It’s Working

One of several mass movements which have shaped the modern world is that of organized workers, usually campaigning for more pay and better working conditions. A key moment in this struggle occurred in 1848 with the publication of a document written by two German Jews, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It was called The Communist Manifesto and called for a worldwide revolution by all workers to overthrow the system which made them victims of their employers. It concluded with this stirring exhortation: “Workers of the Word unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!”

In the nearly two centuries since that proclamation, workers have indeed united in many places and many ways. In its early years this movement acquired an image of violence and extremism. On its outer fringes there were groups known as Anarchists, who wanted to get rid of government altogether. To that end, leading political figures were assassinated. Even in the United States, a President, William McKinley, was killed by one of those fanatics.

But in the course of time, organized workers – acting peacefully together and sometimes implementing their most powerful weapon, that of simply stopping work (or as it came to be called, going on strike) – became a force to be reckoned with, and, ultimately, to be respected. Labor evolved into a new political force.

In Britain, the Labor Party (or Labour as they spell it), have several times, by democratic processes, actually taken control of the Government.

In the U.S., the labor movement initially established itself in the Pacific Northwest among the lumberjacks who formed their own union. They called it the Industrial Workers of the World, commonly abbreviated to the IWW and nicknamed “The Wobblies.” Their leader was an immigrant from Sweden who anglicized his Swedish name to Joe Hill. His talents included creative writing, and particularly writing songs. One of his songs satirized a Christian hymn which, in its original form, promised a glorious afterlife with the words 

“In the sweet by and by
We shall meet on that beautiful shore.”

Joe Hill’s version, which became extremely popular, included these words:

“You will eat by and by
In that glorious land above the sky –
Work and pray, live on hay –
You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.”

Fortunately – or unfortunately for the Labor movement (depending on your point of view) – Joe Hill’s life came to a climax when he became a cause célèbre in, of all places, the Mormon capital of Salt Lake City, Utah. He was accused of a 1914 shooting in which two people died. He did not put up a spirited defense, appearing almost to desire martyrdom on behalf of his great Cause. Others tried to save him – but the outcome was his execution in 1915.

After his death, he did indeed become an enduring hero of the Labor movement, as exemplified by one song which appeared in 1936:

“I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night, alive as you and me –
‘Why Joe,’ says I, ‘You’re ten years dead’ –
‘I never died,’ says he.”

But we must not forget that the U.S. movement was a relative latecomer to the world scene. The long-awaited Revolution, when it came, did not happen, as expected, in one of the advanced societies of Western Europe, but in what was considered the most backward modern country – Czarist Russia. The result, as you may know, was the establishment, just a century ago, of a huge political entity which called itself a “Workers’ Republic,” and became known as the Soviet Union. Its red flag bore the Labor symbol of the “Hammer and Sickle.” The Hammer represented industrial workers. The Sickle was for those who worked in agriculture. Its first heroic leader was a man named Lenin – but it ultimately came under the brutal control of Stalin, who imposed a campaign of modernization, at enormous human cost, but somehow managed to bring that nation victoriously through the merciless Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union during the Second World War. 

Since then, what we used to call “work” has, very broadly speaking, largely become a matter of typing into keyboards and reading on screens, all governed by processes called Automation and Artificial Intelligence. But we still have an annual holiday called Labor Day, which is celebrated by having fewer people performing their customary labor on that day. And the first day of May is observed in many countries as May Day or International Workers’ Day.

For others, there is always a choice – they can choose to do their work willingly or unwillingly.