Workers versus the “Vanguard” (1981)

From the November 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

In signing the Gdansk agreement in September 1980, the Polish government promised to allow independent trade unions, the right to strike, access to the mass media, free Saturdays, and to abolish the nomenklatura system by which the PUWP (the Communist Party) controls all important appointments. But paper promises and piecrust pledges are easily made, easily broken.

Every concession pledged on paper had to be struggled for. Last October the independent trade union was still being denied legal recognition. Free Saturdays and access to the mass media were still denied in January, five months after the agreement. When another strike was threatened, within ten days the number of work-free Saturdays was increased from 25 to 38 still less than originally agreed. Later the government “conceded” to the new unions 0.8 per cent of TV time and 0.2 per cent of radio time, subject to censorship.

Such concessions were wrung with difficulty from a reluctant government using every available form of dirty trick, provocation and intimidation. The union’s experience was: “Members are fully aware that . . . the only successes they had so far were in those instances where Solidarity was willing to stand firm. In all other cases there was no progress at all.” [1]

The Roots of Solidarity

“Nothing starts from square one: everything has roots in another time and another place”, said Andrzej Wajda. There were memories of the Poznan revolt when Gomulka came to power in 1956, and of the 1970 demonstrations over food prices and low pay, when Gierek came to Gdansk. “Just like the others I believed that they were real tears that ran down the gentleman’s cheeks as he spoke, and that while he remained Minister of Internal Affairs there would be no bloodshed in Poland.” [2]

But tanks attacked in Gdansk, in Gdynia strikers returning to work were fired at from helicopters, and in Szczeczin “the militia shot at random into the dense crowd of shipyard workers . . . They began taking the wounded away, and from that moment I became a union activist . . . We left the shipyard having won nothing . . . All that changed were the authorities at the top.” [3]

Gierek’s new economic policy brought a boom: foreign credits enabled industry to import machinery and expand. Each year 500,000 people left the countryside for the cities. In agriculture, the government discriminated against “family farms”. Private farmers were denied machinery and fertiliser, and the the state fixed prices too low for them to make a profit. The increasingly unprofitable farms are manned by an ill-equipped and ageing population, a third of whom are over sixty.

The tide turned in 1975, with rising prices and workers’ protests. Gierek introduced a new Labour Code, whose Article 52 was used in 1976 as an “anti-strike” law. He also changed the Constitution, stressing that “the Party is the leading political force in society”. This gave birth to an ‘‘unofficial opposition.”

In 1976 higher food prices caused strikes and demonstrations. Many workers were beaten, jailed or sacked. Some—like Lech Walesa—were blacklisted. In reaction to police brutality, KOR—the Workers’ Self-Defense Committee—was formed, and succeeded in getting an amnesty next year for all the jailed workers. NOWA, an independent publishing house, was set up to break the state’s “publication and information monopoly”. The number of uncensored publications increased. Along with other workers’ journals, the fortnightly Robotnik (The Worker) had a growing circulation from 1977.

In 1979 Robotnik published a Charter of Workers’ Rights, declaring that: “We have entered upon a course of action whose long-term aim is the creation of a self-defense system for employees, first and foremost, independent trade unions”. The Charter argued that the official trade unions did not protect workers, that Gierek’s 1975 Labour Code was used as an anti-strike law, and urged workers wherever possible to set up “free trade union committees”. [4]

Workers’ Grievances. . . .

As exports to the West dwindled due to the recession, repayment of Gierck's foreign loans became increasingly difficult. This brought pressure on the workers. Poles had the longest working week in Europe-forty-eight hours. The four-shift system caused serious mining accidents, due to lack of maintenance. In October 1979, at least 66 miners died in 4 accidents in pits using this hated system. [5]

Where health and safety were concerned, the official unions were as callous as management: “these matters were totally neglected by the old unions. Bosses ordered the workers to do jobs that could damage their health: in theory it was possible to refuse but in practice there was always someone else willing to do the job, and besides the bosses would take revenge.” [6]

Workers’ living standards worsened. There was a staggering increase in cases of TB, especially in the 23-25 age group. In Poland TB is still the main killer disease, reflecting poor food and housing. [7] The government admit that “nearly 2 million people are waiting for flats. The average time of waiting is 7 years, in many regions it exceeds 10 years”. [8]

Hunger was already a major problem last summer, made worse by hoarding and profiteering. One of the strikers’ “21 Demands” was for meat rationing. This summer’s hunger marches drew the world's attention to the fact that rationing did not end this man-made famine.

. . . . and the Gaffers

The official unions’ role was to enforce labour discipline by carrot-and-stick methods. For carrot, read the distribution of scarce goods, housing, welfare benefits, perks and privileges. For stick, read petty harassment, witholding benefits, fining workers and contriving dismissals. They acted as a branch of management against the workers’ interests.

Last summer the workers' anger boiled over: “the official trade unions have not only failed to defend our interests . . . they have been more hostile to the justified strike action than the Party and State organs.” Szydlak, chairman of the Central Trade Union Council, said, “we will not give up power, nor will we share it.” Their angry reply: “He wants to represent us without our consent . . . Our mandate is for him of no consequence.” [9]

At that time, Gierek was still preaching—like Callaghan, Thatcher and Co.—that “rises in the standard of living have to be earned.” Like his crocodile tears of 1970, this was a lie: just consider his standard of living. In only ten years as Party boss, he had acquired a “luxurious residence”. Gierkowka stands in 3,000 acres. Outside, an illuminated fountain and a 2½ acre lake. Indoors, a swimming- pool, cinema, billiard-room and a grand reception-room, all paved with marble slabs. [10]

Corruption permeated the PUWP at all levels. In Walbrzych, officials used coal-mine materials to build themselves villas while “other materials were being ordered from abroad and charged to the mines while going straight into the officials’ private building activity”. The regional Party secretary, no less, was up to his neck in this embarrassingly entrepreneurial activity. [11]

Workers died because money was used for private profiteering instead of safety equipment! For over a decade, the “red Bourgeoisie” fattened itself unscrupulously. A top sociologist described the PUWP as full of “degenerate elements” for whom Party membership was “a springboard leading to riches, to positions of importance and power.” [12]

Every foreman, trade union official and factory manager owes his appointment to a Party committee. Through the nomenklatura system, these have the power to blacklist him from higher posts. If he wants to get on in his career, he will be only too eager to do the Party bosses any small favours they want. The nomenklatura system is still intact: today’s black-market profiteering in food in the starving cities is a consequence of this.

But even without corruption, no party running a state capitalist economy — whether as a dictatorship or as a lukewarm pretend democracy (the Party Congress reforms were only window-dressing) — can be expected to act in the interests of the working class, regarding our living and working conditions as a higher priority than profits. Governments are not philanthropic institutions; no reform will change this.

Strikes in a “socialist” country?

Sociologists, like politicians, were baffled by this theoretically impossible phenomenon: “what rational explanation could be found for the fact that the rightful owners of the means of production, and the people governing the country, rise up in revolt against themselves?” [13] So why do strikes happen, and not just in Poland? Russia, Ukraine, Rumania. East Germany — all so-called “socialist” countries have this problem. No sensible explanation can be found among Poland’s rulers but workers understand things better.

“The strike is the law of the downtrodden, who have been deprived of all other means of social action. It is a radical act of self-defence . . . The historical experience of the Polish People’s Republic clearly proves that the power apparatus does not represent the interests of the working class. (If it did, how can we explain the events of 1956, 1970, 1976 and 1980?). . . Between the power apparatus on the one side and labour on the other, a deep class conflict exists, which causes antagonisms and conflict in the social life of our country . . . (Labour’s interests are opposed to) the politico-state and economic apparatus, acting as a whole as a collective monopoly, as de facto private owners.” [14]

Together with this awareness that the wages system, under whatever label, is against the interests of workers, goes the knowledge that Poland’s “Socialism” is a fraud: “State ownership and social ownership of the means of production are two completely different concepts which should never be confused. The means of production may be owned by the state but this does not mean that they are thereby the social property of the working class.” [15]

From this point of view it follows that “the real liberation of the proletariat can only take place by means of the socialisation (something quite different from state ownership) of the means of production.” [16]

This is a minority viewpoint but one which has real support. Jednosc, the journal quoted, has had impressive support from local Szczeczin workers, especially the print workers, and by January this year its fortnightly print run reached 100,000 copies.

The Vanguard Party and “Dual Power”

“Solidarity” can only act as a trade union, to defend workers’ interests within the system. It gave up any chance of political action by signing the Gdansk Agreement which, instead of the workers’ demand for trade unions “free and independent of the party”, declared that “the new unions . . . will recognise the leading role of the PUWP in the state.” [17] 

However, as no political organisation genuinely represents workers’ interests, any organisation which purports to represent their interests takes on the role of an unofficial opposition, whether or not it organises as a political movement or even has a declared platform. As one Party member commented: “Solidarity represents all those who define themselves as ‘we’ against a Party and State defined as ‘them’. A system of dual power is gradually emerging.” [18]

Solidarity’s policy has been clear from the start: “in the cause of independence we will not link ourselves, let alone subordinate ourselves, to any political or social organisations.” [19] Yet the Government and its Moscow puppet-masters continually attack Solidarity as subversive enemies of the state. Such tactics are familiar to trade unionists here: Reds under the bed or CIA agents of Counter-Revolution, the same ploy used for the same purpose, to discredit union activists and prejudice public opinion against the unions.

Kania has made every effort to delay, minimise or renege on his signed agreements. Realising that — for the time being, at least — brute force, tanks or truncheons could not be used, the government strategy was to play for time while harassing, provoking or intimidating the union and its supporters.

The Chief Public Prosecutor circulated instructions on how to frame union activists. From his circular (leaked to Solidarity) we learn that the forces of “law and order” were in the habit of raiding workers’ homes to such an extent that “the large number of sequestrated objects — typewriters, duplicators, paper, and above all illegal publications — in some cases creates problems of storage”. Prosecutions were brought against workers distributing leaflets (“dropping litter in public places”) or wearing badges “without permission”. [20]

A Politburo member, Zabinski, privately reassured the security forces that Kania’s apparent concessions did not mean any underlying Wetness. There was a Machiavellian strategy behind the concessions:

“The aim was to quench the strikes, calm the nation and consider the situation later . . . (The workers' committees should) taste a little power: it will have a cooling effect on them.” Ending the four-shift system would cause redundancies: “these workers’ commissions are to suggest who is going to be dismissed from the mines. Let them do this untypical work . . . These inter-factory workers’ committees have to fire them. We have to involve them in a thousand problems.” He concluded: “We should see to it that, first, they do not get rid of Party members, second, that they do get rid of the ‘KOR’ people, and then the rest must be simply slowly broken up.” [21]

This strategy, whose failure is self-evident, is based on the special fear felt by all Bolsheviks when workers form an alliance with “intellectuals”. Like Lenin, Kania and his colleagues believe workers are helpless without intellectuals to lead them. Lenin wrote that “the history of all countries shows that by its own forces the working class can only arrive at a trade union consciousness.” [22] The corollary to this is that only if workers unite with “intellectuals” is there any risk to the powers-that-be.

In Poland the KOR intellectuals supported the militant workers, and vice versa. Did the result support Lenin’s view? In the Gdansk strike, the workers took the initiative and the KOR “experts” were much less militant than the workers. The “intellectuals” were moderates while “the workers were really very opposed to the system, to the point where they wouldn’t even touch it, still less reform it”. [23] The workers wanted a trade union that would be independent of the party. Negotiating behind closed doors, the experts presented them with a “definitely agreed” formula which acknowledged “the leading role of the Party”. The workers “were very annoyed ... (they) wanted to throw all the experts from the shipyards”. [23]

Lenin’s theory is insulting baloney. Workers can have a clear understanding of their real interests and of their actual strength when united and militant. The “experts” and KOR sympathisers were nervous of Russian intervention and more easily intimidated. (They were also more soft when appeals to the “national interest” were tried.) From fear of putting the cause of “free trade unions” at risk, they shackled the new unions with “the leading role of the Party”, which meant the continuance of the nomenklatura system.

One lesson of the Gdansk negotiations is that workers should do their own negotiating, openly. They are the experts.

The Self-Limiting Revolution

Socialists have a special interest in the development of independent trade union movements in totalitarian state capitalist countries. Embryo movements have sprung up in Russia, under enormous difficulties, and still operate underground, as used to be the case in Poland. [24]

In Poland the achievement has been greater, but — like Marx — we realise that “the real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever- expanding union of the workers.” [25]

We are not uncritical of Solidarity. Its policy is made by leaders. It is influenced by the Catholic Church, an influence which gives the “national interest” a higher priority than class interest. It has taken up the cause of the peasant farmers whose demands — higher food prices and private ownership of land — are in conflict with Solidarity members’ need for cheaper food and, ultimately, for common ownership of all means of production, including land.

However it has established a strong organisation of at least 10 million members, voluntarily enrolled, without any “closed shop” agreements or coercion of any kind. It is capable of defending workers’ interests.

Its existence has demonstrated that state and party control of the media cannot forever stifle the voice of the common people, and that police brutality and draconian penalties cannot prevent determined, class-conscious workers from striking and organising on the industrial field.

But, even if all Solidarity’s demands become reality, not mere promises from a Party notorious for breaking them whenever expedient, Poland’s workers would remain wage-slaves. Solidarity is not a revolutionary organisation. It is a trade union, whose role is to defend workers interests within the wages system. Meanwhile the PUWP still holds political power, dictates economic policy, laws, and — the ultimate sanction — controls the police and armed forces which protect the property of the state and which can be used, have been used and may be used again, to “defend the national interest” against the working class.

The PUWP’s power-monopoly will continue until Poland’s workers organise themselves for a political struggle as effectively as they have organised themselves on the industrial field. There is still work to be done. But until they get up off their knees, stop genuflecting to Popes, Cardinals and suffering Saint Lech Walesa, stop saluting the national flag, become deaf to appeals about the “national interest”, and take their stand exclusively on their class interest, they will fall short of becoming a revolutionary movement. They will remain mere heroes of protest.

Charmian Skelton

References

[1] Solidarity communique. Jan. '81 (Information Centre for Polish Affairs)

[2] Anna Walentynowicz (Labour Focus on Eastern Europe, winter-spring '81)

[3] Stanislaw Wadolowski, vice-chairman of Szczeczin Solidarity (Labour Focus, ’81)

[4] Full text in Labour Focus on Eastern Europe, spring-autumn ’80

[5] PSC News (Polish Solidarity Campaign), March ’81.

[6] Interview with Two Gdynia Workers (Labour Focus, ’80)

[7] Solidarnosc Strike Bulletin, 28 Aug. (Labour Focus ’80)

[8] State of the Economy Report, July ’81 (Polish Press Agency)

[9] Solidarnosc Strike Bulletin. 20 Aug. (Labour Focus, *80)

[10] Information Centre for ' Polish Affairs, 14 May ’81

[11] Labour Focus ’81

[12] Prof. Markiewicz, Kultura 21 Sept. ’80 (Contemporary Poland, official digest of media and government statements)

[13] The same 

[14] Jednosc, no. 16, 12 Dec. ’80 (Labour Focus, ’81)

[15] Statement of the Inter-College Co-ordinating Committee of Solidarity (Szczeczin region), Jednosc no. 14, also printed in Kommunikat, the Warski shipyard workers’ bulletin (Labour Focus, ’81)

[16] Jednosc no. 11, 30 Oct. ’80 (Labour Focus, ’81)

[17] Full text of the “21 Demands” and the Gdansk Agreement (Labour Focus, ’80)

[18] Article by B. Rogowski, 14 Nov. ’80 (Labour Focus, ’80)

[19] Inter-Factory Founding Committee of the Independent Trade Unions of the Coastline, statement, 17 Sept. ’80, published through KOR (Information Centre for Polish Affairs)

[20] Full text in Labour Focus, ’80

[21] Transcript of secret tape published in The Free Unionist, 5 March ’81 — Information Centre for Polish Affairs

[22] Lenin, What Is To Be Done?

[23] Jadwiga Staniskia, Experts and the “Leading Role” — (Labour Focus, ’81). Her statement that workers disliked the “agreed formula” is supported by another “expert”, Geremek—interview in Que Faire Auiourd’hui? (no. 9)

[24] See Workers Against the Gulag, ’79 (Pluto Press)

[25] Communist Manifesto

Are socialists utopians? (1981)

From the November 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Look at the world around you. Millions starving while food is destroyed. Mass unemployment and an arms race which threatens human survival. Many murderous regimes overshadowing hints of democracy. But how should change be directed? How should society be organised? Socialists have a clear vision of the way forward, and for this are often branded as utopian dreamers. But Utopians base schemes for a future society on abstract principles such as “freedom” or “justice”, without suggesting how society can be transformed.

The Utopians

For most of human pre-history people lived in communal groups, sharing their food. Conditions were harsh, but hardships were shared. With the advent of slavery, people were forced to become the property of others, to be treated like cattle. The first utopias were romantic visions of a harmonious life, and were placed in the past, For example, this passage from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, written in the first century BC:

In the beginning was the Golden Age, when men of their own accord, threat of punishment, without laws, maintained good faith and did what was right . . . the peoples of the world, untroubled by any fears, enjoyed a leisurely and peaceful existence, and had no use for soldiers. The earth itself, without compulsion, untouched by the hoe, unfurrowed by any share, produced ail things spontaneously, and men were content with foods that grew without cultivation . . . it was a season of everlasting spring.

This tradition continued through the Middle Ages in poems such as The Former Age by Chaucer

What would have been the point of war?

There was no profit, no property;

But cursed was the time, I dare well say,

When men first did their sweaty business

To dig up bits of metal, lurking in the darkness

Looking for gems in the rivers 

With the development of capitalism, the search for a utopia became popular and urgent, and took on a more realistic element by being placed in the present instead of the past. Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) was located in the “New World” across the ocean. By the nineteenth century, utopias were being placed in the future. Edward Bellamy, who[se] Looking Backward in 1887, said that “The Golden Age lies before us and not behind, and it is not far away”. But as early as 1652, Gerrard Winstanley, the Digger, had tried to combine action with vision. His protest took the form of over the land at St George’s Hill near Cobham for common use, while his hopes were expressed in The Law of Freedom:

If any man or family want corn or other provision, they may go to the storehouses and fetch without money. If any want food or victuals, they may either go to the butchers' shops, and receive that they want without money; or else go to the flocks of sheep, or herds of cattle, and take and kill what meat is needful for their families, without buying and selling.

The eighteenth-century French ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity were seen as the essence of the 1789 revolution Five years later, Buonarotti and Babeuf organised the “Conspiracy of Equals”. They planned an armed insurrection as the way to communism, which they saw as an ideal to be put into practice at any time regardless of the historical conditions, with the help of Spartan asceticism and moral restraint. In the early nineteenth century, utopian socialists drew up detailed schemes as alternatives to the unbearable conditions under which rapid industrialisation was taking place. Saint- Simon envisaged a technocracy, with bankers directing production by the regulation of credit. He wrote of a time when the “administration of things” would replace “government over people”. Fourier explained how “Under civilisation, poverty is born of superabundance itself” and urged the formation of communal groups which he called phalansteres. At New Lanark in Scotland, Robert Owen directed a cotton mill as a “model colony” of co-operative efficiency.

Political action

The socialist movement became practical about a hundred years ago, with the formation of political parties such as the Social Democratic Federation and the Socialist League. The latter was founded by William Morris, whose vision of socialism, News From Nowhere, was published in 1890. This work tells of an activist from the Socialist League arriving home after a political meeting and dreaming of the kind of society his party sought to establish. It ends as the people in the dream tell their visitor to go back and see

people engaged in making others live lives which are not their own, while they themselves care nothing for their own real lives — men who hate life, though they fear death. Go back and be the happier for having seen us, for having added a little hope to your struggle.

Socialism was placed on a practical footing when social development was to be based on the interplay of material forces and the class struggle. This was largely accomplished through the work of active socialist speakers and writers such as Marx and Engels. Capitalism was seen to be a struggle between owners of capital and their workers, the sellers of labour power; a struggle ultimately over control of all the productive resources of society. Marx showed how capitalist employers were able to accumulate the “surplus value” produced by their workers because the ages paid, merely enough to keep us fit for more work, are worth less than the the total value we produce. Previous revolutions have taken place when the forces of production (for example, factories) had grown to a point where further development was prevented by the old-fashioned relations of production (such as lord and serf). The contradiction in capitalism which Marx pointed to remains. Wealth is produced by millions of workers across the world, but appropriated by a small minority. This leads to further contradictions such as mass starvation alongside the destruction of food and the universal desire for peace alongside wars.

The end of scarcity

A report produced by the United Nations in 1970 stated that “the surface of the earth has hardly been scratched”. In 1976 the United Nations Food and Agricultural Yearbook showed that “enough grain is now produced to provide everyone on earth with more than 2 lb. (3000 calorics) per day”. In Bangladesh, where half the people are starving, enough grain is produced to provide 2,600 calories a person each day, but it is exported to be sold.

The Head of Policy Planning at the World Bank referred recently to twenty million tons of “surplus grain” guarded by soldiers in India, while chronic hunger continues. In 1966, the US President’s Science Advisory Committee reported that less than half of the world’s arable land was being cultivated, while in 1978, the EEC destroyed almost 200,000 tons of fruit and vegetables (The Times 14/11/ 78). In Nairobi in 1967 about a million coffee plants were burned (The Times 12/5/67). And in 1962, the Director of the International Agricultural Aviation Centre estimated that “the earth could support a population of 28,000 million if food production were organised on lines now known to be practicable” (The Times 24/9/62). (Present world population in 24/9/62 is about 4,000 million.) In September 1976, Robert Loomis declared in Scientific American that current resources could feed more than twelve times the present population. In the same issue, W.D. Hopper explains that

The world’s food problem does not arise from any physical limitation on potential output or any danger of unduly stressing the environment. The limitations on abundance are to be found in the social and political structures of nations and in the economic relations among them. The unexploited global resource is there.

The problem is that, from Moscow to Washington, production is based on the profit of a few rather than the needs of all.

This is most evident in what Kennedy referred to as “planned and subsidised under-production”, when he was US President. The quota system is a huge and barbarically anachronistic fetter on the production of wheat, rice, sugar, rubber, tin and copper. And all this to defend the dividends of shareholders in companies like Nestlés, which has a higher turnover than the Swiss government’s budget (Swiss Information Groups for Development Policy; Nestles Report 1976) and spends more on advertising each year than the entire budget of the UN World Health Organisation.

All this proves that talk of a problem of over-population is a dangerous lie. People’s impressions of population are distorted by living in small areas of absurdly concentrated population. Of 213 million people living in the USA in 1975, nearly three-quarters lived in cities which occupy only 1.5 per cent of the land. The world’s population could be fitted in theory into an area the size of the Isle of Wight with one square foot each. If overpopulation caused hunger, there would be a link between population density and the level of malnutrition. But according to the 1977 FAO Yearbook, France has the same number of people per cropped acre as India, but far less malnutrition. The US Department of Agriculture has estimated that there are about 16 billion acres in the world, as much as four acres per person.

Socialist visionaries

It takes some imagination to envisage a world cleared of the insanity which dominates it today. Alongside the relentless process of debate, persuasion and struggle in the movement for socialism, there is a need for some vision. Not a religious vision of a perfect “Golden Age” or a utopian, detailed plan for life in a future society. What is needed is the kind of passion with which William Morris portrayed work as the great pleasure when under conditions of democratic control, and creation as the driving force to end the destruction inherent in the profit system. Society will be transformed through people understanding capitalism and desiring socialism. Such consciousness inevitably involves strong human feeling.

About a hundred years ago, Paul Brousse boasted of being a “possibilist”. In other words, he was prepared to compromise politically with the system he claimed to oppose. Like thousands who have followed him since, from the SDF to the SWP, he supported what Karl Popper has called “piecemeal social engineering”. To campaign for mere modifications of capitalism is to be absorbed and swallowed by the very prejudices socialists have to fight against. When the Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed, it was dubbed “impossibilist” because of its determination to stand openly and consistently for a system of society which is yet to be established. In that sense only, can socialism be called “utopian”: utopia is the Greek word for nowhere, and socialism does not yet exist anywhere, although the forces bringing it about are present everywhere within capitalism. Problems which are fully grasped contain their solution within them. Only humans can think conceptually, envisaging something before building it. This capacity can be used to look at history scientifically. By predicting and organising, we can assert control over the constant process of social change.

Anatole France said that “Without the Utopians of other times, men would still live in caves, miserable and naked”. It is because of the misery which still prevails that people are interested in the elusive utopias over the seas and far away. But the time has come to reject the American Dream of “free enterprise” and the Russian Dream of dictatorship flattering itself with the false name of “socialism”. To leave the nightmare of the present, all of the tools are to hand. The raw materials, the machinery, the organisation. The rest is up to you. 

Clifford Slapper

Space in British Aerospace (1981)

From the November 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

The view is widely held that workers in the aircraft industry are somehow cosseted from the worst effects of booms and slumps in the economic cycle; the fact that, until very recently, the industry in Britain had apparently been little affected by the current recession gave some support to the idea. The truth, however, is that the fortunes of the industry fluctuate just as much as those of any other in the capitalist economy, as those aircraft workers involved in such recent traumas as the TSR2 cancellation will testify.

One of the reasons for this is the sheer size of the product, the design timescale of which has escalated tremendously in the industry’s comparatively short life. Nowadays the time from drawing board to entry into service can be twelve years or more, which means that a vast expenditure over a long period is required before there can be any hope of a profit. The necessary funding has therefore increasingly been provided by government agencies, so making the industry more and more susceptible to the political climate. Charles Gardner, in his history of the British Aircraft Corporation (Batsford, 1981), maintains that in 1970 Wedgwood Benn, Minister of Technology in the Labour Government, would have approved the loan requested by BAC for the 311 airliner, but the Tory government which was elected that year had other ideas. Similarly, a large defence contract signed with Libya in 1968, centring about Thunderbird and Rapier, was terminated after a military coup the following year. The main factors which influence these government decisions are thus not necessarily economic: the industry has suffered severe setbacks in times of general expansion and, conversely, has until recently expanded its workload in some areas in the face of recession.

Further political influences have been introduced as a result of international co-operation in the building of new aircraft. From such has come, among others, the Anglo-French Concorde, the European Airbus Industry and, in the military field, the Anglo-French Jaguar and Anglo-German-Italian Tornado. Amalgamation within the industry has also proceeded with breakneck speed. In Britain at the end of World War II there were 27 different aerospace companies; by 1960 the development of the industry, with some government pushing, had reduced these to only two — British Aircraft Corporation and Hawker Siddley, each with their aircraft and guided weapons divisions. The subsequent amalgamation into British Aerospace, involving so-called “nationalisation" followed by “denationalisation", will be considered later. The development of joint projects with European concerns is a natural continuation of the amalgamation process. If the separate governments concerned could always agree on all matters affecting the projects, perhaps no additional uncertainties would be injected. Under capitalism however such an idyllic situation cannot be expected. Differences between the partners have appeared in connection with all the projects just mentioned. Currently some French interests are pressing for the abandonment of Concorde, whereas earlier it was the French government, who had committed Air France to the plane, which resisted waverers on the British side. All these political factors increase the feeling of insecurity within the industry.

Running parallel with the amalgamation of the companies, and arising from the same economic causes, has been a change in the nature of the work itself. On the production side automation has proceeded much as in engineering in general. Big changes have taken place on the design side also, with the old type of boffin little in evidence. Computer aided design and the large structural analysis programmes now available have taken most of the glamour out of the process. Each worker can now be assigned routine, boring tasks. One effect has been to increase the militancy among designers as the apparent differences between them and workers on the factory floor are eroded. Another is that it is now possible to stress complicated structures more uniformly than before. Under the constant competitive pressure to reduce weight and cost, aircraft are being produced which have smaller safety margins, and this is reflected in an increasing number of fatigue problems.

The current recession is having its effect on the industry despite appearances to the contrary. Although Keynesian economic theories are still quite widely upheld, particularly in France and in the British Labour Party, governments have generally reacted to a slump by trying to reduce their expenditure, as was done in Britain in the 1930s. On defence, the commitment to Trident reduces the amount available for other projects. Another factor is that contractors whose markets in the civil sector have shrunk are delivering defence goods faster and presenting bills for payment more quickly than anticipated. In fact, there has been no overall reduction in defence spending and the 3 per cent increase promised to NATO may well be kept. But even with an increase in defence spending jobs can be lost, as Herman Rebhan, General Secretary of the International Metalworkers’ Federation, made clear when he addressed the United Nations.

There has been a steady increase in military spending in the United States in the past five years. In 1975 there were 97,300 members of the machinists union employed on military contracts. By 1978 there were 85,000, a drop of 12,300. It is because military production operates at the very fringe of technological development. Military industries are both capital intensive and technologically highly advanced. Both aspects mean a decline in labour. Even with a massive new twist in the arms race the military industry is the worst place in which to invest with a view to creating jobs.

(Tridents into Ploughshares by Bill Niven, New Statesman, 12.6.81)

The British Government, having earlier resisted the efforts of West Germany to cut back on Tornado production, is now having second thoughts, possibly reflecting a toughening attitude following the recent Cabinet reshuffle. At the same time British Aerospace has been forced to ask for aid on interest payments to enable it to continue as a partner in the Airbus project. These cashflow problems are threatening to strangle at birth the latest aircraft to appear on the drawing board, the P106/P110 (information on this project can be obtained from an article in The Times, 22.4.81 by the air correspondent Arthur Reed). The Lancashire Evening Post (15.9.81) reports that the Tory Conference would be lobbied in an attempt to save the enterprise.

How is the workforce in British Aerospace reacting to this escalating uncertainty? Some of the younger workers have gone on contract work, mainly in the United States. This offers high rates of pay in the short term, often enabling them to accumulate some savings. However, it does nothing to banish insecurity or lack of job satisfaction; indeed these are rather intensified — contract workers at Boeing have been on as little as one hour’s notice. It is noteworthy that the AV8B contract with McDonnell Douglas was presented on the British media (BBC1 9 o 'clock News, 24.8.81) in terms of the number of jobs it would “secure”. This would not have happened in the United States, where the effect on company profitability may have been stressed but “job security” is not considered possible. Attempts by British Aerospace workers to “do something about it” are confined to fights for a change in government policy. Despite the lip service now being paid to disarmament, this can lead to open advocacy of increased arms expenditure. The slogan “Jobs not bombs" has a hollow ring to these people because to them, bombs and bombers are jobs. The recent cancellation of Skyflash II and delays to the Sea Eagle programme in the 1981 Defence Estimates caused 600 redundancies at the Hatfield and Lostock (near Boston) missile plants. The New Statesman (12.6.81) reports that immediately shop stewards went to lobby Parliament to openly urge the continuation of these projects. The Chairman of Vickers combined shop stewards committee summed this feeling up when he said on television earlier this year: “We don’t sec anything else that could secure full employment. We would welcome five Tridents on our slipways” (New Statesman, 12.6.81). Behind all this activity is the old illusion that capitalism contrary to its nature, can somehow be run in the workers’ interests.

The forced amalgamation of BAC and Hawker Siddley in 1977, to form the “nationalised” British Aerospace, followed this year by "denationalisation” in the form of a public limited company, has introduced another red herring. Not even the most starry-eyed Leftie among the employees can argue that his position as a wage slave has been in any way altered by these changes. Indeed, management in both cases issued statements making clear that terms of employment would remain unchanged. Yet among those active in the trade unions and reformist politics there is still strong support for the nationalisation concept. These workers do not understand that nationalised industries under capitalism are intended to provide a service to the capitalist class as a whole, and are administered in this way by the state, “the executive committee of the ruling class”.

The present discussion on arms conversion and alternative products must not be confused with the position of future socialist society deciding how best to make use of available resources. In the latter case, arms production of all kinds will have ceased and things will be produced solely for use and not for sale with a view to profit. With production geared to satisfying human needs and free access to all goods and services, a decision to cut back on articles no longer required could not menace anybody’s livelihood; a complete contrast to the situation under capitalism. Most of those now discussing “alternatives” believe that disarmament is perfectly feasible under capitalism. While this is manifest nonsense, it does not follow that these ideas can be totally dismissed. We have already seen that increased arms production cannot always prevent contraction in the workforce employed. Also, both the United States and Russia have more than enough arms stockpiled to knock each other out. They could severely limit arms production and still retain this capability, although there is admittedly no sign of such a reduction right now. It is possible however to envisage the capitalists faced with the very difficult problem of unused resources formerly employed on arms production, and needing to convert these to other uses with the minimum of social unrest. The position of the Labour Party, as declared in their latest manifesto, is that

A Labour government will plan to ensure that savings in military expenditure do not lead to unemployment for those working in the defence industries. We shall give material support and encouragement to plans for industrial conversion so that the valuable resources of the defence industries can be used for the production of socially needed goods.

In the United States these ideas have been carried a stage further. A Defence Economic Adjustment Act has actually been introduced into the Senate (Congressional Record, volume 125, No. 50, 26.4.79), the principal sponsors being George McGovern and Charles Mathias. (The first Bill on these lines was put to Congress as early as 1963.) It legislates for the social problems resulting from the arms race. Professor Seymour Mellman, co-chairman of the peace organisation Sane, is quoted: “Economic conversion is the only way of reconciling fear of job loss with opposition to the arms race” (New Statesman, 12.6. 81).

Despite the optimistic phraseology in the wording of the Bill and by some of its supporters, suggesting belief that capitalism can disarm itself, such an Act never be more than a capitalist answer to one of capitalism’s problems. As for “socially needed goods”, even in the deepest recession a little cash could doubtless be found for a pilot scheme to produce a few of these. The problem, as shown by such absurdities as the butter mountain, is how to sell these goods once they are produced. It is this vital point that the Left and other well-meaning reformers seem unable to grasp.

E. C. Edge

SPGB Meetings (1981)

Party News from the November 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Power pact (1981)

From the November 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

The political alliance between the Liberals and the ‘Social Democrats' pales into insignificance in comparison with the more sinister alliance between the SDP and the BBC. The media in recent months has outdone many of its previous efforts in paving the path of ‘moderation' as the TV, radio and newspaper journalists invent stories to prove that there is now a popular burst of opinion in favour of ‘centre politics'. What began as a Gang of Four has become a rabble of many: ex-Labour cabinet ministers, sixteen members of the ruling group on Islington council, some Liberals who look like they have just won the jackpot at Bingo, and even an inoffensive looking Tory from Norfolk. Names that once sent us searching for a copy of Who's Who (Had you heard of Bill Rodgers when he was a member of ‘our great movement’?) are paraded across our screens as the speakers of Truth; Liberals who used to write manifestos about saving whales and giving power to Wales (or was it the other way round?) are now adopting pompous airs and talking about ‘preparing for government'; even that undying enemy of labour and friend of Labour, The Daily Mirror, has opted for the alliance, with full-page photographs of semi-nude women saying The middle way is the best'.

In order to establish the mythical middle, mythical extremes are needed. One can imagine the editor of The Guardian issuing the order: ‘Go out and create us a couple of really awful extremes so that we can sell this new centre.' And so the caricatures came to be. First, there is the caricature of the wicked, thoughtless Thatcherite Tories who plan to increase unemployment and blow up the world with American weapons once they have succeeded in getting the whole working class standing in one long dole queue. Like the witch in a children’s book, Thatcher is painted as being wickedness personified. The other side of the caricature is the Marxist- dominated Benno-Trotyskyist Labour Party. Benn is portrayed as a modern Stalin, waiting patiently for his chance to grab power and destroy Western Civilisation (coming soon).

Like all myths, there are elements of truth. Thatcher and the Tories are viciously anti-working class. When have Tories not been? Their ignorant and unhistorical monetarist policies do fail to provide any solution whatsoever to the social problems of our time. They are impotent in the face of disaster and arrogant in the face of criticism. With increasing unemployment, increasing cuts in social services, increasing armaments production and increasing poverty, workers are right to regard the promises of Thatcher and her team as an insult to human intelligence. The memories of Labourites are as short as their alternative policies for getting society out of the mess it is in.

They attack the problems as if Thatcher caused them. As if unemployment did not double under the last Labour government; as if Labour Ministers were not in the forefront of cutting social services in order to balance the books; as if the last Labour government did not place armaments production as a top priority; as if the rich did not get richer during the period of the last Labour government. Who are these people trying to kid? But now they have an ‘alternative economic policy’ and the story goes that if we give Benn another chance (‘another' because he was in the last Labour government) he will run capitalism in the interests of the working class. This claim is a foolish and cruel con-trick. The next Labour government (if there is one) will not run capitalism; capitalism will run it. The portrait of Benn and Co. as a socialist alternative may attract a few people to the Labour party, it may scare some off, but in the long-run it will be seen as a waste of political energy.

And there they are, standing in the middle between the Wicked Witch and the Bogus Marxist Threat: the Liberal-SDP Alliance. Dead centre, dead honest, in fact they claim to be so innocuous that they might as well actually be dead. There is that nice young David Steel and that dear old Roy Jenkins . . . all terribly nice chaps with whom any self-respecting media hack would enjoy sharing a bottle of claret, but there is just one little thing: What the hell do they stand for? So far they have left the electorate in the dark about this minor aspect of their alliance. Like a well-rehearsed play for which there is not yet a script, the Alliance are selling plenty of tickets, but what will they do when their followers demand to see the performance? Not long ago a successful SDP candidate for a local council in the North East was interviewed on the local radio: “Now that people have voted for you, could you tell us exactly what policies you stand for?" asked the man from the media; “Well, we’ll be deciding our policy later this year and as soon as we have, the electors will be the first to know", replied the man from the media. So, there you have it; vote for the Alliance and ask what you are voting for later. History being made? It’s more like a mystery being made.

On one point the allies are definitely in agreement. Both are one hundred per cent committed to the maintenance of the capitalist social order. No need for a policy statement about that. Both the Liberals (who claim to stand for capitalism) and the SDP (who call themselves ‘democratic Socialists’) accept a way of running society in which goods are only produced if there is a prospect of selling them on the market for a profit. Both are opposed to any challenge to the class ownership and control of the means of wealth production and distribution. In this vital respect the alliance is broader than it thinks, for it includes the Conservative and Labour parties. All of the Lefties with their ‘alternative economic strategies’ (for which read, ‘previously tried and failed Keynesian policies’ are as committed to the buying and selling system as any Liberal or SDPer.

As reported in a previous issue of the Socialist Standard, the SDP has refused a challenge from the SPGB to debate its views in public. Its leaders prefer to state their case from the secure distance of a BBC Any Questions studio rather than face real working class people with real problems arising from a real cause which the SDP will do nothing to remove. As the media continues to persuade us of the moderation and reasonableness of the new messiahs; as David Steel prepares to resume where Lloyd George left off; as political careerists from all parties point the accusing finger at one another and say that everyone is an extremist but themselves; as the word ‘socialism’ is tossed about the political arena like a football which changes shape each time it arrives at another team; as a Gang of Bores awaits its call to do for the working class what has never been done before and what can never be done, it is high time that we, the working class, took a good, hard look at those who want us to follow them, and when we have seen them for what they are we can tell them precisely where to go.

Steve Coleman