History of the labor movement – from the continuity of exploitation

Slavery is often seen as the relic of a shameful past – comparable to cannibalism, but at least something that humanity has supposedly left behind. In reality, however, slavery continues in a different form: Today’s civilization is also based on the exploitation of people who are objectified to mere workers.

Until just 150 years ago, the private ownership of people – including sexual violence and murder – was completely legal in a state, the economy of which is today the largest in the world and whose democratic system has so far been one of the most progressive: the United States of America. The United States was an agricultural economy over large parts of its history, in which humans were enslaved. Slavery not only contributed significantly to the gross domestic product, but also played a central role in the transformation of the United States from a colonial nation to global hegemonic power. This highly profitable business model was only ended through the use of violence – with the civil war of 1861, which must be understood as a collision of two exploitation models: wage labor in the industrialized north against slave work in the agricultural south. The victory of the north finally replaced the confederated flag with the stars and stripes known today – and the literal chains with wages.

However, the two models were not completely different. For example, management practices from the plantations to the factories with the (double free) wage workers were adopted and finally used in modern offices and production facilities of the 20th century. In order to highlight the similarities between the north and south economic systems – wage labor and slavery – the concept of wage slavery was first used in the USA in 1846. This expression was not shaped by Karl Marx, but by proletarian, educated young women from the town of Lowell, Massachusetts, during a number of working protests. These women recognized their class situation, organized some of the first strikes in US history-and were even successful. So let’s take a closer look at the history of the “Lowell girls”.

Gender-Pay-Gap 1.0

The city of Lowell, founded in the 1820s as the center of the textile industry on the Merrimack River, is located in Massachusetts and is named after the factory owner Francis Cabot Lowell. By 1840, more than 8,000 people worked there, mostly women between the ages of 15 and 34 – many started at the age of ten. The women worked up to 14 hours a day for a weekly wage of three to four dollars; A bed in the dormitories that had been built by the factory for the workers cost 0.75 to $ 1.25 a week. Although the workers obtained economic independence towards their families through their employment, they only earned half of what men got.

Life in Lowell was strictly regulated by the textile company. There were initial blocks, mandatory churches and a rigid moral code; Men met the Lowell girl only in the role of the supervisors and superiors. The work in the factory was exhausting and dangerous. The machines boomed, the air was stuffy and the cotton fibers caused lung diseases. Despite the monotonous work and despite their poverty, women attended educational courses, used libraries and went to the theater. They sealed, played and published the monthly magazine “Lowell Offering”, in which they shared their thoughts on factory work and the role of women.

When the Lowell company announced a reduction in wages of 15 percent in 1834, the workers refused to work. Since the concept of the strike was still unknown, they called their protest a gymnastics out (German, for example: going out). And while this first factual strike failed, two years later, a general rent increase led to a powerful protest that was supported by the entire population of the city of Lowell. The American writer Harriet Hanson Robinson, then eleven years old, describes the protest in her book “Early Factory Laboratory in New England” as an important women’s policy event: “A girl stood up for a pump and expressed the feelings of her companions in a precise speech. She explained that it was her duty to resist any wage shortening. It was the first time that a woman spoke publicly in Lowell – and the event triggered surprise and dismay with the audience. «

The male superiors were stunned and described the protest as “betrayal of femininity”. Nevertheless, over 1,500 workers took part in the campaign, whereupon production decreased sharply. Finally, the factory management took back the rent increase. The success of the strike encouraged the “Lowell girls” in 1845 to found the first women’s union: the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association. They demanded the ten-hour working day from the Massachusetts General Court-a concern that was treated for the first time at the state level, even if the state parliament ultimately declared itself in no time.

Pioneers of the labor movement

In 1845 the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association founded the magazine “Voice of Industry”. In it, the concerns of the US workers in the industrial age were documented, in particular the impoverishment and social descent of the future workers in the course of the industrial revolution. Here, employment contracts soon replaced the term price with wages that was previously only used for day laborers. In this way, wage workers no longer sold the product of their work, but themselves – in the form of their workforce.

For many workers – especially for women – this new dependency contradicted the American ideal of freedom and equality. In articles in the »Voice of Industry«, they made it clear that they did not counter their employers, but also considered themselves equivalent – not only their guards, but also the factory owners. The “Lowell girls” were among the first workers who recognized their absolute dependence on the capitalists: Even if wage workers are legally free, they are slavishly referred to the wages. With this finding, they had a significant influence on the awareness of the working class as well as on the women’s rights and suffragette movement.

Due to the high importance that the textile industry had for the global economy of the 19th century, the fate of the “Lowell girls” was closely linked to the general development of the means of production: For example, the workers used mechanized web chairs that were controlled by punch cards, which became an early form of programmable control that became part of computers. (Just like today’s workers are changing through the rise of artificial intelligence – but that would be a new topic.)

Archaic modern

Although a majority of the population also works for the privileges of a minority in capitalism, the idea that wage work is a more progressive, somehow better form of work organization than slavery. Wage labor initially appears as an honest exchange between the same: the workers sell their workforce to the employer and receives the equivalent of wages. In fact, workers and employers are by no means equal-one only has their workforce, the other has the means of production and a reserve of potential replacement workers. In this respect, the worker is forced to sell your work for a minimum wage.

The formal freedom of a wage worker is therefore actually limited: she can choose between the impoverishment-at the time of the “Lowell girls”, since there was no welfare state, that meant: the starvation-or the employment of another employer. From this it follows that wage workers enter into a form of voluntary slavery: they submit to the will of the employer, because only a salary check separates them from poverty and homelessness. The wages are enough for everyday life – rent, food, clothing, the bare essentials. Saving or acquiring money is hardly possible, so she has to work all her life. Since the worker cannot be separated from the worker, the employer does not only buy the work performance, but the whole person. Modern wage labor is based on exploitation; As already thousands of years ago, the work products are expropriated and benefit the owner. As long as this is the case, social conditions remain archaic.