The Evolution of Labor Movements and Ideologies

Labor Progress
The working world has undergone significant changes since 1880. The growth of capitalism marked a special industrial growth. The spread of socialism favored the constitution of a new unionism that was much more massive. By increasing its capacity for precision, strikes could mobilize a mile of workers, imposing the practice of collective negotiation between unions and employers to set wages and working conditions. Additionally, many unions began to demand accountability from employers and ensure labor legislation. As a result, the first labor laws emerged:

• Work of Children and Women: In the nineteenth century, night work for women was forbidden, and a mandatory process after childbirth was established.
• Insurance Required: In 1908, an English law ensured aid for the unemployed.
• Working Hours: In most industrialized countries, a ten-hour workday was established in workshops and an eight-hour workday in mines.

Marxism
Marxism takes its name from Karl Marx, with Friedrich Engels in the mid-century. It constructs a theory that serves as a program of action to change society: scientific socialism. Its body of doctrine had an initial reference point in the Communist Manifesto. Marxism is based on three main areas:

• The analysis of class struggle, i.e., the antagonism between oppressors and the oppressed, considered the engine of historical development.
• The criticism of capitalism, which Marx explained as inherent bourgeois exploitation.
• The need to overcome the present capitalist condition is associated with a future project: a communist society that would emerge with the takeover of political power by the workers. This would offer a temporary situation of the dictatorship of the proletariat to achieve, later, the disappearance of all classes and the construction of an egalitarian society.

Anarchism
The first prominent anarchist was Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. He believed in the abolition of property and advocated for a social system based on self-employment and the expansion of mutuality and cooperation. Capitalism would gradually be overcome, regardless of any political organization and all authority, through the free association of individuals. Mikhail Bakunin argued that the revolution would be led by all oppressed sectors of society (farmers, artisans, industrial workers, etc.). Its aim was the destruction of the state and the creation of an egalitarian society based on the free association of communes. Based on the anarchist thinking of these leaders, a libertarian ideology was established, proposing a society founded on industrial freedom, social solidarity, criticism of private property, defense of collective property, and the rejection of all forms of hierarchical organization, including religion, politics, and the state.