Here is the basic insight Karl Marx developed. He said that in capitalism what we've heard about how
it works to make technology progress (which it does) and what we've heard about how it produces
wondrous amounts of goods and services (which it does) has to be put alongside of the fact that
also in the core of capitalism is a fundamental conflict. That the people brought together,
the employer on the one hand and the employees, on the other are locked into a relationship
that is fundamentally conflictual. That in the core of this system is a relentless, endless,
class struggle. And it pits the employer against the employee. This is not an argument that
conflict is the only part of this relationship, but it is an argument that it is a core part of
the relationship. And if you want to understand capitalism, if you want to make society better,
you must pay attention to that core conflict because of its importance
and of all of its consequences. You want to make the system work better? You've got to deal
with that. You cannot pretend it isn't there, otherwise you're like the person who pretends
that there's no difference between how we treat male and female genders in this society, or no
difference in how we treat well-off people and poor people, or white people and not white people,
etc. We've learned in our society (I hope) that these are important differences and conflicts
that have to be come to terms with. Well, so is the one between the employer and the employee.
And no one has studied those conflicts more than Marx and the tradition he initiates.
And you can see it once you're aware. You can see because there are visible signs of class struggle
all the time. As I'm speaking to you 5,000 workers in Alabama are figuring out whether they're
going to have a union at the Amazon warehouse because the employer has treated them awfully,
and they're not happy about it, and they want to fight against it, and they may or they may not--
But that's class struggle, friends. Then there's the supreme court ruling in Britain [in February
2021] in which decided that the so-called gig workers (you know, the Uber, the Lyft driver)
they are entitled to the same protections that workers who get a regular wage are. They can't be
denied those protections by renaming them as a "gig worker" as opposed to a regular employee.
So they're going to have to get minimum wage, and they're going to have to get paid holidays,
something we don't have in the United States but that class struggle in England won that. Look,
the class struggle is present in the bitterness of millions of Texans watching their senator
galvanizing off into the sunset of Mexico and then telling lots of lies about it.
Everywhere workers know, employees know, the many ways in which the employer is trying to make more
money, more profits at their expense. And how they have to fight it and struggle against it.
Then there are the invisible ways the class struggle works its way out. Think of yourself
and the people you know who worry about losing their job, worry about losing their income,
struggling (even if they can't put it into words) with the fact that they're caught up
in a relationship where whatever the work is that they do there's somebody (an employer)
in a position to take the job away, to take the income away, to make it impossible to make your
home payment and keep your home, to keep your kids in the school. How did that power get vested in
somebody who you barely know? And who may do that because he sells the business to somebody else,
because he moves, because he doesn't like you. Who knows? These are issues of class struggle
that float up into your consciousness and shape your life. Then it's on the other side too.
You know lots of employers they kind of have to live with the class struggle too.
They don't trust their workers, do they? That's why there's a camera in the bathroom.
They want to monitor how long you're in there. They want to check what you're doing. They're
worried that you're taking the stapler home at the end of the day. They're worried-- You get the
picture? The class struggle is everywhere. Marx is the theoretician who explains it.
But to pretend that it isn't there, to pretend that we don't have to study it,
and to pretend we have no use for the single most developed analysis of it, that's childish.