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REBUILDING THE LEFT
their identity as an oppressed class? The workers’ greatest strength – they were much more numerous than their class enemy – lay in their organisation and unity. However, that strength had to be built and it was only because they followed this path that what initially seemed impossible became possible. Let’s use a contemporary example.There’s no doubt that today in Latin America the working class’s negotiating power has diminished greatly. This is due both to the spectre of lay-offs – those who have a stable wagepaying job are a privileged few – and to the fragmentation that this class has suffered under neo-liberalism. Looking at these objective facts, some claim it is impossible to fight back under these conditions. It is obvious that the classic tactic of union struggle, the strike – which is based on the unity of the industrial working class and its ability to bring production to a halt – is not effective most of the time nowadays. Opportunists, therefore, take advantage of this to try to immobilise the workers’ movement and convince it that it should passively accept its existing conditions of over-exploitation. But the art of politics, in contrast, consists in discovering how the present weaknesses – and they really are weaknesses – of the industrial working class can be overcome in order to build a trade union as a social force adapted to the new world situation. A new union strategy must be built: nineteenth-century class solidarity is no longer enough. If industrial working-class unity was essential back then, today the unity of all of those exploited by capital is essential – permanent and temporary employees, contract workers and those doing outsourced work, and all other social sectors that have been harmed by the neo-liberal system.154 I agree with Isabel Rauber that ‘we must formulate a proposal that puts the emphasis back on the central, organizing role of the working class, yet recognises its present weakness and aims to rebuild its strength by encouraging all those who have jobs and the underemployed, unemployed, or marginalized to work together with all those who are oppressed and excluded to build a social force able to go up against the ruling powers with its own power, fight them for power and win’.155 This is the only way to recover the negotiating power which the working class on its own no longer has, and the rest of the population even more conspiciously lacks. This solution has already been tested in practice. Argentinean unions were successful precisely when they managed to integrate broad sectors