Proletariat

Through most of the 20th century, radical social theory imagined that capitalist society will simplify class relations as it matured.

On the one hand, the owners of capital would constitute a distinct bourgeoisie with a homogenous interest in remolding the world, consolidating their dominance and drawing ever larger profits from the oppressed. On the other hand, a universal proletariat, that army of workers providing the labor power that makes capital produce value, would evolve a distinct standpoint and a common interest in recreating society minus the oppression of capitalist relations.

A class war, independent of national boundaries, was inevitable. Capitalism was doomed to crumble under the weight of its own oppressive logic. The international proletariat will triumph in the end.

That was the theory — the foundation on which so many socialist political movements were built. There was a certain predetermination in that theory, a robust sense of inevitability that provided revolutionary movements their limitless optimism.

Actuality, however, evaded theory. Modern market economies did not simplify, did not evolve into only two conflicting classes, the first bearing the oppression of past stages of evolution and the second bearing the promise of a truly humane social order. Instead, social structures became more complex, social classes mutated and the class struggle increasingly subordinated by the politics of identity.

The pattern of development of each national economy followed no universal rule. There were no standard of social evolution, no uniform stages of growth. The grounds for social revolution evaporated in a cacophony of voices, each with its own drummer. The revolutionary utopia — an industrialized, state-managed economy driven by a disciplined proletariat — simply dissipated with the rise of the information society, the economics of critical consumers and overpowering dynamic of financial intermediation.

The old robber barons were rendered extinct by independent innovators, those who made billions from computers designed in garages and software that paved the way for social interaction independent of class, color and nation. The old bourgeoisie was overthrown by college dropouts wielding personal communications devices. The state-planned economies (paragons of socialist experimentation) actually collapsed. They have reluctantly returned to the recognition that consumers must be kings.

Socialism simply cannot deal with the shopping mall. Centrally-planned economies cannot deal with the smartphone and i-retailing. Marxism cannot compete with Facebook in animating contemporary democratic revolutions.

Still, on this day each year, trade unions who continue to believe all wage-workers share a homogenous interest gather for marches and assemblies to celebrate a dead idea: a universal proletariat bearing the seeds of a new civilizational order. They gather, as well, to try scoring on another quaint and probably irrelevant proposition: that wages ought to be politically negotiated by a working class empowered by unions.

That proposition is probably most anachronistic in an economy like ours. Our manufacturing sector barely exists. The service sector constitutes the bulk of economic activity. Consumption leads our growth, fueled by hefty remittances from our expatriate workers.

The unregulated informal economy employs over half our workers. Small enterprises, existing beyond the pale of labor regulation employ the bulk of our wage-workers. Agricultural wage labor is seasonal. The number of self-employed people imaginably dwarfs the number of workers in large and medium manufacturing enterprises. Eventually, less than three percent of our working class is unionized.

Even as the whole idea of unionization is subject to debate, the most militant unions claim to speak for everybody else. They step in place of the larger number of self-employed to negotiate wages. They demand exorbitant increases in the minimum wage even if doing so will result in dis-employment for the majority of working people in the service sector, the microenterprises and in the informal sector.

Once upon a time, unions were a power in our society, providing a highly organized base for radical social movements. That was during the time our economy was sheltered behind high protectionist walls, immune to competitiveness and antagonistic to trade. When unions won higher wages, the cost was simply passed on to consumers who were denied any choice by protectionist policies. Filipino consumers suffered in this arrangement, paying more for goods of inferior quality.

When freer trade became inevitable, we had to adapt to the standards of cost and quality that apply everywhere else. Our own labor force had to meet standards of productivity prevailing in neighboring economies. It was then that the distortions of the age of economic nationalism began to take their toll.

In comparison with our neighbors, our labor is overpriced. The cost factors — land, fuel, transport and food —- are higher than those in nearby countries. The disparities caused the migration of jobs from our economy, beginning from our highly unionized garments sector.

Under the unavoidable conditions of open trade and global competition, we can no longer raise wages beyond accepted standards of productivity. If we ignore them, we will only be creating unemployment and ballooning poverty. If we wanted jobs, we need to innovate. If we want to improve purchasing power of our workers, we need to be more efficient.

It is no longer the proper role of government to set wages, imagining our microeconomics operates in a vacuum. The role of government is to make strategic investments in infrastructure that will bring down the costs of other factors of production so that workers may benefit from more competitive pricing. Global benchmarks for efficient wealth-creation ought to guide strategic state investments.

The old narrative about Mayday, designating it as an occasion for the unions and government to politically negotiate compensation, has simply become anachronistic in this brave new world. It is time to move out of that old narrative.