ABSTRACT
Historically, the development of capitalism has provided the preconditions for the collective organization of workers, as the structures of labor organizations have by necessity evolved to meet the capitalist challenge. Thus the global evolution of the capital-labor relation has a profound influence on the nature of the class struggle. Capitalist competition has continuously pitted worker against worker, attempting to drive wages, conditions of work, and the quality of life to the lowest possible level—first locally, then regionally, nationally, and internationally. In combating the extraction of absolute and relative surplus value, workers have often conducted economic and, in many cases, political struggle to regulate and improve the terms and conditions under which they are obliged to dispose of their labor power. What is significant is that by transcending capitalist competition for labor power, the expression of trade union unity limits the ability of capital to minimize the value of labor power, which, in concrete and historical terms, counters capital’s demand for increased control and domination of the labor process. This is particularly true in the present era. “Workers of the world, unite” ipso facto is becoming increasingly relevant and applicable as capital transcends the boundaries of nation-states. The transnationalization of capitalist relations—that is, the emergence of a global tendency to real subsumption of labor under capital (production of relative surplus value)—brings the common interests of workers in different countries into sharper focus. Workers are commonly affected by the global integration of labor processes; this elevates the objective conditions for labor solidarity to an international level. On an international basis, workers are integrated into a new relationship. If workers can confront transnational capital with their own international organizations, they can begin to mitigate the deleterious effects of capital’s worldwide mobility. At the stage of transnationalization (i.e., the global integration of social capital), labor organizations must play a central role to enhance the capacity of the working class worldwide in order to transform capitalist social relations.
