“We see no difference between the aspirations of Māori people and the desire of workers in their struggles. We seek the support of workers and organisations, as the only viable bodies which have sympathy and understanding of the Māori people and their desires. The people who are oppressing the workers are the same who are exploiting the Māori today” (Te Roopu o te Matakite, 1975).
Te Roopu o te Matakite was the organisation that led the 1975 Land March; an organisation unapologetically committed to Māori liberation and the struggle for Tino Rangatiratanga. Among their ranks was Tama Poata, a staunch unionist who at various points in his life identified himself as a communist. Poata, among his other achievements, founded the Māori Organisation on Human Rights, which used union power to fight against land confiscation. The statement above is striking: why is it that Te Matakite, Tama Poata, and so many others throughout history have seen the working class as a driving force for liberation? Why do socialists put so much stock in workers that Karl Marx said that in creating the working class capitalism had “created its own gravediggers”?
It is important to understand that the Marxist definition of the working class is more broad and inclusive than popular conceptions. The “working class” is not just white, male, blue collar workers. It is all of us who are compelled – by our lack of resources, land and capital – to sell our labour for a wage. It includes those at work in shops, hospitals, schools, offices, restaurants and bars. It includes those who clean, cook, care, write and code. It includes white collar workers, workers with university degrees, workers of all genders and workers of all ethnicities and nationalities. Our class also encompasses the families and dependents of those who work, those studying or training to work, and those of us who have to go on the dole when we can’t work.
This demographic currently represents a vast majority of human society; while our oppressors, the owners and directors of capital, represent a tiny minority. People throughout history have grasped the significance of this. In 1819 the Poet Percy Shelley implored the working class to recognise its potential power and “rise like lions,” proclaiming “ye are many and they are few!” The moral weight of being “the many” was captured by the slogan of the Occupy movement of the 2010s – “we are the 99%”. The fact that our society subjugates the needs and desires of the 99% to those of the 1% stands out as a glaring injustice and, conversely, a just society would be one that gave agency and fulfilment to the 99%.
In Aotearoa, as elsewhere, workers are in the majority. And it is no accident that indigenous fighters like Tama Poata rose out of and drew on the might of the working class – in Aotearoa Māori are more concentrated than the general population in the working class and have been have been an important pillar of the workers’ movement, while the New Zealand capitalist class continues to profit from stolen Māori land and labour. In a world shaped by colonialism and imperialism, the “toiling masses” which make up the working class are disproportionately colonised people, upon whose backs the wealth of the system was built.
The working class has a shared interest in smashing this system. While hardship and exploitation is not evenly distributed among the working class, it is the common lot of the working class to be oppressed and exploited – to receive only a fraction of the value we create returned to us as wages; to be gouged by landlords and businesses; to do unpaid and undervalued work in the home to sustain ourselves and our loved ones; to have little to no control over the conditions of our daily lives. In trying to change the system we have nothing to lose but our chains.
This common alienation provides the basis for solidarity, not only in fighting our shared oppression but in fighting the oppression faced by specific groups. While regressive stereotypes pit a homogenous vision of the “working class” against the interests of oppressed groups, the reality is that the working class is diverse. Women, trans and queer people, disabled people, migrants – these are the working class. In this context “an injury to one is an injury to all” is not just a nice sentiment but a statement of fact, as attacks on one group serve to drag down conditions of life for all of us. Domestically, bigotry and division are a threat to the collective organising that we need to fight for our rights. Internationally, we have more in common with workers of each country than we have with our “own” ruling class, and it is not in our interest to participate in imperialist wars.
Our size and diversity give us power, but it is our position inside the capitalist system that makes us its potential “gravediggers.” After all, as folk singer Utah Phillips put it, “without our brain and muscle, not a single wheel would turn.” If we withdraw our labour, business grinds to a halt and the profits of the capitalists dry up. The ability to do this not only gives us a tool to wring concessions out of our bosses, but gives us the power to resist. Workers can refuse to build on stolen land, to load weapons on warships, or – as NZ Post workers demonstrated last year – to deliver racist pamphlets. We can, in fact, bring the whole system to a halt. Strikes can bring about profound crises and – beyond pay and conditions – can force much more far-reaching political change. At the most extreme end of the spectrum, mass strikes can precipitate revolutions. Working class revolution is what socialists look to to transform the world.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, workers have the ability to make the world anew. Say we use our power to bring society to a halt – what then? After all, striking workers still need food, healthcare, childcare, news, transport, entertainment. The exciting thing is that we are fully capable of providing these things for ourselves – but only if we work together. It may seem strange to say, in a world full of so much obvious division, but our society already runs on the basis of mass-scale cooperation between workers. Freed from the dictates of profit, this capacity can be used to serve human need. Working class solidarity is not inevitable, but it is always possible, and where workers are able to unite we stand to reap rewards. We have a world to win!
Banner image: Maranga Ake 2024, union rally for workers’ rights and Te Tiriti. Photo Credit: PSA.
