Politically speaking, the issue of full employment has become a very hot potato. Ever since post-war capitalism pulled out the first of its many surprises by not going into the deep slumps which were such a feature before 1939, governments have trod carefully, thinking perhaps that a couple of million unemployed would mean the end of their term of power. (Although if they do think like this they may be over-pessimistic. Despite the heavy unemployment between the wars, the working class never got around to challenging capitalism ; indeed, in 1939 they were preparing for yet another slump under yet another Conservative government.) Inevitably, Chancellors of the Exchequer have churned out many soothing speeches on the theme that the jobs of the working class are safe in their hands. Then can even produce that old and faithful ally Statistics to prove their point. Yes, a hot potato.
And why? It is obvious that employment is important to the working class under capitalism for the simple reason (and we shall have more to say on this) that they depend on their jobs for their living. But the matter does not end there. For so many workers their employment is more than that. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that they almost deify the company they work for. Listen to them talk about it: “ My Job “ My Company.” You can almost hear the capitals. If employment is important to the working class, if it is a delicate political issue, it can be because a depressingly high proportion of workers ask for nothing much more from life than the chance to live in servitude.
In these circumstances it is only to be expected that there would be a lot of wrong thinking about employment. In the first place, about “ full ” employment. Recently, the newspapers, the novelists, film directors, TV men, and so on, have made the startling discovery that in many industries and in many parts of the country full employment is a sour joke. In the shipbuilding industry, for example, and in the towns where the shipyards are based. Day by day, gloomy reports come in from the yards. Employment is low. Orders are scarce. Some yards are completing what they fear may be their last work for a long time. A few small yards have had to shut down.
In the second place, a lot of nonsense is often talked when unemployment is in prospect, and it is not only the politicians who are to blame here. Consider again the shipbuilding industry and the recent decision of the Court Line to order a big tanker from a Japanese shipyard. Court Line is a British company, although the tanker is for a subsidiary of theirs in the Bahamas. Nobody needed to be a clairvoyant to forecast that the placing of this order abroad would provoke strong protests and sure enough that rumbustious fellow, Mr. Ted Hill, secretary of the Boilermakers' union, satisfied our expectations. This was, he said, a ”. . . wrong to the British workers.” And more specifically: “Any British shipowner who places an order in Japan is un-British.”
Mr. Hill did not tell us, at the same time, what he thought of foreign shipowners who have their ships built in British yards. The Sunderland yard of Joseph L. Thompson & Son, Ltd., for example, recently completed the 24,500 ton bulk carrier Kolfinn for an Oslo firm. This was the fiftieth vessel built by the yard for Norwegian owners; their next launch will be an 80,000 ton tanker for Red Olsen & Co., Ltd., also of Oslo. Mr. Hill did not comment that it was un-Norwegian of Olsens to place their orders on the Wear instead of using them to develop their own shipbuilding industry. Neither did he say that it was un-Russian of the Soviet government, when they recently invited tenders from British yards among others—for six fishmeal factory ships.
Mr. Hill’s brand of nationalism is very much a have-your-cake-and-eat-it affair, with the added complication that he is not the only one to be after the cake. When the Russians put out the fishmeal ships for tender, there were signs that the British government were considering swapping an order for Russian oil for the contract to build the ships. This may have pleased the boilermakers, but it upset the miners, who regard every drop of oil as a threat to their jobs. Mr. Sidney Ford, president of the National Union of Mineworkers, described the oil-for-ships deal as “ridiculous.” “This cannot/' he said, “ be a good thing for the coal industry."
And while all this rumpus is going on, capitalism continues on its way, as serenely as it may. For capitalism, once we accept its basic, chaotic illogicality (and that is what trade union leaders have done) has its own orderly logic for its actions. Court Line did not give its order to Japan to cock a snook at British shipbuilding. They protested that they had made every effort to get their ship built in a United Kingdom yard. But:
It was found, with sincere regret, that British prices and credit terms for this type of vessel resulted in an uncompetitive unit when compared with the offers received from abroad. Had the order not been placed in Japan, no ship would have been contracted at all.
Court Line, in fact, are taking advantage of the low shipbuilding prices which are resulting from the current battle between Swedish and Japanese yards and are gambling that the recent rise in tanker freight rates will still be effective when they take delivery of their new tanker. From their point of view it was reasonable to place the order abroad; the economic requirements of capitalism saw to that. In the same way it was reasonable for the Soviet government to put Mir. Ford's mind at rest by ordering their fishmeal ships from Sweden. They got a good price, a promise of quick delivery and generous credit terms. What more does any Capitalist concern ask for?
Capitalism, because of its insistence on the profitability of an enterprise, is often bound to make life difficult for anyone who preaches economic nationalism, whether they do so in the board room or a trade union conference hall. For the working class, it goes even deeper. Last May, an American trade union leader on a visit to this country uncovered an example of the use which the employers can make of working class nationalism. He was Mr. Ben Segal, the director of international affairs in the International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers. This is how The Guardian of May 17th reported him:
. . . General Electric, the American company, had pointed out to their own unions the dangers of lower standards in Japan, but . . . it was found that their own international company was the largest stockholder in Toshiba, one of the principal manufacturers of electronic products in Japan.
Nobody need get indignant about this. A nationalistic working class are wide open to the smooth operator.
The big point in this is that capitalism has split its population into two and of these two it is the working class who need to get a job to live. But merely finding employment does not mean that a worker has solved his problems; indeed, so often it is the people with the better jobs who suffer the most strain. And even when he is earning a steady wage, the worker always finds that he lives under restrictions and that the cloth available to him allows only the skimpiest of coats to be cut.
Let us pile it on a bit more. A worker only gets a job when his employer can make a profit from his labours. If, for any one of a number of reasons, the profit is not there then very often neither is the job. This is why workers are so often interested in their employers finding markets for their goods. It is why shipyard workers agree with Ted Hill raving about “ un-British ” shipbuilders on one side, and on the other miners agree with Sidney Ford snapping about “ridiculous” international trading deals. In another way, it is why workers in the North want industry diverted to them from other areas. It never seems to strike them that this is the most futile tinkering with the problem and that the very best that they can hope for is to keep themselves in a job while another worker somewhere else gets the sack. Employment, of course, is the great dream of the working class; to many of them a regular job is the sun and the moon. What a measly outlook! For the only difference between employment and unemployment is often that between one degree of poverty and another.
Until the working class have grasped this fact, capitalism will continue, and so will its anomalies and stupidities. Industries will continue to boom and to slump and if they are industries like shipbuilding the slumps will cause some concentrated suffering in the areas which live off the industry. For capitalism makes its wealth in order to sell it, and this applies to ships just as it does to anything else. When conditions look good for selling cargo space, the tendency is for a lot of ships to be built. This in itself can mean that the market becomes restricted, helped perhaps by something like a decline in general international trade. This is what defeats gambles like that which Court Line are making over their new tanker. Too many ships compete for a limited market. Ships are laid up (there are over 500 like that at the moment). Shipyards slump and whatever help they may get from their governments (a £30 million fund was recently announced by the British government to aid shipbuilding) can have little effect on the problem.
This is something like the situation today. The chairman of the Houlder Brothers shipping line described it like this in his last report to the shareholders:
. . . instead of reaping the benefit of the expansion in world trade, the shipowners of the world have robbed themselves of that benefit by excessive building of new ships.This excessive building has been stimulated by. . . over optimism generated by the prosperity of previous years. . . unhealthy encouragement imparted by tax considerations in some foreign countries and . . . the building up of national fleets based on policy unrelated to commercial considerations.
There speaks an authentic voice of capitalism, unconsciously displaying the system's crass anarchy. For no economist, no managing director, no minister, has yet been able accurately to predict the course of capitalism's markets. But all of them must go out on some sort of a limb and take their chance on beating their rivals into a market. British shipbuilding may be groggy on the ropes but it is still in there punching, even if rather weaker than before. Camell Laird's chairman said in his last report: “. . . we have intensified our efforts to attract business from overseas. We shall pursue relentlessly and vigorously all potential business at home and overseas . . ."
Cheers, almost certainly, from the Cammell Laird workers. Cheers, for sure, from their shareholders. Employment may be a tricky issue for capitalism and there may be a lot of nonsense talked about it. But the worst thing of all is that the nonsense usually persuades the workers that their interests are hand in glove with those of their employers and this delays the day when the world can take a long, cool look at itself. And come up with the right answers.
Ivan
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