COMMON RESISTANCE

CAPITALISM AND WORK EXPLORATION

Why should workers organize themselves and resist?

Every day, millions of workers get up early, cross cities, enter factories, offices, schools, hospitals, shops and countless other workplaces.

They produce goods.

They do services.

They carry products.

They build houses.

They grow food.

They program technologies.

They take care of other people.

Without human labor, the economy simply would not work.

But there is one fundamental question:

If it is the workers who produce much of the social wealth, why does the control of this wealth remain concentrated?

It is from this contradiction that Marxist criticism of capitalism begins.

WORK AND GOODS

For Marx, in capitalism the workforce becomes a commodity.

The worker does not necessarily have the means to produce independently. So he sells his ability to work in exchange for a salary.

The entrepreneur, on the other hand, buys this workforce to use it in the productive process.

The result is an economic relationship between classes.

On the one hand, those who control capital and means of production.

On the other, those who depend on the sale of their workforce.

This relationship does not mean that every employer is an individual bad person or that every worker is necessarily exploited in the same way.

Marxist criticism is structural:

it is the very organization of production that allows one class to appropriate the surplus produced by another.

WHAT IS MAS-VALIA?

One of Marx's fundamental concepts is the surplus value.

Imagine a worker who produces, during his journey, a value higher than his salary.

The salary paid his labor force, but the value produced during the journey may be greater.

The difference is the basis of the appropriate surplus value by the owner of the means of production.

It is from this relationship that Marx develops his critique of capitalist exploitation.

The problem, therefore, is not simply:

"The worker receives little."

The question is deeper:

Who controls the production process and who appropriates the value created by work?

"But the worker gets a salary"

Yeah.

And that is precisely why capitalist exploitation can be difficult to understand.

There is not necessarily a physical coercion forcing someone to enter a particular factory or company.

There's an economic relationship.

The worker needs income to survive.

The owner controls the means of production.

The worker sells his labor force.

The relationship appears as a contract between legally free individuals.

Marx argues that, behind this legal equality, there is fundamental economic inequality.

Freedom to sell your workforce does not necessarily mean equal economic power.

PROBLEM IS NOT WORK

We need to make a distinction.

Marxism does not consider human labor to be negative.

On the contrary.

Work is a fundamental activity through which humanity transforms nature and produces what it needs.

The problem is how work is organized.

When the worker has no control over what he produces, about the productive process or about the results of his work, he can experience what Marx called disposal.

The work ceases to be an activity controlled by the producer himself and starts to function mainly as a means of survival.

WHO MAKES RICH?

Watch a big company.

There is a owner or group of owners.

But there are also thousands of people responsible for:

• produce;

• transport;

• sell;

• administer;

• clean;

• develop;

• meet;

• Keep the infrastructure running.

The company depends on this social division of labor.

That leads to a central question:

why do those who directly participate in production have so little power over the fundamental decisions of production?

For Marxist tradition, this is one of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism.

EXPLORATION DOES NOT MEAN ONLY LOW SALARY

A worker can receive a relatively high salary and still be subjected to a Marxist exploitation relationship.

Exploitation, in this context, refers to the appropriation of surplus labour.

Therefore, combating exploitation does not simply mean increasing wages.

It means arguing:

property.

power.

production control.

distribution of wealth.

Economic organization.

So should we "return"?

Marxist tradition uses the idea of class struggle to explain that workers do not need to passively accept social relations that they consider unfair.

But resistance doesn't have to mean violence.

It can take forms like:

• trade union organisation;

• strikes;

• popular movements;

• associations of workers;

• political participation;

• cooperatives;

• social mobilization;

• knowledge production;

• independent press;

• rights claim.

The fundamental issue is to transform isolated workers into individuals capable of acting collectively.

A worker alone has little power in the face of a great economic structure. Organized workers have much greater capacity for negotiation and participation.

REVOLTE STARTS BY CONSCIENCE

Before transforming a society, it is necessary to understand it.

Therefore, the worker must know:

• their rights;

• your story;

• the economic structure;

• class relationships;

• the operation of undertakings;

• the role of the State;

• the historical experiences of the labor movement.

Political awareness should not be replaced by slogans.

Studying is also a form of resistance.

WE DON'T FIGHT INDIVIDUALS

Our criticism should not turn specific people into personal enemies.

The problem analyzed by Marxism is a social structure.

Even a businessman who treats his employees relatively well continues to operate within capitalist relations.

Likewise, a worker who gets a promotion does not cease to be part of the working class simply because his individual situation has improved.

Marxist analysis seeks to understand social relations, not create a personal war between individuals.

ANOTHER SOCIETY ORGANIZATION

The critique of capitalism only has meaning if accompanied by a discussion about alternatives.

Socialism, in Marxist tradition, seeks to overcome the private property of the main means of production and put production under forms of social control.

This raises new challenges:

How to organize production?

How to distribute resources?

How to encourage innovation?

How to avoid bureaucratization?

How to ensure democratic participation?

How to prevent new forms of privilege?

These questions cannot be ignored.

An alternative to capitalism needs to be able to respond to them concretely.

THE WORKER'S TREATMENT

The worker does not have to accept that his only political function is to vote periodically and return to work the next day.

He can participate in the collective organization.

You can study.

You can claim it.

You can form unions.

You can participate in social movements.

It can produce knowledge.

You can dispute the course of your community and society.

Politics should not be the sole property of governments, entrepreneurs or experts.

Workers must also be subject to politics.

RESISTING IS ORGANIZING

O Communist Resistance does not defend a revolt based on hatred or indiscriminate violence.

We advocate a different idea:

to resist is to stop passively accepting that existing social relations are inevitable.

When workers organize themselves to demand better conditions, they are resisting.

When students question inequalities, they are resisting.

When popular movements claim housing, they're resisting.

When workers defend their rights collectively, they are resisting.

When a population questions who controls its wealth, it is beginning to understand the political dimension of the economy.

CONCLUSION

Capitalism has managed to develop enormously the productive forces.

But economic development does not automatically eliminate exploitation and inequality.

The Marxist question remains current:

Who produces wealth and who controls its results?

To answer this question requires looking beyond the individual salary and analyzing the structures that organize production.

The resistance of workers, in this perspective, should not be understood as simple spontaneous revolt.

Yeah. awareness, organization, solidarity and collective struggle.

The worker does not need to accept that the existing world is the only possible world.

COMMON RESISTANCE

Whoever produces must have a voice.

Those who work must participate.

Social wealth must not mean concentrated power in the hands of the few.

Studying is resisting.

Organizing is resisting.

Transforming is building.