How much do strikes achieve? (1972)

From the November 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The view is held by some trade unionists and by so-called militant organisations that militancy is the key that opens all doors for the working class. The argument is deceptively simple: as strikes can gain wage increases more and larger strikes will gain more increases, seemingly without limit. How far is this true? There is plenty of past and current evidence though, as will be seen, some of it is open to misinterpretation. When Marx wrote about this more than a century ago he did not share the “militant” view about the extent to which trade-union pressure could raise wages. In his Value, Price and Profit for example (Chapters IV and XIV) and in Wage-Labour and Capital (p. 35 in the Whitehead edition) he took a somewhat pessimistic line based on his understanding of how capitalism works. While urging resistance to the efforts of employers to depress wages he thought it was largely a defensive struggle, with only occasional opportunities for the workers to secure “temporary improvement”. His view was that the times when the workers can hope to gain an improvement were when the capitalists were doing well, expanding production and accumulating capital. In the reverse phase of the “trade cycle”, with sales and profits falling and unemployment rising, he thought the workers could do little.

“The relations between the supply and demand of labour-power undergo perpetual change, and with them the market price of labour-power. If the supply overshoots the demand wages sink, although it might in such circumstances be necessary to test the real state of demand and supply by a strike, for example, or any other method.”

(To bring this into harmony with the present period of fast-rising prices it has to be remembered that though money wages do not now sink, a pay increase which does not keep up with the cost of living represents a fall of “real” wages, i.e. purchasing power.)

Nothing Gained

It will be noticed that Marx talked of “testing” the situation when trade is bad. The militants reject this. They think that if enough workers strike they can make big gains in spite of adverse conditions. As regards past experience the evidence is all against the militants’ case. Apart from 1921 and 1926, the record number of days lost through strikes in any year was in 1893, when the total was over 30 million. This included Lancashire cotton workers who were out for five months, and 400,000 miners. Both strikes failed and wages generally did not rise.

Another outstanding example was the ten years 1921-1930. Unemployment was high, trade was bad and prices were falling—in all by 30 per cent. In those years, which included the General Strike of 1926, the number of days lost by strikes and lockouts averaged 31 million a year, but the strikes completely failed to prevent wages also falling by about 30 per cent.

Discontent & Resistance

The question arises to what extent recent experience differs from the past. Various changes have taken place. There are many more trade unionists, though still only a minority of the workers, and workers on strike instead of depending entirely on their own resources and trade-union and benefit-society funds can now get Social Security payments for their families. British capitalism in the past six years has been in depression with unemployment at one point topping the million mark. And strikes have been building up, from 2,400,000 days lost in 1966 to 13,600,000 days in 1971 and a likely total of 20 or 21 million in 1972. The fact that strikes have become more numerous and last longer is not simply a reflection of workers’ discontent but is also a reflection of stronger and better-organised resistance by employers. It is a truism that the most successful strike is the one that never happens because when trade is brisk employers may yield to the mere threat of a strike interrupting production.

In recent years, with sales falling off, employers have taken a tougher line because they stand to lose less when trade is slack than when they have full order-books and are hard pressed to meet delivery dates. Also, as in engineering and the building industry where the recent strikes were not general, employers with strikes on their hands received financial help from the other employers.

Keeping Pace

What then has been the outcome of the big increase in strikes? On the basis of the rise of the cost of living and the estimated increase of wage rates (not including overtime and bonuses etc.) and of average earnings (including overtime and bonuses) it would seem that real wages have been rising at about 2 per cent a year since 1966; but some complications have to be taken into account. The first is that what matters is not gross pay but “take-home pay” after deduction of tax, and owing to the way this operates take-home pay increases by a smaller percentage than gross pay. If for example a single man on pay of about £25 obtained an increase of £5 a week (20 per cent) his increase of take-home pay would be just under 19 per cent (£4.10).

And owing to the rules governing family income supplements and free school meals it can happen that some workers can be worse off through a pay increase. For a married man with two children a pay increase of £2 from £28 to £30 a week would leave him 95p. a week worse off. (The Times, 8 September 1972).

It is obvious that the past six years, in spite of more strikes, has left the mass of workers in Britain doing little more than keep pace with prices.

Some Do Not

An enquiry by the Economic Research Council (Financial Times, 18 August 1972) indicated that between 1962 and 1970 average take-home pay did not even keep up with the cost of living, though some improvement may have been made since 1970. Another factor that should be borne in mind is that the past few years have seen a widespread tightening-up of jobs through labour-displacing productivity schemes linked with pay increases. Take-home pay in terms of purchasing power has certainly not fully reflected increased output.

Some confirmation of Marx’s general argument is given by a comparison of Germany and some other continental countries with Britain. While British capitalism has been in depression, production has been expanding fast in Germany—the condition in which Marx expected the workers to be able to increase wages. Though strikes in Germany have been much fewer than in Britain, in recent years real wages have risen much more in Germany. Indeed, according to a document submitted to the TUC (The Times, 5 October 1972): “In recent years Britain’s wage increases have been the lowest in Europe.”

Edgar Hardcastle

Letter: Laying down the law to the unions (1987)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Laying down the law to the unions

Dear Sirs.

In the Socialist Standard. July 1987, in an article on trade unions, the following paragraph appeared:

Those who predict the permanent decline of the trade unions also have a lot to say about the anti-union legislation of the Thatcher government. They overlook the fact that, with one exception, the same and worse has happened before and the unions have known how to survive. The one exception is the Act which requires unions to have ballots for the election of officers and ballots for taking strike action. Along with the need for ballots before any strike settlement is agreed to. these are measures which the unions, ought, in the interests of their members, to have adopted anyway.

In your September issue, in another article on trade unions, the following appears:

Since the Conservatives were returned to office in 1979 they have introduced legislation to restrict the ability of trade unionists to take action to defend and improve their living standards.

The article goes on to cite restrictive legislation in the 1980 and 1982 Employment Acts and continues in the same vein: "The 1984 Trade Union Act made it compulsory to hold secret ballots for union elections, strike decisions and political funds. The new Conservative Administration is committed to further repressive legislation". The article points to Green Paper proposals for legislation enabling "members . . . to be able to prevent unions calling for industrial action unless they have won majority support in a ballot. Union ballots will have to be fully postal, independently supervised and to apply to the election of union presidents and general secretaries".

As you claim in a reply to a letter in the same issue, the Socialist Standard provides a forum for discussion of ideas about life in capitalist society, I look forward to reading the discussion you will no doubt wish to publish on whether this proposed legislation is "repressive", or "something which the unions ought, in the interests of their members, to have adopted anyway".

(Name and address supplied)

Reply:

In considering the trade union legislation enacted by the Thatcher government it is important to distinguish between the government's intentions and the consequences of the new laws. Looked at in this way it becomes quite clear that what the government has consistently tried to achieve is restrictions on the power of trade unions. This is quite obvious in relation to some of the new laws (ie restrictions on secondary picketing, powers to sequestrate union funds) but perhaps less obvious in relation to the laws regarding the holding of ballots. Despite all the rhetoric about democracy, the government's intention in compelling unions to ballot their members was. once again, to reduce union power by making it less likely that strikes would take place. It is the government's belief that trade union members are less militant than their leaders and that this more conservative view would prevail if there was greater internal union democracy. The same kind of thinking is evident in the latest proposals contained in the government's Green Paper which, if enacted, will strengthen the position of individual strike breakers against their union thus undermining the most important source of trade union strength solidarity.

The Socialist Party's position is that there should be maximum democracy within trade unions but that the government has no place in imposing it on trade unions. The moves towards greater union democracy would be far more welcome if they had been demanded by union members themselves rather than being legislated for by a government committed to reducing the power of trade unions. Finally it is perhaps worth mentioning the hollowness of Tory rhetoric about democracy by pointing out that trade unions are, in fact, fairly democratic organisations. Indeed they are models of democracy when compared to the companies. corporations and public institutions they oppose in their battle to maintain workers’ pay and conditions.

The Editors.

The Passing Show: H.M.S. Hampshire (1963)

The Passing Show Column from the October 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

H.M.S. Hampshire

The beginning of September and H.M.S. Hampshire, guided missile destroyer, lies at anchor just off Torquay. A day or two later, she is joined by several more warships of the home fleet. If you like, you can have a boat trio around the grey monsters and view—at a distance, of course—their wicked death dealing paraphernalia.

These ships have just finished exercises off the South West Coast. They are a timely reminder of the constant development under capitalism of more and more horrifying weapons; for these are just about the last word in modern fighting craft, although they will probably be out of date in a few years’ time. Capitalist politicians may prattle about efforts for peace, disarmament, test ban treaties and the like, but sincerity has never been their strong point. Anyway, sincerity will not remove the conflicting interests of private property which make armaments necessary. So Lord Hailsham signs a treaty in Moscow, and almost in the same breath, the government announces that another warship is to be built—this time an aircraft carrier costing around £50 millions,

Militant Bank Managers

Whatever next! There were enough disdainfully raised eyebrows and tongue cluckings when the teachers struck for one day last year. But now the bank managers, of all people! The Daily Herald of September 7th tells us of the first of a series of weekend strikes by these men and their staffs, employed by the Manchester and Salford Trustee Savings Bank. Apparently it’s a very gentlemanly affair with courteous picketing outside the branches by none other than the managers themselves.

But strip away the niceties of etiquette and what is the strike over? Why, the same old thing, of course—pay and conditions. The bank staffs are pressing for “proper negotiating machinery” and have reached the end of their tether waiting for a move from their employers. “…. even gentlemen get their backs up occasionally,” commented one bank man, bitterly.

It is certainly interesting, this show of militancy among “professional” workers. And at the risk of being called priggish, it does go to support something we have always said. Arbitration courts and joint councils may be all very well up to a point, but it is the strike (or the positive threat of it) which gingers up the negotiations. In fact, it is the only weapon which workers have in their struggle with the employers, although it cannot be used indiscriminately, of course. This hard truth has begun to dawn on some of the bank employees, and they are a living denial of the claim sometimes heard nowadays that the strike weapon is out of date. It will never be out of date as long as we have capitalism.

Auto-intoxication

Roaring and stinking its way merrily across the length and breadth of the land goes the motor car. It pours from the production lines to swell the enormous tide of tinplate on the already overcrowded roads. In attempts to cope with its insatiable appetite, workers’ backyards are sliced in half as motorways are pushed through with ruthless urgency. And up, up, up, mounts the toll of death and injury in its wake. No wonder Dr. Bergen Evans wrote a long and bitter denunciation of it eight years ago in The Spoor of Spooks.

But it is not only Dr. Evans who is concerned at the encroachment of the motor car. Brickbats have been thrown at Transport Minister Marples over his plan for “pedestrian control” experiments in selected areas. “The Marples Matchsticks” it was contemptuously labelled by the Daily Mail, after the illuminated robot who will show you how to walk across the road when the way is clear. Failure to observe the rules may cost you a £20 fine and the Mail is very piqued at the whittling away of pedestrians’ rights which this will involve.

Now the motor car is no longer a luxury. Indeed, it is an essential to many workers in holding down their jobs. More than eight million are on the roads and the number is expected to go on increasing. So the car manufacturers have done nicely out of it, although no one will expect British Railways to be very pleased. Neither will some of the shop owners, who will no doubt echo the Mail’s sentiments, because growing pressure against pedestrians might well discourage sales. This has in fact happened in some of the streets recently restricted to one-way traffic.

There is nothing very straightforward about the traffic problem, because it is surrounded by all sorts of interests tugging all ways, a familiar enough feature under capitalism. It exists, too, against the background of speed and yet more speed. For as any Socialist knows, the time factor is all important in capitalist production and colours all our outlook And when looked at from this angle, Socialism would be worth establishing: only just to let us slow down and take a breather.

Eddie Critchfield

Society and Morals. Part VIII. The Outlook of the Proletariat (Continued). (1918)

From the June 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part VIII.

Re-Birth of Unrest

The revival of trade union militancy which has taken place in recent years has its causes in those developments of capitalism we have previously outlined. The intense competition in the world markets which has supplanted the old-time “monopoly of Britain” made the employing class of all countries increasingly reluctant to concede even the least advances in wages. On the contrary, it stimulated the more general adoption of speeding-up methods and the wider use of the most perfect machinery. By depreciating the need for skill and increasing unemployment these factors led to a sharper competition for employment and tended to depress wages. The growth of trusts and of employers’ federations has enabled the capitalists to offer a more effective resistance to the unions, while on the other hand a progressive increase in the coat of living has proved a spur to working class unrest and organised activity, in spite of which real wages have continuously fallen.

In the last thirty years or so the strike policy has come again into favour, first among the newer and so-called unskilled unious, but later generally. Especially has this been so in the years immediately proceeding the outbreak of the war, during which period a continually growing unrest manifested itself among the workers in every part of the world. And it is probable also, that after the war militarism and capitalist “efficiency” will prove a further stimulant to working-class revolt, although, of course, the master class will make strenuous efforts to avoid industrial strife and suppress revolutionary propaganda.

To a certain extent a somewhat new outlook has been realised. The obvious dislike of the old-type officials and leaders to a militant policy and their love for the practice of “conferring” with the employers ; their compromising attitude and frequently proven treachery, have also led to much unfavourable criticism and to a decided weakening of their prestige. As a result many strikes have taken place in opposition to the desires of a compromising executive.

Moreover, the strong co-operation manifested among the masters in their determined efforts to resist and to break strikes, and particularly also the growing frequency with which they used their class weapon—the armed forces—to brutally coerce strikers into submission, brought about a decided tendency toward closer solidarity among the workers themselves. This is evidenced in the consolidation of various unions in the same field of production, in the spread of “sympathetic” strikes, and in the voluntary raising of funds by organised workers in support of disputes in which they themselves were not directly concerned.

Furthermore, the gradual decline of the industrial value of personal skill on the part of the employees, together with the need for “fighting” efficiency, has compelled the older “aristocratic” craft unions to recognise that their old-time method of conserving the strength of the unions by insisting upon special qualifications, including the prior serving of long apprenticeships, is both obsolete and futile. They have been forced more and more to adopt the method of the later “unskilled” unions who aim at including all those of a particular trade or industry within the organisation Consequently, “non-unionism” has become almost as great a crime in the eyes of the unionist as “blacklegging”—the worst delinquency in his moral code.

The same causes which fermented this revival in industrial strife also stimulated among the workers a livelier interest in politics which led to the formation of the Labour Party. The trade unions supported the project, and their leaders saw the possibility of political influence and office. The capitalist parties were cute enough to meet this new interest in political affairs by formulating delusive schemes of social reform to pacify and mislead the workers.

Moreover, having found the Labour Party leaders willing to play the same game, the bourgeoisie, especially the petty capitalist element, have given it no little amount of support. The Labour Party, dominated as it is by the reactionary leaders of trades unionism and men of the same stamp, to all of whom the notion of a class struggle is obnoxious, has consistently upheld capitalist principles, and is in reality only a bourgeois party with a “labour” label. Having achieved nothing of value for the workers it has become the butt of adverse criticism from the same elements as have shown independence and militancy on the industrial field.

                                                                       * * *

Thus far none of the movements mentioned above show any indication of being promoted by a full consciousness of proletarian interests. They register but the first stages of such a conception. The general mass of those who built up the strength both of the Chartist and of the trade union movement, saw and felt only their immediate sufferings and disabilities. The deep social causes from which these arose were mostly quite unrecognised. Consequently, no definite principles in opposition to capitalism were adopted by these movements, and no general code of proletarian ethics grew out of or with them.

Much the same applies to-day. The majority of the workers still accept the main dogmas of bourgeois orthodoxy. No doubt the trade unionist regards black-legging and non-unionism as bad and criminal whereas to the capitalist they are good and justifiable. Likewise extreme exploitation or “sweating” is abhorrent to the workers. Yet with regard to the existence of the wages system and of a profit-reaping class, the need for “national solidarity” in defence of “national interests,” and the like, the working-class mind is a faithful reflection of that bourgeois outlook which we considered in a previous section. Even where the workers do show a divergence of opinion upon Free Trade or Protection, Pacifism or Imperialism, these are manifestly but the effect of similar differences among the employing class and its retainers. That these contentions are correct is abundantly proven by the attitude the workers of every belligerent nation adopted upon the outbreak of the European War.

Nevertheless there does exist a school of thought and action which accurately reflects proletarian needs and interests, and therefore presents a true working-class system of morality, and this is the Socialist movement. Originating in, but toward the climax and close of the first period of working-class revolt, Socialism persisted and grew up, as it had to, independently of the several reformist and palliating movements, receiving a fresh impetus with the coming of the second period of activity now growing surely year by year among the workers of the world.

Our next and final consideration, therefore, will be Socialism in its relation to morality.

R. W. Housley

                                                                  (To be Continued.)

The Unions ten years after the miners’ defeat (1995)

From the February 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the 1984-85 miners’ strike baton-wielding police officers were a vivid warning of things to come as various anti-union laws promoted by the then Thatcher government have since stripped the unions in general of most of their powers — and a lot of their members.

It is now ten years since the miners marched back to work behind their banners following a 51-week strike that began in March 1984; sixteen years since the Tories began their overt assault on the working class; and seventeen years since the Economist leaked the “Ridley Plan” — an internal 'Tory Party document which was to be the blueprint for Thatcher’s assault on trade unions.

It is common now for trade unionists, assessing where they stand, to take their bearings from the 1984-5 strike and the defeat of the miners. When the strike ended, the NUM boasted 180,000 members. They now represent 8,000 miners at 17 pits. The impact of the miners’ defeat was phenomenal. “The wreckage of defeat,” wrote Steve Platt in a recent special trade union edition of the New Statesman and Society (18 November), “is still scattered around the national labour movement landscape like the relics of war on some recent battlefield”

For the Tories, the war didn’t end there. Since they came to power in 1979 they have implemented eight anti-union Acts, confining trade unions in a straitjacket of legislation and they have stooped to anti-union tactics not witnessed in Britain for ninety years.

Unions boast no victories these days, only the pyrrhic sort — that they still receive dues from 7 million members (12 million in 1979), that they still exist, surviving day-to-day like death-row inmates. They no longer call mass strikes and gain the support that the pickets at Saltley Gate Cokeworks secured when 10,000 Birmingham engineering workers downed tools and marched to their aid behind piper and banners in 1972. Their victories now are minuscule — fighting for individual rights, winning propitious tribunal hearings, and securing damages for members. Unions like the TGWIJ no longer call one-day strikes. Instead, they set up 24-hours legal advice helplines.

The roots of the present-day assault on trade unions go back two decades. Tories, like elephants, never forget. When they came to power in 1979 following the “Winter of Discontent”, it was with having endured two humiliating defeats at the hands of the miners in 1972 and 1974 that they placed the NUM so clearly in their sights. 'The Tories had long since accepted the fact that the miners, with their tradition of militancy, were the backbone of the trade-union movement — break the spine and the body crumbles, paralysed. Indeed, the Ridley Plan had carved the name on the bullet that killed miners’ solidarity five years before it was fired.

The Ridley Plan, like some Maoist strategy for guerrilla war, suggested where and when the Tories might win another show-down with the miners. It suggested the preparation of contingency plans - the building-up of coal stockpiles, the securing of overseas supplies, and it put on the agenda the recruitment of non-unionised haulage companies prepared to cross picket lines, the reduction of benefits to the families of striking miners and the rapid mobilisation of a huge paramilitary-like police force. When the Tories came to power, they only needed to bide their time and provoke a strike at a time favourable to themselves. They did this by announcing the closure of the Cortonwood Pit in March 1984. The rest is trade-union legend.

Anti-trade-union laws

Anti-trade-union legislation has been a major fetter on working-class unity over the last 16 years, and it is necessary to pin-point a few Acts before we can even take the temperature of the climate unions now operate in.

The 1980 Employment Act, for instance, made secondary picketing illegal and stole from unions the right to claim recognition from employers. It also made union members embroiled in sympathy strikes liable for damages should employers lose sufficient profits.

The 1982 Employment Act introduced periodic ballots on the closed shop, slimmed down the definition of an industrial dispute, outlawed industrial action against non-unionised firms and took away from striking workers the right to appeal should their action lead to their dismissal.

Such Acts were camouflaged as enhancing the freedom of the individual, of “improving the operation of the labour market by providing a balanced framework of industrial laws” as Norman Tebbitt went on record as saying in 1982.

David Coates sees the gulf between the “reality and rhetoric”, pointing out that:

“the freedom enhanced by those laws has been the freedom of capital, not labour. and the balance has been in reality the imbalance of class power ” (The Crisis of Labour, 1989, p. 123).

Under John Major the attack on unions has continued, keeping up the average since 1979 of one anti-union law every 20 months. The 1993 Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Act, for instance, permitted firms to entice their employees away from their unions with various inducements.

Files can be filled with examples of companies that have made use of such laws - laws aimed at pushing trade unions and collective bargaining arrangements out of the door.

In April 1993 over 120 workers at J.W. Arrowsmiths, a Bristol printing company, found themselves dismissed when they decided not to abandon a work-to-rule and overtime ban in support of their pay claim. They were eventually locked out and given two weeks to denounce the GPMU and to accept a two-year pay freeze with lower shift and overtime rates. Only three workers signed the new bond.

Eleven months later and Caterpillar UK de-recognised MSF and GMB (APEX). They then offered workers a two percent pay rise and a £500 lump sum, along with health/legal benefits, if they denounced their unions and signed individual employment contracts.

“Human Resource Management” is now taking over from unions in many workplaces. Legislative constraints have prevented unions from operating inside many companies and workers now find they have to take on their capitalist paymasters single-handedly, denied the support of collective strength, being forced by circumstances to accept individualised employment contracts, performance and profit-related pay schemes, de-skilliing and their induction into the “flexible workforce”.

Class collaboration

The future appears bleak for workers, with employers looking to have it all their own way. Robert Taylor in his TUC-commissioned book, The Future of the Trade Unions, believes:

“unions . . . need to encourage employee share-ownership schemes . . . they are becoming institutions invaluable to employers, because they provide the stability that companies need as they carry through necessary change ” (chapter 9).

If unions are invaluable to employers it is only because they pose no threat to capitalism and help provide stability for them to amass huge profits, rather than fighting to improve the lot of the workers they are supposed to represent.

Apathy and sixteen years of disillusionment at the hands of a Tory government has soured the outlook of trade unionists and the leadership has done little to boost morale. When Arthur Scargill said that the “unions have not been marginalised by the Tories but by our own unwillingness to fight back”, it was John Monks, the TUC General Secretary, who retorted that Scargill's brand of defiance “was not a practical option” (Guardian, 7 September).

So long as leaders like Monks continue to rule the TUC, bowing to the whims and dictates of capitalism, the longer unions will remain a puppet of capitalism. Monks is all for reform. He promises a “mutually reinforcing package of reforms of the tax and benefit system”. He argues for “targeted public investment for rebuilding the industrial base” and believes “the conversion of individual unemployment benefits into a subsidy to the employer can benefit both employer, employee and the exchequer" (New Statesman and Society). Thus, capitalism prospers, becoming even more profitable at the expense of workers. Reform in reality becomes class collaboration.

Useless Labour Party

Neither can unions depend on the labour Party for support, if they ever could in the past. Indeed, the Labour Party has an outstanding historical record of betraying unions and deserting them in their hour of need. While Tony Blair had “considerable sympathy for the signal workers” during last year’s RMT strike, he argued that “this dispute is costing the country a great deal of money . . . people are entitled to take strike action, but it is not the function of politicians to start barging into industrial disputes” (Guardian, 7 September). Perhaps Blair is unaware that the Tories have been provoking strikes since they entered office and sending in their paramilitaries to crush resistance to their onslaught against working-class unity.

Conservative mentality

Blair later went further by saying that unions "do not want, nor will they get support from a Labour government", and declared that “at their best, unions represent in the workplace the values that Labour shares with the British people” (New Statesman and Society, 18 September). Certainly both Labour and the TUC have imbibed a conservative mentality, but what values labour shares with the working class is open to serious contention — certainly no commitment to end the profit system that ruins millions of lives every year.

For John Pilger, in the same trade union edition of the New Statesman and Society:

“Labour differs from the official conservatives only in tone . . . it would be hard to slip a cigarette paper between their views and those of the Tories . .  the trade unions have by default become the political opposition. ”

Insofar as Labour has acknowledged the inevitability of unemployment and refuses to support strikers, that would appear to be the case. As far back as 1984 the Labour Party was seeing trade unions as a hot potato and that supporting strikes would be an electoral liability. This is why the miners were given only tepid support and why RMT was ignored by Blair. Big union defeats would have reverberated through Walworth Road like the shock waves from an earthquake.

But the 1990s appear to have heralded the demise of trade unions as mobilisers of mass discontent born of workplace injustices. Just as Labour failed to harness the frustration and anger generated by the 1984-5 miners’ strike, so too have the unions failed to capitalise on sixteen years of Tory mayhem at the expense of their membership. In 1979, working days lost through strike action stood at 30 million. By 1993 it had dropped to 649,000 — a figure actually higher than the previous year — 528,000 — the lowest in 100 years!

There is indeed the potential for a real trade-union movement. Workers the length and breadth of the nation are crying out for representation. Some 800,000 workers every year take their employer-related grievances to the Citizens’ Advance Bureau. A recent survey found that only 6 percent of respondents felt secure at work. The 1992-3 pit closures brought more people out on the streets in protest that at any time during the 1984-5 strike. Research recently carried out by the Industrial Relations Unit of the University of Warwick, conducted with the co-operation of 12 unions, found that 72 percent of respondents joined a union for support. Some 31.2 percent sought out a union themselves.

There are many reasons why trade-union membership has fallen by 5 million in sixteen years — anti-union laws, Thatcher's premeditated attack on the traditionally strongly unionised manufacturing base, recession, unemployment, apathy and general disillusionment to name just a few.

Struggle for socialism

Trade unions have adopted a bunker mentality, afraid to pop their heads up in case they’re blown off. This is nothing new. Unions have always fought from a position of weakness. But it does not have to be this way. So long as unions continue to sec victories in securing crumbs from our masters’ tables, as long as they continue to acquiesce in and help perpetuate the capitalist system of production for profit, not use, and the exploitation of their members in the process, the longer and more futile will be their struggle.

Unions need broader objectives — long-term macro goals, not immediate micro victories. They need to harness their struggle to the movement for world socialism, to a system of society whose establishment will end the whole employer-employee relationship. Micro struggles can only be a rearguard action. In their efforts to coexist with capitalism unions will always fail, in theory and practice.

For Marx, they fail because they generally limit “themselves to a guerrilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organised forces as a lever for the emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system” (Value, Price and Profit).

John Bissett

What’s behind the current strike wave? (2002)

From the February 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

The media is desperate to discredit them, but what are the strikes by the railway and postal workers really about?

The media are trying to discredit the rail strikes by implying that it is just a cynical manoeuvre by rival pretenders to the crown of RMT general secretary. An internal TUC document was leaked to the London Evening Standard, in which one official opined that Bob Crow, the Leftist contender, “believes that strike action raises the class consciousness of the rank and file” (10 January), thus adding a “Red Scare” to their anti-striker arsenal. Unfortunately for the Evening Standard both they and “Red Bob” are wrong; workers do not go to the lengths of striking just to please machiavellian union bosses.

Sociologists studying unions have frequently commented upon how it is the type of industry that can determine the level of union organisation: the turnover in workers, the relations between workers in the workplace, the importance of an identifiable group of workers within the labour process.

Both the postal workers and the rail staff confirm this. They work in industries which involve mass co-operative human labour (relations in the workplace), which are technical enough to prevent them being easily casualised (turnover of staff), and which are social monopolies (key industries) which work stoppages are able to immediately shut down (being services, rather than commodity producing industries). Such factors put workers in a stronger bargaining position, which has itself caused the assaults on working conditions which have provoked the current wave of industrial struggles in reaction.

It is the essential nature of the services in these industries which has led to their being associated with state control. Arguments about state ownership and control over these areas can be traced back centuries (indeed, Adam Smith discusses this issue in his Wealth of Nations, and, indeed, favoured the “regulated market” approach which Blairites claim to be an innovation of the Third Way). These services have to be paid for somehow, but to allow them to be run on a totally free market basis would mean that their monopolistic power could lead to them charging at levels which would be detrimental to the interests of other capitalist firms. On the other hand, in order to attract investment they have to make sufficient return to make it worth investors’ while.

Failure of nationalisation

In 1945 the railways were nationalised, after twenty or thirty years of the capitalist class agonising over how to deal with the railways, and as a necessity of post-war reconstruction (See Socialist Standard, November 2000). This had the advantage of securing the existence of the railways, and bringing them within the system of “planning” that characterised immediate post-war capitalism. It also had the, unfortunate for the capitalist class, side-effect of concentrating the workforce into one huge unit. This effectively meant that the unions in those industries had the power to shut down the entire national system in support of their demands.

Along with two other factors, this led to “inefficiency” within the rail and postal industries. The first of these other factors was the nature of nationalised industries. Although they were in effect simply giant corporations in the usual mould, they had one significant difference. Unlike publicly quoted corporations, they were not subject to take-over. If a capitalist firm is run inefficiently, that is when the amount of profit it produces is low relative to its total capital, its share price falls, and other capitalists are able to buy its assets for a relative song. This spurs management on to keep the productivity of the workforce in line with its capital value and standard rates of industrial profit; and it also acts as a spur to investment in capital.

This lack of stimulus was linked to the nature of political control of the nationalised industries. Given that all parties were chasing working class votes, to hoodwink them into supporting capitalism, the political masters of these industries were reluctant to overtly lay-off workers from the nationalised industries. The tendency was, rather than increase the rates of exploitation, or attack workers conditions, to opt for the more politically expedient way and close down rails, coal mines, etc. when they became “uneconomic” (i.e. capitalistically inefficient).

What this meant was that, over time, whereas it had been expedient for capital to hand these industries to the state, eventually nationalised industry became a detriment to their interests. Firstly because inefficiencies due to inadequate investment in new capital in transport and mail were cutting into the profits of other sectors of the economy. Secondly, because the relative strength of the workers and their conditions had wider consequences of working conditions and labour discipline throughout the whole of the economy. Finally, these asset-rich industries were ripe for someone to make a profit from.

When privatisation did come, as a part of the Tories’ turning away from the “post-war consensus”, they moved to undo the disadvantages for capital of national pay bargaining. Part and parcel of the break-up of nationalised industries, was the introduction of trade union legislation banning support strikes in firms not directly involved in negotiations. This was necessary from the capitalist point of view, so that the huge unions which had amalgamated due to necessity faced with the concentrated power of national employers, could not strike across firms in order to protect their members. This was coupled with the deliberate breaking-up of national institutions (including the NHS) into smaller bargaining units, effectively paving the way for long term attacks on workers conditions.

Get rich quick

The other consequence of privatisation, especially in the rails, was the asset stripping of the industry. Since the amount of capital in the industry (especially land) had not been used “efficiently”, it proved to be a cheap source of profits for the new investors. Indeed, for the first few years, the amount given out in share dividends to the owners of Railtrack et al. were equal the amounts realised in sales of land and stock. Rather than realising profits from improved service provision and investment, the new owners sought profit in the easiest form they could (much in the same manner as the asset stripping of the former Soviet Union’s industries).

Alongside this, “overmanning” was attacked, that is, the new management tried to increase the rate of exploitation. Mostly, this involved laying off staff wholesale, leading to a big decrease in the number of signalling staff, as well as drivers. Many of the staff were transferred into subcontracting firms, which subsequently clouded the chain of command with regards to maintenance, but which in the short term allowed workers’ conditions to deteriorate.

These cutbacks have led to a desperate situation. Arriva trains in the Northeast have found themselves short of sufficient drivers to meet their commitments. As has been shown in Scotland, a simple overtime ban has been sufficient to cripple service there. Across the country, the rising wages of drivers relative to other rail staff has been the immediate cause of the South West Trains dispute (leaving aside the disciplinary grievances). It is hardly surprising, then, that the state is offering to come to the industry’s aid, by subsiding the training of drivers with a new academy, to take this cost of their labour off their shoulders, and restore the level of drivers needed.

This short sighted increase in the rate of exploitation did not, for several reasons, lead to an immediate increase in profits. Firstly, the big bulk freight contracts declined along with the demise of the coal and steel industries, a situation not helped by the second factor, which is that successive governments have consciously followed a policy of preferring roads to rail (after all, the car industry needs propping up). Rails need more maintenance and manpower to keep running that do ordinary roads, so in competition between the two the latter comes out better (especially when its costs are disguised into general taxation).

Transporting labour-power

The most important commodity carried by rail at present is labour power, in the form of commuting workers. This aspect remains vital for many capitalists, particularly in London, since housing prices within the city prevent workers from dwelling near their workplaces. What this does mean, however, is that transport prices feed directly into the price of labour in many areas, and any rises in transport prices cut the profitability of the firms who rely on the rails for labour delivery. Hence why transport becomes such a key issue, and the capitalist class is so willing to countenance state intervention in the rail industry.

The fact remains, though, that the unions remain strong enough within these sectors to resist attacks to a certain extent. Despite being hampered by law and the break-up of the industry, the big unions can co-ordinate their campaigns, and exploit political embarrassment to try and get their way. The problems are such that the rail operators may soon decide it is worthwhile giving national bargaining another try as a way of keeping workers under control. Likewise, the Post Office, now ridiculously renamed “Consignia”, may have to think again about their proposed mass sackings of workers, in the face of a concerted union resistance.

Given, though, that the capitalists have used the issue of nationalisation or privatisation as the grounds for their alteration of policy over industrial relations and an attack on working conditions, it is understandable as to why many workers will see the debate in those terms, and their own interest lying with nationalisation. Hence they may be willing to believe that people calling for nationalisation represent their interests. The nationalisation debate, however, is simply one that occurs due to the incapacity of the market system to contain the contradiction between the need for ever more integrated social labour, with private property and market relations. Re-nationalisation will not remove the question of investment costs and running of the railways that have led it into such a parlous state, and will just lead to a repeat of the centuries old story.

Likewise, success through striking may well encourage other workers to stand up for their rights in the workplace more. A group of workers’ strength, however, will continue to be determined by their position within the capitalist economy, and their victory a partial one within the market system. Only by looking to the political situation, the reality of class ownership and power within capitalism, and organising to make themselves a party to the political battle in the name of common ownership for their mutual needs, will a general gain come to workers, and an end wrought to the need for these sectional battles. Otherwise, the ultimate result of the strikes will be the need to strike again in the future.

Pik Smeet

An Open Letter to Dave Douglass (1972)

From the December 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Dave,

I see from the News of the World for November 15th that you are the editor of the Trotskyist magazine ‘Mineworkers Internationale’, and that you have published articles addressing the miners on union policy.

You appear to have upset the editor of the News of the World, and the officials of the Communist Party, who say that you are getting the “sane militants” (the C.P.) a bad name.

You wrote (apparently) in one issue of your magazine

“The only long-term justice for the workers will be under a system which they themselves control—a Socialist system.”

and

“Launch the General Strike immediately and occupy the factories, docks, railways without charging, capture the supermarkets and food wholesalers and distribute the food free.”

Hard Enough

And you claim to work for the overthrow of Capitalism.

One can sympathise with your indignation with your exploitation and the fact, as you say, “that Capitalists are making a fortune out of my sweat, discomfort and forfeiture of human dignity”. Fair enough!

But, Dave boy, indignation is not enough! In this business (the class struggle) brains are more important than heart, because our enemy, the Capitalist, is immensely powerful, and helped by a large staff of cunning labour leaders and T.U. Officials.

And I’m going to tell you straight out, that your stuff is doing more harm than good.

First “seize the pits” or “the Supermarkets”, or “the railways”, is rubbish. The workers have a difficult enough job trying seize half-a-pound of steak on a Friday night, without you try to feed them this baloney.

You must begin to learn that the control of the public apparatus of production and distribution is political, not industrial. It is maintained by the Government of the day, if necessary by armed force, although the workers don’t show much evidence of doing any “seizing”, do they? Could it be they’ve too much sense?

The Wrong Interests

Neither are you doing any good trying to cod the miners into taking action for “workers’ control”. The workers will never control Capitalism. What determines class control is ownership, and that ownership is legalised and maintained through Parliament, by the Government of the day, backed by an electoral majority.

It is no business of trade unions to try to usurp the job of a political party. Control of the whole of industry is a political matter concerning the whole capitalist class. The strongest, most militant trade union in the world can do nothing about it and won’t want to, anyway, because people join unions to look after the trade interests, not class interests.

Dave, I’m sorry, but your other stuff urging the miners on strike last year to do as much damage as possible is nonsense too. This is a hang-over from early Russian days when the isolated Bolsheviks sought to create as much dissension abroad as possible, for political propaganda materials.

Strike What For?

I now come to what, for me, is the most stupid and ridiculous nonsense of all. “Launch the General Strike and occupy the factories”. Are you really in your right mind, mate? Don’t you know that whenever the workers have occupied factories, after a few weeks with the wives bringing meals and drinks, they have unoccupied them again?

The capitalists will always beat you at this game; they own everything; they can retire to the Hilton or the country, and starve you out. In fact, the French authorities have said they approve of the strikers occupying the factory because “It keeps the place clean”.

And lastly, the General Strike! What stupid bloody rubbish. First of all, General Strikes for industrial ends are difficult enough, because workers’ action on such a scale concerns the whole capitalist class who have shown repeatedly, all over the world, that they will not hesitate if necessary, to crush strikes by armed force.

But even worse, you are urging a General Strike for “Workers’ Control”, which because you are not clear about it, you call a “Socialist system”.

A Socialist system will and must abolish classes! What are you on about? Will there be wage-workers under Trotskyist “Socialism” then ?

But, worst of all, you are trying to control trade unionists in General Strikes for political purposes — and this is disastrous.

If you claim that all the workers (or a lot of them) are militants, anxious to overthrow Capitalism, why have they got to lose their wages (and some of them, their personal freedom) in General Strikes?

Consciousness Wanted

If they want a General Strike why do they vote for Tory and Labour parties?

If the workers are Socialists, they have a perfectly safe and sane method of abolishing Capitalism, which also happens (as time will show) to be the only possible method — the ballot box.

It is for this reason that the Socialist Party of Great Britain will never support calls for General Strikes for political purposes. People like you, Dave, may feel very strongly, but you haven’t thought very much.

Socialists, in their capacity as trade unionists, because we are exploited like you, and have to join them, say to their fellow workers : Political action is for political parties! Trade union political independence at all costs!

Socialism will be established by a class political party, not the T.U.C., or any trade union.

It Can be Done

Let trade unions mind their own business, the interests of their members.

Let the affairs of the union be run democratically, by the rank-and-file vote, make strikes short and sharp. Procrastination is the death of strikes.

And, lastly, some advice to you, by one who has been right through the Leninist mill himself.

Forget all your Trotskyist dreamworld; it never was right. Look where the Leninist “boring from within” the trade unions has landed the C.P. The very nominees the Communist factions have got “elected” as officials have at times been the first to kick out Communists.

Study Socialism! Get clear on the necessity of conscious political actions by the workers, organised in a political party to take political power, to abolish capitalist control; and replace it by “democratic control”.

This is the road of Success, to Victory.

What you are doing now will only spread apathy as a result of bitter disappointment.

Forget Trotsky, and remember Marx!

Yours for Socialism,

Horatio

11 November 1972.

Editorial: The Bus Strike (1958)

Editorial from the July 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

It may seem that a strike lasting nearly seven weeks was a high price for the busmen to pay for the relatively small gains they made in the shape of some increase of pay for the men outside central London who at the start were excluded entirely from the offer of 8s. 6d. increase: though even this was noteworthy in face of the adamant attitude of the London Transport Executive. But the heartening demonstration of working class solidarity by the central London men will have achieved much more. The employers and the government were looking at the busmen’s struggle as a test case for the wage claims in other, larger, industries. Having seen the hundred per cent, solid strike, they will take note that there is a degree of determination behind the claims that they did not expect

The T.U.C. comes out of it badly. Having given verbal encouragement to the busmen’s claim they were too timid to face the prospect of extending the strike and limited their help to an appeal for financial assistance.

The Government cleverly applied their old class principle, "divide and rule,” by detaching the railwaymen from possible involvement in the dispute, with a 3 per cent. wage increase, to be paid for through redundancies and economies. (Readers should turn to another column to see what this journal was saying about Railway Nationalisation 50 years ago.)

Sir John Elliot, chairman of London Transport, showed that a nationalised industry behaves just like employers generally. He was, as he said, being tough, and was apparently prepared to see the buses off the streets till Christmas in order to win. Simultaneously, he announced further contraction of bus services, because they don’t pay their way.

Taken all in all the bus strike was a complete demonstration in tangible, painful form, for everyone to see, that under its thin disguise of “Welfare,” capitalism has not changed from what it always was, a hard, ruthless social system in which the workers are expected to take what capitalism offers and be beaten down if they try to get more.

In revolt (2023)

Book Review from the May 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour Revolt in Britain 1910-14. By Ralph Darlington, Pluto Press, 2023

The period of strikes between 1910 and 1914 was known at the time as the ‘Labour Unrest’. Darlington says that it should rather be described as the ‘Labour Revolt’. Miners, railway workers, dock workers, and many others were involved in bitter strikes, some accompanied by rioting when the police protected ‘blacklegs’ that the employers brought in to try to keep production going. The army was called in too. Workers were killed, either shot by soldiers or beaten by the police, in Belfast (2), Liverpool (2), Tonypandy (1), Llanelli (2) and Dublin (2).

Darlington discusses possible reasons for the revolt. Wanting to be treated with more respect will have been an element as he suggests but the rise in the cost of living which eroded real living standards will have been the most important.

The bogey for the capitalist press was ‘syndicalism’. Darlington brings out that what was called this was a practice rather than a doctrine and was a revolt against trade union officialdom as much as against employers. He notes that the number of paid union officials had increased faster than the number of union members. These officials prioritised union recognition by employers to negotiate agreements but these involved commitments not to strike without first going through conciliation procedures. An element of ‘syndicalism’ was workers insisting that their union’s officials be their servants and not do deals over their heads; they wanted employers to be treated as the class enemy rather than mere bargaining partners. It was essentially militant trade unionism.

There were doctrinaire syndicalists who advocated more than this and saw the objective as the workers eventually, through ‘direct action’ and a general strike, taking over and running the industries in which they worked. But there can’t have been many activists and strikers who took this seriously or who thought it realistic to expect the government to stand by and let this happen when it even intervened to hinder the ordinary trade union struggle. Most activist workers knew that political action was also necessary; indeed the demand for worker representation in Parliament was another feature of the wider period.

Darlington criticises the SDP (as the SDF became in 1908 and then in 1911 the BSP) for insisting on the need to gain control of political power before taking over the means of production and so regarding the trade union struggle as ‘secondary’. But, in a footnote towards the end of the book, he criticises syndicalism because ‘it did not explicitly address the problem of how a revolutionary general strike to establish workers’ control would overcome the state monopoly of armed force in defence of the capitalist economic and social order’, adding ‘it did not consider the question of the conquest of political power’.

He also discusses the position of the De Leonist SLP and criticises its ‘doctrinaire and sectarian’ view that workers should form revolutionary unions to oppose the existing unions. This doctrine, known as ‘dual unionism’, was also embraced by the IWW and some syndicalists. Other syndicalists favoured staying in the existing unions and trying to make them more democratic and militant.

One contemporary group whose views he does not discuss is the SPGB. There is a single mention, to say that George Hicks, the national organiser of the Operative Bricklayers’ Society, was a founder member. E. J. B. Allen, one of the doctrinaire syndicalists he cites on a number of occasions, was also a founder member, though Darlington has him as a founder member of the SLP. There can be no justification for discussing the views only of the SLP but not the SPGB which was probably slightly larger and was active in more places.

The Socialist Standard of the time covered all of the big strikes discussed by Darlington (and one he doesn’t — the 1911 London printers’ strike). The September 1911 issue carried a detailed 4,600 word editorial on the failed 1911 railway workers strike under the title “Strikers Struck. How the Railway Servants were betrayed’ which argued that the strikers should have given priority to demanding the release of all imprisoned strikers and improved hours and wages rather than to the ‘recognition’ of union officials as negotiators, and concluded:

‘The most they may snatch from the ashes of their ruined hopes is the lesson that, whether on the industrial or the political field, their struggles must be grounded upon democracy. Their position must be democratic, their methods must be democratic, their weapons must be democratic. Even under capitalism democracy is no empty word, and its first interpretation is that the representative is the servant, not the leader. Had the railwaymen given this reply to their so-called leaders when the latter sent the fatal message: “All men must return to work immediately,” they would not now be chewing the cud of their disappointment, marvelling at the difference between recognition of the unions and recognition of their officials, and wondering if they had not better set about making the unions (which appear to consist of the officials) recognise the men.’

As to the syndicalists and other anti-parliamentarians:

‘The final lesson, and the greatest of all, is to be found in the crushed hopes of the Industrialists, the Syndicalists, the Anarchists. These claim that the means of production must be seized in the teeth of the armed forces; the Socialists hold that the preliminary must be to get control of the armed forces by capturing the machinery of government.’

The 1912 strike in the London docks was dealt with in the August issue under the title “Dockers Betrayed” which made the same point regarding union officials. The failure of the rail union leaders to support sympathetic strike action to help the locked-out (by an Irish Nationalist employer) Dublin transport workers was covered in the January 1914 issue under the title “Sold Again”. The August 1911 issue included an eye-witness account, and experience, of police brutality in Manchester (all these articles can be found here: www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/standard-index-1910s/).

What the articles show is that the SPGB didn’t conform to the left-wing calumny that it is ‘anti-trade union’. What it was against was not to workers forming unions or even appointing officials but to the control of unions and of struggles over wages and working conditions by officials who regarded themselves as the leaders rather than the servants of their members. It was for democratic organisation of workers to wage the struggle against employers, even if this was indeed ‘secondary’ to the need to gain control of political power. And it opposed ‘dual unionism’, working within the existing unions.

It is only on the last but one page that Darlington reveals that he supports ‘the Bolshevik doctrine of a revolutionary vanguard party’, though this could have been guessed from his earlier analysis that what was lacking in the period was the right leadership.

Nevertheless, the book does usefully describe in detail and analyse the national and local strikes of the period, including those by women workers. It will obviously be on the reading list for anyone studying or interested in the period.

Adam Buick

Enough is enough is not enough (2023)

From the February 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Over the past decades, employers have been fierce and unrelenting. Companies laid off workers, attacked unions and demanded concessions. Governments of all stripes helped by eroding labour standards, de-regulating industries, privatising services and permitting job out-sourcing. Being in a weak position the union leaders recoiled from the prospect of waging an all-out class war to challenge the employers so they accepted the new contracts, no matter how damaging, in the hope that lost ground could be regained. Emboldened by this, employers demanded workers forfeit more established practices, even as the stock market boomed and profits soared. With few notable exceptions, strikes were defeated, union recruitment drives failed and workers became demoralised.

But now trade union militancy and strikes have returned to the forefront of British politics. The Socialist Party does not minimise the necessity and importance of workers keeping up the struggle to maintain the level of wages and protect working conditions. There are now once again some signs that general combativeness is rising. Unions are the single most effective way organised workers can counter the bosses. Workers who risked their lives during the Covid pandemic and are now suffering from a cost of living crisis not of their making say they deserve substantial pay raises, and are prepared to go on strike to try to get it. Employers can no longer expect their workforce to compliantly roll over and be strong-armed into conceding cuts in wages and conditions. Increasing numbers of workers across all sectors are saying enough is enough. The current labour shortage means they have a bit more leverage. It has got the bosses worried.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government intends to introduce new laws that are aimed at trade union industrial action by insisting key workers must maintain essential services during any strike. The government wants to make it more difficult for ordinary working people, firefighters, nurses and teachers to express their democratic wishes and to take industrial action in defence of their jobs and pay. Make no mistake. The government’s legislative plans are an assault in the class war on workers’ ability to resist the employers’ offensive. Trade unions are workers’ front line of defence against their employers under capitalism.

The legislation will permit employers to sue unions and sack employees if legal minimum service levels are not met. Union members who are instructed by the employers to work and refuse to do so could lose their jobs. The new law will also back employers bringing an injunction to prevent strikes or seeking damages afterwards if they go ahead with unions facing court actions and possible sequestration of funds.

When workers strike or work to rule, the bosses find out who really runs the workplace, who keeps the machines humming, production going, and the money flowing. But that said, it’s important to clarify that the employers have the power of the state behind them and when push comes to shove, they do not hesitate to bring that powerful institution to bear upon the workers. In addition, most workers have practically no savings, so cannot afford to stop working for long.

Hence the strategy of a series of short strike stoppages. Adapting to match the new reality, rather than calling for a general strike, individual unions seek to coordinate their actions for increased effect. Solidarity is one of the greatest weapons we possess. Many workers are realising that it is the worker and the worker alone who has to take care of their economic interests, as they’ll get nothing from the politicians who fill parliamentary seats and cabinet posts or the bureaucrats in their professional union posts.

When the government goes on the offensive against workers on behalf of the capitalist class, this may lead workers’ organisations to more radical actions, to the capitalist society exposing its class nature, to the general public opening up to revolutionary ideas, and consequently, to the class struggle becoming conscious and political rather than just defensive and economic.

To be sure, participation in strikes does not automatically make workers class-conscious. Even when workers acquire revolutionary consciousness they are still compelled to engage in the non-revolutionary struggle. As workers we fight in the here and now, where we are and where we can. We don’t see such day-to-day struggles as a diversion.

Our preferred trade union strategy is to be active in unions where they exist, but not to do it with a parochial perspective but with a class-wide viewpoint that involves all groups in society that have no opportunity to participate in unions and to engage them as much as possible in a conscious class struggle. The strike weapon is not a sure means of victory for workers in disputes with employers. There are many cases of workers being compelled to return to work without gains, even sometimes with losses. Strikes should not be employed recklessly but should be entered into with strategy in mind.

Socialism demands the revolutionising of the workers themselves. This does not mean that workers should sit back and do nothing, the struggle over wages and conditions must go on. Workers are learning the hard lessons and it is becoming clearer that this is a secondary, defensive activity. The real struggle is to take the means of wealth production and distribution – the factories, farms, offices, mines etc. – into common ownership. That is the larger, political struggle.

For New Readers (1971)

From the October 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard 

What we are not

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is not the Labour Party, nor do we support the Labour Party. In our view the Labour Party used to be an organization with confused and vague ideas about changing society and improving the lot of working people. It has now become little different from the Conservative Party — another “team” to administer capitalism.

We are also opposed to the so-called “Communist" Party and to the Trotskyists.

We have to explain these points because unfortunately the word “Socialism” has been used in many different ways, often very woolly, whereas we are quite clear about what we mean by Socialism, and about how to get it.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is connected with parties and groups in other countries. It is democratically run, with all members having an equal say, and no secrecy.

What we mean by "Capitalism"

By capitalism we mean commercial society, society based on buying and selling. This exists all over the world, with the exception of pre-capitalist societies which still survive, for instance tribal communism, and subsistence-level peasant societies. Capitalism rules in Russia, China, Cuba, and other countries falsely claimed to be “Socialist” or “Communist.”

Capitalism has not always existed, and it will not exist for ever. Capitalism is not an evil conspiracy (though as a matter of fact, it is fertile ground for evil conspiracies) but a type of social order which has been necessary for the progress of our species.

The function of capitalism was to put human beings through a great deal of anxiety, loneliness, boring work, shoddy food and housing — a generally insecure and frustrated existence — in order to screw wealth out of them. Capitalism developed science and technology with brilliant success, united the world (for communications purposes) into a “global village” and trained more people than ever before to a high level of knowhow and adaptability.

But capitalism has not, in the main, fully applied its science and technology for the benefit of the majority of the population, and in our view it cannot. Capitalism has not united the world politically — wars go on all the time, and a Big War which would exterminate the lot of us gets steadily less unlikely. Capitalism has not employed its knowledge and expertise in useful, dignified and happy productive activity, but has put a curse on work.

Capitalism has created a potential abundance of wealth, capable of satisfying human wants on a scale heretofore undreamed of. But capitalism cannot realize its own potential. This is because the capitalist economic system is best suited to rationing scarcity by means of the market. It goes haywire at the threat of abundance — as witness the “problem” of millions of tons of “surplus” food in a world where over ten per cent of the population is starving.

Who the workers are

To many people “the working class” is defined by occupation or education, or even by trivialities like accent or table manners. These may be useful classifications for some purposes, but to the Socialist “working class” has quite a different meaning, based on the analysis of Karl Marx. By this definition, the working class is composed of those who do not own enough to live off their possessions, and therefore have to sell themselves. The working class is a class of wage-slaves. This includes the great majority of the population, if we count dependents (such as housewives and babies) and trainee wage-slaves (such as schoolchildren, apprentices and students).

Capitalism has tidied up classes. All other classes apart from capitalists and workers (such as peasants) readily dwindle away under capitalism — usually by their members being recruited into the working class. Workers are exploited. By this we don’t mean that they always live in Dickensian conditions, or that foremen stride about brandishing whips. We mean simply that workers are a source of wealth, which is taken from them. This may seem fairly obvious, but many people appear to live in a make-believe world in which captains of industry” or “financial wizards” or (increasingly) “the authorities” somehow “give” workers employment.” The fact is that the world’s wealth produced by the working class, but does not belong to them. In Britain, for example, 10 per cent of the population own over 90 per cent of the wealth and get 99 per cent of the property income. The rich and powerful (the capitalist class) have interests opposed to those of the workers. They gain where workers lose: if wages rise, profits fall. And of course, the capitalists will lose their privileged position in Socialism, where all men and women will be social equals.

It is the working class which must establish Socialism, because they are the majority of the population, because they do all the essential work of operating capitalism and are therefore trained to a high degree, and because they are driven by their conditions of life to challenge the status quo — though to date it has usually been fairly easy for workers’ discontent to be channelled in a reformist, rather than revolutionary, direction.

Defeatists and self-styled “realists” are apt to point at that the majority of workers are “contented” or apathetic” — though of many workers it might be truer to say that they are worried so sick that they do not care. What the pessimists forget is that capitalism is a dynamic society, indeed a revolutionary society, of perpetual agitation and change.

Many workers adopt the motto: “Anything for a quiet life.” But most of them find this impossible, capitalism takes them by the scruff of the neck, gives them a good shaking, and says: “You cannot have a quiet life.” Just as we are about to close our teeth upon the dangling carrot, it is whisked away by war, slump, job re-organization or other arbitrary authority. There is of course no guarantee that workers will turn to Socialism as the answer to their problems. All we can say is that certain long-term trends in capitalism make it increasingly likely that they will. For the moment they may take refuge in television, drugs, mental and psychosomatic illness, feelings of personal guilt and feverish pursuit of “success.” It is up to the Socialist to dis-illusion people.

What unions can do

As long as capitalism stays, there will be class struggle. Workers don’t ask for it. Socialists don’t delight in it. Strikes, and other forms of “industrial action” are unavoidable if workers are to defend their living standards, and occasionally raise them.

We advise workers to be “militant” in the sense that they should press for the highest wages they can get, and should not soft-pedal this struggle because capitalism has started one of its wars or because the government says there is a crisis. But trade union militancy in itself does nothing to threaten the continued existence of capitalism, though it may threaten particular regimes or schemes of capitalism.

Strikes are necessary for our defence, but severely limited even for this. The general level of wages is largely fixed by the pattern of capital investment, and negotiable only within relatively narrow limits. The operation of capitalism’s trade (and employment) cycle is a running tide in relation to which the militant trade unionist is little more than a King Canute. In addition, trade unionism by itself may set one group of workers against another.

One of the immediate consequences of the growth of a mass Socialist movement will be a more effective trade union movement, which will take no notice of hallucinations like “the national interest” or “inflationary spirals.”

In keeping with our opposition to leadership, we say that the people best qualified to decide the tactics of a particular strike are the workers directly involved, who have to live with the consequences. It is not the function of our Party to lay down a detailed trade union strategy — indeed our trade unionist members may have differences of opinion about this. There are however two general aims which Socialists pursue: working class democracy and unity. Whereas governments of capitalism worry themselves about “giving unions more power over their members”. Socialists are more concerned with giving the members more power over their unions. Parochial craft or regional interests should be subordinated to the interests of all the workers.

The Conservative government’s Industrial Relations Bill could not have been killed by trade union action, because such a large number of workers were either in favour of it, or indifferent. (Many of those opposed quibble only about details, and would support anti-union measures by a different ruling party). If this were not so, the government would not have dared introduce the measure in the first place. Lacking Socialist understanding, workers find scapegoats for their problems. Union-bashing wins working class votes. Enforcing the Act is another matter. Whether the mass of workers will remain so docile then remains to be seen. In any case, we see here an example of the trade union struggle being hampered by the lack of a strong Socialist movement, based on widespread Socialist understanding.

Reforms?

Capitalism never runs out of reforms. On the contrary, it needs perpetual reforming. Capitalist political parties do not declare that the existing state of affairs is fine. On the contrary, they use words like “radical,” “dynamic,” "revolutionary” etc. to describe the reforms they advocate.

A Socialist party does not, of course, oppose all reforms any more than it advocates them. On the contrary, Socialists recognize that reforms inside capitalism may sometimes benefit the working class — though never by as much as one per cent of what is claimed for them!

But it is not the function of a Socialist party to campaign for reforms, or to seek support on the basis of reforms. Historically, we have seen parties which started out with Socialism as an aim, converted into run-of-the-mill capitalist parties (for instance, the German Social-Democratic Party) because they fell for the easy line: "Why not advocate revolution and reform — just in the meantime?” This must attract the support of those who want reform, but aren’t too interested in revolution. A “Socialist” party which grows in strength ahead of the real extent of Socialist understanding among the workers, is likely to be placed in a position where it is forced to administer capitalism, or go in for political trading with capitalist parties. For a party to canvass the support of non-Socialists is the first step to becoming a party of non-Socialists.

A Socialist party analyses closely the likely effects of reform measures, and gives a sober assessment of the extent to which they will benefit or injure the majority of the population.

Revolution?

Because Socialism will be a democratic society, in which the majority will get its way, with full rights of dissent and arguments for minorities, it follows that Socialism can only be set up democratically. That is to say, Socialism cannot be handed to the majority of people by an elite which thinks it knows what’s good for them.

Although Socialism is the culmination of trends within capitalism, this does not mean that Socialism will somehow come about irrespective of people’s wishes. On the contrary, one of the ways in which capitalism tends towards Socialism is by creating a large organized, informed working class. It is these people (i.e. it is we, the workers) who will establish Socialism, but we will not do it by accident or improvization: we will do it consciously, because we want it and see the necessity for it.

The chief job of Socialists at this stage is therefore to spread Socialist ideas, and expose the false remedies of capitalism. At present Socialists are in a tiny minority, but as we have pointed out, capitalism is unlike previous societies in that it is a system of constant agitation and rapid change in which nothing is sacred and no ideas are safe.

“Revolution” to the Socialist is not a violent thing, with street fights and barricades. Such a view of revolution is nineteenth-century. Today, no barricades could possibly stand up to the might of the modern state, and in any case there is no need, because in the advanced countries, where workers are most numerous and highly-trained, capitalism, is forced to give them certain political rights. We can see in the present-day Russian Empire what happens when an increasingly advanced form of capitalism is lumbered with an outdated political apparatus; more and more unrest and instability, which can only result in the granting of democratic reforms.

Socialists are not pacifists, and we are in no position to guarantee that the Socialist revolution will be altogether free from violence. Violence is improbable, but will depend upon the behaviour of the minority who are still opposed to Socialism. If there are people reactionary, desperate and foolish enough to use violence to obstruct the plans of the Socialist majority, then defensive action of some sort might have to be taken against them.

What we mean by Socialism

Socialism means the end of buying and selling, the end of money and the wages system. As long as these things remain, there will be economic crises, wars, bitter class struggle and day-to-day violence. In our opinion these problems cannot be cured by charities, social reforms or a personal “change of heart” on the part of individuals. Neither can they be solved by nationalization or "workers’ control” — since these are merely different ways of administering the same economic system.

Socialism will mean sweeping changes in many spheres of life: education, the family, social administration — but these will all be based on the abolition of production for sale (what Marx called “commodity production”), and the introduction of democratically planned production according to people’s wants.

Socialism will be a society of voluntary co-operation. There will be sexual freedom and equality. Work will be voluntary, and people will take freely what they need to consume. This is technically feasible because capitalism has already developed the potential for abundance.

Socialism will be a fully democratic society, with complete freedom of expression for everyone. And, of course, Socialism will be a society without economic classes — there will be no capitalist class and no working class.

Socialism can only be world-wide. “British Socialism” is a flat contradiction. Attempts to set up Socialism in one part of the world would have to fail — the remaining capitalist powers would see to that, if nothing else. On the other hand, the world is now so closely united in terms of communications, fashions and the rapid flow of ideas, that if the people in one place were ready for Socialism, the rest of the world could not be far behind.

A world community founded on common ownership, and democratic control — in our view this is the only solution to the major problems of modern life. We ask you to give it serious consideration if you desire an end to war, poverty and oppression.

Is this possible? The revolution begins when you decide that it is.

David Ramsay Steele