Slave Cubela: The working class has been left speechless

Fights for work are increasing again. Neoliberal and conservative voices demand that people work more and longer. Leftists and trade unions are calling for less drudgery and more pay. IG Metall has presented a demand for a four-day week, and the GDL train drivers’ union has partially implemented it. One might think that the class struggle is back – not from above, but from below.

It is not that simple. In contrast to previous eras of labor disputes, for decades there have been hardly any words for the suffering caused by exploitation and forced work. The term class struggle itself has become an empty phrase. This speechlessness is also the reason for the new book “Word grabbing, word freezing and word loss” by the trade unionist and journalist Slave Cubela, who follows this development in the workers’ movement and describes his approach as traumatological Marxism. Although he adheres to Marx’s categories, his gaze not only follows the objective structures of society, but primarily the “traces of injury, pain and suffering” of the working and production conditions.

Workers take the floor

For this reconstruction, Cubela divides the workers’ movement into three phases: the era of the seizure of words in the 19th century, the ossification of words in the 20th and the era of the loss of words in the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century. In the first phase of taking up the word, the concept of class was still an expression of the workers’ concrete experiences of suffering in the production process. Through the collectivization and verbalization of suffering in shared spaces such as factories and bars, a shared awareness of one’s own social and economic situation under capitalism emerged. “The term was used to translate everyday solidarity,” emphasizes Cubela in an interview with “nd” about his new book.

The suffering became an experience to be endured and the utopia of the end of the work became increasingly exhausted.

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From the height of the socialist workers’ movement, which was characterized by the hope of overcoming capitalism, Cubela describes an ambivalent development: from the 20th century onwards, a progressive mindset found its way into the organizations of the workers’ movement. They become scientific believers and productivists. Not the end of the work, but rather its affirmation became the leitmotif. “The belief was: We have to go through the phases of capitalism and then the liberated world is waiting for us,” says Cubela, summing up the development. As a result, suffering became an experience to be endured, and their revolutionary potential, the utopia of the end of work, was increasingly exhausted.

The terms of the workers’ movement became institutionalized and solidified. The concept of class changed from a living expression of the everyday realities of workers to a rigid framework that was repeated like a mantra in empty formulas – not only in the social democracy, but also in the communist parties and in the Soviet Union. There were always attempts to speak out from below, the wildcat strikes that were directed against work. “But at the upper level they were channeled.” Discipline and unity of the working class became the dogmas of the increasingly successful organizations.

Integration into the power structure

The rise of fascism and National Socialism also occurred during this era of rigidity of words. Not only that the socialist belief in progress was shattered by National Socialist barbarism, the war of annihilation and the Shoah. In practice it also became clear that the organizations of the workers’ movement were no longer as firmly anchored in the everyday world as their success in power politics suggested. During fascism and National Socialism, the leading figures of the workers were persecuted, the resistance was brutally crushed and the workers were ultimately integrated into the political structure of power – particularly successful ideologically and practically in Germany, with lasting effects beyond the Nazi era.

Nevertheless, it remained in niches, the wild protest against the suffering experienced at work. However, the gap between experience and rigid concepts grew ever wider in the second third of the 20th century. This was due to the post-war boom. “It was a dead end; for the first time, European workers were about to gain prosperity,” emphasizes Cubela. This was bought through productivist consumerism. “There is a tragedy in this,” because there was little prospect of any other path. Only for a short time did the protest movements in the early 1970s and the sometimes wildcat strikes by migrant workers seem to show a way out of the impasse. “There was a movement for words, but it collapsed due to the rigid structures of the labor movement,” explains Cubela.

And this era also came to an end with another epochal upheaval in capitalism: neoliberalism transformed the production facilities. They became fluid factories: authoritarian, flexible, with new digitalities, dynamic processes and working relationships. Proletarian everyday cultures in residential areas and bars died out. The wave of work suffering that is now beginning is different from those previously experienced, notes Cubela. It is internalized and resistance to external constraints becomes increasingly ineffective. The result: loss of words. Because what else was left for the workers to articulate their experience of suffering?

New expression for the class struggle

But the increasing speechlessness does not mean that the suffering has disappeared. But the constellation is complex: the individualization of suffering and the separation between the different factions of the working class are well advanced. There are the relatively well-secured core workforces in the capitalist centers. Then there are precariously employed workers who are hoping for advancement. And finally, those left behind eke out an existence with no prospect of improvement or security. They are migrant workers, many illegalized, who work in highly irregular conditions.

“They try to make sense of what they find and use the language they have,” says Cubela. The fact that it is increasingly one of religion and not solidarity is also due to the fact that the workers’ movement has become speechless. The renaissance of the concept of class that can currently be observed, on the other hand, is a timid attempt to recapture increasing social inequality. However, it is only suitable for translation if it expresses the workers’ real experiences of suffering that cannot simply be summarized under abstract categories.

Suffering and its disguised manifestations must be carefully decoded. If this doesn’t happen, the taking of the word will fail. This is evident in the current revival of orthodox Marxism: the subordination of the world of life to dogmatic categories and the authoritarian crackdown, as linked to Leninism, seem seductive. Because quick solutions are needed and impatience is great. But Cubela is convinced that the empty phrases of orthodoxy only repeat the separation between everyday life and rigid concepts.

So how do workers today formulate their everyday experiences? The book’s appeal is that the answer could give rise to new possibilities for using words. This is a perspective from below that looks at the stubbornness of wage earners and can counteract a left that seems to have forgotten how the work process shapes people and their experiences. Such a perspective could make the class struggle from below visible in the current conflicts over work. Or would that just be a disguised expression of the suffering experienced at work? A question that Cubela’s book cannot answer conclusively, but it can nevertheless be asked anew.

Slave Cubela: seizing words, freezing words, losing words. Industrial suffering and the history of the modern working classes. Westphalian steamboat 2023, 424 p., br., 48 €.