Forms of Working – Class Struggle

In the 19th century the workers used various methods of and struggle – demonstrations , meetings , strikes armed uprisings – to defend their economic and political interests . Two forms of working – class struggle were correspondingly distinguished : an economic struggle , i.e. , a struggle for their immediate interests ( raise in wages , shortening of the working day , normal housing conditions , etc. ) , and a political struggle , i.e. , a struggle for altering the policy of the government and the existing system . In the course of this struggle workers set up their own organisations – trade unions and different associations . The types of organisations , the effectiveness of their work and their ties with the masses depended on concrete historical conditions – the political system of the given country , the struggle experience of the working class , the economic conditions of its existence , etc. On the whole , however , the working – class movement of that time developed spontaneously . The workers did not as yet have a common outlook upon the world , society and its development , and the historical role of their class ; nor did they have a common ideology . The workers ‘ actions were therefore disunited and usually failed . At the same time the workers of the different countries lived under similar economic conditions . The workers became carriers of a new social mode of production which made the private method of appropriation of the products of social labour unneces sary and harmful . That created an objective necessity for the working class to elaborate its own ideology that was fundamentally opposed to the ideology of the bourgeoisie , which strove to retain private ownership of the instruments and means of production . Bourgeois ideologists regard capitalist society as the highest stage of development and cannot conceive humanity existing without private property . It follows that for successful struggle against the bour geoisie the working class must work out its own ideology and come to realise its historical mission of changing the social system . This task can be accomplished only by ideologists of the working class – people who do not work manually and understand the historical necessity for replacing the capitalist system by a new , socialist system based on social ownership of the instruments of labour and means of production .