[GM-76] The Labor Movement in North America

The report begins with a description of the forms of labor found in the British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America. It was noted that, in order to spread and take root in those virtually untouched lands, capital had to rely heavily on forms of forced labor, from which it drew the energy needed to set its cycles of accumulation in motion.

Indentured servitude was very common; under this arrangement, an individual who set sail for the New World bound himself to serve a master for a certain number of years—usually seven—with the obligation to work without pay and the prohibition against leaving his post; the master, for his part, was required to pay for the transatlantic crossing, provide room and board for the indentured servant, and pay a severance allowance at the end of the seven years. The relatively short duration of the contract and the ease with which a servant, once his service was completed, could become an independent farmer and owner of his own land—given the vast amount of available land—greatly encouraged emigration to the New World.

In the southern colonies, the development of the large-scale plantation system necessitated the use of an increasing number of laborers, so that alongside white indentured servants, African slaves—forcibly imported from Africa and deprived of their personal freedom for life, along with that of their children—were introduced on an ever-larger scale.

The report went on to focus on the process by which, with the emergence and development of the first major urban centers in the North, the number of free workers possessing artisanal skills grew—workers who would later form the core of the American working class.

In the years following independence, markets expanded and the manufacturing industry grew alongside them; this shift toward larger-scale production, which led to an increase in the size of the working class, spurred the emergence of the very first economic defense organizations composed solely of wage earners. These associations were organized along strict craft-union lines and were composed of highly skilled workers with considerable craftsmanship. Before long, every trade had its own association, which later began to form federations at the city level.

In 1834, a national federation was even established: the National Trades Union, which, however, was short-lived and dissolved three years later as a result of the commercial crisis of 1837.

This period was marked by strikes, boldly led by these unions and often escalating into open violence due to the bourgeoisie’s resolute ban on any form of workers’ union organization—a ban enshrined in common law, which criminalized “conspiracy to restrict the freedom of trade”.

This ban began to be relaxed only in 1842, when pressure from the Unions made it impractical for the bourgeoisie to maintain a regime based on the outright prohibition of workers’ associations, ushering in a period marked by the formal recognition of their legitimacy—though, of course, efforts to obstruct them continued in countless other ways.

The report concluded with a brief overview of the economic and social factors that led to the outbreak of the Civil War.

It was emphasized how the plantation system, by perpetuating the institution of slavery, hindered the full development of capitalism, and how the situation in the South of the country revealed the inadequacy of the achievements and gains of the American Revolution, as British imperialist capitalism’s interference and its policy of plundering—drawing from the U.S. economy, which was still colonial in nature— raw materials that fueled its industry, primarily the cotton industry, was still active. In this situation, the struggle against slavery meant nothing less than a struggle against British imperialist influence, the culmination and conclusion of the long and arduous national-bourgeois revolutionary process on the new continent.

The Northern planters would have benefited from the abolition of slavery even in terms of the relationship between capital and labor, as this event played a decisive role in the formation of a vast and stable industrial reserve army—a prerequisite for launching an ever-expanding accumulation of capital and outcompeting Europe (where, let us not forget, wages were significantly lower than in America before the Civil War).

Although not driven by humanitarianism toward Black people but by the ruthless laws of capitalism, the emancipation of slaves was objectively a progressive development for the future of international socialism, as it served as a catalyst for the development of American capitalism and the formation of a modern, concentrated proletariat in the New World—developments that were fraught with economic, political, and social consequences on a global scale.