After much ballyhoo the grand National Plan was published in September. It aims for a 25 per cent increase in total production by 1970. In a television talk Wilson described the Plan as a “national crusade for higher productivity” and called for a “determined attack on anything that holds back production”. Among those he mentioned as “wreckers” were “Luddite employees”. The Plan assumes that the problem of increased production is just a technical question; it assumes a state of social harmony since only if the interests of everyone were the same could those who hold up production justly be called wreckers. Both assumptions are open to challenge.
A social order in which the land, raw materials and the man-made instruments of production were owned in common and were subject to the democratic control of all would be one of social equality and harmony. There would be no built-in minority privileges or sources of group conflict. The problem of producing things to meet social and individual needs would be merely one of planning and organization. The people of such a society would have to work out ways of organizing themselves to satisfy their needs. Use would be the aim of production. Planned production for use would be the rule. Nobody could have any interest in wrecking the planned production of things to satisfy needs.
This, however, does not at all describe the present social order. For today the land and instruments of production are the property of a minority, which means that production is not for use—not even the use of the privileged minority themselves. This arises from another feature of the present order: the owners of the instruments of production, or capitalists, are rivals of each other, they compete to sell their products. Hence things are produced for sale rather than for use. Market production is unorganized, unplanned production. The competing capitalists get a living from the profits they get from selling their products. The making of such profits is in fact the aim of production. The question that is asked before things are produced is not “can they be made?” but “can they be sold?” The rule is thus: no profit, no production. The market and the need to make a profit are restricting factors; much more could be produced than can be sold at a profit.
Total production does increase in the long-run but this growth is by no means a steady expansion. Periods of rapid growth are followed by periods of stagnation. This is the familiar boom-slump (or “stop-go”) cycle which is an unavoidable feature of unorganized, market production. Confidence in future profits is a very important factor in fixing the rate of growth. In times of rising prices and sales expanding and reckon that they can get the best of it; their expanding and reckon that they can get the best of it; their rivals think the same. The result is overproduction relative to the market: more has been produced than can be sold. When this happens expansion is checked, production slumps and the number of unemployed rises. In treating increased production as if it were just a technical question the Plan ignores the dangers of overproduction. Wilson merrily calls for more and more production without stopping to think whether it can be sold. Even if he doesn't businessmen will. By all accounts the Plan is over-optimistic so that if businesses do gear their output figures to its targets they may find themselves with stocks of unsaleable goods. More likely, however, is that everyone will ignore the targets and treat the Plan as the scrap of paper it is.
Wilson seems to think that a rational explanation—and defence—of restrictive practices and strikes is impossible. As we saw, the land, raw materials and machines are today monopolised by a minority. As a result the rest of the population are forced to work for those who own, for a wage or a salary. Wages are in fact the price of a person’s working ability. The benefits of increased productivity go only to the minority of capitalist owners: a greater share of what is produced goes to them, if wages are kept to a minimum. It is obvious that the question of increased productivity is not one over which the two classes of people, capitalists and workers, have a common interest especially as labour-saving inventions, as the name implies, often allow workers in a particular industry to be laid off.
Those who make up the most numerous class of people, the wage and salary workers, are driven to consider ways of mitigating the workings of this system. The first and obvious move is to try to restrict the competition for jobs; to unite the workers of a particular trade into a body capable of raising wages by restricting competition. Trade Unions are an outstanding example of a restrictive practice. Many ways of restricting competition in particular trades have been worked out: long training periods; requirements that only trained men can do a particular task; requirements about unskilled assistants. Other practices aim at forcing capitalists to take on more workers than are strictly necessary. “Making work” may raise the costs of the capitalist but it also restricts competition in the labour market. Besides dealing with wages, Trade Unions can also exert pressure to improve working conditions. They can try to restrain arbitrary acts of dismissal and punishment by the owner or his disciplinary agents; to establish and maintain a standard pace of working which allows even the oldest to keep up. All these practices which, along with tea-breaks, make work a little less unpleasant also restrict production and raise costs.
These devices will be more or less effective depending on conditions in the labour market. But, as can be seen, they are protective rather than restrictive practices. Their primary aim is not to restrict production but to protect those who work for wages in a particular trade. There is no direct relationship between wages and productivity. Wages are a price and depend on market conditions. An increase in productivity which does not alter conditions in the labour market has no effect on wages. An argument does arise, however, as to how increased productivity does affect the demand for labour. Experience suggests that, in the first instance at least, labour-saving inventions lead to sackings and hence help to exert a downward pressure on wages by increasing competition in parts of the labour market. When we consider the long-run effect, we should remember that under the wages system people live from week to week and, as Keynes is supposed to have said, “in the long run we’re dead”. Again, there is the lesson of “overproduction” where the result has been widespread unemployment. The experiences of workers over the years has suggested that unrestricted competition and production are by no means beneficial to them. “Restrictive practices” are tried and successful weapons for defending the interest of the class of wage and salary workers.
Strikes, too, interrupt production and thus are condemned by Wilson. But here again experience has taught that the collective withdrawal of labour is a most useful defensive weapon. Experience has also taught the best time to use it. In times of slump, with many seeking work, strikes were less effective. In times or shortages of labour the matter is altogether different. Groups of wage-workers can choose when to use it. The obvious choice is when an interruption of production is going to hurt the capitalist most: when he has a valuable order or when sales are good. In these circumstances he will wish to settle more quickly. Thus for airport workers to strike at a peak holiday period is by no means the result of “viciousness” but rather of sound action based on experience. It is true that in cases like this other workers are put to considerable inconvenience and, of course, popular sympathy should not be ignored when considering strike action. It seems that only when “the public” suffer will the capitalist employer listen.
We see then that Trade Union protective practices and strikes are by no means examples of inconsiderate wrecking. They arise from the very nature of the present social order which forces one of the two classes to defend its interests in these ways. In assuming that such actions are irrational the Plan indulges in wishful thinking. The class struggle is a fact which cannot be persuaded (or coerced) out of existence. These practices are firmly rooted in the tradition of those sections of the working class where Trade Unionism is common. They will persist and be modernised and perfected throughout the period of the Plan. The class struggle too will treat the Plan as a scrap of paper.
The Plan assumes, as we have seen, that the interests of employers and workers are the same but sees a basic conflict of interest between the various “nations” of the world. The expressed purpose of the Plan is to make goods made in Britain better able to compete on the world market. In this struggle for a share of the world market “restrictive practices” are acceptable. For it is not only workers who organise and struggle to restrict competition and production in their own interest. This is true of groups of capitalists too. They can, given favourable market conditions, join together to raise prices and so rake in a monopoly profit. The perfect competitive conditions of the Free Trade dream have never existed and the very workings of competition lead to the growth of monopoly elements. The “nation” is itself a form of monopoly. The capitalists of a particular political area use the power of their State to try to further their interests in the same way that workers use their Trade Unions. This power is used in various ways to restrict competition, especially by tariff protection, which restricts the free movement of goods and gold. Tariffs, import controls, duties and surcharges, national currencies, and exchange control all restrict some parts of production in the interests of a particular group of capitalists. In the eyes of the Plan some such restrictions are praiseworthy. The Plan is against monopolies at home (which allow one group of capitalists to hold the rest to ransom) except for those in the export industries. Clearly a double-standard is applied: the capitalists on the national scale can band together to restrict production but the workers, never!
But here again the Plan is unrealistic. Many of the measures it offers for solving the capitalists’ overseas payments problem, such as cutting down overseas aid, investment and defence spending and finding substitutes for imports, may make the world market more competitive, thus making the 5 per cent annual increase in exports harder to get. For these measures could make the overseas payments of other groups correspondingly worse. They too will try to recoup by similar methods.
So all in all the grand Plan is a farce. Even as an attempt to solve the capitalists' particular problem it will most probably fail. It had to ignore the possibility of overproduction, the class struggle and the effect of its own policies on the world market. It will turn out to be no more reliable than the long-range weather forecasts which have also been introduced recently. This is not really surprising since the market is as unpredictable as the weather.
Adam Buick
No comments:
Post a Comment