This article was reprinted from the April 5, 1997 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.
This is the second in a series of articles on the class struggle which began in the March 22 issue. Gus Hall is national chairman of the Communist Party USA.
The class struggle is the most basic fact of life in our capitalist society. It determines who we are. It molds our personality, our character.
It is a major factor in how we think, how we approach all questions in life. It is basic in our politics, in our ideology, in our culture. It is basic because it is basic in real life, the real world we live in.
The class struggle is the most fundamental, defining feature of our capitalist system. There can be no capitalism without the two main, opposing classes - the working class and the capitalist class. There can be no capitalism without the every day class struggle between them. A study of the class struggle is a study of capitalism.
Some call it working class ideology; others call it the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, or socialist or communist ideology. I will simply call it our ideology, because it is just that - ours.
The working class of all countries has the same ideology. However, each working class reflects the specific racial and national composition of its country.
Our U.S. working class is a single class - multiracial, multinational. But all are exploited as a class. That is what unites the class, exploitation as a class. Class "oneness" is the most fundamental question within the class struggle.
There can be class unity only if the organizations of the working class, specifically the trade unions, fight against both class exploitation and the super-exploitation as a result of racism.
The struggle against racism is most successful when it is related to the working class, the class struggle and class exploitation.
The main opposite ideology is ruling class, capitalist ideology, including anti-communism. Capitalist ideology has an advantage in a capitalist society because it is the ideology of the ruling class.
Its sole purpose is to defend and cover up for the capitalist system of exploitation for corporate profits. It is rooted in the idea that there is no class struggle or class exploitation.
The capitalist class, the monopoly corporations, spend many millions every year to spread its ideology - in the mass media, in movies, books and magazines, in the schools, in the workplace, everywhere.
Another opposite trend argues that U.S. national interests overshadow and supersede all other interests. Therefore, they argue, there must only be cooperation and collaboration between the bosses and the workers in the common interests of the whole country.
Then there are the more middle class currents. Their ideology is based on the concept of downgrading and minimizing the working class. They push concepts of class collaboration, labor-management partnership and social democracy.
Working class ideology and an understanding of the unrelenting class struggle between the exploiters and exploited enables workers to avoid the pitfalls of all the anti-working class ideological trends.
Exploitation of workers in the production process - the source of all profits - takes place at the point of production. It is here that the working class produces more than it gets back in the form of wages and benefits.
It is the difference between the added value this class produces and what it is paid that is the source of all profits. Marx named it "the law of surplus value" or "the law of profits."
For example, today out of a working day of eight hours, the average worker works two hours and nine minutes for himself and five hours and 51 minutes for the boss. That's corporate profits.
The fact that surplus value (profits) is generated at the point of production and that workers in this relationship to the corporations daily confront naked exploitation compels them toward unity and struggle because the labor process is social, collective and increasingly global.
Workers in basic and mass production industries carry on the class struggle at the point of production daily. They must constantly use their accumulated organizational skills. They have a history of fighting the class enemy. They understand, through struggle, the necessity of class unity based on Black, brown, white unity.
The working class is molded in this production process and thus forced to play an advanced role in the struggle for a better life. Thus, a working class outlook is shaped by a constantly reinforced understanding on the part of workers that they are not getting a fair shake, that exploitation is unjust and has no moral justification.
The experience of struggling against exploitation itself becomes a part of the cumulative objective framework that molds a working class outlook.
The class of exploiters has political power. They have the government machinery, the armed forces, the police. They have control over the press, radio and television.
The ideology of the capitalist class justifies the use of governmental authority and force in the interests of the few, even when such use is against the best interests of the people as a whole and of the nation.
The working class under capitalism has no such instruments on its side. Workers are compelled to seek strength in their great numbers, organized into unions. Their only weapon in struggle is the unity of the many.
Mass action, mass movements, strikes are concepts that grow from this realization. Disjointed actions by individuals is not a working class trait.
There is no other section of the population that has such compelling reasons for acting in mass as has the working class. It is in this process that the working class is made and molded, by capitalism, into the leading class. It is through this process that the working class realizes that as a class, under capitalism, they have no place to go, that there is no escaping the class struggle.
The process of alienation that takes place under capitalism pushes non-working class people into a feeling of helplessness, to shifts and swings as individuals. Such helplessness and frustration is overcome in the working class because the worker has a class to turn to and from which to gain strength. This, in turn, leads to action, to struggle to collective effort. This becomes a feature of workingclass ideology.
Thus, only after the basic nature of the working class and, within that, the basic industrial and mass production workers, is firmly established, is it possible to view the working class as a part of a much wider and a more complex social, political and economic framework.
Then we can ask: Has the working class changed over the years, especially as a result of the scientific and technological revolution? Of course.
Are other sectors much bigger and more important today than even 10 years ago? Of course. How could it be otherwise. However, this does not change the position or role of the basic industrial, mass production workers - i.e., steel, auto, electrical, rubber, machine tool.
The actions of these workers have an impact on the whole class. When they move, the whole class moves. When they win a struggle, the whole class wins. And the fact is that the greatest surplus value (profit) still comes from exploitation of these workers.
Victory in the all-out class war by Wheeling-Pitt will mean not only victory for the steelworkers and their union in its eight plants. It will mean victory for all steelworkers. It will save the steel union. It will greatly affect the upcoming basic steel contract negotiations. It will have an impact on all contract negotiations. It will be a tremendous class victory.
It is true that there are moments when other groups or sectors of people project radical ideas. And that at moments other groups or sectors come to the fore to play a special role. But they are just that - momentary.
The working class is the ONLY consistently revolutionary force because it is the only force that is directly and consistently exploited. This is not a choice or decision of the class. It is the objective reality of the class struggle.
The middle class and professional strata experience exploitation second hand, more indirectly. This is reflected in their ideology, in their attitude about exploitation, in their approaches to life and struggle. They are exploited more as individuals. The working class is exploited as a class.
However, as mass layoffs, downsizing, mergers, monopolization and the overall deterioration in the quality of life more and more victimize intellectuals, professionals, academics, students, scientists, etc., they gravitate toward the class that is in the center of the oppression - the working class.
They increasingly tend to identify their self-interests with the working class. Ever greater numbers become an integral part of the class struggle.
It was Marx who first stressed that the most revolutionary class, the working class, appropriates the entire progressive legacy of the past, all that which is positive in human achievement. He stressed that the workers take up and represent the interests of all oppressed and suffering humanity. This is part of working class ideology.
Another of Marx's fundamental ideas is that it is precisely through the pursuit of its own class interest, organizing itself for itself, that the liberation of all humanity would be achieved.
Just as there are laws of nature and natural science, so there are laws of society, of social development and the social science of Marxism-Leninism, which includes the law of class struggle and the law of profits.
Like the mastery of any science, the science of the working class does not come to most workers spontaneously, as a result of struggle. However, it is easier for workers to understand and adopt these concepts and the ideology because the ideas are related to the exploitation they experience as workers.
Our ideology is a system of thought. It gives us a unique way of looking at everything in life. And the role of the working class and the class struggle is the very foundation stone of our Marxist-Leninist, working class ideology.
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