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| Edward Cottle |
A strike is a ‘social phenomenon of enormous complexity which, in its totality, is never susceptible to complete description, let alone complete explanation’ (Gouldner, 1954:65). The complexity of the meaning and implications of strikes often comes to the fore when offensive strikes – strikes where workers demand more than what they have in terms of wages and working conditions – force the attention of the state, capitalists and civil society. They lead to a varied interpretation not only of how events unfolded but also the impact they have made.
Strikes are a key manifestation of the class struggle over the distribution of national income and reform of the labour relations system. Offensive strikes can generate an extraordinary amount of pressure on the social system which often leads to structural changes such as the reconfiguring of the industrial relations system, the economy or the political system. Such events are referred to here as a turning point ( Legassick, 2012; Alexander, 2013; Webster, 2016).
Strikes in post-apartheid South Africa
In the immediate post-apartheid period, the trend was for strikes to increase in frequency, with the highest number of strikes in South African history – 1 324 strikes – taking place in 1998. From 2000 and 2009, however, strikes averaged 71 per annum, which was even lower than the 1960s, and these strikes were largely defensive in character.
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| Maria N Ivanova |
From 2007 to 2009, the United States (US) experienced a major financial and economic crisis, a ‘Great Recession’, whose depth, severity, and global impact evoked numerous comparisons with the deepest structural crisis of the twentieth century – the Great Depression of the 1930s. There are significant similarities between the circumstances and dynamics surrounding both crises. And yet, those similarities should not distract from even more important differences.
The boom and the bubble: then and now
The Great Depression and the Great Recession were triggered by asset-price bubbles – a stock market bubble in the late 1920s and a housing bubble in the 2000s – but pre-existing structural imbalances in the US economy were the reason why the burst of speculative bubbles induced a general economic collapse. One fundamental imbalance was the highly unequal growth of property income relative to labour income. The combination of relatively stagnant labour income and surging corporate profits played a leading role in the run-up to the downturns and was chiefly responsible for the slow recoveries. The boom and the bubble in both instances were driven by similar dynamics: sluggish wage growth and falling labour share of national income, deepening inequality with heavy concentration of wealth gains at the top, corresponding mounting indebtedness among lower- and middle-income households, surging corporate profits and a corporate saving glut seeking financial ventures. Thus, two causal mechanisms underlay the structural fragility of the economy then and now. On the one hand, the stagnation of labour earnings represented a key factor behind rising income inequality and a drag on consumption which was temporarily alleviated by credit expansion; hence, the rising household debt levels which eventually became unsustainable. On the other hand, rising corporate profits created an overhang of idle money, eager to lend itself to speculative ventures, which played a key role in fuelling the stock market bubble of the 1920s and the housing bubble of the 2000s.
