Review of Workers Inquiry Network (2020). Struggle in a Pandemic: A Collection of Contributions on the COVID-19 Crisis
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Review of Workers Inquiry Network (2020). Struggle in a Pandemic: A Collection of Contributions on the COVID-19 Crisis London: Workers Inquiry Network. 128 pp. ISSN 2631–9284 (E-Book) Mark Smith 1 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Keywords Covid-19 . Pandemic . Struggle . Workers . Collective . Marx . Capitalism
A Tool of Struggle The Struggle in a Pandemic collection from the Workers Inquiry Network (2020) considers the Covid-19 pandemic through the lens of the Marxist struggle for workers’ rights. It is an enlightening and sometimes conflicted mixture from eight authors— collective writing that strives to make sense of the global crisis. At times it is polemical, ensconced in the history of conflict between capital and workers. At other times, it is close to heart-rending as it includes testaments from the oppressed. It suggests that a new post-capitalist future may be achieved through workers’ self-organisation and provides a historical context for this. However, it also warns of how post-pandemic capitalism will ensure its recovery via increased oppression of the worker, regardless of the colour of their collar. The collection conflates the past, present and future. It suggests that activism may triumph whilst offering up a bleaker picture of the postpandemic world. At times it reveals an ethnographic intent to see the world through the eyes of the oppressed. At others it may turn towards a well-trodden rhetoric. Above all else, it provides a wealth of data from six countries (Belgium, Brazil, France, Italy, UK, USA) that provides a neatly balanced overview of how the pandemic may have impacted on the struggle for workers’ rights and how self-organisation may yet provide the means for triumph against the pervasive control mechanisms of global capitalism. In the introduction, the editors’ suggestion that workers’ inquiry ‘can be developed as a tool of struggle’ (Workers Inquiry Network 2020: 1) springs from Karl Marx’s A Workers’ Inquiry (1880). This recognises that ‘statements of labor’s grievances are the
* Mark Smith [email protected]
1
Solent University, Southampton, UK
Postdigital Science and Education
first act which socialist democracy must perform in order to prepare the way for social regeneration’ (1). In comparison with Marx’s collection of data from the French proletariat by the use of questionnaires, Invisíveis Goiânia (a small collective of activists) recorded the plight of Brazilian call centre operators. As Covid-19 cases increased, workers reported that colleagues ‘are being fired and disappearing from their workstations’ (70). This ethnographic tendency in the workers’ inquiry used a variety of reporting mechanisms, including text messaging. Some of the data is highly emotive and at times distressing: ‘We are taking risks and this text is a cry for help’ (77). Yet a note of hopeful praxis permeates this account. ‘The courage of these workers was an inspiration to us and - we hope - may be an inspiration to others as well’ (70). Far more distanced is Sergio Bologna’s fascinati
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