"In the latest edition of the Global Labour Journal, Sam Gindin argued for the necessity to "bring class back in" (full article: https://escarpmentpress.org/globallabour/article/view/2465/2355). We asked him a few questions with regard to the influence of the current crisis and how he envisions an adequate strategy for labour nowadays. Here are his answers:

1. Observing the current weakness of labour, you argue to "bring class back in" - how and when has "class" been lost and what are the results?

Unions are inherently sectional, not class organizations; they represent selected groups of workers. The struggle to form unions against great hostility, plus the role of socialists and communists in their original creation, brought class ideology into unions, but as unions were institutionalized, especially after WWII, their inherent sectionalism came to the fore. Neoliberalism, with its emphasis on individualism and competitiveness and attack on union institutions reinforced that weakness of unions.

2. What constitutes the "spirit of neoliberalism" (107) you are talking about?

Neoliberalism was a class project directed to strengthening the conditions for accumulation. Contrary to popular perceptions, the state was central to this, acting to give markets a greater role in disciplining workers, firms and society towards the overwhelming priority of accumulation. Crucial here was the construction of a spirit of individual/family survival against collective goals, subservience to the logic of competitiveness against other priorities, and an acceptance of growing inequalities as the natural order of things.

3. Is the current economic crisis a chance or an obstacle to the kind of labour union reinvention you imagine?

The current state of affairs opens the door to raising the need for alternatives. It is an opening and can make previously radical options seem more needed and practical. But crises themselves can lower expectations (the once abhorrent past looks good now) or raise them. Which way things go depends on our capacity to organize to popular new possibilities and build new capacities to bring them into being.

4. The "radical has become the practical" (111) - what would be the essence of an adequate (global) labour movement nowadays?

It is crucial to appreciate that, in spite of globalization, the central question remains how workers can organize to shape the context they face within each state. This involves making a working class that operates across workplaces and the workplace-community divide and has the capacities and coherence to address the state. This is all the more complex because the issue is not just lobbying or pressuring the state but beginning the large march to taking state power and transforming the state so it can become a vehicle for transcending capitalism. Taking this on within each state creates the space for other working classes to do the same." - Reply to this email to comment on this photo.