YES MARTHA, IT REALLY IS CLASS STRUGGLE – the Indigenous and Environmental Movements

 “OK, what do you mean by 'class' and what constitutes 'class struggle'?”, you may well ask. Classes are based upon their relationship to the ownership and control over the means of wealth production. (Wealth, refers to that which is produced by labour acting upon the natural world.) In contemporary society, people who have neither ownership nor control over wealth production are called 'working class'. This is a relationship of economics and power and has nothing to do with education level, cultural preferences, the ownership, or the lack of ownership, of automobiles or a dwelling. Attempts to reduce the concept of working class to the poor or uneducated, or to 'blue collar' workers alone are superficial and a form of disinformation. Those who do own and control the means of wealth production are called 'capitalists.' There is also a middle stratum of small capitalists, managers and independent professionals. The latter two are called the 'managerial class'. Roughly 75-80% of the population are workers and the remaining 20-25% make up the other two classes.

Class division creates conflict over who controls the system of wealth production. Workers seek to maximize their income and improvements in their working conditions. Capitalists seek to minimize worker's income and restrict any improvements that might impinge upon their annual profit margin. Thus the capitalist-worker relation is a bit like oil and water.

The battle over wages and working conditions is class struggle at its most limited and basic. It is something relatively easy for capital to accommodate and indeed, by creating a consumer economy though higher wages and shorter work hours, workers have done capital a great favour. Mass consumption enabled capital to rapidly expand into new areas or replace older forms of economy like the “mom and pop” store and craft workers with corporate production.

Socialists, syndicalists and anarchists always tried to get workers to move beyond the 'bread and butter” (wages and working conditions) issues and to directly challenge capital. Hence, these radicals rejected the notion of “a fair days pay” for the slogan, “abolish the wage system.” , the corollary of which was the workers were to democratically control the economy. If we look at working class history, we find the shop stewards movements, workers councils, general strikes and factory occupations which directly confronted the capitalists over who was to be in control.

In the 1930s, in order for the trade unions to get the legal clout needed to force the capitalists to recognize them as bargaining agents, the unions agreed to not challenge management over the control of the workplace. Since then, unions have been reduced to “bread and butter issues” and when capital is challenged it usually comes from outside the official union movement, (France 1968), or from a radical minority within the union movement, (the Quebec General Strike of 1972.)

The eco-movement and the Indigenous movement, even when moderate in form, directly challenge capital. They do this by attempting to stop or limit what capital can do with “its property”. (1) Like with the factory occupations, the question is raised, “who owns/controls?” The Wet'suwet'en struggle challenges the “right” of capital to build a pipeline through Indigenous territory. The Fairy Creek land protectors confront Teal Jones “right” to cut “its” old growth trees. Virtually all the major Indigenous and ecological struggles are about who controls/owns what. Capital seeks to exploit Indigenous lands and to generally impose development and forms of resource extraction that are in opposition to the needs of the human and natural environment. (2)

Since the Indigenous and Ecological movements directly challenge capital over questions of ownership and control, theirs is a much higher stage of class struggle than over the wages and working conditions of the business unions. Not only do the business unions refuse to go beyond this narrow frontier, they are often in league with the capitalists in opposing the Indigenous and ecological movements when they challenge developers or ecologically unsound resource extraction. Their sectoral interests are seen as more important than the needs of the people as a whole.

While it is true that certain land or tree protection, can after a lengthy struggle, be accepted by capital, the areas so protected are usually removed from the commodity system. As land trusts, parks, Indigenous territories, they take on more the form of a commons defended from capitalist exploitation. Thus, a small, but permanent encroachment on the “rights” of capital. Mega projects, on the other hand are the system's favorite way of plundering the land and public finance, and are much more difficult to defeat. A few hectares of old growth might mean several million dollars, but Site C involves billions. Stopping, or limiting, a mega project is a major victory against corporate state capitalism. And it does happen, though it is difficult to achieve, as capital will use all its media, government and political resources, including violence, against these movements.

So, with the exception of the minority of class struggle unions and any spontaneous worker risings that might occur in the future, the capital-challenging forms of class struggle have shifted to the Indigenous and Ecological movements. Essentially, they are, at this point, the “vanguard” of the struggle in opposition to capital. As climate conditions deteriorate, one can only conclude these movements will grow in the level of support and militance.

Before I conclude, there is one straw man I wish to beat down. That is the ridiculous claim that the ecological militants are some how “middle class.” Of course, when something is sneered at as “middle class” the implication is that it is not worth supporting by “real” socialists. I doubt if anyone making these claims has done a sociological study of ecological protestors, nor has anything but a superficial understanding of what constitutes a class. Somehow I doubt that the Fairy Creek land defenders are made up of corporate managers and small capitalists! I suspect what they are in the main are white collar WORKERS, like teachers, nurses, technicians, and those in the service industry. None of these forms of employment involve ownership or control of the workplace, hence they are as working class as a logger or heavy equipment operator.

1. Here on Vancouver Island in the last decade, we have had the Shawnigan Lake waste dump fight, Victoria's Blue Bridge battle, the attempted privatization of the Nanaimo Harbour, the Colliery Dam, Linley Valley, Cable Bay, the Union Bay coal struggles, and now Fairy Creek. All challenged capital's “right” to do what it wants with “its” property.

2. A consistent ecological approach is in opposition to capitalism, even if many environmentalists are unaware that they are so. Since the environmental movement realizes there is a limit to growth and capital exists to perpetually augment itself (perpetual growth) the two are incompatible.