When Injustice Becomes Law: Towards a Theory of Just Class War

“We’re not starting a class war, we’re ending one.”
— Popular union placard

For thousands of years, elites have subscribed to Just War theory, looking to justify their violence at the institutional level on moral grounds, while at the same moment delegitimising the resistance of subject classes. The doctrine of Jus ad bellum (“right to war”), for example, holds that war is permissible—e.g. if done for a just cause, is comparatively just, waged by a competent authority, is undertaken as a measure of last resort, and is proportionate to the perceived wrong. Just War theory also considers issues of right conduct during war, the doctrine of Jus in bello (Guthrie & Quinlan 2007). The latter provide the fundamental rationale for the Geneva Conventions.

We know from the thousands of years of human warfare that warmongering elites have rarely adhered to any of the abovementioned tenets, seeming to prefer the pretence of ethical concerns as a way of legitimating their preparations for the manner in which history tells us they conduct war in fact. When the time comes, scaremongering over alleged threats to National Security and Our Way of Life disables rational thought such that ethnical niceties might not get in the way; the construction in this manner of a demonised Other constitutes to all intents and purposes the proverbial oldest trick in the political playbook.

Ethnical niceties then no more figure in war between nations, conspicuous in the last few decades especially in its imperialist aggression, than they do in social and class warfare. As with imperialist aggression, elite aggressors in social and class warfare apply a social variant of Just War theory to suit themselves—blaming their victims for being in the way of their greed and lust for power in the process and constructing a demonised Other for the purposes of stoking the kind of hatred and fear that, in the case of war between nations, can be mobilised in support of state-driven violence and terror. On precisely the same basis they seek legitimacy for class-based violence and terror at the societal level; ask anyone who has ever participated in strike action.

If doing so represents a corruption of their own theoretical foundations for Just War, then, perhaps this also begs the question as to whether or not Just War theory might be reframed in support of class-based resistance. With the right to strike as its lynchpin and the general strike as its ultimate object, perhaps a theory of Just Class War might be applied in similar manner to the rationales for anti-imperialist and national liberation struggles.

Before we come to this question in earnest, however, let us backtrack a little.

Class war scare narratives

As preeminent representatives of the current ruling transnational oligarchy, the Murdoch media empire and its loyal enablers in politics display a remarkable penchant for accusing their enemies of fermenting class warfare whenever they pursue policies they happen not to like. To arouse their ire on this count, one is only required to fail to worship neoliberal ideology with the requisite level of awe, or to cast doubt on the right of defenders of class privilege to habitually conflate said privilege with freedom and human rights.

The guiding pretence of this mentality and the ideological narratives associated with it that is that the rich and powerful are innocent of fermenting class warfare, though as billionaire Warren Buffet is quoted by the New York Times as saying, ‘There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning’ (Stein 2006). Buffett’s comments have been in circulation for over a decade, but the ideological purposes informing class war scaremongering relegate them to the memory hole as a matter of reflexive habit, being not of service to class warfare where beneficial to elites.

Recent samples from the news media illustrate the panicked tone of such scare narratives. Prior to the last federal election, The Australian alleged, ‘Shorten divides to conquer in class-warfare attacks’ (Benson 2019) and the AFR that ‘Labor’s Bill Shorten ramps up class warfare with attacks on BHP, business’ (Kehoe & Marin-Guzman, 2019). Following the election, former PM John Howard declared that ‘Shorten’s class war and climate change cost Labor’ (SBS News, 2019), while The West Australian chimed in with ‘Bill Shorten learns Australians won’t cop class warfare’ (Parker 2019). Numerous other examples abound.

The double standards attending the scare narratives around class warfare from the corporate media and their parliamentary enablers have long been shameless and brazen enough to have become the basis for a common refrain, ‘you only call it class warfare when we fight back.’ This became the subject of a parliamentary speech from Senator Scott Ludlam in 2017 following similar attacks on the insufficiently obsequious Greens (Ludlam 2017).

If class warfare is only a problem when the targets resist, and thus when class warfare fails to benefit the right people, then surely this fact begs the question as to the ethical grounds on which defenders of class privilege perpetrate the myth that class warfare in defence of privilege is just, while defence of rights and advancement of interests in the face of class war is unjust? Asking this question in particular is arguably crucial to addressing the problem of elite-driven class warfare writ large; if nothing else, as long as the myth that class warfare in defence of privilege is just prevails as a result of scare narratives, the defenders of class privilege maintain the initiative. To recognise the existence of class war is necessary to recognise that lacking or gaining the initiative within it is even an issue.

If the greater part of the purpose of scare narratives over class warfare is to ensure that particularly thorny questions about class privilege and the consequences of its existence for the rest of society are not asked, then the primary value in asking them, and questioning the logic of scare narratives whether articulated in terms of class warfare or anything else, lies in the possibility of recapturing this initiative. In so doing, we might even reclaim a stronger sense of the justice of our own cause in resisting class war at all—much less to say ending it.

Changing the rules, and breaking them

The justice of those who perpetrate class war in defence a status quo constructed on a bedrock of class privilege is that of James Madison, the principal author of the US Constitution, who during the Constitutional Convention of 1776 argued that the proper function of government should be to ‘defend the minority of the opulent from the majority’ (Madison 2002). If this is the true function of governments, then the Golden Rule of politics must be then that ‘those with the gold, make the rules.’

The Golden Rule that ‘those with the gold, make the rules’ demands the imposition by Madison’s ‘minority of the opulent’ of an overarching, hegemonic morality, one that equates that Golden Rule with universal morality almost as readily as it equates its own class privileges with the principle of freedom per se. One consequence of this appears to be that the Minority of the Opulent feel themselves entitled and emboldened to indulge howls of righteous indignation whenever they feel their class privileges to be imperilled by the doubt, independent thought or rights and freedoms of subordinate classes.

On this count, their terror is palpable, going some considerable way to accounting for their penchant for victim-playing, which the Opulent Minority perpetrate by purposefully confusing being criticised and being attacked. Reflecting a general intolerance for the possibility that they might become the object of legitimate criticism as a result of actual wrongdoing, the ‘with us or against us’ creed of tyrants enables Those With the Gold to dodge reflection on the consequences of their own actions, while ‘projecting’ the inadmissible shame of their injustice and tyranny onto their critics, typically now demonised as the archetypal Other.

A good recent example turned up in the reaction from the Opulent Minority to the ACTU ‘Change the Rules’ campaign—or more specifically, to comments from ACTU Secretary Sally McManus on the ABC to the effect that, ‘I believe in the rule of law where the law is fair, when the law is right. But when it’s unjust, I don’t think there’s a problem with breaking it’ (Cahill 2019). In addition to the usual suspects in the Murdoch press, McManus came under fire from then-opposition leader Bill Shorten, who adopted an incredulous stance: “If you don’t like a law, if you think a law is unjust, use the democratic process to get it changed,” he argued—adding that the ‘great thing about living in a country like Australia’ was that ‘we believe in changing bad laws, not breaking them,’ and that ‘that’s what democracy is about’ (Bourke 2017).

History has a bizarre sense of irony; as subsequent events were to prove, believing in changing bad laws, not breaking them didn’t count for much ultimately if those who believed in not keeping bad laws were willing and able to sabotage dispassionate policy debate with scaremongering over Islamic terrorists, porous borders—or, in the case of the most recent election, death taxes (Murphy, Knaus & Evershed 2019). The successful exploitation of moral panic during the election cycle—what Scott Morrison cynically called ‘a miracle’—happens now with monotonous predictability (Debney 2017). If class war scare narratives are a weapon of class war, and death tax scare narratives are identical in tone and dynamics to class war scare narratives, then one hardly needs to be a rocket scientist to draw the appropriate conclusions.  

If this is the case, it would seem then that a conspicuous naiveté now envelops the theory that Those With the Gold will permit their class privilege to be legislated against, one mirrored by an equally conspicuous complacency towards the power of moral panics to unduly influence elections and engineer consent (cf. Herman & Chomsky, ‘the manufacture of consent’). Sadly enough for Shorten, his apparent desire to contain union militancy in the name of avoiding the ‘class war’ label deprived him of his best line of defence against the class aggressor. Having abandoning workers solidarity for politics, Shorten seemed to have forgotten which side his bread was buttered on, and in being unable or unwilling to recognise the scare narrative for the act of class warfare that it was, and, laid the basis for his own defeat at the hands of a similar line of scaremongering over death taxes. He who lives by the sword dies by it.

Further to the point, and as Cahill (2019) notes in his commentary on the McManus episode, Shorten’s claims regarding ‘the democratic process’ and ‘the great thing about living in a country like Australia’ are undermined by the particularly inconvenient reality that the current raft of anti-strike and anti-worker laws are as much the child of the ALP governments of the 1990s as they are of Tories. If the ALP leadership are unable to acknowledge their own role in creating the problem, what reason at all is there to suppose that the nest one might be willing or able to ‘change bad laws, not break them’? Perhaps the lack of clear answers in this respect helps to explain how the ALP managed to lose the 2019 federal election.

Some of the more notable gains made by Australian workers bear out this point. The 8-hour day victory in 1856, not the least of which, was won not with the electoral process (or, for that matter, wasting massive amounts of resources in pursuit of opportunities to fight on enemy territory), but as the result of a strike by building workers in Melbourne. While unfettered free-market capitalism would have us work 12- and 16-hour days 7 days a week, as in the early days of the industrial revolution, it was collective struggle at the point of production and not political action that made such a significant gain as this, as it has many others like them. And more to the point, doing so demanded the breaking of unjust laws.

Enterprise bargaining and the right to strike

As much of the above commentary would appear to reflect, the right to strike has never been a strong feature of capitalist democracy. In light of the Golden Rule, this does not seem so surprising. Radicals like Rudolf Rocker have long argued that democratic forms were ‘shipwrecked’ on the auto­cratic social relations of capitalism; such seem to account for why our political rights under democracy evaporate as soon as we cross the threshold at work. On a similar count, the underlying tension between democracy and capitalist autocracy dominates electoral politics; instead of dealing with practical matters of achieving progress, electoral politics perpetually recontests the right to conflate ‘freedom’ and ‘progress’ with class privilege (Debney 2019)—and on this count, as Warren Buffet pointed out, his class is winning.

The industrial relations regime presents as the main ring for this contest between democracy and capitalism; Cahill (2019) argues that industrial-relations laws have been driven by the Golden Rule, not concerns about worker’s rights, and that changes to the prevailing regime have tended to arise from threats to private accumulation. With the Golden Rule as its motivating force, the prevailing laws so severely curtail workers’ right to strike, then, that ‘it is time to acknowledge these laws as unjust and to act accordingly’ (Cahill 2019).

The cockiness of the Warren Buffets and others With the Gold seems to derive from the failure of the labour movement to ‘act accordingly’—a consequence in the context of the much-vaunted Australian enterprise bargaining system perhaps of ‘protected action,’ and the attendant limits on the right to strike. Strikes are only permitted when the self-appointed protectors will allow; when their protection is withdrawn, so too is the right. The human right to control the conditions of one’s own labour then is not understood then as an inalienable right, one we are born with, one that underwrites our humanity and one that governments cannot attempt to separate us from without degenerating into tyranny, but as a gift of benevolent paternalism. Such benevolent paternalism is also the gift of mafia goons running shakedown rackets, who are infamous for disguising their violence and injustice in the language of ‘protection.’ In this case, the promise of protection for obedience and violence for disobedience are not brute thuggery, but respectable policy, because it benefits the state, the biggest standover racket in town.

Insofar as this is the case, enterprise bargaining as a key facet of industrial relations reflects the Golden Rule in protecting the minority of the opulent from the majority. While the ALP seems to talk of enterprise bargaining as manna from heaven, in hushed and breathless tones, the Shorten option of  ‘using the democratic process to get an unjust law changed’ and ‘changing bad laws, not breaking them,’ sacrifices the right to strike to the benevolent paternalism of ‘protection’ under laws governed by the Golden Rule, as we have seen. This has two effects: (1) it takes the power away from the point of production and puts it in the hands of lawyers, and in so doing (2) it undermines the union culture of workers solidarity and the militancy that forms its lifeblood.

Perhaps then difference between Workchoices and enterprise bargaining is the difference between a quick death and a slow one, a big chop and a thousand cuts. Peacemeal electoral reforms are a limited form of recourse when, as Cahill (2019) points out, they a major part of why the problem exists in the first place.

A workers’ Jus ad bellum

The much-vaunted ‘right to war,’ as we have seen, hold that war is permissible if the cause is comparatively just, waged by a competent authority, is undertaken as a measure of last resort, and is proportionate to the perceived wrong. In light of class war scare narratives, the habitual tendency of defenders of class privilege to conflate that privilege with individual freedom and human rights, and Warren Buffet’s admission that, ‘There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning,’ the cause would appear to be a comparatively just one.

Under a workers’ jus ad bellum, ending the war being made by the rich class requires the class war to be waged by a competent authority; to the extent that the ALP have revealed themselves incompetent in dealing with the class war of the rich, or better yet complicit, this would mean unions not subject to the dictates of Laborism at the very least. At best it would mean unions directly under the control of their members, as per the organisationally horizontal and bottom-up traditions of the libertarian left, maintaining a basic harmony between means and outcomes on the basis of a basic recognition that ‘if the end is not contained within the means, then the end becomes unattainable’ (Walter Benjamin).

Within a context of enterprise bargaining and 16 percent total union coverage, a workers’ jus ad bellum points to class warfare as a measure of last resort. In looking to end the war being made by the rich class, the workers’ jus ad bellum is proportionate to the perceived wrong. It is both a measure of last resort and proportionate in challenging entrenched forms of gender and racial privilege, amongst others which in dividing workers amongst ourselves upholds class society by enabling the myth that other people gaining access to social rights you have always had is the same as you losing them. A workers’ jus ad bellum is not about long-oppressed groups forming new tyrannies on the basis of a mythical reverse discrimination, it is about getting even.

As the central facet of the workers’ jus ad bellum, the right to strike provides a litmus test for the real meaning of formal political freedoms under conditions of class power. It presents as the focal point for this struggle, drawing into sharp relief the seedy underbelly of a political paradigm designed to ‘protect the minority of the opulent from the majority.’ As global capitalism sinks ever deeper into terminal economic, social and environmental crisis and its democratic façade falls to reveal the face of fascism beneath, it will try to take the rest of us down with it. Perhaps the greatest value of the workers’ jus ad bellum lies is its implicit recognition of the fact that it need not.

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The author is an NUW community member.

References

Benson, Simon (2019), ‘Shorten divides to conquer in class-warfare attacks’, The Australian, 17 May, via https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/shorten-divides-to-conquer-in-classwarfare-attacks/news-story/119b253f135ef7ab91fe7ebddc943abc

Bourke, Latika (2017). ‘Bill Shorten rejects ACTU leader Sally McManus’ view on breaking ‘unjust’ laws,’ Sydney Morning Herald, March 16, via https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/bill-shorten-rejects-actu-leader-sally-mcmanus-view-on-breaking-unjust-laws-20170316-guz1vp.html

Cahill, Damien (2019). ‘Change the Rules: Breaking the rules to change the law,’ Arena, 10 June 2019, via https://arena.org.au/change-the-rules-by-damien-cahill/

Debney, Ben. (2017). The scare cycle: Moral panics and national elections. Arena Journal, (47/48), 76.

Debney, Ben (2019). ‘Is Politics Getting Worse, Or Are We Getting a Better Handle on How Bad It Has Always Been?’ Counterpunch, 4 February, via https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/04/politics-getting-worse/

Guthrie, C., & Quinlan, M. (2007). Just War: The Just War Tradition: Ethics in Modern Warfare. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.

Kehoe, John and David Marin-Guzman (2019), ‘Labor’s Bill Shorten ramps up class warfare with attacks on BHP, business,’ Australian Financial Review, 17 January, via https://www.afr.com/news/politics/national/labors-bill-shorten-attacks-bhp-business-20190117-h1a6bi

Ludlam, Scott (2017). “You only call it class warfare when we fight back”, Greens MPs, 30 March, via https://greensmps.org.au/articles/you-only-call-it-class-warfare-when-we-fight-back

Madison, James (2002) [1787]. “Term of the Senate, [26 June] 1787,” Founders Online; National Archives, accessed 28 June 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-0044.

Murphy,  Katharine, Christopher Knaus and Nick Evershed (2019). ”It felt like a big tide’: how the death tax lie infected Australia’s election campaign,’ The Guardian, 8 June, via https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/08/it-felt-like-a-big-tide-how-the-death-tax-lie-infected-australias-election-campaign

Parker, Gareth (2019). ‘Bill Shorten learns Australians won’t cop class warfare,’ The West Australian, 19 May, via https://thewest.com.au/opinion/federal-election-2019-bill-shorten-learns-australians-wont-cop-class-warfare-ng-b881204149z

SBS News (2019), ‘Shorten’s class war and climate change cost Labor: John Howard,’ 19 May, via https://www.sbs.com.au/news/shorten-s-class-war-and-climate-change-cost-labor-john-howard

Stein, Ben (2006), ‘In Class Warfare, Guess Which Class Is Winning,’ New York Times, 26 November, via https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26every.html