The current Samwu strike has seen bins overturned and litter strewn across the streets. I have heard several times how pointless it is for the strikers to do this, because when they (inevitably) return to work, they will be the ones cleaning up the mess.
The current Samwu strike has seen bins overturned and litter strewn across the streets. I have heard several times how pointless it is for the strikers to do this, because when they (inevitably) return to work, they will be the ones cleaning up the mess.
Why would they create more work for themselves? Calling their action pointless fails to recognise it as a bold politically-loaded statement.
It reveals a failure to understand the relationship between the power-holders in society and those they deem to be in an inferior position to them.
While the middle class may regard itself as superior to the working class, it depends on the latter for its members’ position in society – and its very survival.
In The Phenomenology of Spirit, German philosopher Georg Hegel pointed out that the dominance of the master over the slave is a façade. While the master feels free, he is actually dependent on slaves.
The slave-holding class relies on slavery for the materials that provide its wealth and indulgences. According to Hegel, this class is unable to facilitate historical change without wiping itself out.
It is evident, then, that the link between master and slave is not so wide that the master is able to view himself as better than the slave.
I use this dialectic not because I believe that municipal workers are treated as horrifically as slaves were, but to demonstrate the power relations between two seemingly separate positions in society and the power-holders’ dependency on workers.
While some philosophers may argue that to appropriate Hegel’s dialectic into class struggle is to trivialise real slavery, it is useful to draw parallels to understand the power relations at play in our society.
The case of the Samwu strikers’ action is relevant because it makes clear the vulnerability of the power-holders when they can no longer depend on others for something taken for granted the city being clean.
I do, however, disagree with Hegel’s assertion that the slave was responsible for his lack of political and economic freedom through the slave’s choice of survival rather than risking his life for liberty.
It is true that the powerless in society can only become and remain free if they believe that they are free. However, a Marxist understanding of such admission to a repressive system shows that oppressive political and economic systems can create and perpetuate thoughts of inferiority.
Anger at the strikers’ action may well be the recognition of a challenge to positions of power in society. Suddenly the power-holders do not know what to do, or how to act, because they always act in relation to an ‘other’.
When that ‘other’ acts differently, power-holders feeluncomfortable. I do not support the violence that has occurred during the strike, nor do I wish to see litter spread across the streets.
I hope only that members of society understand the action of the strikers. Regarding it as ‘pointless’ reveals a lack of understanding of the power relations in society that have been in place for centuries.
