The revival of the radical left and working-class politics

Most of us have lived most of our lives under a one-sided class war.

The billionaires have built fortunes while the poor have been screwed. Governments the world over have bent over backwards to facilitate this. The result has been a world in which the rich stomp over everyone with few repercussions. The apex of this laissez-faire attitude to the abuse of power is Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians.

People have rebelled. In the 21st century, we have seen some truly enormous demonstrations: against the Iraq War, the Black Lives Matter movement, the climate strikes and now the global Palestine movement.

However, a fundamental weakness of these movements has been the lack of action by workers. This is crucial because only the working class has the power to challenge the ruling class’s real source of power—its control over the economy.

The decline in working-class activity had a devastating impact on the left. The idea that socialism was about building a mass popular movement of ordinary people who could unite and take power into their own hands was forgotten. Many socialists lost confidence that workers would ever move again. This helped open the space for the far right to masquerade as the new champions of the working class.

This is why what has happened in Europe has been so invigorating.

On 3 October, a nationwide general strike shook Italy. Hundreds of thousands of workers shut down the country, demanding that their government cut all ties with the Israeli government.

This is unprecedented. General strikes aren’t unheard of in Italy, and particular sections of workers have taken strike action against militarism in recent history. But a mass general strike, backed by the mainstream unions, over a political issue like Israel’s war, is a different matter.

This action by workers grew out of the mass movement of blockades and street protests that has intensified in recent weeks. Since then, Madrid metalworkers have moved to take indefinite strike action over the links between their industry and the Israeli military. On 15 October, a massive demonstration is planned in Spain, various trade union federations planning strike action. Hundreds of thousands of Europeans are discussing the need for strike action to support Palestine.

This marks a huge qualitative step forward both in the struggle to isolate Israel and in regenerating a radical working-class movement that can challenge capitalism.

The genocide has “produced a new awareness, which took time and energy to take root, a lot of time, probably too much for those who are prisoners in Gaza, but which has distorted Western political coordinates”, argues the editorial of Italian magazine il manifesto. “[M]ultitudes in every corner of the planet are bringing together their apparently particular claims within a global paradigm that has found its own flag.”

This is a watershed moment that demolishes much of the so-called common-sense thinking about workers and capitalism.

For decades, it was common to think that the industrial working class didn’t exist any more, that white collar workers were, in the words of philosopher Slavoj Žižek, the “salaried bourgeoisie”, that those who had insecure work were incapable of taking any action and that those workers who had stable employment wouldn’t take action because they were a privileged aristocracy bought off by the ruling class. The workers of the Western world were seen as the beneficiaries of the imperialist machinations of their rulers. Within the Palestine movement, it has been common to condemn them as “settlers”, complicit in the oppression of the Palestinians.

The general strike in Italy shows what rubbish this all is.

The striking dock workers of Genoa, Livorno, Ravenna, Venice and other cities confirmed that, while automation has reduced the number of workers in these ports, it has not reduced their industrial power. Vast numbers of workers joined the strike from hospitals, schools and universities, confirming that these are central nodes of the modern economy.

This revealed the latent power that the working class possesses, not just in Italy but around the world. It also reinforces the core arguments that socialists have made for why the working class is the force that can fight for human liberation.

The working class encompasses everyone forced to sell their ability to work, no matter what that work is or whether the employer is a private businessperson or a government department.

It is the activity of the working class that moves the gears of capitalism. Workers are concentrated in semi-automated industrial factories, in schools, hospitals and government departments, in the ever-expanding “knowledge” industry of universities, while others are dispersed into millions of smaller businesses, all of which are connected by intricate transportation, energy and communications systems.

Because workers are at the centre of this vast behemoth of global capitalism, they have the potential to understand the way in which the system facilitates genocides and exploitation, and the power to shut it down. After all, workers are not just cogs in the machine. They are humans who are inspired by the determination of others and appalled by moral tragedies like the genocide in Gaza.

We can see this in a direct way when the Genoa dock workers strike to stop their ports from being used to send shipments to Israel, or when Spanish metalworkers demand an inquiry into their industry over fears that European arms production is being used to help Israel.

The potential for workers’ action against genocide goes beyond those whose work is immediately tied to Israel’s war machine. The general strike also showed how workers have the power to severely disrupt the businesses and governments that depend on their labour.

When workers are passive, the innumerable differences among them make it seem unlikely that they can move into united action. But once they do, it seems so obvious. This is because the action is based on something that really unifies people—their common experience as workers exploited by the capitalist system.

The Italian events also reveal the dialectical relationship between the power of workers and the activity of other social groups. The general strike would not have occurred without the two years of activity by young people and the Palestine solidarity campaign. There has been an accumulated impact of the involvement of hundreds of thousands of people in protests, despite the ebb and flow of the movement. This has produced the context in which left-wing workers felt more confident to take action, and in which the mainstream trade union leaders couldn’t hold back the tide.

Italy also shows that to regenerate working-class self-activity, we need a sharp break with the established trade union leaders and the official left parties.

Some socialists, scarred by the years of isolation, believe that the only way to rebuild working-class politics is by sucking up to union bureaucrats and reformist political parties. Often this is dressed up in talk about “united fronts” or “mass work”.

Yet the Italian general strike was not achieved because Palestine activists pleaded for trade union leaders to do the right thing. After a number of smaller left-wing union federations called for strike action on 22 September, pro-Palestine organisations and left-wing currents within the trade unions mercilessly and savagely criticised the mainstream trade union leaders who tried their hardest to avoid taking action.

“The people protesting in the square, let’s be clear, literally can’t take it any more”, explained a statement from Unione Sindacale di Base, a left-wing union federation, “but since they have not found any support in the political and trade union world, they have remained silent for a long time, passively suffering the decay of political life, the decline of rights and the worsening of social conditions”.

It was not only the far-right government and the media that fundamentally misunderstood the shift in mass consciousness.

This is being repeated in Spain with the debates over the 15 October day of action. While smaller left-wing and regional union federations have endorsed the general strike call, the main Spanish trade union federations are trying to limit industrial action to only two hours.

A key factor helping to facilitate action has been the militant activity of young people, particularly students. This has given a huge boost to all of those in the workers’ movement and the left pushing for more serious action against the resistance of the trade union leaders.

This all has an echo of the past. When the workers’ movement and the radical left have gone forward, it has been in a form of a sharp break from the present and in revolt against established traditions and organisations. It can’t be otherwise. How else can we begin to break up the years of passivity and conservatism?

The events in Italy are exciting, but they also throw down a serious challenge to the left everywhere.

The space to re-popularise the idea that workers are the agent of social change has grown larger. The actions in Italy didn’t come out of nowhere, and support for Palestine is not the only factor behind it. The cumulative impact of years of inequality, of militarism, of the elitism of the establishment, has shattered people’s confidence in capitalism. There is a strong polarisation across the world between progressive left-wing people who want to free Palestine, reject the far right and abolish the billionaires, and those who look to ultra-reactionary nationalist politics.

The possibilities are most obvious in Europe. Beyond the Palestine issue, there was a massive general strike in Greece in October against changes to the labour laws. France has been rocked by huge days of protests and blockades against its unstable neoliberal government. In Germany, there have been significant demonstrations against the far right.

The growth of left reformist parties is also an indication that a space has opened. La France Insoumise has shifted to the left in recent years and consolidated into the largest radical left party in Europe, with almost 400,000 members. The German Die Linke party has grown from 58,000 to 112,000 this year. Some 800,000 people have signed up for Your Party in Britain.

These are the strongest signs in years that a revival of radical left and working-class politics is possible. The world is rapidly changing. Now is the time to seize the moment.