See also the preface to the German Edition (in English) and an interview with Beverly Silver

The movement against neoliberalism has fulfilled its ideological aim, in that neoliberal ideology has been discredited; but it has not reached its political and social aims: Iraq was bombed and occupied; inequality is on the increase; more and more people are dying of hunger around the world. Market relations are becoming more prevalent and more intense in everyday life, and the result is frustration and de-politicisation. So how do we use our knowledge of capitalism to show us where and how to act as revolutionaries?

Why capital / capitalism behaves like it does

One of the main contradictions of capital is that the ONLY way profit is made by paying people wages lower than the value of the goods they produce. Individual capitalists then make more profit by changing the work process and intensifying the work, making each person work longer or harder, and crucially - using more machines and less workers. In the long run this means that the capitalist is spending more on machinery and less on wages. BUT for capital overall - it has to make profits from the workers.

This contradiction is a big part of the tendency of the profit rate to fall.

The end of capitalism, says Marx, will come about when capital’s need to grow meets historical barriers. Capital is forces to do certain things to keep making profits - but those things also increase the chances for struggle and the overall problems for capital.

Intro to Forces of Labor, By Beverly Silver, 2004
‘Forces of Labor’ argues that it is not the ‘Empire’ or the ‘Forces of Capital’ which are the driving force of world politics: globalization of markets, production and war. On the background of a vast empirical work she shows how the struggles against exploitation and oppression, the unrest of the working class is the actual engine of global developments. This also may help us identify where the weak points of capital are, as they try to find ways to continually find solutions or 'fixes' to the trouble they have making profits. I have some reviews of this book with me.

There is a common view that we are in a significantly different phase of capitalism. This has various elements:
• The 1980s was seen as the triumph of global neo-liberalism. In the mid 90s there was a shift to a more aggressive 'empire' and people were talking about imperialism and anti-imperialism again. More wars, the US´s aggressive foreign policy, culminating in the ´war on terror´. There was a perceived rise in size and power of finance capital as a dominating global force. Many lefties, including many of those in the anti-globalisation movement began singing ´hymns to capital’s power´.
• There was a perceived change in the nature of work and the capital-labour relations. There was talk about the end of the ´mass worker´ and a growth in the IT sector and the service sector. People begun to use the term precarity to describe insecure work and living conditions. It was said that it was the ´end of the workers movement´, that the old forms of unionism etc were outdated, the end of the dream of socialism, the end of the working class, or the working class were too fragmented and bought off to act collectively.

In this context people are looking for a books that can explain these shifts, and some other offerings are ones such as Negri and Hardt´s Empire and Multitude. These books seek to explain these new trends, new forms of ´empire´ and new forms collective action from the multi-faceted and complex ´multitude´ rather than the 'working class'. What is different about Forces of Labor is that Silver puts these recent changes into a larger historical context and into the context of workers unrest and comes up with a quite different picture. Forces of Labor spells out the relation of class struggles and how they lead to changes in production, the globalisation of capital, monetary politics and war.

I think this book is important for our debates and an understanding of the profound importance of worker's struggles in history. It is written with the aim of getting a realistic picture of workers' movements world-wide today.
World Labor Group

The book is based on a huge pieces of empirical work: A group called the 'World Labor Group' searched all copies of the London Times and New York Times for reports on global labour unrests, from 1870 to 1996. (They excluded all UK mentions in the London Times and all USA mentions in the New York Times). They defined what they meant by Labour and Unrest:

The definition of Labour was summerised as: “acts of resistance by human beings to being turned into and/or treated as commodities¨.

What is classifed as 'unrest' is equally diverse. It includes both overt struggle such as strikes, boycotts, riots, demos with certain demands; and covert or hidden resistance where they are found to be widespread, collective practices, such as slowdowns, sabotage, absenteeism, community withdrawal to escape proletarianisation.

Then – having made this impressive map of global historical class struggle, Silver puts the map against the maps of capital and industrial development, and political shifts including wars. It is from the results of that combination and the conclusions that she draws, that she forms the book.

The global and historical perspective shows clearly that globalisation is not a 'race to the bottom' directed by an omnipotent subject (capital), but a contradictary process in which workers' power is dismantled in some regions and industries, only to be re-concentrated at a higher stage in others.
Where capital goes, quickly follows workers expression of discontent (in contrast to the globalisation myth that global production weakens class struggle).

Within the contradictory process of capitalism, the relation between capital and workers changes, the face of the working class itself changes and the forms of struggle change, shaped by the changing material conditions. So the class struggle pushes capital into certain choices and changes, which then recompose the class, creating in turn new forms and new waves of struggle, which then pushes capital again. Thus she shows that history is not just a penulum, but rather a force which changes and develops each time.
Fixes
One of the key concepts she uses is that of fixes. Fixes refer to how capital reacts to workers struggles, specifically the four main ways it re-composes itself:

a) Technological fix:
New machines or work organisation, E.g. Fordism or Taylorism. More recently, the dismantling of large factories and the growth of supply chains, team work and just-in-time, aimed to reduce workers´ power to disrupt the work. But of courses these in turn create new potentials for struggle e.g. JIT production is heavily reliant on transport and communication. For example, some truckers who move goods 500 meters from the boat to the train in the US went on strike, paralysing whole chains of production. This technological fix re-organises workers and attempts to increase control and also make production more efficient and so more profitable, at least at first.

b) Geographical or spatial fix:
Basically moving the company, or parts of production, to places with cheaper labour and/or less established workers´ power. Today this is happening with the IT and call centre industry at a very fast pace. The spatial fix being used only a few years after setting up a call centre. The speed with which capital has to look for new countries, new products and new ways of working increases. This would include outsourses, re-locating and investing overseas.

c) Product fix:
Capital investing in new industries making new products which are initially more profitable. The first phase or 'innovation' phase of any product is the most profitable and the workers have a lot of power at this moment. We see a trend of strong workers power at the end of the innovation phase of a product. Then as it becomes standardised and more and more technological fixes are used, the profits drop. Of course many of the old products still get produced (textiles, cars...) but the key centre for capital accumulation shifts. The whole product cycle has sped up over history.

While the textile industry was the key sector in the 19th century, it was also a site of strong class struggle, (e.g. India in the 1920s). As capital moved to the car industry - class struggle moved there too. See chart page 82.

BUT now capital can’t find such a comparable product, also one that employs enough people and has a big enough production to be a solution for many capitalists. Employing many people, is a solution in two main senses - firstly because labour is, in a generalised sense, and in the long term, the only way that capital can valurise itself. And secondly, to employ enough people, for them to benefit enough, for the legitimistion of capitalist democracy. The new sectors such as mobile phones are just not enough. For example, one factory in China makes 50% of the worlds microwaves, so it cannot be a widespread solution. - Which is part of the crisis.

d) Financial fix
Capitalists move their money out of production into financial markets. As capital tried more and more product fixes, including investing in 'capital goods' or the means of production itself (machines, buildings etc) and military spending it kept finding its profit limits. Then there was a shift to finance capital – I.e. money lending, financial intermediation and speculation. This became significant in the 1890s.

Silver claims there is a similar pattern today, and draws many parallels between today’s situation and the 1890s financial fix tendencies and crisis of hegemony (e.g. Dutch colonial powers on the wain and the British empire experiences a lot of discontent, having to use war and repression to hold on). Then more recently, in the 1980s, capital again 'went on strike'. There was a withdrawal of capital from trade and production into finance capital, which had the effect of turning “the deep crisis of capital into a deep crisis for labour”. (Silver interview in Prol-position and FoL p 166). By the late 1980s labour in the north was weakened by this and could be seriously attacked (e.g. the Thatcher government in the UK). (FoL p 163)
Workers Bargaining Power:
Another concept Silver uses through the book is that of the different types of workers' bargaining power. There is structural bargaining power, more specifically defined as either workplace bargaining power, based on the workers´ role in the actual production process (e.g. a key point on the assembly line) or marketplace bargaining power, based for example on having a rare but important skill.
Then distinct from those is associational bargaining power, which is more similar to political power. This would refer to strong unions, a traditional place in society, or from strong community or political alliances.
Car-industries Example

Silver looks at the car industry in depth as the key sector of the 20th century. It also serves as a clear example of some of the tendencies.

Spatial fix and Spread of the industry leading to the spread of Class Struggle

As automobile industries employ a spatial fix, they typically choose new sites where workers were previously not industrial workers, but came from rural backgrounds because that means that they also don't have experience of industrial struggle BUT…

The investment in the car industry globally is followed by waves of unrest following this investment. For example the growth of the car industry in the 1920 in the US leading to the sit-down strikes of the 30s. Then the car industry starts moving towards Europe, followed by many strikes in the UK, France and Germany in the 50s and 60s, and then in Italy, Spain and Argentina in the 70s as capital moved on. Then in the 80s and 90s one sees the same thing in Brazil, South Africa, South Korea and Mexico. See chart page 43. These workplace struggles also played a large part in the general political struggles in those countries.

Technological fix
As a response to the workers' power inherent in the factory structure (the assembly line stoppages, large numbers of workers in one place) some car firms started dismantling the big factories. This was an attempt to de-compose and fragment the workforce. Starting with Toyota in Japan, they developed team-work units, supplier network and just-in-time production. However, this made them very vulnerable to struggles, as they did not have stock-piles to fall back on and wait out the strike. Now we see some re-concentration of production.

One point that Silver makes that can be an antidote to too much despair about the current situation is that in the 1920s many in the left saw the rise of the car factories as the end of workers power. Because workers were coming from all over the place, without a common language or culture, because their skills-based (individual) bargaining power was undermined by the unskilled and homogenised nature of the work etc. The traditionally strong guilds and handicraft workers were losing their power. In hindsight, everyone accepts the factory as a place of strengthened workers' bargaining power due to the nature of the production process and the concentration of workers, but this was only after the workers themselves found those strengths. So now we find it hard to see how a more dislocated and fractured, but also more globally connected, working class will find its power, but history shows us that it will! (FoL p 6).
Post WWII US Hegemony

Silver claims that the decline in strength and militancy of labour movements after WWII (compared to the 1st half of the 20th century) is due to how capital reacted to the strong post-war labour movements:
• Reforms offering concessions to labour (partly due to the success of revolutionary movements) such as the triptych government, firm, union agreements. The unions role became one of controling rank-and-file and helping push through technological fixes in exchange for a place at the table. But the compromise was not ideal either for profits, or for controlling rank-and-file rebellion. And anyway, the expense of these compromises meant that they only applied to a protected core of workers. Most workers in the South were outside of this protection. So increasing profits was partly achieved by changing the ratio of protected and outside workers. The same strategy was applied within developing countries, with small sections of an urban working class separate and protected and the mass of peasants and urban very-poor left out.
• Repression. This was especially used in the South and particularly after the cross class alliances broke down after national independence. New ruling classes, backed up by westen support, began the drive to 'create conditions for investment' entailing all the necessary crushing of strong labour movements. Or in the US the repression of 'irresponsible unionism' culminating in McCarthyism. But repression is always an unstable solution for capital.
• Restructuring. Which became so common in the 1970s, but started in the 1950s and 60s. Technological fixes, accepted by the unions, leading to increased productivity; the rise of mass consumption lead to the chance for various product fixes; support for import substitution industrialisation with foreign investment gave chances for spatial fixes. Or to rephrase: Less-industrialised countries were allowed / encouraged to begin domestic production of previously imported goods, so long as the investment for the production came from those countries previously exporting. Of course, like every spatial fix, this throws up the potential for a new wave of class power.

BUT: Despite all these measures the accommodation between capital and labour proceeded along a “knife’s edge between a major crisis of profitability, due to the cost of reforms, and a major crisis of legitimacy, due to the failure to deliver on the promised reforms fully. This contradiction eventually exploded in the crisis of the 1970s” (FoL p 150). With the historical contradiction of capital, there is a crisis of profitability; with the decommodification of labour, there comes a crisis of legitimacy. This is a system-level problem. The integration of workers in a social contract/compact leads to a crisis of profitability, and capital’s solution to this causes a crisis of social democracy.

Northern states were not prepared to come down on the side of capital by seriously dismantling concessions and attacking workers. So capital:
a) Moved to low wage areas.
b) In core countries, applied more technological fixes and increased reliance on immigrant labour
c) Financial fix; i.e. moving liquid capital into off-shore tax havens.

More recently we have seen a growth of the call centre and other IT sectors such as data imputing:
• This is a technological fix for areas such as bank branch staff or shop workers giving personal product advise.
• The spatial fix is relatively easy in this sector due to its relatively low fixed capital costs, but this has its limitations, e.g. of language and also there are not infinitely more lower wage areas.
• It is a reconstruction of the class, but we have not yet seen this leading to a new power.
• The weak points have also not been found or used, but they should be there as cyber space is quite vulnerable – e.g. to viruses and hackers.

Of course we can't predict the future, but Silver identifies a number of possible potential new areas for capital development.
The question however is will there be a sector organizing the composition of the class in such a way that lends itself to class struggle - e.g. large numbers of people together in one workplace - and where that sector is at the same time a strategic lever or week point for capital - in the way the car industry was. Silver gives some suggestions as where to look for interesting developments:

• In China there is a developing cycle of production and accumulation, so we could expect a new wave of struggle along with the new intense industrialization there.
• The World Labor Group found a significant rise in labour unrest in the education sector, also a growth area recently (more people employed there, more investment etc). They lack workplace bargaining power (i.e. Education workers do not work in a complex technical division of labour) but they have an important role in the social division of labour.
• Superconductors are a key sector in the production and accumulation process, but it is not an indusrty that employes many workers together in one place, something that facilitates labour unrest.
• Transport and communication workers have lots of bargaining power, service sector workers less

Global perspective and the north / south divide

Spatial fixes have a tendency to generalise conditions, but because the innovation phase of each product cycle still occurs in the north, resultant high profits allow for concessions to workers power, that does not seem to be the case in the south. This is of course a very complex story and includes issues of marketplace bargaining power, the industry being introduced when it is already streamlined etc. There is also the fact of protectionism in the north and of certain workers in the south. “Spatial fixes relocated the social contradictions of mass production (including strong working classes), but they have not relocated the wealth through which high wage countries have historically accommodated those same contradictions. As a result, strong grievances and strong bargaining power go hand in hand, creating the conditions for permanent social crisis in much of the post-colonial world”. (FoL p 179). Along with the end of neo-liberalism there have been some state concessions in Latin America with the lefty governments in Brazil, Venezuela, Chile and Argentina.

Lots on war - can read it.

Conclusion

Silver draws many parallels between now and the late 19th century. Financial fixes, attacks on established ways of life, associational rather than workplace bargaining power, liberal economic policies, rising unemployment and inequality, anti-labour offensives and a decline in labour unrest. But this was short lived.

We are in a period of hegemonic change, the USA losing its position to an unknown region or state, probably in East Asia – (or maybe to no-one since it is also possible that this will be the end of that kind of history and the start of a new one beyond capitalism). The analysis of other periods of hegemonic change - for instance from the British Empire to the USA in the early part of the 20th century - shows that there was also a period of financialization, of financial speculation, where the losing hegemonic state uses its position to attract credit in order to finance its consumption and military projects - in order to defend its role. The effect of this is a major weakening of the working class on a world-wide scale because money is not invested in production of surplus value.

So here we have the reason for the crisis of the working class movement. But there is hope: This period of financialization cannot go on for ever since capital and capitalism depend on the production of surplus value. The question is how long it will go on for and what happens in the meantime. And furthermore: hegemonic change has always meant systemic chaos and world war. Another question is whether the working classes, especially in the old hegemonic power USA and in the probable new centres like China and India will use their power to shape the new world order and possibly get rid of capitalism, or whether they will use it in a protectionist manner against other working classes. Will the declining power of nation states lead to a new labour international? Silver sees associational bargaining power becoming more important, for example amongst the migrant movements in the US, but if you really want to win you have to have structural power. Silver herself ends the with the question of whether capital will be forced to make serious concessions again, where as we may ask whether the working class will find its way to global class revolution.

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Operaism - understanding the technical and political composition of the class

The mode of Production determines and mode of struggle.
The 'technical composition of the class' is the description of the workers and the work - who are the workers, what kind of lives and families do they have - are they supporting families on their wages, working part time or full time, what the actual work is like…

The 'political composition' is this technical composition in the context of struggle. It will be the form of what is the site of antagonism - what is the struggle about, what the form of the struggle takes, how the workers organize and use the work organization and a basis for struggling against that work organization.

• The Operaists developed the term 'class composition', in order to describe the relation between changing work organization, composition of the work force and class struggle. Because dynamic nature of capital means that the work organization constantly changes and the class is constantly re-composed, workers come up with new forms for each new situation they find themselves in. Also the divisions within the class change due to the changes of the material process of exploitation.

The Operaists criticism of traditional static forms of workers organization, e.g. unions, were not ideological, but based on the understanding of the link between the changing forms of the technical and political composition of class.

The links of production, the concentration and underdevelopment, the migration, the new technologies are the constantly changing organizational base of workers struggle - which is why the Silver stuff helps us too.

The point of these two arguments is that there is a constant dynamic between capital and class struggle - our possibilities and forms of struggle are shaped by the conditions we find ourselves in - the way work and society are organized give us the frameworks for our struggles. But on the other hand - those very struggles become the framework or constraint forces capital into new developments.

So how does this help us decide what to do?

We can see what Capital is doing and understand that our struggles are offensive as well as defensive. We can see that we need to really understand the daily reality of work in terms of how the structure of work influences and can be used as a tool in class struggle, and how the social organization and daily reproduction of society is also a product of the capital / class dynamic and can be used by us in our struggles.

On the background of this some short-comings of the anti-cap-movement become clear:
- The limitations of the widespread critique of neo-liberalism/ imperialism and it's out datedness
- The "immaterial labour' or 'cognitive capitalism' debate being based on theories and assumptions rather than a description of the work reality.
- The mythical view on power of finance capital as being able to control and define us all, rather than seeing it as a desperate attempt of capital to keep making money somehow.
- Lamenting each move of industrialization in the south as part of the race to the bottom and inevitably bad for those people, and for the global class as a whole.
- Some of our own ‘activism’ is sometimes rather unrelated to the actual social conditions and struggles.
- We also sometimes have static concepts of organization and go with what is in fashion rather than what is really appropriate to our local situation.
- We need to really examine our own myths of certain social movements, be it landless peasants or migrant workers centers.
- The minimum income demand is not coming from a class struggle / class antagonism perspective.
- There has been a new interest in the Operatism tradition after Negri & Hardts success, but what they are representing now is actually quite different from this tendency in the 50s and 60s.

Today we can see a certain comeback of ‘inquiry and intervention’ within the movement, e.g. within the precarity debate, although often these inquiries remain too external of the contradictive reality of class struggle and its material structure.

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