Chapter 45 Part Two Results Chapter Eleven The Working Poor 3

3 The labor movement responded to the cries of the poor.We should not confuse the labor movement with the historically frequent collective revolt against nothing but unbearable suffering; nor even with strikes or other forms of struggle that have become peculiar to labor.The history of the labor movement dates back to before the Industrial Revolution.But the new phenomenon of the labor movement in the 19th century was class consciousness and class ambition. The "poor" no longer pleases the "rich".A given class, laborers, workers or proletariat, confronts another class, employers or capitalists.The French Revolution gave confidence to this emerging class, and the Industrial Revolution impressed upon it the need for constant mobilization.A proper life is not achieved by occasional protests that can only restore an already stable but temporarily disturbed social balance.What it needs is a "movement" of perpetual vigilance, organization, and activity—trade unions, fraternal or cooperative societies, working-class schools, press, or agitation.But the kind of social change that was constantly refurbishing, changing rapidly, and almost devouring them prompted workers to think in terms of total social transformation, based on their own experience and their ideals of countering their oppressors.A reasonable society should be cooperative, not competitive; collectivistic, not individualistic.Should be "socialist".And it represents not the eternal ideal of a free society, but a long-lasting and viable alternative to the existing society.The ideal of a free society has always been forgotten by the poor, and it is only in exceptional cases that they contemplate a general social revolution.

Working-class consciousness in this sense had not yet formed in 1789, or indeed during the French Revolution.Outside England and France, even as late as 1848, such awareness was extremely rare, if any.But in both countries that embodied the dual revolution, working-class consciousness did take shape between 1815 and 1848, especially around 1830. The term "Working Class" (as distinct from the less specific "the working classes") appeared in British labor writings shortly after Waterloo, and perhaps even earlier; In the works of the French working class, after 1830, the same sentence can also be seen.In England the attempt to organize the labor of the whole country under a "General Trade Union" was formally launched in 1818 and was attempted with great fervor in the period 1829-1834.The purpose of organizing the Federation of Trade Unions is to break down the sectoral or geographical divisions of specific groups of workers and organize all workers into national solidarity organizations.The "general trade union" was accompanied by the general strike, which during this period was regarded as a working-class idea and a planned tactic, as William Benbow in The Great National Holiday and the Productive Class In the book "The Grand Meeting" (1832), it has been stated in detail, and the Chartists have also regarded it as a political method and discussed it seriously.At the same time, discussions among intellectuals in Britain and France produced both the concept of "socialism" and the creation of the term in the 1820s.It was immediately adopted by the workers, to a lesser extent in France (such as the Parisian Guilds in 1832) and to a much greater extent in England, which soon gave impetus to a broad mass movement led by Owen, for whom Owen personally is incompetent.In short, by the early 1830s the class consciousness and social aspirations of workers had taken shape.Compared with the middle-class consciousness formed or expressed by their employers at about the same period, the consciousness of the working class is undoubtedly much weaker, and it is not so effective.However, they have already appeared.

Proletarian consciousness is powerfully combined with what is best called Jacobin consciousness.Jacobin Consciousness refers to the set of aspirations, experiences, methods, and morals that permeated the thinking, confident poor through the French (and before that, the American) Revolution.Just as the emerging working class, its actual expression is the "labor movement" and its ideology is "civilian cooperation", as ordinary people, the proletariat, or other actors pushed onto the stage of history by the French Revolution rather than pure suffering Or, its actual expression is the democratic revolution. "Shabby citizens and those who previously dared not appear in the exclusive place of the well-behaved, now walk with the rich with their heads held high." They need respect, recognition, and equal status.They knew it was possible because they had done it in 1793-1794.Not all such citizens are workers, but all conscious workers are.

Proletarian consciousness and Jacobin consciousness complement each other.The experience of the working class endows the working poor with the main institutions of daily self-defense: trade unions and mutual aid societies; and the main weapons of collective struggle: solidarity and strikes (which in turn imply organization and discipline). (Strikes are such a spontaneous and logical consequence of the existence of the working class that most European languages ​​have their own local words for strikes [e.g., greve, huelga, sciopero, zabastovka], and terms for other institutions terms are often borrowed from each other.) Nevertheless, these developments were generally weak, unstable, and localized in the countries of the Continent; even in less weak, less unstable, and less confined countries, Its scope is also strictly limited.The attempt to use the model of pure trade unions and mutual aid societies is not merely to secure higher wages for an organized section of workers, but to smash the entire existing society and create a new one. Such an attempt was made in England between 1829 and 1834; partly again during the Chartist period.The attempt failed and undermined for half a century a fairly mature early proletarian socialist movement.Attempts to organize trade unions into national cooperative producers' federations (as in 1831-1834 with the United Builders' Union and its "Builders' Congress" and "Builders' Guild") failed; And attempts at a "fair labor exchange" also failed.The "Federation of Trade Unions", large enough to include all workers, proved to be weak and difficult to operate before it proved to be stronger than local trade unions and trade unions.Although this was not primarily due to inherent flaws in the Federation of Trade Unions itself, it was due to a lack of discipline, organization and leadership experience.During the Chartist period, general strikes proved impracticable, with the exception (1824) of spontaneously spreading hunger riots.

On the contrary, methods of political agitation that belong to Jacobinism and radicalism in general, but not specifically to the working class - political campaigns, public meetings and demonstrations through means such as newspapers and pamphlets, riots and insurrections when necessary — Proven to be both effective and flexible.Indeed, when such movements aim too high, or scare the ruling class too far, they tend to fail.During the hysterical period of the 1820s, rulers tended to call in armed forces to suppress any major demonstrations (as in London's Spa Fields in 1816, or Manchester's 'Peterloo' in 1819). "[Peterloo] massacre, when 10 demonstrators were killed and hundreds were injured). Petitions signed by millions of people between 1838 and 1848 did not bring the People's Charter any closer to realization.On a narrower front, however, political campaigns are effective.Without such a movement, there would have been no Catholic Emancipation Order of 1829, no Congressional Reform Act of 1832, and, of course, not even effective legislation on factory conditions and working hours.So, time and time again, we find that organizing the weak working class compensates for its own weakness with the agitation methods of political activism. In the 1830s, the "Factories Agitation" in northern England compensated for the weakness of the local trade unions, just as the mass protest movement caused by the deportation of the "Torpdale Martyr" after 1834 somewhat saved It is as if the "Federation of Trade Unions" that is collapsing is saved from destruction.

But the Jacobin tradition in turn drew its strength from the close solidarity and loyalty that characterized the emerging proletariat, absorbing an unprecedented continuity and massness.The proletariat is united not only because they suffer poverty in the same situation, but because their life consists of working, working together, and being interdependent with many people.Indestructible unity is their only weapon, because only in this way can they demonstrate their only but decisive capital-incomparable collectiveness. "Do not break a strike" (or something to that effect) is - and always has been - the first commandment in their moral code, and the unitybreaker (the word "scab" [blackleg] has the moral " "black") was the Judas of their group.Once they develop even a vague political awareness, their demonstrations are no longer just occasional flare-ups of "mob" anger, which is not so easy to calm down.They are an active army.In a city like Sheffield, as soon as the struggle between middle and working classes became a major issue in local politics (as in the early 1840s), a strong and stable proletarian bloc emerged immediately.By the end of 1847 there were already eight Chartist representatives on the city council, and the national defeat of Chartism in 1848 had hardly any impact on Chartism in the city, where 10,000 to 20,000 people contributed to the Paris Revolution that took place that year. Cheers.By 1849, Chartists captured almost half of the city council seats.

Beneath the working-class and Jacobin traditions there is an older traditional foundation that strengthens both, the tradition of the occasional public protest of the insurrectionist or the desperate.There is a long history of direct action or rioting, of destroying machinery, shops, and the houses of the rich.Generally speaking, such riots reflect general famine or the mood of people in times of desperation, such as in handicraft industries that are threatened by machinery and decline. industry, and in the mid-1830s and mid-1840s, the textile industry of Continental Europe).Sometimes, as in England, riots were a recognized form of collective pressure by organized workers, which did not represent hostility to machinery, as in miners, certain skilled weavers, or knives and scissors, who combined political Moderation and planned terror against non-union colleagues.Traditional protests also reflect the grievances of unemployed workers or starving people.When the revolution matures, such direct action by a politically immature pimp may turn into a decisive force, especially if it takes place in the capital or other politically sensitive areas.In 1830 and 1848, it was movements of this kind that cast a huge weight on the side of unrelated dissatisfaction, and protests turned into uprisings.