Capitalist Fears and Admissions. (1921)

From the February 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

The ever-increasing development of machinery—a law of existence to capitalism—begets problems faster than they can be solved. "Efficiency," the watchword of the capitalists, works with a boomerang effect through the glutting of world markets and compulsory closing down of industry, and a realisation of this sets to work the brains of professors, journalists, and individual capitalists, thinking out schemes for the weathering of commercial storms which grow more intensive in ratio with increasing productive forces.

So it is that the capitalist Press gives a large amount of space to the discussion of society's problems, and the more conscious members of the master class-draw attention to and attempt to solve the various problems.

"Printer's Ink" for November contains a report of a speech delivered by Wm. B. Dickson (President Midvale Steel Corporation) before the American Society of Engineers, in which he declares:

  "Efficiency in all lines of human endeavour is greatly to be desired, yet I fear that we are in danger of making a fetich of efficiency such as to endanger human freedom. It is a deadly menace in a people clothed with political power but stunted in body and soul by their environment. . . The tendency [sic] of modern industry is towards autocratic control of the workers through ownership of what our Socialistic friends term 'the tools of production,' which include not only the natural resources, but also the furnaces, mills, factories, and transportation systems." (Italics mine.)

Just how this autocratic control of the workers arose, exists, and is maintained has been explained innumerable times in the columns of the "S.S."

Divorced from the ownership of the necessary tools of production, the workers are compelled to sell the only power they possess—the power to labour—and in return receive wages which represent in the main only the bare necessaries needed to produce that labour power, despite the fact that their energy, applied to the materials they work with adds value to the subject of their labour. The products, however, remain the property of the masters, who proceed to realise their profits by selling the products on the market. Thus, being dependent upon the masters, the workers are enslaved and subjected to exploitation, which grows more and more intense, with the result that ever more quickly markets are flooded and more workers are thrown on their own resources—which means that they are at liberty to starve.

Lest we appear biased, let Mr. Dickson describe the process of shutting down industry. He says :

  "The merchants were driven out of business, real estate values were depreciated, and the workers were thrown on their own resources and had to break up their homes and seek employment elsewhere. None of these persons had any voice in the momentous decision, which was made in a New York office and which resulted in social paralysis in all of these communities. . . . It is the effect of the unconscious insolence of conscious power. . . By reason of this condition we have the unstable situation of a government founded on the suffrages of men who—for all practical purposes—and industrially bond men."

Coming to his solution of the problem the steel magnate declares for a "fair system of collective bargaining," and insists that the worker must be given a real stake in the enterprise, slyly suggesting that the employee should be induced to invest his savings. Also a greater measure of management must be introduced according to this capitalist sociologist, who goes on to issue the following warning to those who will have nothing to do with "industrial democracy."

  "My answer to this is that all human relations are not static but dynamic, and unless I am mistaken as to the direction and force of the tide which is now running so strongly in human affairs your choice will not lie between the present system of industrial control and industrial democracy."

Ah ! the cat is out of the bag. Of what can Mr. Dickson be afraid ? SOCIALISM ! as is obvious from his quotation from Carnegie's "Problems of to-day." 

  "Revolutionary Socialism is successfully to be combatted only by promptly conceding the just claims of moderate men."

What a noble compliment to the pseudo-Socialists who are the formulators of "just claims" and so-called working-class reforms. Like the Italian premier, Mr. Dickson would like to be able to declare that "Socialism has been prevented for at least fifty years," but because he is not confident in either his own solution or the many other palliatives which have been advocated at different times and in so many different guises, he is compelled to fall back upon the bourgeois religion of hope. He concluded his address with the following: "I am hopeful that our generation will guess the sphinx riddle, and that 'Out of the nettle, danger, will pluck the flower, safety.' "

So much for Mr. Dickson. We will now turn to another defender of the bulwarks of capitalism, Mr. Hoover, who is reported by the New York "Daily News" of November 20th as saying before the Federated Engineering Societies that 

  "the intermittency of unemployment . . the ever-present industrial conflicts by strike and lockout produce infinite wastes and great suffering. The aggregation of great wealth with its power to economic domination presents social economic ills which we are constantly struggling to remedy."

Hoover, like Mr. Dickson, is concerned with the removal of this condition of affairs which gives the workers innumerable object lessons which, with the aid of Socialist analysis, will bring them to a definite acceptance of Socialism. He asserts that employers frequently overlook the fact that "Labour organisations as they stand to-day are the greatest bulwarks against Socialism."

He also advocates shop committees "imbued with the principle of co-operation" and. discloses another "shilling under the foot," for apropos of the recent agitation on the part of master-class associations against the closed shop he remarked: "There would be little outcry against the closed shop if it were closed in order to secure unity of purpose in constructive increase of production by offering the full value of the worker's mind and effort as well as his hands." In other words, a BRAIN-SUCKING SCHEME with which the British worker is familiar under the guise of Whitley councils, Nationalisation schemes, etc.

Mr. Hoover's solution is no solution, but an aggravation of the problem, as indeed all capitalist solutions tend to be. Although they see how they are compelled to dig their own graves they are also compelled to evolve even bigger tools for the purpose. Shop committees, whether built up from the more conservative unions or the ultra-revolutionary (sic) industrial unions, will, according to his theory, serve as the instrument for removing minor points of friction in this industrial machine, as well as contribute by suggestion towards more efficient development.

Always tinged with the insatiable greed for wealth, the solutions offered by the master class fall short, as that very profit lust is the expression of the causes of the problem and it cannot be solved without their self-abolition or without the working class organsing for that purpose.

While production is social the product is privately owned, and as the workers can only absorb wealth according to their meagre purchasing-power, and the master class cannot dispose of the surplus wealth even by indulging in stupendous orgies of waste, distributing centres become choked with wealth and the cycle of unemployment and starvation in the midst of plenty is gone over again until the wealth is gradually absorbed and the channels once more freed. Private ownership, then, is the root cause of the problem; and it is at the root cause we must strike.

Capitalism is rotten, as is evident from a glance over the headlines in any newspaper. Crime, disease, oppression, starvation, indicate the social and economic bankruptcy of the system of private ownership of property, and we of the working class can confidently go ahead to wield ourselves into the party which shall take the helm and usher in the system that, for the first time in the history of man, shall make freedom possible. While the masters are futilely trying to "pluck the nettle," we Socialists shall continue the educational work which makes the roses grow on the cheeks of a working-class party determined to make use of the political power with which we are clothed and digging out the weed of capitalism which chokes most that is best in human relations.

We declare with Engels: 

  "To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed proletarian class a full knowledge of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement—Scientific Socialism."

Atlantic

Democracy By Decree (1968)

Book Review from the October 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Experiment in Industrial Democracy by Flanders, Pomeranz and Woodward (Faber and Faber, 45s.)

This book studies the John Lewis Partnership, a group of department stores and supermarkets employing 17.000 people, that has for fifty years run “an experiment in industrial democracy”. Its introduction did not come as a result of pressure from below. Rather it was the brain-child of Spedan Lewis, the son of a store-owner. The scheme was introduced at Peter Jones, an unsuccessful shop Lewis had taken over from his father. Spedan Lewis believed his father’s shops had prospered by giving good value. It could be improved “if more of its resources were allocated to better pay and conditions, which would attract good workers and encourage them to work well”. The scheme succeeded and was extended to the stores he inherited from his father in 1928. The group has continued to prosper so that:

   Turnover has more than doubled over the past ten years, and profits have more than kept pace . . . Partnership department stores have also been more successful in increasing sales than comparable stores outside.

In a society where goods arc produced to be sold with a view to profit, success can only be measured in terms of sales and profits. In this respect Lewis' scheme has made the grade.

What about the “industrial democracy", then? It consists in the main of elected councils, journals, profit-sharing and welfare schemes. The study shows that employees are more concerned with questions of wages and working conditions than with commercial policies. In fact they have the normal attitude of workers rather than of “partners”. Not that we would expect it to be otherwise. The workers' attitude to trade unions is fairly representative of the industry. Few of the shop workers are believed to be members of USDAW. while the most highly organised are the central London delivery van crews in the TGWU.

The profit-sharing part of the scheme comes up against the same snags in that the workers, having to look after their daily needs, tend to sell the shares issued them. So that whatever the intentions of the firm, it forms part of their wages rather than a stake in the company. Partners opt out:

  The partnership now operates a licensed stock-dealing pool which handles small transactions and arranges to place the considerable quantity of stock which is 'renounced' each year .by partners as soon as they become entitled to it.

One table shows that in January 1966 £13,999,090 or 29.5 per cent of the firm’s capital was issued to outside investors. £5,136.120 was 5 per cent Second Cumulative Preferred Ordinary Stock "most of which was originally issued to the partners under the profit-sharing scheme". This benefits the business and safeguards outside shareholders as follows:

  This part of profit-sharing mainly takes the form of shares which provide a continual flow of new capital, and which rank last in the capital structure, so that the Partnership can offer the best possible security to outside investors, while remaining independent of them for a considerable part of the fresh funds required by an expanding business.

In practice the scheme has served as a means of regulating the employer-employee relationship to get the co-operation of the latter for the benefit of the former.

Capitalism nowadays needs an efficient and enterprising working class running production. Their participation in making decisions has to be tolerated to the extent that it aids the smooth running of industry. It is nonsensical to think in terms of industrial or political democracy in isolation from social activity as a whole. Only in a society which the means of life are held in common will democratic control by society over its affairs be achieved.

Joe Carter

Politics First (1968)

Book Review from the April 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Industrial Democracy in Great Britain. edited by K. Coates and A. Topham. Macgibbon and Kee. 63s.

It is insolent of those who idealise industrial action to link this, as Coates and Topham do, with Marx. For Marx held that, necessary and useful as industrial action was, what it could achieve was limited; to end wage slavery the working class should take political action to convert the means of production from class to social property. The industrial side of the class struggle is thus in a sense subsidiary. This book is a collection of writings advocating a greater say in industrial administration for workers on the shop- floor and, frankly, is uninteresting. The authors’ comments are mealy mouthed and in places inaccurate. We are told that lames Connolly “split the old Social Democratic Federation to form a new Socialist Labour Party". This move was in fact an expression of the dissatisfaction of the younger SDF members; it is quite wrong to attribute the founding of the SLP to Connolly. Another sign was the founding in 1904 of the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain — not mentioned, of course.

Workers have no special power “at the point of production”. The real seat of power is what controls the government machine and capitalist power rests on their control of this. Industrial action won’t dislodge them. It is significant that Coates and Topham can find nothing to quote on the shop stewards' movement from 1926 to 1935, a period of great unemployment. All the pre-war items on this issue are from members of the so-called Communist Party — Tom Bell. J. T. Murphy. Tom Mann, W. Gallacher, Wal Hannington and Harry Pollitt — thus endorsing the view that at one time the CP was a revolutionary organisation which went off the rails when it embraced parliamentary action after the war. But the CP has always been an opportunistic party, its only principle being to act in accordance with the interests of Russian state capitalism. Thus they called a meeting of shop stewards in April 1940 to protest against the employers using the war as an excuse to attack working conditions. At another meeting in October 1941 the same people were reported as cheering a man who declared “If a man doesn’t pull his weight in war production then, whether he is a labourer or engineer, he should be put in the army". We all know what had happened in between! From 1941 to 1947 the CP supported production drives and this only changed when the wartime alliance broke up. One of the pre-war Communists quoted is J. T. Murphy. Murphy was expelled from the CP in 1932 because he would not accept the slogan “‘stop the transport of munitions"; he wanted "credits for the Soviet Union!" Murphy's following had been built up among engineering workers in eastern Sheffield, an important munition producing area. This incident well shows that the shop steward's following is based on industrial issues. They don't carry their supporters with them when they branch out into politics.

Coates and Topham recognise that democratic control of industry will not work if production is still to be geared to the market (look at the co-ops, they say). They know that for this to be effective the market and money must go. Only they fall for the old stepping stone policy:

Given the establishment of a democratically self-regulating industry in a climate formed and dominated by the market, a struggle will begin between democracy and the market.

Once some people thought that nationalisation was a step to Socialism. All they achieved was to bring certain industries under the collective control of the capitalist class via the state. All this talk about “worker’s control” and industrial democracy will probably have a similar outcome: employers will latch on to it as a stepping stone to involving their workers in production problems—with a view to increasing profits.

Adam Buick