Are You in Control? (1986)

From the June 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Have you ever thought how much your life revolves around work? Not even the time you spend at home is your own, it is spent recuperating from one day's employment and preparing for the next. You need to regain your energies by eating and sleeping; if you have a bath and iron your clothes, it is mostly for the purpose of turning up at work reasonably sweet-smelling and dressed in a manner that is socially acceptable. This situation was described very well by Karl Kautsky in Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx:

  Thus from the standpoint of reproduction, the worker is engaged in the interest of capital, not only during his labour time, but also during his "free'' time. He eats and drinks no longer for himself, but so that he may maintain his labour-power for the capitalist class. It is therefore not a matter of indifference to the capitalist how the worker eats and drinks. If, instead of resting and recuperating his labour-power, the worker gets drunk on Sunday and has a headache on Monday, the capitalist does not regard this as an injury to the worker's own interests, but as an offence against capital, an embezzlement of the labour power that is due to capital.

One of the most exciting prospects of socialism is that for the first time since the beginning of property society we shall regain control of our time, of our lives. As it is today, the lower you are down the social ladder, the less money you have in your pocket which means limited options and a low level of control. Continent-hopping executives are as much members of the working class as are cleaners at the local school but it is doubtful if they feel the same incentive to spur on the revolution.

   Contrary to popular belief, it is not high-powered business executives who suffer most from stress-related diseases. Unskilled manual workers develop and die more often from cancer, heart failure and chest diseases. Even middle managers have 40 per cent more heart attacks than top executives. Manual workers have to put up with more stressful working conditions, their lack of control over their working lives and boredom with the job they do can reduce frustration and anger. (Guardian, 12 February 1986).

Within capitalism, work is often the only place people's natural need to communicate and socialise with others can be expressed. It may seem a better alternative than home, if home is a constrictive cell consisting of four walls, a TV set and an uncommunicative spouse. It is usually to be preferred to trying to exist on the dole. Commuting between the double prison of home and work you may feel you are fleeing from one unsatisfactory situation into another.

So how do we spend our leisure time? Apart from frantic activity or total collapse at weekends, a lot of our "free" time is spent on what Marx called "animal" activities:

   As a result, therefore, man (the worker) only feels himself freely active in his animal functions — eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing-up. etc; and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal. What is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal.
   Certainly eating, drinking, procreating, etc. are also genuinely human functions. But abstractly taken, separated from the sphere of all other human activity and turned into sole and ultimate ends, they are animal functions. (The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844).

In some jobs, employees sell not only their pure labour power but such things as "appearance". "sociability" and the "right" kind of part-time interests — if they prostitute themselves completely to their employers they will take home unpaid work voluntarily and have few other subjects of conversation but possible promotions/demotions and other goings on at work.

For all this devotion, workers' labour power is just a commodity to be bought on the market or discarded in the best interests of profit and capital. Every year, there is another crop of eager young school-leavers to be picked, at their physical and intellectual peak and usually ready to work for less than more established wage slaves.

Meanwhile, the lid is kept firmly on a discontented and frustrated population, whether it is the police force with their tougher methods of crowd control or GPs prescribing large amounts of tranquilisers. According to the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, unemployment and the stress of threatened job loss may increase families' consultation rates with general practitioners by as much as 20 per cent. (Financial Times, 14 February 1986). The article goes on to say that "Prescription rates in Wales, Northern Ireland and the north-west are up to 50 per cent higher than those in areas such as Oxford"

Our life in capitalism becomes more and more fragmented, more and more specialised. There is a specific period in our life for learning, another for working, then some more compartments for "leisure activities" and so on. From an early age we are encouraged to decide what we want to do for "a job" as adults and our time in the education system is spent training for a particular slot in the capitalist machine. Work under capitalism is supposed to be the pinnacle of our lives, the coveted goal reached in young adulthood when our roles as passive consumers can really begin. Many "happy young couples" have been conditioned to expect that their main pleasure and purpose in life is to consume; carpets, sales, best buys, cookers and three-piece suites then, as the old cheap rubbish wears out or they are persuaded that "changing" leads to happiness. the whole thing starts all over again — a life-time revolving around the acquisition and replacement of shoddy things.

Real sensitivity is blurred and genuine human caring has a hard time in the ruthless reality of the capitalist market place. Everything has its price and competition is so much a part of our every day experience that it penetrates and sours even our personal relationships. Greed, ambition and self- interest are held up as virtues in capitalism. Let us be really ambitious and use these so- called virtues against the system that fostered them.

Torgun Bullen

People Against Machines in Andalucia (1981)

The Briefing Column from the March 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

About 1.5 per cent of the farmers of Andalucia—one of the most fertile areas in Europe own over half the land, about 11 million acres. On the other hand, 450,000 smallholders make do with 1 million acres between them.

To maximise profits the estate owners have switched from traditionally labour-intensive crops such as sugar beet, cotton, tobacco and olives to crops like wheat and sunflower seeds which can be mechanically harvested. This way they save over £20 million a year in wages. The unemployment rate among farm labourers is 20 per cent and rising. They have no land of their own and receive no unemployment pay if they fail to find work on the farms or in the villages.

One in five farm labourers is illiterate. Their motto—‘The land for him who works it’—is as it was before the civil war. One in four rural houses lacks a bathroom, one in five running water or electricity. The standard of living is one of the lowest in Europe, on a par with Sicily. In the most depressed provinces per capita income is only one third of the lowest European average.

Due to the recession the Andalucian labourer has difficulties finding work in Spain’s industrial cities or in Western Europe. Between 1960 and 1973 two and a half million people (over a third of Andalucia’s present population) left the area to find work in Europe’s industrial centres. This figure included half a million farm labourers. As a result wages began to rise. Many of the large estates, which had existed profitably on cheap labour for more than half a century, turned to mechanisation to stay profitable.

The unemployed view the new machines as their enemies and have repeatedly invaded the estates to stop mechanical harvesters. They have set fire to wheat fields and staged hunger strikes against hunger. The government has tried to create ‘communal employment’ at wages of £6 a day to alleviate some of the anger. If that does not work the Guardia Civil steps in to keep the peace.

Spain is also changing her education system to cater for the needs of a growing industry. From primary schools onwards education in Spain was once mainly private and very expensive. The standard of teaching in the few state schools that existed was very low. The state is now providing more schools and modem industry will of course require more workers with a basic understanding of the three ‘R’s, as well as more advanced knowledge.

Sympathise as we may with the plight of the farm labourers, what is going on in Andalucia is the inescapable development of captalism. Spain after Franco is slowly getting more industrialised. It is almost certain that the workers’ attempt to stop mechanisation will be fruitless.

Torgun Bullen

Norway — luxurious serfdom? (1985)

From the January 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Norway is now among the five wealthiest countries in Europe even though the sky-high expectations of the early years of North Sea oil exploration have not been realised. In the recent past it was seriously believed that when the oil started flowing, all Norwegians would be wealthy and the country could allocate large sums of money to third world aid.

Realism has descended on these would-be Northern sheiks since then; not because the reserves of oil and gas are smaller than expected — on the contrary, new oil and gas strikes are being made all the time — but because this new-found wealth does not penetrate down to the grass-roots:

. . . The petroleum reserves on the Norwegian shelf belong to the country and the profit gained from it is intended for the benefit of the whole community. However, the man in the street doesn't see the riches which are supposed to be flooding the country. He is told repeatedly that the authorities are short of money, that hospitals must be closed for lack of funds, that municipal transport services are being reduced, that dues and charges must increase and that pay increases cannot compensate the increase in cost of living . . .  It is admittedly difficult to understand that seriously sick people have to sleep in hospital corridors in such a rich country and that all services are poor but expensive . . .
("How does Norway spend her oil revenues?”. The Norwegian Journal of Commerce and Shipping, August 1984 )

It is a common belief in Norway, as elsewhere, that the state operates in the interest of the ordinary man and woman: "the state is every one of us". The Norwegian state has certainly been very active in the oil fields of the North Sea, both through its own oil company Statoil and when it comes to extracting tax revenues from the foreign companies operating there. The high taxation and stringent licencing demands of the Norwegian government are resented by the big oil companies; ESSO, for example, reckons that the average tax and royalty burden during the production life of a field is 80 per cent or more. Another grievance is the so-called Sliding Scale which allows the government to take back 60 per cent of a company's licence to operate in a field if a commercial development is made.

It is believed there are vast reserves of oil and gas under the Norwegian continental shelf as yet unexploited, but most of this is not "economically viable” at the moment. Most of these are in deeper water in the harsher weather conditions further north. Because of the higher inputs of technology and know-how necessary to operate these fields, they are unprofitable compared with present fields where extraction is a lot less complicated.

The primary object of the state — in Norway as elsewhere — is not to look after the man in the street but to see that the economy is run in the interest of the capitalist class. How, then, is the Norwegian government planning to spend their gains? It could be used to help Norwegian firms setting up subsidiaries abroad or buying up foreign companies. A debate has also been going on as to whether Norwegian banks abroad should be allowed to use these currency reserves for investment. In other words, the income will be used in the service of capital to yield profit and interest.

The Scandinavian countries have for a long time been considered to have a high standard of living, to be fairly "egalitarian" and to be much more "socialist" (meaning state controlled) than many other Western nations. Certainly a visitor coming to Norway, even before the oil was found, would get an impression of space, cleanliness and relative affluence. Homes are on the average more spacious and of a higher quality than in Britain. Home "ownership" is high (74 per cent, mostly financed through the state operated House Bank) and 19 per cent rent privately. Public places like cinemas and railway stations seem luxurious and clean compared to Britain.

Norway has gone from being a "backward" country in economic terms to an ultra modem society within the last hundred years. Industrialisation did not take off until just before the turn of the century and many parts of the country remained relatively unmodernised until well into this century. For the many landless people scratching a very meagre living working for the big landowners, employment in industry offered a chance to improve their situation a little. A relic of Norway’s not so distant agrarian past can be seen today in the fact that they still have a distinct Farmers' Party.

For people who view social differences in terms of "middle" and "working" class, these appear to be a lot less distinct than in Britain. There are no private and council estates; a manager and a factory worker are likely to live next door, have similar interests and homes. This is not to say that competition and snobbery do not exist; on the contrary, people are very much aware of who has got the slightly better hi-fi or the more up-market car. But in one respect, it is easier to see class relations as they really are in Norway for it is not such a problem explaining that the "middle" and "working" class are really the same, forced to sell their mental and physical energies to an employer in order to live — that is to say, they are all working class.

Only a small percentage of Norway's firms are state owned, but on the other hand, the two largest. Norsk Hydro (oil. petrochemicals. aluminium, fertiliser) and Statoil, belong to the state, as well as two armaments companies with a very large turnover. It is in the interest of the capitalist class to control certain industries and services vital to them all. This is why telecommunications, the postal services, transport, energy sources (coal, oil, electricity) and armaments factories tend to be nationalised in a lot of countries, including Norway.

The standard of living may be much higher in Norway today than a few decades ago. But Norwegians still work their lives away to pay for their homes, their car loans, their educational loans and all the while mental illnesses are on the increase. The before mentioned article puts it as follows:

The standard of living is high in Norway, but most Norwegians are heavily indebted even so. Many live in a kind of luxurious serfdom, depending on a secure income and the benevolence of their banker. Their freedom to move about, to change their life situation, is often renounced for the shallow benefits of keeping abreast with the Joneses.

Torgun Bullen

Sex and socialism (1985)

From the April 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

A tangled web of myths and double standards still enmeshes the subject of sex and sex roles in our “liberated” and developed form of capitalism. For centuries, there has been a peculiar tendency to assign to women one of two equally extreme and repellent roles, that of either a solely sexual being — “whore” — in her relationship with men (whether this has ever been an enjoyable sexuality is doubtful) or a de-sexed and “decent” wife and mother, glorified and put on a pedestal. This division of women into prostitutes and madonnas has been surprisingly persistent. Agony columns still contain letters from men finding it difficult to enjoy sex with their wives/cohabitees after the arrival of a baby, because they feel the woman is now on a higher plane of sanctified motherhood and should not be debased by primaeval lust. The notion that sex is sinful and that women are to blame when men succumb to “sinful” practices runs through the three religions originating in the Middle East: Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Until recently it was only prostitutes who committed a punishable offence, not the men using them. Rape victims are still told they were “leading a man on” if they were not “appropriately dressed” at the time; it would seem that only a full purdah is good enough for our courts of law.

First, for most women sex is still a means to power. Achieving the conventional standards of beauty, for example, still holds the greatest promise of power available to most women, and so we cultivate and package our individual attractiveness in order to trade it for economic gain, advances in status, and love. This is true even in radical and even feminist circles.) Heterosexual relationships, no matter how “equal” in bed, still represent contact between members of a dominant and a subordinate group. Most women are still dependent on male favour for their economic survival, whether at home or work.

(The Politics of Sexual Freedom, Peace News, 25 March 1978.)

It would be misleading to put all men in the “dominant” group, if this dominant economic group is understood to be the capitalist class (which consists of men and women). However, a lot of men are dominant in a domestic situation in as much as they hold the purse strings and the women depending on them can be properly characterised as “slaves of slaves”. In preparation for eventually trading their attractiveness for economic “security”, girls are strongly encouraged to take an interest in clothes and make-up from an early age. Their faces, their bodies and their hair are never quite good enough to measure up to the stereotyped, eighteen-year-old, Page Three girl, so chemists and department stores are crammed full with remedies from chemical and cosmetic companies which make enormous profits.

Several myths concerning women’s sexuality persist. Women are supposed to need to be “in love” with a man to enjoy sex. This is a complete fallacy; women are as capable as men of separating sexual enjoyment from any deeper feelings. Another prevalent myth is that women are supposed to find sex repugnant during pregnancy and after giving birth. This may show individual variation, of course, according to how the pregnancy affects the woman and the difficulty of the birth. But largely this is another superstition tied in with the “purity of motherhood” myth.

As for men, another set of sex roles are inculcated by society and another set of myths hold sway. As the capitalist class relies mostly on men to kill and torture for them in war and to compete for the top jobs in the labour market, we would expect the myths to be of a kind that encourage the belief that men are inherently brutal, cruel and domineering. Robert Briffault, for instance, argues as follows in an otherwise interesting chapter on love in his book Sin and Sex:

Every expert in matters erotic knows that tenderness, affection, and even respect are sentiments opposed to the full biological operation of the predatory and pugnacious masculine sexual urges. Their fulfilment requires, in whatever measure, a reversion to the brutal, dominating attitude of the animal male. It requires in some degree the elimination of love.

Although there is no doubt about humans being part of the animal world, it is naive to think that animals capable of writing the sonnets of Shakespeare and developing the scientific theories of Einstein will not show more sophistication and nuances in their sexual play than two ferrets mating in a subterranean tunnel. In the case of ferrets, rough treatment of the female is necessary for ovulation; the biology of humans is completely different.

Although 40 per cent of the workforce are now women, who are making inroads into education and jobs that were formerly reserved for men, it is still men who are expected to “succeed” financially. Under capitalism, their whole self-esteem is so closely tied in with their earning capacity and their jobs that unemployment or failure to get promoted can result in serious depression or even suicide. Stresses and strains at work find their outlet in violence in the home; if a man can’t be the boss at work, he can at least increase his efforts at being the boss at home. In a relationship, men are expected to take the first step; sexually, they are expected to “perform” and emotionally they are expected to be severely deficient, not to show fear, to be brave, not to cry; in short, to avoid too much display of sensitivity.

Another explanation for the strange myths surrounding women’s sexuality was put forward by Garrett Hardin in an article in the Ecologist of January 1974, entitled “Parenthood: Right or Privilege?” The effect of prostitution on the one side and “decent” women remaining virgins until marriage would be reduced fertility. Apparently, large families of between 8—16 children were only common in America at the time of the settlers and in Europe in the 19th century. Before that, families of four children were more common than those of twelve:

Delayed marriage, lifetime celibacy, prostitution, venereal disease, and sanctions against bastards and the mothers of bastards constituted a powerful system of population control at the family level. To mitigate any one element in such a system was to diminish its effectiveness in keeping population under control.

The shift of opinion regarding sex outside marriage (as well as women’s “right” to sexual fulfilment on an equal level with men) which has taken place in the West over the last few decades has been revolutionary. It is worth remembering that only about 20 years ago, many doctors still would not give unmarried women the contraceptive pill for moral reasons. Being able to easily control their fertility has undoubtedly been a significant step for women although the real "sexual liberation” will not take place until we have a society where neither men nor women will be dependent on a dominant class for their survival.

The way “sexual liberation” has been exploited and to some degree created by capitalist society is explained in the following two quotes from The Politics of Sexual Freedom, by Deirdre English and Barbara Ehrenreich:

      Obsession with sex can only be understood in the context of the extreme privatisation of people’s lives. Very few people have meaningful work-lives and many people have never experienced a supportive community or sense of collectivity in any realm. Unfulfilled needs for social relatedness, and for creativity, are chanelled into the zone of "private life”, where they can’t do any harm. (Just try demanding more creativity or richer social relations in most jobs.) The less the collectivity or social satisfaction experienced by people in the public realms of work and community, the greater the pressure on the sexual relationship to provide life with meaning.
. . . This new emphasis on sex can be seen as part of an attempt to shore up the monogamous marriage, or to free it up slightly, to save the family. What all this adds up to is that the human need for sex is made to bear the burden of all our bodily starvation for contact and sensations, all our creative starvation, all our need for social contact, and even our need to find a meaning in our lives. In the face of overwhelming alienation, the emphasis on sex is used to encourage people to individualise and trivialise their problems — looking for the cause of their unhappiness in their sex-life, rather than in the world around them. Of course, the dominant culture would like us to believe that we can achieve happiness through personal, sexual satisfaction. This is what it will strive to provide if it will keep us quiet. For women . . . especially, every effort will be made to channel our demands away from the social and political realm (where they cannot be satisfied without thorough-going social and economic changes) and back towards some version of a "liberated” private life. This is a trap.

In capitalism, sexuality is for sale, exaggerated in importance and manipulated in the interest of the state and capital. Europeans today are three times as likely to get divorced and twice as likely to have illegitimate children as they were a generation ago. Most divorce suits are now filed by women and it seems more than a coincidence that literature concerned with the sexual fulfilment in marriage has been on the increase at the same time. If marriages are breaking up, more marriage counsellors and sex therapists can be employed to encourage workers to get their sex lives in order, accept monogamy and stay together.

Humans need to satisfy their basic need for adequate food, clothing and shelter; for a happy and well-balanced emotional life they must also form deep and lasting relationships with other people. These need not be of a sexual nature (if sex is narrowly defined as sexual intercourse only), although at the earliest stage in our life a close, physical relationship with a grown-up is absolutely essential.

Today, a lot of misery is caused by people having to live together for economic reasons when they would rather not. Some people spend a lifetime wearing each other down mentally and emotionally, wasting their lives away in an undignified relationship. The worst irony is when some claim it to be an unconditional success that two people have stayed together for forty years; the quantity is praised, the quality is not questioned.

It is difficult to envisage the complete liberation of human relationships which socialism will bring about. Free access to everything that is produced will mean economic security for all members of society; independence of men and women from employers; economic independence of children from parents and of women from men. Nobody will have to accept an intolerable situation for the sake of satisfying their basic needs. Men and women in socialism will be able to enjoy their lives as full, not fragmented, human beings; satisfying not only their sexual, but all kinds of affectionate and other needs as they occur, not the least being the need to spend our time doing useful work in the companionship of friends.

In socialism, the stereotyped sex roles imposed on men and women under capitalism will disappear. These are equally damaging to both sexes as the similarities between them are far greater than the differences. Both have the same need for companionship with others, for expressing and receiving affection and for feeling secure, both have the same capacity for getting upset and hurt.

Socialism will probably not distinguish between heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual relationships. Everybody will be free to adopt the life style and sexual preference of their choice; the attitude to sex will be relaxed and in proportion to all the other things that make life pleasurable. Perhaps the designations “homosexual”, “heterosexual” and “bisexual” themselves will even disappear, as people will find it superfluous to distinguish between various kinds of loving relationships.

Relationships will be entered into freely, nobody will regard another human being as his or her property. It will be generally understood that when one partner does not want a relationship to carry on any more, the relationship has in fact ceased to exist and any feelings of jealousy are futile. The total shift of attitudes this involves, will be taking place while the ideas of socialism are growing and will make the acceptance of these ideas as well as others a gradual one before socialism is introduced. There is no reason to expect that people in socialism will be more "promiscuous” than they are today although this would not incite moral condemnation. On the other hand, because of our complicated mental make up, we are much more likely to form lasting relationships.

Torgun Bullen

The Mondragón co-operatives (1984)

From the July 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

In face of the popular belief that co-operatives are ineffective and mostly doomed to failure, the workers’ co-operatives founded in Mondragón in the Basque region of Spain have been held up as an example of how successful workers’ control of industry can be. Only one of these co-ops apparently ever failed.

In 1982 there were 85 industrial cooperatives with around 20,000 members. The first one, ULGOR, was founded in 1956 under the guidance and inspiration of a Catholic Priest, Father Arrizmendi, by five of the first pupils to go to the technical training school he started with the help of local townspeople. Here Father Arrizmendi taught his ideas of “dignifying the role of labour” and “democratising the workplace”. ULGOR is today the leading Spanish producer of electrical goods like fridges, washing machines, cookers and dishwashers.

Several claims are being made about these types of co-operatives. David P. Ellerman in his papers The Socialisation of Entrepreneurship and What is a Worker cooperative? defines a co-operative as a firm “controlled and operated by the people who work in it”, and says that it is “neither privately nor publicly owned . . . . It is not owned at all; it is a democratic social institution”. There are, it is claimed, no “wages” and no “profits” in a worker cooperative, only “labour income”. Another claim made is that in a workers co-operative, “labour hires capital” instead of the other way round.

The structure of the Mondragón workers’ co-ops is different from other types of co-operatives. First of all, any new member wishing to join has to pay a membership fee of between £2,000/£2,500. This is more than most workers can afford so they put about 25 per cent down and the remainder is deducted from their pay over a two-year period.

Having paid the membership fee, the new member is automatically allocated one share in the firm on a one share/one vote basis. The members, through the General Assembly, elect the Board of Directors who in turn appoint the management. The shares are just membership certificates and do not carry the net worth of the company’s assets plus the accumulated retained profits; these are allocated to the so-called Internal Capital Accounts (or Internal Accounts)—a system invented by the Mondragón co-operatives. Seventy per cent of the co-operative’s profit is credited to the members’ Internal Accounts according to the formula “equally per hour worked or equally per dollar pay”; similarly, if the company makes a loss, this is deducted from the Internal Accounts. The difference between the allocation to the highest and lowest remunerated member is 3-1. Should members wish to realise their capital, they normally have to wait until retirement when the firm pays it out over a period of years. If they have to leave the co-op earlier “for reasons beyond their control”, their capital will be cashed but if they leave to work for a competitor, 30 per cent of the value of their Internal Accounts will be deducted.

It is claimed that the “members” of a co-operative are not paid wages as such. Ellerman describes it as follows:

The net value accruing to the workers is the value of their product less the non-labour costs. Some of that value is paid out during the year (the closest analogy to “wages”), some is paid out at the year’s end (bonuses), and some is retained in the co-operative. Since the net amount is not known until the end of the fiscal year, the amount paid out during the year is an advance or an anticipation (anticipos) of the workers’ income.

The group headquarters of the Mondragón co-operative movement is the Caja Laboral Popular (Bank of the People’s Labour) whose main role is to be a credit institution for the associated co-operatives. Apart from the Banking Division it also has an Empresarial Division which concerns itself with the launching of new co-ops, performs feasibility studies into new market possibilities and keeps these on file for the use and further exploration of people planning to start new co-ops. The Caja Laboral Popular assigns a “godfather”, usually an experienced manager from within the group, to keep an eye on and advise the fledgeling co-ops. The Empresarial Division stays in close contact with the research and development institute, Ikerlan. which is an offshoot of the Polytechnical College of the Mondragón group.

What are the reasons behind the apparent "success" of these co-operatives? One factor is the economic upturn in Spain in the 1960s which resulted in heavy demand for household electrical goods. Another could be the tightly woven net comprising the co-ops; the double function of the Caja Laboral Popular: Ikerlan and the Polytechnical College. Perhaps most importantly, the willingness of workers (or "members") in co-ops to accept smaller wage rises and more spartan working conditions, as they believe they are working in their own firms and therefore have to keep an eye on costs. A further strengthening of worker solidarity in this region could be Basque nationalism.

So where does control, and thereby ownership, lie in the Mondragón co-operatives? The key question is whether the workers can actually directly gain access to their capital and decide what to do with it. They cannot; in fact the whole system seems to operate like a pension scheme, as the members have to wait until retirement to realise their earnings and even then they do not get it paid out in one lump sum. Most effective control and decision making is carried out by management, who in this case would be the de facto owners of the co-operatives.

It must also be remembered that cooperatives are integrated into the market system and subjected to the same economic laws as other firms. Should Spain eventually join the Common Market and the high protective import duties imposed to protect Spanish produced goods be removed, the Mondragón co-ops might face very strong competition from foreign produced goods. The claim that "labour hires capital” does not hold up as there must be something in the kitty to pay new members their wages (or "anticipos").

The argument is often put that it is possible to establish "little islands of socialism—workers co-operatives — within the framework of capitalism, thus making a revolutionary, world-wide change from capitalism to socialism unnecessary. But socialism means common ownership and free access to everything that is produced. Such a social system does not exist in the Mondragón co-operatives or anywhere else in the world. The rigorous economic law of profitability at all costs imposed by the market must be supported by defenders of co-operatives; if. under capitalism, you don’t observe this law you very quickly go out of business.

Torgun Bullen

In the workplace . . . (1984)

From the August 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

The alarm goes off, it’s 7 am and I know the nightmare is not yet over. I desperately want to stay in bed but drag myself out and again get through the normal routine in preparation for another day's wage slavery.

My lift is waiting down the road, my “chauffeur” buys the Sun every morning, so I open it up as usual. The pre-packaged opinions glare at me in huge print in between pictures of uninteresting idols and unwanted "news" about who they've had affairs with lately. My friend informs me that he "only buys it for the wife". As he has seen me read the occasional Financial Times at work, he has explained that he really reads the Daily Telegraph at home.

From my desk, penned in for another day, I can see the company cars lined up. the MD's Audi nearest the entrance, next the under-Manager's car and so on strictly according to hierarchy. The car parking spaces are rigidly adhered to and the poor, unsuspecting rep who parks his car in one of them is in grave danger and can, on return from lunch, expect to be subjected to verbal abuse and threatening behaviour. When a new wonder-machine is being delivered. the prospective recipient has to hover patiently in the corridor, like a child at Christmas, until the MD has approved the purchase. A flash car is the outward expression that a salesman has done well, the prospect of a new, more up-market one next year is the carrot for working harder, for putting in unpaid work at the weekends without complaint, for smiling and being pleasant to overseas visitors he can't stand the sight of.

Most of my fellow workers are constantly chasing the next appliance on the road to gadget paradise. They never quite get there but it is glittering seductively just out of reach. Perhaps happiness to them is when they acquire a kitchen extension, a better car, new carpets, a bigger house, bigger mortgage, bigger debts. The more the debts increase, the more they need to keep their jobs, to conform, to turn up on time, show willing, have the right ideas. More often than not they look harassed rather than happy; one suffers from sleeplessness, others need tranquilisers.

I've tried explaining that because they are all working class and in the overwhelming majority, they need not put up with this kind of existence, after all. our class produce all the shoddy goods they always need to replace, make sure they are distributed, plan the sales campaigns—run society from top to bottom. But after four years of constant mental strain to get this point of view over, some still think I am describing some sort of "Russian system”, others say “it would be nice were it not for human nature", not to mention the worker who told me that "work is not the place for this kind of deep, political conversation", then obediently lowered his head over his boring delivery schedules.

Young female members of staff have to endure sexual harassment—always just within the limits of decency. Thinly veiled suggestions like “how good are you at it” or “you are looking hot this morning" abound and men stand as close as possible to explain a piece of work with hands longing to touch. The men are too worried about their "stable” marriages to play so close to home; better wait till next time they are on a business trip. The wives at home wait for their next anniversary card and seem satisfied with being no more than Mrs. with their husband's initials in front of the surname.

The sad thing about this kind of behaviour is not the existence of sexual feelings but the hypocrisy and frustration which surrounds sexual relations under capitalism. The sexual act with a prostitute, whether she/he is bought on the streets or in marriage, is divorced from any real feelings for another person and a lot of unhappiness results from it. This kind of treatment of women in workplaces need not be a result of sexual desire but how the macho male is expected to behave as well as a way of “keeping women in their place”, constantly reminding them that they are really only good for one thing and must not aspire to senior positions. Of course, reinforcing the traditional view of women does tend to lessen competition for men.

As I settle down to yet another day’s tedious slog over the typewriter, I know that most of the other workers here consider themselves to be "middle class", basing this self-satisfied assessment on the assumption that they are "educated" (have come out of one end or the other of the sausage machine), that they are "buying their homes” (are in debt to building societies) and enjoy taking business contacts to pretentious hotels and restaurants. Even so, they are acutely aware that their little privileges could easily disappear should they lose their jobs. However, this does not seem to lead them to the conclusion that they are members of the working class dependent on selling their labour- power to an employer for a living, just like the factory workers next door. Apart from the working class, there is only one other class in society, the employing class or capitalists. The capitalists may or may not work; the essential difference between them and the working class is that they have the choice.

Really big worries at my place of work, apart from whether next month's salaries are going to be in the bank on time, are things like choosing the "right" bottle of wine when carrying gifts to “superiors” and whether their wives really know how to “entertain” at dinner parties. When extremes of idiocy take place, as when one worker brought a TV set in to watch the return of Prince Andrew and the boys from the Falklands, I have felt there is a real need for the firm to make an urgent investment and follow a Japanese example. In Japan, apparently, some companies have rooms where their workers can get rid of pent-up frustration and anger by locking themselves in for a while; screaming, shouting, hitting things and- throwing things about.

But this can only offer temporary relief. Unless we take conscious, political action to abolish this lunatic system, we are going to be faced with more of the same tomorrow, as I will be with the alarm clock.

Torgun Bullen