The wage inequality of 1870 was less than the wage inequality of today, 2014. The gap between the capitalists and the poor proletarians is much wider and getting wider each year and eventually will spawn a proletarian worldwide revolution unless the gap closes. This isn’t the first time a revolution was waged to end the tyranny of the rich.
Wages must be raised from subsistence to a living wage with some disposal income. There was a proletarian revolution about to happen in the 1800s, between 1867 to 1870 in England, western Europe and North America, but was averted by real wages being paid; however, there were some small declines in wages from time to time.
Then we had the rise of the so-called third world countries, which some of these countries had just gotten their independence from European colonialism and with this the inequality began to spread because the third world countries were draining jobs from the rich countries so the 1 percent could keep even more of the money made off the backs of workers. The third world countries were exploiting workers and using cheap labor to lure the greedy corporations to their countries, thus setting the stage for wage inequality once again.
In rich countries, with the threat of a proletarian revolution, which Karl Marx claimed would happen, our capitalist society dodged a bullet in the 18th and 19th centuries, but will we dodge the bullet in the 21st century? I think we will if we start raising the wage to a minimum of $15 to $16 an hour. Then get good immigration reform and some good laws with teeth in them for our unions to organize workers, but it's up to the oligarchies to make their country a priority.
There are three phases of a general strike and unions must plan for one. Those three phases are: 1. general strike in an industry 2. general strike in a community 3. general national strike We need to move away from being on the defensive and move toward a good offensive. The American Federal of Labor (AFL) could not have held a general strike if it wanted to because they had thousands of different contracts that expired at different times of the year. This was done deliberately so that there is no consolidation of power for a general strike. Also, nowadays, there is no law agency that will support labor, except the National Labor Relations Board (NLBR), which has been under attack and in decline for years. This leaves the burden of change up to unions, and unless unions work together, little will change. We essentially have a combination of job trusts, which are not as strong as contracts, and the courts can break easily because the NLBR will be further weakened and essentially elim...
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