Pick of the anarchist movement

I have no real opinion on AF or indeed their paper,

What has happened to resistance?

According to the Office for National Statistics, the number of strikes fell last last year to an all-time low, with workers striking for only 500,000 working days. The unions themselves, once bastions of working-class resistance, have shrunk to cover only around 29% of the UK workforce. Increased casualisation of work means that 14% of us are temporary employees – with much fewer rights and no union representation. UK workers work the longest hours in Europe, and we get the least number of days off. It is not as if there is workplace peace- a poll by HR Gateway showed that two-thirds of workers don’t trust their immediate superiors, while 80% distrust their directors.

So, where is the resistance?

Resistance is all around us, but is less organised and more atomised than it once was. It is less immediately visible as political resistance, but not all political action waves a banner and marches around.

Last month, the Economist warned UK bosses that they were operating in the worst climate in Europe for theft (what they euphemistically call “shrinkage”). Britain has the honour of having the highest rate of shoplifting in Europe, and it is heartening to know that “shrinkage is increasing alarmingly in some countries and is generally on the rise” throughout the continent.

Despite the decline in union activity, resistance carries on at the point if production itself: the workplace. UK workers manage to take back £1.2bn a year from their employers though theft. Interestingly, employee theft also shows a pattern of targeting larger capitalists: 19% of firms with fewer than 15 employees have experienced staff fraud, with the figure being more than doubled (48%) for businesses with over 36 staff. This desire to take back what the bosses have stolen from us was highlighted in a survey by Leicester University, which showed that 70% of the 2,000 people questioned admitted they would steal from their employer if they felt that could get away with it.

It is not only the money and goods that our labour produces that we take back, it is also our time. What the bosses call “absenteeism”, and we call “sickies” is up to an all-time high of around 30% of total time taken off work. A recent poll indicated that a third of UK employees pull a sickie if they don’t want to go to work. Figures released by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) showed that sickies cost businesses around £11.6bn a year.

The real figures for all these acts of resistance are likely to be much higher, as most of it goes unnoticed. How many don’t use company phones to speak to their families, use the internet while at work or knock off early when the boss is out for the day?

Capitalism is based on a contradiction that cannot be solved- bosses want to pay us as little as possible for the most amount of work, whereas we want to work the least amount possible for the most amount of money. It tries to reduce all human interaction to monetary exchange: to live we must sell our bodies and minds in return for a wage, which we then have to give back by buying a small proportion of what we produced. In reasserting our dignity as human beings, it is natural that we resist this exploitation.