Here is a question and to be honest, I don't know the answer to this question. However, I do know that their is a class war that is being waged on the world's poor and on America by corporations. Would unions be one of many effective means to counter-attack against corporations who are robbing and pillaging? Or will unions only create more problems? People complain that unions will harm the efficiency of an economy, but this pure, unregulated capitalism has not been efficient either. So, the debate remains, are unions an effective way for the world's poor to counter-attack in the class war?

Unions are effective only to a limited extent. They might solve some basic problems but they won't cure the world's ails. The reason is that they still remain within the confines of the social conditions set up by the very people you're alleging to be battling (bourgeoisie). In other words, they'll help you get a fifty-cent raise but they wont stop the exploitation and oppression in third world countries.

So if unions are an instrument of the ruling class, then what effective means do the poor and the working class have to effectively fight back in the class war that is being waged against them? I see a strategy of divide and conquor on the part of the ruling class and I can also see where unions might be an instrument of divide and conquor rather than accomplishing unity. The poor and the working class must be united and their can be no way that a strategy of divide and conquor can succeed. If the poor and the working class cannot unite, they will be crushed in the class war. Right now, the working class and the poor are being decimated and are losing this war.

I'm not saying unions are instruments of the ruling class. They're instruments of the working class, but I'm just saying that they operate within the confines of the existing social conditions, and those social conditions are set up by the ruling class. All they basically are, are organizations of workers that demand certain things from the ruling class and continue to reinforce the bourgeoisie as the ruling class (I've never heard a union ask for abolition of classes). And so long as there are classes there will be class antagonisms, and inevitably poverty, exploitation, and so on.

The only effective means the poor and the working class (proletariat) have is their force in numbers. I mean, tag on a name you want; revolution, 'democratic revolution' (undoubtedly more politically correct), or forcible overthrow of existing social conditions (as Marx puts it); it's the only means by which class antagonisms can end.

Their will always be rich and poor. We can never eliminate the rich or the poor no matter what we do. We can wage revolution. I think what is necessary is making America more environmentally friendly to the planet, close the growing gap between rich and poor and make America a socially mobile society. I have accepted the fact that rich and poor will always exist. But right now, their is a war being waged by the ruling class on the poor. Rather than trying to create a more just society, the ruling class is now seeking to create a more unjust society. We have a society where increasingly, if you are born poor, you die poor. The poor are not "undeserving." Everybody deserves to live the American dream and not just the ruling class. Right now, America is a society were only the rich are permitted to live the American dream. It is unacceptable. My generation will make less money than my parents generation and social mobility is now a myth rather than a reality in America.