Developing the class struggle of different ‘classes’ of labour: The working class movement in the face of mass unemployment and 'informalization’

Workers Party—Philippines

27 June 2011

1. The number of unemployed person worldwide stood at 205 million in 2010, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO). In addition to this, at least 1.53 billion workers fall under the category of ‘vulnerable employment’ (the sum of own-account and unpaid family workers) representing 50.1% of the total labor force in 2009. Combine the number of unemployed and the ‘vulnerable’ and we have close to two billion workers living in extreme conditions worldwide.

2. In Asia, more than 50% of the total workforce are ‘informal economy workers'. In countries like Indonesia, Korea and Philippines, more than 50 % of the total workforce is engage with the informal economy. While in Cambodia and India, more than 80% of the total workforce is informal economy workers. In China, informalization has grown rapidly since market reform policy came into force. While in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan the rapid growth of the service industry has created informal employment.

3. In the Philippines, out of the 39 million labor force, 3 million are unemployed while 45% or 16.6 million of the 36.8 million employed persons are own-account and unpaid family workers.

4. Now what do these numbers entail in our discussion? Evidently they show the picture of how the crisis of capitalism created this vast army of reserve labour described by Marx before.

5. In the language of the ILO, the own-account and unpaid family workers are those people working in the 'informal sector' and therefore are ‘exposed to a high risk of poverty, ` dangerous working conditions and a lack of security’. Sometimes they are also referred to as the ‘poorest of the poor' as majority of them live on less than USS 2 a day. The ILO also acknowledged the fact that the situation exists ‘despite an economic boom in many countries.'

6. Truly, the situation exists and will continue to persist as global capitalism sinks deeper into crisis. But even without the crisis, it is in fact, according to Marx, the basic law of capitalist accumulation that creates this phenomenon because the means of production and the · productivity of labour increase more rapidly than the productive population, thus creating a redundant or surplus population bigger than what is practically required in production. And this problem intensifies further with capitalism's shift from real commodity production to financialization.

7. Accordingly, unemployed workers who are actively looking for jobs, those who are living in unpaid labour and those who have decided ‘not to sell' their labour but rather use them for own account ~ are no different from what Marx described then as surplus population of ‘floating’, ‘latent’, ‘stagnant’ and ‘pauperized’ workers. In other words, capitalist accumulation in the process also creates different ‘classes' of labour largely due to the uneven development and inherent crisis of capitalism.

8. This interrelations of processes under capitalism is the reason why I always use the term ‘informal sector' in allusion (for lack of better term) since l do not subscribe to the idea that "dualism" exists in the modern world today — capitalism having the ‘formal' and ‘informal’ part? .. the former being regulated and the latter not in their simplest definitions.

What we have now is a global capitalist system expressed in many forms due to its uneven development. It is in fact this uneven development which created a North-South world divide as well as the economic differentiation between cities and counties. The 'dualists’ believed that the ‘formal' and ‘informal’ economies exists independently of each other with more and more people removed from dependence to wage labour. ‘Entrepreneurship’ is their new catchword.

Marx, however, was very clear on the kind of structures and linkages that capitalism creates to ensure accumulation. He observes That kind of Industry has now been converted into an external department of the factory...Besides the factory worker, the workers engaged in manufacture, and the handicraftsmen, whom it concentrates in large masses at one spot, and directly commands, capital also sets another army in motion, by means of invisible threads: the outworkers in the domestic industries, who live in the large towns as well as being scattered over the countryside (Marx 1992: 590-91)

9. Furthermore, abundance of surplus labour creates the condition for cheap labor since the law of supply and demand operates in the same intensity even in the field of commodified labour. Second, the availability of surplus labour provided a condition for capitalist restructuring now being done in both the local and international level through the introduction of outsourcing or sub-contracting with the main objective of maximizing profit through surplus extraction from surplus labour. Third, it is these layers upon layers of structures in the supply chain which created the interrelated/interconnected ‘informal economy'. Davis suggests that the informal sector ‘generates jobs not by elaborating new divisions of labour, but by fragmenting existing work, and thus subdividing incomes'. And this is similar to what Marx called then as "domestic industry" which, in essence, is production. (and reproduction) done outside of the centralized industry, indicating the "unevenness" of capitalist development. Note that ‘informality’ is prevalent in less developed economies where the pace of industrialization is too slow to absorb the proletarianizing population.

10. Hence, it cannot be argued that a petty commodity producer and the lowly sidewalk vendor reproduce their life outside of the structures of the capitalist economy. The "self-employed" concept is somehow problematic since many self-employed persons also enter into wage employment from time to time especially in the countryside. Or a seasonal` skilled or semi-skilled labourer in the city who may also operate as owner of small business that utilizes family labour. This simply implies that a member of the working population participates in multiple production relations.

11. Yet we have to recognize the fact that due to this differentiation of "classes" within the class there shall exist different levels of class consciousness among workers owing to the different modes of survival (reproduction) he/she has to adapt under the uneven development of capitalism in the world scale. For instance, class unity may easily take higher form for industrial proletariats owing to how they are organized and exploited in the process of production compared to an unemployed, demoralized and chronically pauperized section of the working class, or to the own-account workers who are in constant competition with each other. Yet it cannot be denied that in many instances, the none-industrial section of the working class have become more radicalized compared to industrial workers. The Piqueteros of Argentina is a good example. So are the poor neighborhood-based Bolivarian circles in Venezuela; the movement of unemployed people in India, and the MST movement in Brazil.

12. I have to deal with this lengthily because I believe that failure to understand these dynamics may lead many to a conclusion that having no single interest to pursue because of such differentiations, the trade union movement or the working class movement 'would lead to extinction due to the problem of ‘informalization’.

13. The problem of ‘informalization’ posed upon us is quite obvious. The number of organized trade unions shrank significantly during the last two or three decades, while more than a billion reserve army of labor, though chronically exploited, remain largely unorganized, particularly in South or developing countries. The consequence of this North and South divide is the non-homogeneity of the world’s working class condition. And this non-homogeneity in condition creates uneven development in class consciousness, divides its attention and therefore fragmentation.

Here lies the biggest challenge for the working class movement today.

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

1. Remove the ‘class divide'

> Review or re-evaluate the party or movement’s orientation, realign it to the present realities yet upholding and the Marxist theory of class struggle and enriching the methods of scientific socialism. ‘Informality’ or ‘formality’ of labour should unify rather than divide the working class.

2. Defend the gains of the working class

> Trade unions, whatever position they occupy now in society, must be defended at all cost at all times. Trade unions embody the basic gains of the working class, specifically unions being the most elementary form of class organization in its day to day struggle for better working condition. Thus, building and strengthening the capabilities of the trade union movement is the duty of all the worker's movement around the world.

3. Create ‘unity structures’

> Build structures that represent both ‘formal' and ‘informal' labour (an example is a worker’s association in the community or a national coalition of formal and informal labour, removing in effect the trade union-urban poor divide in the working class movement.

4. Formulate ‘homogenous demands’, organize common actions

> Demands should not be differentiated between ‘formal' or ‘informal’ categories. Trade unions must include in its platform demand for employment and other forms of social protection for the unemployed such as housing, healthcare, education, etc. Likewise, the army of unemployed or self-employed (historically organized into urban poor or neighbourhood associations) raise their demand beyond opposition to planned demolitions such as jobs and different forms of social security.

5. Create bases for building political power

> The working class must have its own political party independent of other class parties. The party struggles for the immediate demands of the working class; prepares itself politically by bringing into its fold the most dedicated and advanced section of the working class especially the young; builds organs of political power from the local to national level, the ultimate aim of which would be· the establishment of a workers state and as socialist society.