The Reorganization of Labor Against Capital

The class movement of the future must reestablish the link between the sphere of production and the sphere of life; it must unite the labor movement with the struggles for public health, education, housing, social security, and democratic rights. To the extent that the working class can combine the power it derives from production with the demands for rights and freedoms of broad sections of society, it can transcend its status as merely an economic class and become a social and political force.

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The fundamental idea put forward by Marx and Engels is clear: Social history is also the history of the struggle between classes. In capitalist society, the two main sides of this struggle are the capitalist class, which controls the means of production, and the working class, which is forced to sell its labor power to make a living.

Marx explained the basis of capitalist exploitation through the concept of surplus value. Workers produce more value than the wages they receive; this surplus is appropriated by capital. Engels highlighted the historical necessity of the working class’s organization while exposing the harsh working and living conditions created by the Industrial Revolution. Lenin, on the other hand, viewed trade unions not merely as institutions fighting for wages and working conditions, but as arenas of struggle where workers learn to organize and develop class consciousness.

Consequently, the labor movement is not merely a demand for higher wages or better working conditions; it is also one of the tools through which the working class becomes aware of its common interests and transforms into a collective force.

From the Industrial Revolution to Neoliberal Transformation

With the Industrial Revolution, millions of people were uprooted from the land and became wage laborers in factories. Long working hours, low wages, the intensive use of women’s and children’s labor, and the lack of workplace safety were the defining characteristics of capitalism’s early period. Although workers initially responded in a scattered manner, as it became clear that individual resistance was insufficient against capital, unions and permanent workers’ organizations emerged.

The labor movement, which grew over the course of a century, along with socialist struggles and, in particular, the international impact of the October Revolution of 1917, forced the capitalist class to make significant social concessions. Rights that are taken for granted today—such as the eight-hour workday, the right to strike and collective bargaining, paid leave, social security, and retirement—were won through organized struggles spanning many years. The fundamental lesson of this historical experience is that the worker’s true power stems not from their individual position, but from their capacity for organized and collective action.

The crisis facing the capitalist world economy in the late 1970s ushered in a new era. Neoliberal policies implemented under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the United States quickly spread on a global scale. Privatizations accelerated, public enterprises were liquidated, financial markets were liberalized, and the organized power of labor was targeted.

Neoliberalism was not merely an economic program but a social and political transformation that redefined the balance of power between capital and labor in favor of capital. Beginning in the 1980s, as production became fragmented on a global scale, multinational corporations shifted their operations to low-wage countries; subcontracting, flexible employment, and precarious forms of work became widespread. Thus, while the working class grew in numbers, it became fragmented organizationally.

Digital Capitalism, Artificial Intelligence, and the New Working Class

It is not sufficient to explain today’s capitalism solely through the neoliberal transformation. Digitalization, robotic technologies, artificial intelligence, the data economy, and the growth of global technology companies are creating new areas of capital accumulation. Data, algorithms, software, and digital infrastructure have been added to the means of production of industrial capitalism.

However, technological change has not eliminated capitalism’s fundamental contradiction. Production remains a social process; technologies developed through the collective labor of millions of people and the scientific knowledge accumulated by humanity are increasingly concentrated under the ownership and control of a limited number of large corporations. Therefore, the fundamental question is who will benefit from technological progress.

Artificial intelligence and automation can eliminate a significant portion of heavy and repetitive work, thereby making it possible to shorten working hours and reduce humanity’s dependence on wage labor. However, when these same technologies are subordinated to the needs of capital accumulation, they can also result in workforce reductions, increased work intensity, and the widespread adoption of algorithmic control.

Consequently, artificial intelligence is not merely a technological issue, but also a matter of ownership, distribution, and class. The question we must ask is not merely “Which jobs will artificial intelligence eliminate?” but rather to whom the benefits of the resulting increase in productivity will belong. If the gains from technological progress go to corporate owners while the costs—in the form of unemployment and job insecurity—are borne by workers, then technological development will not equate to social progress.

This transformation is also altering the structure of the working class. Today’s working class is not composed solely of industrial workers in large factories. Logistics workers, motorcycle couriers, warehouse and call center workers, healthcare and education workers, software developers, white-collar workers, and digital platform workers constitute the various forms of wage labor today.

Although many workers in the platform economy are ostensibly defined as “independent,” a significant portion of the work process—from working hours to compensation, and from order distribution to performance evaluations—is determined by algorithms. While the boss becomes invisible, oversight does not disappear; on the contrary, it can take on a more constant nature.

People working for the same company can work in different locations without ever seeing one another. One worker may be in a factory, another at home in front of a computer, yet another on a motorcycle, and still another in a warehouse—all part of the same chain of capital accumulation. This situation does not indicate that class has disappeared, but rather that the visibility of class relations has diminished.

One of the fundamental organizational challenges of our era arises precisely here: How will millions of workers—fragmented spatially and sectorally but economically tied to the same capital relations—develop a shared class consciousness and organize themselves?

Neoliberal Transformation in Turkey: Class and Organization

The most significant turning points of the global neoliberal transformation in Turkey were the January 24, 1980 Decisions and the subsequent September 12 military coup.

The development of capitalism in Turkey followed a different trajectory than the classical processes of capitalist development in Western Europe. Despite the acceleration of industrialization, rural production relations persisted for a long time. Different Marxist traditions have sought to explain this development using various concepts such as “late capitalist development,” “dependent capitalism,” or—in reference to specific periods—“semi-feudal, semi-capitalist,” and so on. These approaches point to the unequal and composite development of capitalist relations in Turkey.

In the 1960s and 1970s, industrialization accelerated, factories expanded, and the working class grew in numbers. The deepening economic crisis of the late 1970s, however, forced Turkish capitalism into a new direction. The January 24 Decisions established the economic program for the transition from an import-substitution model to an export-oriented neoliberal accumulation model.

However, this program faced strong opposition from the labor movement and mass social resistance. For this reason, the September 12, 1980, military coup should be viewed not only as a political intervention but also as a class-based intervention that made the restructuring of the capital accumulation regime possible. Following the coup, unions were shut down, strikes were banned, and workers’ organizations—most notably DİSK—faced severe repression.

The consequences of September 12 were not limited to organizational purges. While the working class’s collective memory and culture of solidarity were weakened, individual salvation and a culture of competition were encouraged; subcontracting, privatization, and precarious forms of employment became widespread.

This process is significant in terms of the distinction between the “class-in-itself” and the “class-for-itself.” The “class-in-itself” refers to people’s objective common position within the relations of production; the “class-for-itself” refers to the class that organizes and struggles by becoming aware of these common interests.

Following 1980, with the exodus from agriculture and urbanization, millions of people became dependent on wage income. In other words, Turkish society became increasingly proletarianized. However, due to the weakening of unions, political repression, and the spread of precarious work, this quantitative growth did not translate into organizational and political power to the same extent. While the “class-in-itself” grew, the process of becoming a “class-for-itself” was interrupted.

One of the fundamental problems of the Turkish socialist movement emerges here. While theoretically recognizing the working class as the fundamental force of social transformation and speaking on behalf of the class, the movement has failed to take root within the class itself. Lenin’s approach holds that the class’s ideological and political leadership does not emerge spontaneously; it requires long-term and sustained organization within the class. Yet the left has been unable to move beyond mere words and slogans to put this into practice.

Today, this task is not limited to the gates of large factories. Organized industrial zones, warehouses, logistics centers, hospitals, schools, call centers, technology companies, motorcycle courier networks, and digital platforms are also current arenas of class struggle. The real issue is establishing lasting connections within all segments of the new working class created by contemporary capitalism.

The Revolutionary Dynamics of 1970–1980 and Strategic Assessment

A deeper analysis emerges when Turkey’s revolutionary dynamics from 1970 to 1980 and the subsequent social transformation are evaluated in light of historical conditions and socioeconomic realities. This approach can be further developed, particularly regarding the nature of the relationship established with the social base and the working class.

The Lack of a Social Base and Working Class

The driving force behind the movement in the 1970s was primarily university students and intellectual circles. It was a period when industrialization had not yet been completed, and the working class had not yet reached the maturity—in terms of both quantity and quality—to single-handedly drive social transformation. Moving to mass actions without fully securing “broad mass support and class consciousness”—one of the most fundamental principles of revolutionary theory—weakened the movement’s social base. The failure to establish organic ties with rural and urban working-class masses isolated the movement in the face of the state and the ruling powers.

The Struggle Experience of the Turkish Labor Movement

The history of the Turkish working class is a history not only of economic demands but also of struggles for democracy and political freedoms. While the 1961 Saraçhane Rally and the Kavel Resistance marked significant early manifestations of the modern labor movement, the founding of DİSK in 1967 constituted a major turning point in terms of class-based unionism.

The Great Workers’ Resistance of June 15–16, 1970, demonstrated that the working class’s power derived from production could transcend the boundaries of the economic sphere to influence political and social life. The 1976 DGM Resistance, meanwhile, served as a key example of workers mobilizing not only for wages and working conditions but also for democratic rights and freedoms.

The March 20, 1978, “Warning to Fascism” Action was also a powerful demonstration of this political character. Following the attack on March 16, 1978, in front of Istanbul University, in which seven students lost their lives, hundreds of thousands of workers participated in a one-hour work stoppage at the call of DİSK. When the DGM Resistance and the “Warning to Fascism” protest are considered together, it becomes clear that economic rights and political freedoms cannot be separated from one another.

The growing mass participation in May Day rallies and the 1980 TARİŞ Workers’ Resistance also demonstrated the labor movement’s capacity to unite with other working-class segments of society. The fact that the September 12 coup targeted this movement so harshly was not independent of the social and political power the working class had attained.

Although the coup interrupted this rise, the class struggle did not disappear. The 1989 Spring Protests, the 1991 Zonguldak Great Miners’ March, the 2009–2010 TEKEL Resistance, and the 2015 Metal Storm once again demonstrated the working class’s capacity for collective struggle in different periods. Today, the struggles of couriers, warehouse and logistics workers, healthcare and service sector workers, and digital platform workers also provide important insights into the class movement of this new era.

It is essential to establish a connection between the experiences of the past and today’s forms of labor. The power rooted in production during the June 15–16 protests, the character of the DGM Resistance in defending political rights, the “Warning to Fascism” movement, and the connection TARİŞ forged with social struggle are not merely historical memories from today’s perspective. The fundamental lesson of these experiences is that the working class can become a genuine social force only to the extent that it unites its economic demands with the struggle for democracy, freedom, and social rights.

What Should the Union Struggle Look Like Today?

Today’s capitalism has transcended the boundaries of classical factory capitalism. Digital platforms, artificial intelligence, algorithmic control, remote work, and flexible employment are creating new forms of labor and exploitation. Consequently, the labor movement must develop new organizational tools suited to the changing structure of the working class.

Women workers, young workers, migrant workers, platform workers, white-collar workers, and service sector workers are integral parts of today’s working class. Unions should not be reduced to mere institutions that negotiate collective agreements and wage bargains; they must be democratic organizations of struggle that also play a role in education, legal support, solidarity, and class consciousness.

The union struggle must not be confined solely to the question, “How much will we be paid?” Working hours, social security, housing, transportation, health care, education, and care services directly determine workers’ living conditions and their bargaining power against capital.

Similarly, a purely defensive stance in the face of artificial intelligence and automation is insufficient. We must ask why working hours are not decreasing as productivity rises, and why the wealth produced with less labor is not being distributed throughout society. The result of technological advancement should not be mass unemployment; rather, it should be shorter working hours, greater social security, and more free time.

The labor movement must not evaluate workers solely based on their position in the workplace. A worker’s class position does not end when they leave the factory; they remain within the same social relationships when they are a tenant, use public transportation, send their child to school, go to the hospital, or retire.

For this reason, the class movement of the future must reestablish the link between the sphere of production and the sphere of life; it must unite the union struggle with the struggles for public health, education, housing, social security, and democratic rights. To the extent that the working class can combine the power it derives from production with the demands for rights and freedoms of broad segments of society, it can transcend its status as merely an economic class and become a social and political force.

Conclusion: Rebuilding the Class

The nearly two-century history of capitalism demonstrates that the working class’s fundamental gains have been achieved through struggle. Rights now considered indispensable—such as the eight-hour workday, the right to organize, collective bargaining, the right to strike, paid leave, and social security—are the products of organized struggles spanning many years.

The history of the Turkish working class is also replete with powerful examples of this. The historical trajectory stretching from Kavel to June 15–16, from the DGM Resistance to the Warning Against Fascism, from the Spring Protests to Zonguldak, and from TEKEL to the Metal Storm demonstrates that the working class can mobilize not only for economic demands but also for the country’s political and social future.

The neoliberal transformation that unfolded on a global scale after 1980 reached a new phase in Turkey with the January 24 Decisions and the September 12 military coup. As capitalist relations of production deepened, wage labor became the fundamental way of life for increasingly broader segments of society. In contrast, the organized power of the labor movement and the working class was significantly weakened.

Today, digital capitalism, artificial intelligence, automation, and the platform economy are being superimposed upon this historical transformation. The working class is not disappearing, as some would have us believe, but is changing form.

Although factory workers, motorcycle couriers, warehouse workers, software developers, hospital workers, and call center employees work under different conditions, they are all part of the same fundamental relationship: they are forced to sell their labor power to make a living.

However, in today’s capitalism, this shared class position is not shaped solely within national borders. As multinational corporations spread their production across different regions of the world, workers tied to the same capital group in different countries become parts of a single chain of production and accumulation. A company’s factory may be in one country, its supplier in another, its logistics network in yet another region, and its digital infrastructure in a different part of the world.

In particular, the relocation of production facilities by European-based monopolies to countries with lower wages—and the fact that a single company may operate production centers in numerous countries—serves as a timely reminder of the idea in the Communist Manifesto that “the proletariat has no country.” The fundamental issue here is not that workers do not belong to the countries or societies in which they live; rather, it is that in the face of capital’s international character, the class interests of workers can converge beyond national borders.

As capital organizes its production, investments, supply chains, and interests on an international scale, confining the working class’s struggle solely within national borders is becoming increasingly inadequate. When a workers’ resistance that begins in one country within the same corporation is embraced by workers in other countries, it will also limit capital’s ability to pit workers against one another across borders.

When a strike in one country is supported by workers in another, and when workers in different branches of the same company develop common demands, share information and experience, and—when necessary—organize simultaneous solidarity actions, international proletarian solidarity can be transformed from an abstract principle into a concrete tool of struggle.

For this reason, international workers’ solidarity cannot be viewed as a historical slogan belonging to the past. On the contrary, in today’s capitalism—where global production chains, multinational corporations, and international capital movements have become decisive factors—it is a more urgent and essential need than ever.

If capital can transcend borders, then workers’ solidarity must also transcend borders.

The fundamental problem of our era is how to transform the objective commonality of millions of workers—whether divided into different forms of labor within the same country or scattered across different countries of the world—into an organized class consciousness.

Consequently, the task of the labor movement and socialist politics is not merely to declare the working class, in theoretical terms, the vanguard of social transformation. The real issue is to create lasting organizations in all areas where the class lives and works; to forge links between the traditional industrial proletariat and new forms of labor; to bring together factory workers and motorcycle couriers, warehouse workers and software developers, and local workers and migrant workers around common demands; to establish channels of international solidarity among workers in different countries who are part of the same chain of capital; to integrate the economic struggle with social rights, democratic freedoms, and social demands; and to advocate for the use of the social wealth generated by technological development for the benefit of all of society.

For class consciousness is not an identity imposed from the outside, but a historical consciousness forged through shared struggle.

The true power of the working class stems not only from its numerical size but also from its capacity to produce, its ability to organize, and its capacity to transform its fragmented interests into a common social will. Today, this is further augmented by the ability to link the struggles of workers in different countries in the face of the international organization of capital.

Therefore, the fundamental question we must ask today is not whether the working class exists. The real question is this:

How will the 21st-century working class—fragmented, precarious, digitized, and interconnected within global production chains—reorganize itself into a force that is organized, conscious, capable of international solidarity, and committed to social transformation by combining the historical memory of past struggles with today’s new conditions?

This is precisely where the future of class and union struggles hinges.

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