Workers and wages
"We . . . do not . . . exhort workers to try to attain 4y wages where before they only had 3y wages. An above average wage in one industry necessarily implies a below-average wage in another”.
This seems to suggest that the Socialist Party of Great Britain does not urge workers to struggle for higher wages on the grounds that a wage increase for one group of workers necessarily involves a wage decrease for another.
The Socialist Party has always urged workers to try to get the highest possible price for the sale of their labour-power. And Marx long ago exposed, in Value Price and Profit, the "wages fund” theory accepted by the Owenite Weston that, as the amount that could be paid out in wages was limited, one group of workers could only obtain a wage increase at the expense of the rest of the working class, and that therefore trade union action was to be opposed. As Marx showed, it was sometimes possible for workers to take advantage of favourable labour market conditions to obtain a real wage increase, even if only a temporary one, at the expense of the profits of the capitalists and without harming other workers. For Marx Socialists had not to oppose the struggle for higher wages, but rather to point out its severe limitations and to urge the adoption of the revolutionary, socialist slogan “Abolish the wages system”. Marx also made the point that workers have to struggle for higher wages, even if they don’t obtain them, just in order to realise the value of their labour-power. Workers should struggle to get 4y wages in place of 3y because if they don’t they won’t even get paid 3y.
A. Buick
Brussels
Reply:
The interpretation placed on this extract by A. Buick appears to have been an over-reaction to what was stated. The term “above average wages” derives from the IPC statement itself and it should be remembered that this is a statistical concept. It should also be remembered that the statement relates to a specific company and those workers within it. This is not meant to imply that because it is a specific company, that we take no interest in the workers concerned, but more to mean that we do not approach these workers and their part both in the class struggle, and in their understanding of Socialism, exclusive of all others.
As was pointed out in the article, Mr. Roberts (the Managing Director of IPC Newspapers Ltd.) refers his employees to their high standing in the “Pay relativities League Table.” The graph (re-printed from the Financial Times) represents the average rates of pay throughout many industries, and Roberts is telling IPC employees: Look how much higher up this scale are your wages compared to those of other workers. This is a blatant appeal to his men to be thankful, for what are in the end, extremely small mercies. It is relevant however, to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that if Roberts pays his workers wages which are above a norm, then those of other workers must be below it. Clearly not all workers can obtain “above average wages,” for an average is necessarily the mean between high and low.
This reference was made to point out the limitations of Robert’s own emphasis on above-average wages as an indication of “success” and to remind IPC workers that they should not consider being “above-average” as a satisfactory position. In short, “above average” as a class view. It was certainly not intended to endorse the theory that there is a given pool from which wages are drawn, and consequently one man’s wage increase, is another’s decrease. The clause A. Buick has omitted from the extract quoted in fact points to the source from which an increase in wages would come i.e. the capitalist’s profit.
As A. Buick says, it is quite possible for a group of workers to achieve a wage increase without affecting the amount of wages received by other workers Their relative positions on a statistical graph will of course change, but as was pointed out, these relative differences will not change the basic class position of workers, or their problems. It is worth bearing in mind that there have been a considerable number of strikes in post-war years over wage relativities. As such we cannot be expected to approve a claim by any group of workers that at all times they must have more than some other group of workers.
A. Buick’s letter states “For Marx Socialists had not to oppose the struggle for higher wages . . ." and so on. However it seems a somewhat large (and inaccurate) mental leap to conclude from the passage quoted, or the article as a whole, that we were advocating opposition to workers struggling for higher wages. The class struggle between worker and employer results from the capitalist system, and wage claims are manifestations of this struggle. It would indeed be contradictory to claim that the SPGB represents the political interests of the working class on one hand, while actually advocating opposition to intelligent efforts aimed at improving or maintaining standards under Capitalism by struggles in the industrial field. The article did not put forward this point of view, and Marx explains fully why this would be a contradictory position:
(Writing about the tendency for the average standard of wages to fall)
. . . is this saying that the working class ought to renounce their resistance against the encroachments of capital, and abandon their attempts at making the best of the occasional chances for their temporary improvement? If they did, they would be degraded to one level mass of broken wretches past salvation . . . they would certainly disqualify themselves for the initiation of any larger movement.(Wages, Price & Profit. Chapter 14).
In practise, where gains are made by workers in industries, generally it is due to these “occasional chances” and not to the number of strikes they engage in.
Regarding A. Buick’s opinion of how our case should be expressed in relation to the struggle for higher wages, it would not be true to claim that the SPGB is better placed than the workers, or Trade Unions involved, to identify such "occasional chances” for improvement, or to usurp their particular functions in this respect. It would be a considerable and alien extension of our own function to assume that we should act either as some form of Advice Bureau, or Clearing House for various wage claims. Such a conclusion would be hard to avoid were we to blandly assert that all those IPC workers receiving (in the article’s terms) 3y wages, should be taking action to attain 4y wages.
Apart from elementary considerations such as the likelihood of such a claim being met or not, or to what extent and duration of industrial action can be taken, it should be remembered that workers (not the SPGB) advance wage claims in terms of £’s and pence. Apart from these other considerations it would be unrealistic to prescribe the numerical formula put forward by A. Buick to the IPC workers, and even more so, to all workers at all times. The extract complained about was expressly inserted to make clear to the reader that we are not able to give specific advice on the formation of particular wage claims. We certainly do not exhort workers to act in such a way, we exhort workers to achieve Socialism.
Although Mr. Roberts might view such a formula as an attempt to be “realistic”, if a little immoderately, the SPGB would take a view which he, and millions of workers at present regard as “un-realistic,” namely, if we are to talk in terms of figures, why just struggle for 4y, why not 5 or 6 or 10y ?
It is possible that A. Buick means his formula to be interpreted in a more general way to read that workers should continue to struggle for higher wages. If this is so, he is acknowledging what is occurring daily under capitalism. The SPGB has frequently put forward the view that workers generally (not just Trade Unions) should recognise the need to achieve not only the best wages, but also the best conditions that they can, although we have not always seen as beneficial some of the methods employed in this respect: For example, the use of industrial action to preserve the “Closed-shop,” inter-unions disputes, or racially motivated strikes etc., because their result has been to further divide and embitter sections of the working class. If A. Buick is concerned lest the IPC workers, or other workers, become unaware of increasing costs of daily necessaries, or of greater exploitation by the capitalist class, his reminder is timely.
While recognising that the capitalist class will constantly seek to lower wages to the minimum level required to ensure the maintenance and reproduction of a work force, and pointing out to the working class that this is a most undesirable tendency, which, if not resisted, will result in a fall of their standards, the SPGB’s task is to urge workers (employed or not) to recognise their class position, and, as Marx points out in his following paragraph from Wages, Price & Profit (Chap. 14).
not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the cause of those effects.
Our exhortation must be therefore for workers to adopt a class view and establish a system of society in which high, low or average wages will only be sought and found in history books.
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