intersectional paradigms of race, class, and nation might explain certain aspects of black political economy. Patricia Hill Collins
writes: "Du Bois saw race, class, and nation not primarily as personal
identity categories but as social hierarchies that shaped
African-American access to status, poverty, and power."
In modern times, emerging schools of thought in the U.S. and other countries hold the opposite to be true.
They argue that the race struggle is less important, because the
primary struggle is that of class since labor of all races face the same
problems and injustices.
.jpg)
