The Substance of State Power Has Been Revealed
May 13, 2:00 PM. Between 10:00 and 11:00 AM today, the state's command structure revealed itself. Just seven hours after Samsung Electronics' labor-management post-adjustment broke down at 3:00 AM, Deputy Prime Minister Gu Yun-cheol opened fire on SNS, saying, "A strike must never happen." Prime Minister Kim Min-seok convened an emergency meeting of ministers and instructed relevant ministries to "ensure that under no circumstances does it lead to a strike." Adding to this the 'national dividend' proposal made by Kim Yong-beom, head of the Blue House policy office, the day before, the state's triangular formation—policy brain, economic command, administrative head—aligned toward a single goal within 24 hours: completely blocking Samsung Electronics workers' right to collective action. This is no longer a labor-management dispute. It is a political struggle against the entire combination of monopoly capital and state power.
What the triangular formation exposed is the true nature of the national dividend discourse. Kim Yong-beom proposed "returning part of the structural excess profits of the AI infrastructure era to the people." Within 24 hours, when the workers who produce those excess profits directly demanded their rightful share, the state—with the same mouth that discussed dividends—declared "no strike under any circumstances." This sequence is no coincidence. The hidden premise of the national dividend is that the subject of distribution must be state-capital negotiation, and workers' direct action cannot be tolerated—i.e., it aims to distribute only a portion of monopoly excess profits in a way that changes class power relations not at all. The dividend items Kim Yong-beom listed—youth startup assets, basic income for farming and fishing communities, support for artists, strengthening old-age pensions—are not inherently bad. What must be pointed out is that this is a plan for the state to broker and distribute capital's profits, unrelated to what Samsung Electronics workers demand through unity. The scene of the prime minister and deputy prime minister sequentially mobilizing the entire state apparatus to block a strike at a specific company demonstrates the one-day lifespan of the national dividend discourse. Talk is dividends, action is suppression.
In analyzing this struggle, we must reject the frame of 'Samsung Electronics wage negotiations' itself. The moment the prime minister personally steps in to cite the "gravity of the ripple effects on the national economy," this is a scene of the state defending monopoly capital's profit structure with a military-level command system. The labor minister and industry vice minister are summoned to the prime minister's office, and the spectrum of state pressure tools—from emergency arbitration to mediation and adjudication—is already poised for operation. The sequence—Gu Yun-cheol preparing public opinion via SNS, then a few hours later the prime minister receiving it in an emergency meeting—is not improvised. It is a step-by-step escalation to accumulate legitimacy. The experience of the 2025 general strike, with its surge in union membership, provides the material basis for organizing this struggle from the outset with the awareness that it is a political strike against state power as a whole, not just the employer. Mapping the spectrum of state pressure tools in advance, securing on-site control in the first 48 hours, and connecting Samsung Electronics workers' wage struggle with those of semiconductor subcontract workers, construction workers, and irregular workers—building the substance of 'class solidarity' against the discourse of the 'national economy'—is the practical struggle to neutralize the state-capital alliance strategy.
That state power has revealed itself means, conversely, that the target has converged into one. The triangular formation of Kim Yong-beom, Gu Yun-cheol, and Kim Min-seok consists of different faces but loyal administrators of the same system, and what they carry out is an integrated strategy of maintaining monopoly capital's excess profit structure through carrots (national dividend) and sticks (strike suppression). That this integrated strategy fully exposed itself within a day is not a sign of the system's strength but of its vulnerability. The organized power of the working class has grown so large that the state can no longer afford even the pretense of neutrality. It is May.
What the triangular formation exposed is the true nature of the national dividend discourse. Kim Yong-beom proposed "returning part of the structural excess profits of the AI infrastructure era to the people." Within 24 hours, when the workers who produce those excess profits directly demanded their rightful share, the state—with the same mouth that discussed dividends—declared "no strike under any circumstances." This sequence is no coincidence. The hidden premise of the national dividend is that the subject of distribution must be state-capital negotiation, and workers' direct action cannot be tolerated—i.e., it aims to distribute only a portion of monopoly excess profits in a way that changes class power relations not at all. The dividend items Kim Yong-beom listed—youth startup assets, basic income for farming and fishing communities, support for artists, strengthening old-age pensions—are not inherently bad. What must be pointed out is that this is a plan for the state to broker and distribute capital's profits, unrelated to what Samsung Electronics workers demand through unity. The scene of the prime minister and deputy prime minister sequentially mobilizing the entire state apparatus to block a strike at a specific company demonstrates the one-day lifespan of the national dividend discourse. Talk is dividends, action is suppression.
In analyzing this struggle, we must reject the frame of 'Samsung Electronics wage negotiations' itself. The moment the prime minister personally steps in to cite the "gravity of the ripple effects on the national economy," this is a scene of the state defending monopoly capital's profit structure with a military-level command system. The labor minister and industry vice minister are summoned to the prime minister's office, and the spectrum of state pressure tools—from emergency arbitration to mediation and adjudication—is already poised for operation. The sequence—Gu Yun-cheol preparing public opinion via SNS, then a few hours later the prime minister receiving it in an emergency meeting—is not improvised. It is a step-by-step escalation to accumulate legitimacy. The experience of the 2025 general strike, with its surge in union membership, provides the material basis for organizing this struggle from the outset with the awareness that it is a political strike against state power as a whole, not just the employer. Mapping the spectrum of state pressure tools in advance, securing on-site control in the first 48 hours, and connecting Samsung Electronics workers' wage struggle with those of semiconductor subcontract workers, construction workers, and irregular workers—building the substance of 'class solidarity' against the discourse of the 'national economy'—is the practical struggle to neutralize the state-capital alliance strategy.
That state power has revealed itself means, conversely, that the target has converged into one. The triangular formation of Kim Yong-beom, Gu Yun-cheol, and Kim Min-seok consists of different faces but loyal administrators of the same system, and what they carry out is an integrated strategy of maintaining monopoly capital's excess profit structure through carrots (national dividend) and sticks (strike suppression). That this integrated strategy fully exposed itself within a day is not a sign of the system's strength but of its vulnerability. The organized power of the working class has grown so large that the state can no longer afford even the pretense of neutrality. It is May.