‘Revolutions are the locomotives of history.’
‘But perhaps it is quite otherwise. Perhaps revolutions are an attempt by the passengers on this train — namely, the human race — to pull the emergency brake.’
‘Engine, engine, number nine
On the New York transit line
If my train goes off the track
Pick it up! Pick it up! Pick it up!’
The image of a Locomotive, or train, has proven to be a deceptively versatile symbol. Depending on the context in which it is invoked, it can mean vastly different things. Invoked as Benjamin does, it can represent an ever expanding society rushing towards fascistic (and in recent times, ecological) destruction. If used in the context of Britain and Ireland, it calls to mind an even wider variety within those contexts; it could invoke the withering of and severing of train lines connected to isolated rural communities, it could invoke the mishandling of public transport by corporations after the privatisation of the railway, or maybe Charles Dickens horror story ‘The Signal-Man’. On the continent of Africa, the locomotive might call to mind the Cairo-Cape Town line, an attempt to build a railway spanning across the continent, supposedly to bring development to that part of the world, but in truth to ensure total control over British colonies and facilitate movement of goods for trade. For British people today, the train is currently a site of class struggle as the RMT continues their strike in order to secure better pay and conditions for their members. The train as a symbol, as we can see, is malleable and context sensitive, changing from engine of destruction, to engine of struggle, from colonial withdrawal & partition to colonial expansion. In fiction, its presence can range from Dickens’ foreseeable but unstoppable train crashes to the Isle of Sodor’s industrial nostalgia. There is also Marx’s famous quote about revolutions, something that we will come back to. There are other meanings and uses, but these too will have to wait. But the fact remains: the train is as much a symbol as it is a form of transport, one that changes depending who is using it and what their reason for using it is. If we (excuse the pun) reverse engineered the train as a sign and device, we can gain a glimpse into the values, the historical and literary trends of the time of each use. And by doing so we can understand that we too can use this symbol to look at our own political moment, and
If this were a longer essay, I might give an overview of the aforementioned uses of the railway engine. But for now, I think it would be best if we use one literary example that represents the train engine and its various contradictions; one that is, funnily enough, a runaway train. In China Miéville’s weird fantasy novel Iron Council, the final part of the Bas-Lag trilogy (named for the fantasy world it’s set in), the narrative covers several characters and story threads across the world as insurrectionary politics begin to bubble to the surface in New Crobuzon, a London-esque metropolis of steampunk and thaumaturgy where an authoritarian government attempts to violent repress dissent. Featuring stories such as a trade unionist following his golem-crafting lover across the world to a young theatre artist making the move from reading groups to anarchist illegalism, one section of the book covers the history of the book’s through line; the eponymous Iron Council. A review of the book sums it up thus:
More than 20 years earlier [than the start of the book], the TRT corporation started to build a railroad around the world. Exploiting the Remade (humans gruesomely altered as punishment for relatively venial crimes or unpopular political opinions), various humanoid species (cactuslike men, flying wyrmen) and some whole humans, the railroad had pushed its way into the wilds, heedless of both the indigenous peoples and the environment. But a strike for back pay unexpectedly leads to armed struggle and the eventual establishment of a workers’ commune.
The engine itself, the ‘Perpetual Train’ as it is called in universe, takes many forms over the story. Starting as an ecosystem flattening behemoth of manifest destiny, like its real life counterparts it becomes a site of class struggle and (and unlike them) eventually a moving city of rebellion. And if I were a bad writer, it might be easy to stop here, lay out some more of the story’s synopsis, make a tenuous link between the RMT strikes, Marx and the strike in the book, and then call it a day. But there’s a few important elements in the story of the Iron Council that are not only relevant but bear worth discussing. First and foremost, the book’s events and themes were informed by the context of the time in which the book was written, with the anti-globalization movement still going strong, and the anti-war protests against Iraq and Afghanistan only being a few years old. The train does not represent one or the other of these contexts, but both. The perpetual train becomes a symbolic chimaera of sorts representing the capacity for destruction by imperialist nations, whose military complexes are famously a different kind of industry.
But as well it represents how grassroots power can challenge governments and social relations. But Miéville does not simply provide the raw steam power of this train was a metaphor for some kind of socialist energy, but focuses crucially on how the workers of the train relate to the train itself, which I think is incredibly relevant to our current moment now/ Because it is not when the workers strike that they are revolutionary, that is simply a step on the path towards it, to the slow dredge of class warfare and breaking down of racial barriers (which Miéville stops from being too on the nose compared to the use of other fantastical races). The moment it becomes a revolutionary movement and symbol, when the Iron Council is born, is when they take the trains for themselves and decide to take it off the planned continent spanning route of colonisation. The Iron Council is born when they take the train off the rails, which is to say when they organise themselves.
It is this distinction which is important, and one that American labour organiser Daisy Pitkin talks about in her book On the Line, when she discusses exactly what power means for workers, urging we shouldn’t:
think of power as a finite sum, a thing that is acquired by wresting it away — however forcefully — from the powerful, as if the work of organizing were akin to cleaving an orange, or as if the substance of solidarity were the same as the substance of oppression. What I mean is that I no longer think that worker power originates with the boss, or that workers come by it by taking it away from the company where they work. Worker power is built and waged through an entirely separate system.
It is this understanding of power as self-organisation rather than the seizing of it from the state or employers, that is vitally important. If I had to add to the quotes at the start (aside from jokingly quoting Black Sheep) I would say that the revolution is a runaway train. The runaway locomotive is one where the workers or the oppressed can take their lives into their own hands and decide its direction. It means that revolution exists outside simply assuming control of a set path of development of productive forces, and simply using it ‘for workers’. However, it has often been the assumption that the development of industry is what it means, and not without reason. It is this factor that Miéville was aware of, that the ecological application of Benjamin’s quote and later critiques by radicals such as Cedric Robinson and Maria Mies seek to oppose, most often because it implies a eurocentric, patriarchal type of revolution seeking simply to advance european ideas and social relations, with some of the power redistributed.
But it is important to note that the original Marx quote is often taken out of context, used to imply the every accelerating rush of industrial power, but actually meaning something quite different in context. The quote comes originally from The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850, a series of Neue Rheinische Zeitung articles collected by Friedrich Engels. In the relevant article, writing on the consequences of June 13, 1849, Marx describes the effect political suffrage has on the French peasant class in choosing who to vote for, where ‘the scale rises or falls according to the votes the peasant casts into the ballot box.’ Marx goes on to say:
He himself has to decide his fate […] most understandable was the language of the actual experience that the peasant class had gained from the use of the suffrage, were the disillusionments overwhelming him, blow upon blow, with revolutionary speed. Revolutions are the locomotives of history.
What Marx actually meant was that revolutions are a locomotive of political consciousness, that the self-organisation of workers, of engagement in the political sphere (which today does not simply have to mean making use of suffrage e.g. voting for a Party) accelerates the degree by which the oppressed and dispossessed understand the world and assert themselves within it. This is not to say that the industrial revolution imagery attached to the phrase is wholly unproblematic, but it goes to show that Marx is gesturing to something other than a future filled with Five Year Plans. And it opens the imagery to take from a wider variety of social movements for inspiration, something we’ll touch on soon. Simply using the train as a symbol or metaphor does not actually need the involvement of trains or of all its characteristics.
Now, at this point, you might ask, how exactly is it relevant to our moment? Well, to return to the point about Workers power raised by Pitkin, it becomes apparent to my eyes that the British Trade Unions attitude to power, the power wielded by their opponents and their own power, is one of cooperation and collaboration. Even the RMT, one of the more militant unions, cannot help but speak at least a little bit apologetically about their own strikes. As a trade unionist myself, it is clear that the Trade Union movement sees itself at best as a limit imposed upon the power of capital, and at worst as almost an underappreciated teammate in the progression towards a modern workplace. It is this mindset that has long characterised labour movements across Europe, leading to the situation that Italian Marxist Mario Tronti described as such that ‘whilst it is true that the working class objectively forces capital into clear, precise choices, it is also true that capital then makes these choices work against the working class.’ I think that in attempting to see itself as a limit, the British labour movement limits the thinking and hope of its members. If striking must always be done with a cringing apology, then sooner or later it will simply become internalised that workers themselves that they barely deserve their own demands.
And as Tronti predicted, even if the RMTs (and many other Unions) disputes are won, if no attempt is made to use these victories as a springboard to something else, then the gains won will eventually be recuperated by social capital, and Unions may not find themselves in any stronger position. That said, there are some incredibly radical and important aspects of the RMTs dispute which unfortunately are some of the most overlooked. By this I mean its active opposition to National Rails planned path of development for railway stations and staff, such as ‘vast changes to working practices, huge job losses, Driver Only Operated (DOO) trains on all companies and the closure of all ticket offices.’ In this regard, RMT is opposing the literal de-humanization of the workforce. But even this opposition is framed as the limiting of a callous corporate culture, and not as opposition to a deeper logic of capital.
For my part, I believe that striking is a part of a process of workers re-humanising themselves against a demeaning and alienating work environment and productivity culture. I believe that striking should help workers feel empowered, and inspire them to take further action. I believe it is that locomotive of consciousness And I believe that current Trade Union leadership and structures prevent this. I do not believe any of them will truly allow it, as to allow the revolutionising of consciousness, to allow that locomotive to accelerate, would mean to be eventually overtaken. In truth, workers will only begin to have collective power when they organise for themselves, outside of the dance of development Unions currently play with social capital. Workers will only revolutionise themselves when they take the locomotive off it’s set path. And this will ultimately mean having to take influence from groups outside typical workerist organisations and culture. I say it again: a revolution is a runaway train.
By taking this metaphor, we can begin to construct a political imaginary for our moment, opening up the field of possible actions. Free of a trade unionism withered and restricted by repressive laws and a self image bound to insurance schemes and cooperation with the bosses, where could this train run? It’s up to us to decide. It could mean we rebuild the connections between communities ourselves, running rampant in the forging of mutual aid links once attempted during the pandemic and then left behind.
