A counter-discourse against the failure of strikes in strike novels

Abstract

This thesis is a study of workers’ exploitation and the possibility of the effectiveness of strikes to reduce labor exploitation. The work stoppage in Peter Abrahams’ Mine Boy (1946) is used as a counter-discourse against the failure and ineffectiveness of strikes in Emile Zola’s Germinal (1885) and John Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle (1936). My aim is to use Mine Boy to scrutinize the way labor strikes can lower the exploitation of labor unlike what Zola and Steinbeck promote in their novels. Zola points out the shortcomings of the Marxists and anarchists and condemns labor strikes arguing that this social movement would spiral out of control. Instead, he calls for the role of the republican government to go for reform to preserve the rights of the workers. Steinbeck, as well, highly criticizes the communists. He argues against the strike that they instigate by emphasizing that it is a specter that must be crushed. He calls the liberal government to interfere to preserve the reputation of the US as a nation of justice. Both writers portray the radicals as hypocrites who care for their personal interests, and the strikers as an uncontrollable force that cannot be guided. For both novelists, reform within the capitalist system is the only right solution as the strike is a destructive and fearful social movement that leads to plight and affliction. Against this judgment, Abrahams exposes the way the South African government, which has a capitalist leaning, uses the system of segregation in order to take the non-whites and the poor whites as a cheap labor- force. In Mine Boy, he exposes the hypocrisy of the liberals and questions the legitimacy of the idea of the superiority of the white race arguing that it is fabricated in order to control the labor-power. Unlike Zola and Steinbeck who use their literature to solidify the capitalist narratives that help to exploit the labor-force, Abrahams bring them to light in order to dismantle them. Instead of relying on the role of the liberals, he shows the way labor strikes are the only method to fight against labor exploitation and work for equality. In order for this thesis to have a methodological base, the following theories are to be used: the Marxism of Georg Luk?cs and Antonio Gramsci, Emile Zola’s theory of naturalism, John Steinbeck’s argument of phalanx, and Noam Chomsky’s concept of Anarchism. These theories are relevant for this thesis because they all study the struggle between labor and capital and they all hold the context of the crowd and the rise of the mob against labor exploitation, the focal points that the three novelists build their novels upon