Letter: Class struggle through ‘cyber struggle’ (1995)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class struggle through ‘cyber struggle’

Dear Editors,

I disagree with Jonathan Meakin’s pessimistic conclusions regarding the global computer network known as the Internet (“Internet; Forum or Marketplace?", Socialist Standard, June 1995). My experience as an avid "net surfer” lucky enough to enjoy cheap access as a university student is that the Internet does not simply mirror the capitalist marketplace. At the moment only about one half of net “traffic” is put to commercial use. Alongside this market-driven content is an incredible diversity of non-commodified information reflecting the multiplicity of net users, most of whom seem to be hostile towards attempts at money-making and the imposition of state (or any other) censorship. The decentralised and fluid nature of this form of communication has been capitalised on by unions and grassroots organisations around the world in their attempts at preventing the erosion of gains won under capitalism in the face of the innocuous sounding “global restructuring". Unions in particular, while slow to catch on to the potentialities of "cyber-struggle”, have more recently begun to the use the Internet to coordinate strikes and boycotts, educate around labour issues, and make links around the globe with otherwise isolated union activists. One of the most successful political uses of the net came with the dissemination of information concerning the plight of Mayan Indians in the Mexican state of Chiapas, following the recent crackdown by the Mexican government. The situation was largely ignored by the mainstream media, yet the support garnered from the speedy and widespread publicising of the demands of the Zapatistas on various global computer networks was cited as one of the main reasons why the government was eventually forced to negotiate with the rebels.

There are also numerous mail-lists, newsgroups, and "web sites” which are of more direct interest to socialists. One particular mail-lists "oneunion”—involves participants drawn from the political sector which the World Socialist Movement shares an affinity with; anti-statist and non-market socialists and anarchists. Discussions on this list are wide-ranging and include debating the relative merits of "free access” versus labour vouchers. criticisms of reformism, and appropriate methods of working-class organisation. There is also an excellent web site where those who are so inclined can access most of the work of Marx and Engels at the touch of a button.

Of course, the Internet is not perfect and it cannot escape being tainted by capitalist social relations. As Meakin acknowledges. availability is obviously restricted to those with literacy and access to a computer, modem, and the relevant software— which counts out the vast majority of the world’s population— although the growth of "freenets" (computers hooked up to the Internet available free of charge usually in public libraries) is encouraging. The question of whether computer-mediated communication is desirable given the health risks associated with the production and use of this form of technology, is important to consider. And with the Clinton-backed "Information Super-Highway" just around the corner, the possibilities for Orwellian levels of surveillance and social control of people in their homes is indeed frightening.

Nevertheless, commercialisation and state interference with the Internet is not as inevitable as Meakin implies. It is unlikely that the millions who, at the moment, enjoy the accessibility, diversity, autonomy, and co-operative nature of the net will simply stand aside and concede to the crass consumerism of the invading market. In fact, if it is inevitable that every form of communication used by workers to counter capitalist ideology and exploitation will eventually succumb to the "law of the market", how on earth will socialist ideas spread? Why wait for a revolution? Used in concert with other media, the Internet has the potential to become a useful tool in the hands of a growing socialist movement and, despite the ruminations of neo-luddites, it is probably here to stay.

Julian Prior, 

Vancouver, Canada (julianp@sfu.ca)

Note: 

The Marx and Engels Archive is available on the World Wide Web at http:// csf.Colorado.EDU:80/psn/marx/ To join the "oneunion" maillist send a message to OneUnion- request@list.lever.com with the subject “subscribe”.

Letter: A Campaign with Revolutionary Implications? (1995)

From the March 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

ALB’s review of Selma James's Marx and Feminism (Socialist Standard, December 1994) not only gives a misleading portrayal of a tradition which has made a valuable contribution to libertarian communist thought, but also displays the usual blind-spots present in much orthodox Marxist theorising (or lack of it) on the position of women under capitalism.

The Socialist Party may dismiss Wages for Housework as "conservative" and reformist.but I believe that they, together with the Autonomist Marxist tradition with which they are connected. have made the following critical interventions which have revolutionary implications:

(a) Selma James, together with Mariarosa Dalla Costa, was among the first to show how capitalism is founded not only on the capital/wage labour relationship but also on a hierarchy between waged and unwaged within the working-class. Thus capital “hides behind" the unpaid labour of those, usually women and people of colour, who carry out activities such as care-giving, cooking, cleaning, and basic food production, upon which "free" wage labour depends. Where these activities are provided in return for a wage, this usually involves the "super-exploitation" of labour-power as in the case of the so-called Third World where many women and men are paid far less than the average cost of meeting their subsistence needs. The production and reproduction of the commodity "labour power" is central, therefore, to the ongoing process of capital accumulation.

(b) Present day capitalism can usefully be seen as a "social factory" in which class struggle has spread to virtually all areas of everyday life, even as. numerically speaking, "wage labourers" have come to constitute a small minority of the world’s working-class. (The German sociologist Claudia von Werlhof has estimated that only 10-20 percent of the world’s working class are wage labourers "free" to sell their labour-power in return for a wage or salary. The rest, made up of women, subsistence producers. peasants and other "marginalised" labourers appear to be the "norm" despite what Eurocentric forms of Marxism would have us believe.) Resistance to capitalist domination, therefore, occurs in sites far removed from factory-based industrial production and trade unions: from women fighting against the introduction of reproductive technologies to the resistance of indigenous peoples to the forced enclosure of common land. In this respect. James and Dalla Costa have stressed the importance of recognising the diversity of working-class experience as well as the commonalities. They and other feminists have exploded the myth of the white, male, unionised wage labourer as the subject of Marxist analysis and agent of revolutionary change.

(c) Wages for Housework and the Autonomist Marxist tradition has consistently stressed the futility of reformism, particularly as it is embodied in unionism, labour parties. Leninism, and the “left” in general. They have been critical of those leftists who see the way forward as more jobs/full employment, more rational control of capitalist production disguised as "workers control", a social democratic government, or a vanguard party leading the masses to revolution. Selma James castigates feminists who "don't aim to destroy the capitalist social relation but only to organize it more rationally" while Mariarosa Dalla Costa has argued that those "who advocate that the liberation of the working-class woman lies in her getting a job outside the home are part of the problem, not the solution. Slavery to an assembly line is not a liberation from slavery to a kitchen sink" (Dalla Costa & James The Power of Women and the Subversion of Community. Bristol: Falling Wall Press. 1972. pp 2 and 33 respectively). The alternative this tradition poses is concurrent with other non-market communist traditions; the abolition of capitalist work (both waged and unwaged labour) and of the state, common ownership and production for human needs, and the encouragement of the fullest possible range of human creative activity unmediated by the capital class relationship.

(d) In arguing for the importance of the self-activity of the working-class. Wages for Housework argues against vanguardism and the centralised Party (with a capital "P") and for the development of autonomous organisations within the working-class. These have enabled women, for example, to challenge the sexism of male-dominated socialist organisations which have colluded, perhaps unintentionally, with capital and the state in rendering women's work socially invisible, "natural" and unproductive, and relegating to "side issues” any attempts by women to organise independently to challenge their exploitation. It is only by supporting the autonomy of various organisations throughout the circulation of struggles within the working class, that divisions can be overcome as a prerequisite for class unity and fundamental social change.

It is in the above respect that the campaign for Wages for Housework should be understood. not as just another single-issue reformist group. Rather than an end in itself, the campaign for a guaranteed income for women and men homeworkers is best looked at as a strategic intervention designed to expose patriarchal capitalism's dependence on the unpaid labour of women, and bring to the forefront some of the unique experiences and struggles faced by women as members of a divided working-class.

With their fixation on wage/salaried labour as the source of surplus value for the capitalist class, socialists (following Marx) have generally ignored the production and reproduction of labour-power and have historically accepted the false division between "private"/reproductive/unwaged work and "public"/productive/waged work imposed by capital on the working class. Furthermore the Socialist Party has always maintained that the only worthwhile vehicles for defending the living standards, wages, working conditions etc of the working class under capitalism are trade unions. The Socialist Standard continues to pay scant attention to forms of working-class struggle outside of unions, such as that waged by women in Wages for Housework. Such a monolithic class analysis does little to overcome the many divisions within the working class at the same time as it provides cannon fodder for those who feel that Marxism is now outmoded.

Feminists argue that the liberation of women entails more than simply the abolition of wage labour and the establishment of "free access" to wealth produced. It is quite possible, they argue, to conceive of a socialist society (as defined by the Socialist Party) where the wages system has been abolished yet an exploitative sexual division of labour continues to exist, where women continue to lack control over their bodies, sexuality, or reproductive rights, or where male violence continues on a substantial scale. We might, then, question ALB's assertion that "the energies of those who are. quite rightly, concerned about the economic dependence of women on men would be much better directed to campaigning for socialism”, and ask instead whether at least some of the energies of those socialists who are concerned about the liberation of women might be better employed listening to feminists. 

Julian Prior

Burnaby, Canada.

Reply:

The claim that the Wages for Housework Campaign is now a single-issue campaign for a reform within capitalism was based on the contents of the pamphlet Marx and Feminism itself and of the accompanying publicity material sent us by the publishers.

In the 1970s Selma James did talk about "class struggle”, "revolutionary action", “abolishing capitalism", etc (though not so much about abolishing wages, money and markets and instituting common ownership and production solely and directly to satisfy people’s needs) and she saw the launching of a campaign for "wages for housework" in this context.

We wouldn't deny — and weren’t concerned to deny — that James and others made some valid criticisms of the narrow definition of the working class (and so also of the agent of revolutionary change) held by Trotskyists, Leninists, Stalinists and other leftists. In defining the working class only as miners, dockers, factory workers, etc these excluded whole sections of the working class from being able to play a full role in the transformation of society and downgraded their problems and struggles to being marginal or secondary.

But this criticism didn't apply to us since we have always had a broad definition of the working class as all those excluded from the ownership and control of the means of production irrespective of the job they do (or don't do). OK. perhaps not so broad as to include "subsistence producers, peasants and indigenous peoples” but this issue has been discussed amongst our members.

Nor is it accurate to say that we have "always maintained that the only worthwhile vehicles for defending the living standards. wages. working conditions, etc of the working class under capitalism are trade unions". We may see trade unions as the main vehicles for doing this, but we don't exclude other organisations like tenants associations, claimants unions, student unions — or some women’s organisations such as those advising women of their legal rights or refuges for battered women. The Wages for Housework Campaign. however, does not enter into this category. It is a politically-motivated reformist group.

James came from an ex-Trotskyist tradition, but one which had not got rid of all the assumptions and methods of Trotskyism, in particular the so-called "transitional demand". This is a demand put forward by militants for discontented workers to struggle for but which the militants know full well is not achievable under capitalism: their hope is that when, as a result of their unsuccessful struggle, the discontented workers realise this they will turn against capitalism and become revolutionaries.

James's disagreement with the Trotskyists was not over whether or not to put forward "transitional demands" but over what these demands should be and at who they should be aimed. They favoured demands of a trade union-type like “indexisation of wages to prices". “35-hour week", "workers' control". She rejected this on the grounds that these demands could only be attractive to unionised, mainly male, factory workers and left out unwaged women doing housework as “the slave of a wage slave". The alternative she proposed was "wages for housework" as a transitional demand to mobilise women as an autonomous movement. independent of (and even opposed to) the Trade Union and Labour Movement.

We always rejected "transitional demands". As far as we are concerned they were just reforms. while the Socialist Party had been founded on the principle that a socialist organisation should not advocate reforms; this was not because we were against all reforms but because we recognise that reformism cannot solve the problems of the working class within capitalism and because of the effect we felt that campaigning for reforms would have on the socialist nature of the organisation. We argued that for it to campaign for reforms would attract the support of people who wanted reforms not socialism and that this would eventually lead to it becoming a reformist organisation.

The fate of the Wages for Housework Campaign which James helped set up over twenty years ago illustrates this perfectly.

Whatever might have been her original intention (and there is no reason to doubt that she then wanted to get rid of capitalism with its privileges for the few and exploitation and oppression for the many), the WFH Campaign has become a single-issue reformist pressure group.

The publicity material accompanying the review consisted of an interview of Selma James and Margaret Prescod in the Los Angeles Times of 7 May 1987, a news item from the same paper headlined “Bill Would Make Housework Count in Calculation of GNP" (12 December 1991), and an article on Selma James from the London Times of 19 February 1992.

All these articles have a common theme: that the payment by the state of money to women for doing housework is a demand that should, and can, be achieved within capitalism, and is in fact on the way to being realised thanks to successful lobbying by James and others of the United Nations, the European Parliament and the US House of Representatives. James is quoted as follows:

"There are. she says, two questions. women always ask when confronted by the concept of wages for housework. "Who will pay for it?" and "Will we ever get it?' Her answers are "Trident" — she would siphon off the entire military budget to pay for unremunerated labour — and "Yes'. 

Her optimism springs from existing welfare provisions. "Child benefit and income support are forms of recognition that women working in the home have an entitlement to wages, even though it is not enough. Those benefits are creeping wages for housework and after you creep you walk, after you walk you run." (Times, 19 February 1992)

.

A far cry from what she was saying in the 1970s. Now it’s the inevitability of gradualism. We once heard somebody (not a member of the Socialist Party) describe "wages for housework" as a “crap demand". His point was that if you were going to make such a demand on the state you might as well demand a basic state income for everybody. We said you might as well establish socialism, at least that was achievable.

There are feminists and feminists. Some (most, these days?) feminists wouldn’t know what you were talking about if you mentioned "the abolition of the wages system" and "free access": they are concerned with getting women an equal chance to compete in the rat-race that capitalism is and to scramble to the top of the heap if they can. Or, in a language they wouldn't understand. to turn women from unequal wage slaves and from “slaves to wage slaves" into "equal wage slaves” with men.

Other feminists may well be able to conceive of a socialist society in which discrimination and oppression of women continued. Well, we can't and we're socialists and they're not. Socialism involves people voluntarily co-operating to produce and distribute wealth and to run their common affairs on a democratic basis, with free access for all to the things they need to live and enjoy life. Under these circumstances there would be no economic pressures on women to put up with discriminatory or oppressive practices: women could simply walk away from them and still have free access to what they needed. So there’d be no basis for their continued existence. In fact the feminist — and indeed socialist aim — of women’s equality is only going to be fully realised in a socialist society.

Editors.

Letter: Class struggle in sport (1992)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class struggle in sport

Mention the term “class struggle" to someone and they are most likely to recoil in terror or perhaps conclude that you are slightly mad. The John Majors of this world would, of course, have you believe that we now live in a classless society; and if you don't believe him there are always plenty of sociologists around to assure you that yes, there are classes—but it’s OK because everybody's “middle class" nowadays.

On 1 April last members of Canada's National Ice-Hockey League voted 560 to 4 in favour of calling the first ever strike by players in the NHL's 75-year history, and in doing so stuck two fingers up at those academics and politicians who are proclaiming the “death of the working class" and of socialism in general.

Now I'm not pretending that hockey players have spent the past few weeks skating around with copies of Marx’s Capital in their hands, but nevertheless there is a profound sense of awareness on the part of the players that, in the words of one of the ex-stars Tiger Williams. “we have rights just like any other worker”.

The fans in Vancouver, however. are up in arms over the strike especially in a year when their beloved team has a great chance of winning the revered Stanley Cup. How, they argue, can players whose average yearly earnings top $350,000 (about £175.000) choose to go on strike at a time when ordinary fans are struggling to make ends meet?

The facts, though, paint a different picture. The average salary is misleading in that there are a handful of players who earn an amount well into seven figures, thereby pushing the average up. The players were told recently by the owners of the NHL franchises that there would be no money available for increased wages despite a turnaround last year of over $43 million.

On top of this the average pro hockey player can expect his career to last about four years during which he will be subjected to constant media pressure, long-distance travel, niggling injuries, and the physical and psychological grind of playing and training day in and day out. a fact which is reflected in the abnormally low life-span of many professional athletes. Added to this, after his career is over he has little to fall back on in terms of “marketable skills”.

Yet perhaps more than this the strike is about “free agency", or, as described by Pat Quinn. the Vancouver Canucks General Manager, “the right for players to sell their talent to another club— which is at the moment being denied to them by the owners”.

The bottom line being, of course:

that this is entertainment, that tickets are sold for a product, that the value of that product is found in the talent of the players.(Globe and Mail, 2 April).

And summed up nicely by the CBC reporter:

This is not a sport—it is a business, built around one point—the raw talent of the hockey player.

All this goes to show that under capitalism, there exists a fundamental social antagonism between those who own the means of living and those who don’t. The exploitation of wage labour exists regardless of whether one is a factory worker, a working mother, a university professor or a professional ice-hockey player.

What all these people have in common is an interest in getting rid of a social system that has long since outlived its purpose and in establishing instead a way of living in which human talents from whatever walk of life can finally be expressed to the full.

Julian Prior, 

Vancouver

Letters: 'Socialist Material will be Dwarfed' (1995)

Letters to the Editors from the September 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

In response to Julian Prior’s letter about the article on the Internet in the August issue of Socialist Standard I’d like to make a few points.

The first one is that the Internet is just like other information disseminators such as newspapers, books and magazines except it’s electronic and generally cheaper. For instance the Socialist Standard is a hard copy form of information distributed to a few thousand around the world and compared to the Sun, a tabloid gossip rag in the UK. which is read by around four million daily it doesn’t compare.

Similarly, on the net socialists distribute their information electronically but once the big corporations move in, again, socialist material will be dwarfed. It's true what he says about groups resisting this encroachment by corporations onto the net, but that's capitalism isn’t it? The past 200 years of capitalism has been about people resisting the commercialisation of life. It's also true what he says about Mexico and the Mayan rebels, indeed the same could be said about the Russian coup attempt in 1991 or Tiananmen Square both of which used fax and computer technology to alert the world. But what’s new about this? In the past, rebellions and wars were brought to public view using newspapers or leaflets. All that has changed is the method not the content. It’s also true that socialists won’t stand aside whilst the corporations move in, but if the Internet is growing at such a rate then socialists will be sidelined. If half the net is commercialised now after only two or three years of real net use then what’s it going to be like in 10 years?

My general view is that we should see the net for what it is, a convenient and valuable information and communication resource and use it as such. In fact that’s what I find exciting about the net, the accessibility of information and its global reach. I certainly don't think it will go away, but I'm sure that this new global reach of the net is going to be used by corporations for their own ends.

As for how people are going to become socialists if information is market-led, people become socialists for various reasons. not exclusively through access to socialist literature. In some ways it could be argued that people have to be socialist or socialistically-inclined to know where to get socialist literature in the first place, in other words most socialist literature preaches to the semi-converted anyway. But, of course this shouldn’t mean that socialist literature has no wider value, as people's life experiences and increasing global outlook encourages them to look for better ways to manage our world then socialism will become an increasingly viable option. 

Jonathan Meakin, 

Leixlip, Co. Kildare,

Ireland (jmeakin@iol.ie)

Band Aids and Aspirin

Dear Editors,

No doubt there is a need for the relief given to the desperate. poor, starving and sick people of the Third World by various charities, including Oxfam (Socialist Standard July). Just as there is no doubt that there is a need for the secondhand clothing sold to the poorest people in this country by Oxfam and other charities.

The fact is, however, that a world in which some depend on charitable schemes for bare subsistence. and others, the admittedly less absolutely poor, depend on the discarded clothing of the more affluent, is a sick world. Charity, I am sure the most fervent Oxfam supporter must admit, is not a solution, but band aid or aspirin at best Socialism is the cure.

Robert Taylor, 

South Shields, Tyne & Wear

In defense of Islam

Dear Editors,

I am writing in response to A. Ditta's letter about "Socialism versus Islam" (Socialist Standard, August). In his letter, Ditta states that "Islam is a very oppressive religion depriving women, gays and other minority groups of fundamental rights". I find this statement very hard to swallow. The goal of Islam is to give rights to all people in order to create a just and tolerant society. In pre-lslamic Arabia, a woman was looked down upon as a source of grief, and baby girls were sometimes buried alive. Henry VIII forbade the women in England to read the Bible, and throughout the middles ages, the Catholic Church treated women as second-class citizens. Before 1850, women were not counted as citizens in England and English women had no personal rights until 1882 (Islam: Beliefs and Teachings, Ghulam Sarwar). Under Islam, women have had all of these rights and more for fourteen hundred years. As for Islam being oppressive towards minority groups. I’m not quite sure to whom A. Ditta is referring. If Ditta is referring to “racial minorities", I will point out that Islam embraces people of all colours. If Ditta is referring to the economic minority, the upper class, s/he can rest assured that they are not deprived of their fundamental rights. I am not clear on whether or not gays are deprived of their fundamental rights, so I must abstain from making any comment at the present moment.

Islam's main goal can be paralleled to one of the goals of socialism. This goal is to create a just, loving and tolerant society. It is compulsory for Muslims to give charity and the richer members of society are advised to spread their wealth throughout the community to try and balance the unequal distribution of wealth. It is true that Muslim countries have a record of abusing human rights, but the religion of Islam cannot be blamed for that. Many people in power abuse human rights on a regular basis and use Islam to justify their actions. They cloak their sins by falsely sighting Islam as the reason for what they do. It is these people who are responsible for denying fundamental rights to other human beings, not Islam. Erum Faruqi, 

London SWI

Reply:

Assuming that Erum Faruqi is correct about the goals of Islam being to create a "just, loving and tolerant society” the fact remains that it has failed to do so in fourteen hundred years. If Islam is such a powerful force of good and tolerance then these abusers of human rights would not have got to the positions they have. It is strange that one cannot cite a single Islamic country that lives up to the ideals that she refers to. or even comes anywhere near—the divisions of wealth in all of them is as great as anywhere else. The answer, of course, is that Muslims put their trust in leaders (both religious and secular) instead of themselves and that is fatal.

Islam accepts the class nature of society though it had some difficulties in embracing the capitalist form but in the end managed to find a way round that. There's an old saying about the rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs and this is precisely what the rich Muslims who "spread their wealth throughout the community” are doing. They still rely on the exploitation of Muslim and other workers to maintain their wealth and privilege and then arc “generous" enough to hand a few coins of conscience money back.

Erum Faruqi says that a goal of Islam is to give rights to all people. Who are these people who are to bestow these rights? Probably the very same people she accuses of abusing human rights. Socialists don’t want to be given anything by the capitalist class, our aim is to get the majority producing class in society to take democratically the resources of the world and use them for the benefit of all. As socialists we aren't concerned whether Islam is or is not better than other religions. As far as we are concerned all religions—Islam, Christianity. Judaism. Hinduism. Buddhism, the lot—are absurd and wrong.

Islam may have started out with good intentions but now workers all over the world should start questioning their religious beliefs and their support of leaders and ask themselves if they can better their situation by organising together democratically to build a socialist movement which won’t be able to be hijacked by power-seekers who use the discontent of workers to get to the top. 

Editors.

Letter: Does Everywhere Have To Pass Through Capitalism? (1994)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Peter Newell’s informative account of the history surrounding recent events in Chiapas, Mexico (Socialist Standard, February) started me thinking about the different political responses to this indigenous uprising. In Vancouver where I live, these ranged from the predictable bandwagon-jumping escapades of various Leninist sects to a more interesting - but equally flawed - attempt to create an alliance of "leftist" inspired groups with the aim of supporting the Zapatista-led rebellion primarily by drawing links with "democratic struggles" here in Canada. The latter response, while moving beyond the insulting vanguardism of many groups on the left, was nevertheless typical of the kind of political strategy endorsed by many self-styled "post-Marxist" intellectuals currently resident in University departments. While the democratic decision-making processes of such alliances are, in my view, to be applauded, this post-Marxist political strategy remains mired in the rhetoric of failed projects of social democracy. Instead of challenging the profit-system in its entirety, the talk here is largely of smoothing the rough edges of capitalism by supporting social and environmental, justice and human rights incentives as ends in themselves.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that Peter Newell’s conclusions to his otherwise excellent article takes us a great deal further. According to him the uprisings were based on "backward-looking" ideas which "can achieve nothing of value, neither in the short nor the long run". This euro-centric view ignores the fact that for generations of First Nations’ peoples "violent rebelling" has been pretty much the only course of action available to them in the face of Euro-sponsored slavery and genocide. To sit back and regard their conversion into good little proletarians as somehow inevitable is to be complicit in their extinction. It also forgets that what is at stake for indigenous peoples is not simply higher wages or better working conditions but whole civilizations and ways of life. Do we really want one day to inherit a border-less world with a homogenous global culture where indigenous cultures have been reduced to quaint museum relics or trendy clothing styles for white people?

Part of the problem, I would argue, lies in the apparent unwillingness of many contemporary socialists to move beyond the sterile orthodox Marxist analysis of the effects of global capitalism on First Nations’ peoples. While there is nothing inherently euro-centric about socialism — there are countless historical examples of people the world over who have rejected wage labour and capital in favour of a cooperative, needs-based economy — there is clearly the need for contemporary socialists to be aware of the ways in which commitment to the goals of "scientific socialism", "reason", and the "positive aspects of capitalist development", contributes to the silencing and continued suffering of non-Western peoples. Even Marx himself acknowledged the extent to which capitalism was built on the oppression, slavery, and genocide of people of colour. It would seem to make sense, then, to see the abolition of capitalism as tied up with the overturning of euro-centrism, the elimination of white privilege and continuing opposition to newly emerging forms of colonialism and slavery.

For those socialists who would dismiss this as reformist and nationalist nonsense, I would ask you to consider what the Zapatistas of Chiapas, the Mohawks of Kahnesatake, or the East Timorese are fighting for. For the most part these autonomous struggles are anti-Statist, grass-roots and non-hierarchical movements calling for the return of communal land holdings. They have involved degrees of active participation by women on a scale that puts socialist parties to shame. Furthermore, are there not parallels to be drawn between the struggles of First Nations’ peoples for self-determination, and the economic and political struggles of wage-workers in the West?

Showing critical support for the Zapatista rebels does not imply a step-backwards for socialists; it merely acknowledges the extent to which the abolition of wage-slavery and the emergence of a world community of different cultures is inextricably linked to the self-determination of indigenous people worldwide.

Julian Prior, 

Vancouver, 

Canada 

Reply:
Julian Prior makes a number of interesting points, many of which I do not dispute. Nevertheless, I did not say that the uprisings in Chiapas, at the beginning of this year, were based upon "backwardlooking" ideas, which "can achieve nothing of value, neither in the short nor long run"; although, earlier in the article, I did suggest that, if he was anything, Emiliano Zapata, some 80 years’ ago, "was a rather backward-looking utopian communist".

What I did say was that such a movement will fail against the power of a modern state which, I should think, is obvious (I encountered units of the Mexican army when they were mopping-up the remnants of the "party of the poor" in the state of Guerrero); and that violent rebelling against such a state can achieve nothing of value (to the oppressed Indians) neither in the short nor the long run, although I did comment that it is not surprising that some of the Indians rebelled. Indeed, it is true that, over the last 90 years, almost all struggles and land occupations in Mexico, and elsewhere in Latin America, began peacefully and only became violent following state intervention and repression. Recent reports from Chiapas appear to confirm my view that the Indian masses of Chiapas will have achieved no more, and probably less, than if they had used various forms of non-violent strikes, and non-cooperation, against the large cattle ranchers and the pro-government village bosses.

Julian Prior seems to imply that socialists "sit back", and regard the conversion of the Indians "into good little proletarians as somehow inevitable". We do not, of course, sit back, but actively encourage people — all people — in London, Vancouver and Chiapas, to strive for a socialist world, not of conformity and uniformity, but of diversity. Sadly, or otherwise, it is more than true that capitalism is rapidly destroying pre-capitalist culture, some of which, at least in part, may well have been worth preserving — although we should not idealise some of their practices and mores.

Lastly, I agree with Julian Prior that both the original, and the recent Zapatista, movements have involved degrees of "active participation by women that puts socialist parties to shame". Hopefully, however, this is beginning to change.

Peter E. Newell

Letter: Workers’ Resistance (1986)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors.

I would be grateful if you could clarify, for the benefit of myself and others, the Party's position on the function of Trade Unions within capitalism.

Although I would accept that workers have to organise collectively to protect themselves against the physical and mental de-humanisation effect of the profit system. I would argue that benefits gained within such organisations arc largely short-term. Supporting their actions, therefore (especially in their present state led by such apologists for capitalism as Norman Willis), treads the thin line between the encouragement of the futile reformism of, say, the Labour Party, especially since the two have strong political connections.

Following on from this, I would be interested to hear your views on other forms of workers' resistance outside that of Union membership, such as over-manning, theft, go-slows, deliberate inefficiency and industrial sabotage - surely these are just as important as collective unionisation because they too produce cuts in surplus value (albeit. short-term) used to make profit for their bosses.

Keep up the good work.

Julian Prior

Pirbright. Surrey

REPLY

The Socialist Party's position on trade unions is based on Clause 2 of our Declaration of Principles: "There is an antagonism of interests, manifesting itself as a class struggle, between those who possess but do not produce, and those who produce but do not possess". We therefore support actions of the unions against the employers when they are for objects that are in the interests of the working class. Such, for example, as an action to raise wages or to resist a reduction, for shorter hours or to improve working conditions. Inter-union disputes, actions by unions against the employment of immigrant workers, or support given to the political parties which perpetuate capitalism are not in the interests of the working class We have always emphasised that though union organisation is valuable to the workers, its effectiveness is strictly limited and it cannot end the exploitation of the working class. Unions cannot prevent unemployment.

How valuable it is can be seen from the big increases of wages following the rapid growth and improved organisation of the unions in the second half of the nineteenth century. In the 1860s, when unions were mostly small and weak, Karl Marx thought that a continued fall of workers' living standards was inevitable in face of the development of the division of labour and the introduction of labour-saving machinery. As it turned out, the average real wages of British workers rose between 1855 and 1890 by over fifty per cent. Frederick Engels in 1892, looking back over the previous forty years, commented on the improved conditions of factory workers and "the remarkable improvement" obtained by workers in the big trade unions.

Our correspondent's statement that "benefits gained within such organisations are largely short-term", is quite untrue. The improvements in the 19th century, mainly through the greater effectiveness of the unions, have never been lost; this in spite of some periods of falling real wages (as during the 1914 war, and between 1920 and 1925 when prices were falling but wages fell more severely). Long-term, the slow rise of average real wages has continued, and the big reduction of hours of work and extension of paid holidays have been permanent gains. There can be no doubt whatever that if union organisation did not exist wages would be lower than now, and working conditions worse.

The value, and the limitations, of trade union organisation are well illustrated from manufacturing industry as a whole. For the years 1948 to 1978 official figures were published of the number of workers employed each year, their total pay, and the amount of the employers' profits. Their average take-home pay, after deducting PAYE and after allowing for the rise of prices, rose by at least fifty per cent. And it was not a question of the workers' total pay having fallen in relation to their output. On the contrary, the profits of the companies, measured against wages, fell by nearly a half.

But the total number of workers employed in manufacture fell, from its peak of 8,500,000 in 1955. by more than a million. Since 1978 it has fallen by another two million, largely the result of successful foreign competition which put large numbers of British manufacturing firms out of business, or compelled them to reduce output and cut staff. Our correspondent's reference to "overmanning" presumably refers to such loss of jobs and union resistance to it. The unions can sometimes delay the loss of jobs but they can't prevent it.

"Go-slow" tactics are sometimes used by the unions. They are less effective than an all-out strike and if the employers choose to do so, they can end the go-slow by a lock-out. "Deliberate inefficiency" by an individual will result in his losing his job. Unions do not go in for "theft" and "industrial sabotage". If individuals do so they render themselves liable to prosecution. That is their affair, though such actions are hardly likely to be popular with their fellow workers. More importantly, what is the purpose of it? The employers' profits would certainly be reduced and. in extreme cases, the sabotage could bring work to a halt or even put the employer out of business. But can our correspondent tell us in what way the whole exercise could possibly be of any benefit to the working class?

As regards the TUC, its affiliated unions (and of course the larger number of. mostly, small unions not affiliated) take their own decisions about the claims they make on employers and the actions they take to support their claims. What limited power the TUC has (for example, to intervene in inter-union disputes and to require affiliated unions to inform the TUC about strike decisions) are only those the affiliated unions collectively choose to concede to the General Council.

Our basic criticism of the unions is the one made by Marx. That they limit their aims to what Marx called the "reactionary" policy of seeking a "fair day's pay for a fair day's work" Marx went on to say that the workers should adopt the revolutionary policy of seeking "the abolition of the wages-system". Only when the working class comes to adopt the Socialist Party's aim of abolishing capitalism and establishing Socialism, and taking the essential organised political action for that purpose, will the exploitation of the working class cease.

Editors.