Political and Economic Struggle Distinctions

I found a very interesting passage in the first chapter of the book, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. On page 15, Laclau and Mouffe discuss the intertwined political and economical struggles. Quoting Kautsky, they write: “Occasionally someone has attempted to oppose the political struggle to the economic, and declared that the proletariat should give its exclusive attention to one or the other. The fact is that the cannot be separated. The economic struggle demands political rights and these will not fall from heaven. To secure and maintain them, the most vigorous political struggle is necessary. The political struggle is, in the last analysis, the economic struggle.”

The quotation noted above is striking, to me, because it seems both subtle and apparent at the same time. On first glance, can we join the necessity for fiscal survival from political rights? This argument seemed to fit well with my final project on Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South. While the main storyline is one of the love between poor, Southern lady Margaret Hale and powerful, Northern manufacturer, John Thornton, this courtship revolves around the labor disputes concerning the cotton manufacturers. Though better than some other industries, the working conditions at the cotton mills are sub-par and the workers desire higher wages for the damage done to their bodies in the process. Margaret becomes friends with one of the labor leaders and watches as the mills fall prey to strike. In order to keep his mill working, Mr. Thornton secretly brings in Irish replacement workers. Those striking are enraged and a riot ultimately leads to an injured Margaret.

This labor dispute seems to encompass this question of political and economic struggle. Are the workers striking solely for monetary gain? They believe that they should have certain rights, as workers, since they have put their medical well-beings at stake in their industry. In addition, they are enraged to find that replacement workers have been brought, endangering their job security if and when the strike ever ends. All of these events revolve around the fictionalized stirrings of a union movement among the cotton mill workers. I don’t know if it is possible, in this instance, to separate the economic from the political, as economic gains seem tied to their arguments for greater political rights.