Work 1

There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.

Zitat: Ben Stein (26.11.2006): In Class Warfare, Guess Which Class Is Winning. In: New York Times. Bild: www.saha.org.za/udf/full/671.jpg

Warren Buffett (born 1930) is a US American entrepreneur, investor, and multi-billionaire.

For Buffet, war is about the distribution of economic resources. Since the 19th century, workers’ movements in many parts of the world have been fighting for their social and economic rights, for example, the 8 hour work day which was established in Germany in 1918. However, from the 1980s onwards, social rights have been cut back across the world, to the benefit of the rich. US President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the UK were crucial protagonists here. Thatcher smashed the unions, describing striking miners in 1984 as the ‘enemy within’. Sociologist Wilhelm Heitmeyer also talked about a ‘class struggle from above’ in the case of Germany. Yet this struggle was confronted with many forms of resistance. In 1987, more than 300,000 black miners organised a strike in apartheid controlled South Africa, which was violently suppressed.

*New York Times (16.08.1987): Miners' Strike in South Africa Raises the Spirit of Resistance

2006