Greasy Pole: Blair backs down (2001)

The Greasy Pole column from the December 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

On a battlefield it is called a strategic retreat – conceding ground to make it easier to defend what is left, to conserve an army’s strength, to regroup for an effective counter-attack. Sometimes it means giving up ground which has been won in an attack which has in fact left the attacker crucially exposed to the enemy. But in the long run it is worthwhile – as any soldier who spent time harried by German observation and bombardment in the Ypres salient in World War One would have agreed.

The same principle can apply in the battlefield of politics. In a recent attack, which turned out to be strategically something of a mistake, on working class conditions the Blair government announced an intention to charge people who apply to Employment Tribunals for compensation alleging unfair dismissal, discriminatory practice at work or whatever. The plan was to introduce a charge for an application and then another (in the low hundreds of pounds) for a hearing of the case. This was, the government assured us, a necessary reform “a new, modest charging regime . . . to reduce the cost burden to the taxpayer” was how a Downing Street press release described it. Perhaps it was assumed that all those workers who are misled into a belief that they are “taxpayers” would have been so beguiled by such smooth assurances that the proposals would have been able to slip past like troops silently infiltrating enemy positions.

If that were the case, what the government had overlooked was that there are too many “taxpayers” applying to the Tribunals – about 130,000 a year at present – to allow the charges to go through unnoticed. In fact the Tribunals get more and more attractive; over the past ten years applications have increased threefold. It was predictable that there would be an outcry of protest: “contrary to the principles of the Human Rights Act and the principle of free, fair and open access to justice” was how TGWU General Secretary Bill Morris put it. Some Labour MPs were so impressed by the fervour of the opposition that they daringly considered doing the equivalent of deserting from the front line – voting against the proposals.

TUC

Of course the Blair government is well accustomed to shrugging off protests about their anti-working class policies – like the 1916 generals in their chateaux who were able to ignore the casualty figures and the battered soldiers at Ypres. But on this occasion there were other considerations to be put into the balance. The TUC conference was due to begin a few days later, when Blair was expected to have to face a barrage of wrath on the issue and on others such as the financing of hospitals, schools, transport systems. In the overall cause of strengthening the government’s position it was decided to make a strategic retreat, giving way and not imposing the charges – of which more later. In the end, of course, the destruction of the World Trade Center overrode all other matters and Blair was allowed to escape unbothered by any criticism.

Employment Tribunals evolved from Industrial Tribunals, created by the Wilson government’s Industrial Training Act of 1964, which was greeted as a great step forward in the protection of workers’ rights. It was also seen as the dawn of an age of sanity in industrial relations when, instead of rushing into conflict in the form of a strike or a lock-out, both sides would thrash out their problems in civilised negotiation. This, we were told, was how they did it in other countries, where as a result productivity was higher and there was wider prosperity. It sounded suspiciously too good to be true and that was how it turned out.

The Tribunals’ scope was originally a lot less than it is today, restricted to cases relating to assessment to training levy, entitlement to redundancy pay (the Wilson government’s plans for a more “flexible” work force in an age of “technological expansion” envisaged a lot of “redundancies” in which workers would be uprooted from their jobs and their homes) and disputes over a failure to provide a written statement of conditions of employment. Since then the Tribunals have become more complex, expanding into disputes over “unfair” dismissal, equal pay, discrimination over gender, race and disability. In 1987 there were 29,000 claims referred to the Tribunals; ten years later there were 80,000 and in 2000 it topped 100,000.

Lawyers

Until the Blair government came up with their proposals there was no basic charge to any applicant but for the other side – the employers – it could be an expensive business. For them the average cost of defending a case demanding 27 hours of management time was £2,000. (The proposed charges were estimated to save the employers some £70 million). The employers also complained that the Tribunals’ set up they gave the applicants an advantage, a situation no self-respecting, profit hungry employer would tolerate without a struggle.

The informal style of the Tribunals encouraged applications; it also fostered the impression that applicants could put their case themselves, without a lawyer speaking for them – although this is something the growing complexity of employment laws may change. But employers – especially the larger companies and government agencies – are more likely to engage a lawyer, which for them could be cheaper than drawing up a case and presenting it themselves. Overall this puts a rather different perspective on the fantasy about irresponsible and disgruntled workers being allowed to obstruct the work of the Tribunals with frivolous applications which cost them nothing.

In hard reality the employment dice always have to be loaded against the workers. The employer/employee relationship cannot be between equals because it is the employer who controls a worker’s access to their only means of getting a living. If for any reason an employer does not wish to allow a worker the opportunity to be exploited they can simply deny it. This is what happens when trade falls off and goods cannot be sold or when there are more than the market can absorb so that it is not profitable to produce them. At such times the illusions of “fair” employment, of “unfair” dismissal, of workers’ “rights”, are exposed for what they are. If a sacked worker can persuade a Tribunal that they have been “unfairly” dismissed it is clearly in their immediate interests to make the experience as painless financially as they can. In that sense the Employment Tribunals have their uses. But in no way can they upset, or even affect, the basic reality of working class employment and all it means in terms of exploitation and poverty.

Retreat

This reality may also be asserted in the government’s response to the protests against imposing charges on applicants. The motivation for the charges was to save money for the employers by encouraging (or perhaps forcing) applicants to settle their dispute through ACAS arbitration. That motivation is still there, which probably means that the charges have been postponed rather than scrapped. This is a well-used tactic in such situations. To give a recent example, a few years ago the government provoked a huge outcry when they proposed to close down the coal mines. To widespread surprise protesters sprang out onto the streets from the unlikeliest places – like leafy Tory strongholds in the Home Counties. The response of the government, in the person of the minister Michael Heseltine, was to announce that the closures had been called off – and then, when the protests had died down and other crises were monopolising attention, to reinstate them. We all know what then happened to the coal mines – and to the miners who thought they had won their case.

That was an example of a strategic retreat and the government were able to plan it and execute it and in the process to deceive the protesters because as representatives of the employers they hold a superior position. That is a basic fact of life under capitalism with its class monopoly of the means of living. It is a reality unaffected by agencies like the Employment Tribunals which the ever-hopeful queue of applicants would do well to remember.

Ivan

Diabolical liberty (1985)

From the June 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is the individual right to go to work during a strike equal to the collective right to strike? This is the issue at the centre of a row within the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) which resulted in the resignation of Larry Gostin, the General Secretary, four members of its Executive Committee and an Independent Inquiry team appointed to look at the civil liberties implications of the policing of the coal strike. It has also led to reports in the Press that NCCL has been hijacked by the Left, and claims from some NCCL members that, on the contrary, they have stopped the organisation from being dragged off its libertarian course by preventing an unholy alliance with such dubious elements as the uncivil and illiberal right. The latter was the policy that they claimed was advocated by Larry Gostin and his supporters.

NCCL was set up in 1934 as a result of concern about police brutality towards hunger marchers. Its objective as stated in its founding constitution was:

to assist in the maintenance of hard-won rights, especially freedom of speech, the press and assembly, from all infringements by executive or judicial authority contrary to the due process of law, or infringement by the tendency of governmental or other agencies to use their powers at the expense of the precarious liberties for which citizens of this country have fought

and to:

aid in advancing measures for the recovery or enlargement of these liberties (cited in Patricia Hewitt. The NCCL Fifty Years On in Peter Wellington (ed), Civil Liberties 1984. p.15).

Over the years NCCL's activities have included monitoring police behaviour at marches and demonstrations; preparing legal test cases where it is believed that an individual's rights have been abused; setting up enquiries into incidents such as the demonstration in Southall in 1979 which resulted in the death of Blair Peach; campaigns for withdrawal of, or amendments to, legislation which has extended state power such as the Prevention of Terrorism Act and the Police and Criminal Evidence Act.

NCCL has consistently claimed to be an organisation concerned with civil liberties issues rather than with social justice (a point reiterated by Larry Gostin on his resignation). Patricia Hewitt, a former NCCL General Secretary, wrote:

From the outset. NCCL saw its activities as belonging to a specific tradition of civil liberties — the defence of civil and political rights, such as freedom of speech and association, rather than economic and social rights, such as the right to education or a minimum standard of living (Patricia Hewitt, op. cit., p. 16).

It was hoped that by adopting such a position NCCL would be able to cut across party political divisions. But this stance has not. over the years, always proved successful. In 1946 such eminent members as George Orwell and E.M. Forster resigned from NCCL because they believed it was being used as a front organisation for the Communist Party. NCCL's traditional links with the trade union movement have also led to accusations that NCCL is too closely associated with the Labour Party — a view that has gained increasing currency as a result of the recent developments.

The recent controversy, which came to a head at NCCL's AGM, arises from a resolution taken by the 1984 AGM to set up an independent inquiry into the policing of the coal strike. The inquiry's terms of reference were as follows:

To inquire into and thereby establish the fullest possible account and the civil liberties implications of the role of the police, the police authorities and the criminal courts in the events arising from and relating to the NUM dispute, which began in March 1984 (Preface to Civil Liberties and the Miners ' Dispute, First Report of the Independent Inquiry).

In December 1984 the Inquiry team published an interim report which immediately sparked off angry debate within NCCL. While the report was largely critical of the conduct of the police towards striking miners, it also contained the following paragraph:

We accept that the freedom not to take part in a strike is as much a fundamental right as the right to strike. Going to work during a strike is in any case a lawful activity, and like any other lawful activity ought not to be impeded by violence, threats or physical obstruction. We have identified the freedom to travel unhindered for any lawful purpose as a fundamental liberty; this is equally so whether the purpose is peaceful picketing, taking part in a demonstration, or simply going to work (First Report of the Independent Inquiry, p.6.)

It was this equation of the "right to strike" with the "right not to take part in a strike" and the report's comments about the behaviour of both striking and working miners which led to its being condemned as a "Scab's Charter".

At the end of February, NCCL's executive committee passed a number of motions which censured the inquiry team. Firstly, they "regretted" that the independent inquiry "exceeded its terms of reference in commenting on the conduct of striking and working miners and in setting out civil liberty principles which did not directly relate to the role of the police, police authorities and criminal courts". This resolution was upheld by the AGM. Secondly, the executive committee "regretted" that the presentation of the report, and especially its plea that all sides "refrain from violence, intimidation or other actions likely to cause injury or public disorder or provoke unnecessary ill-feeling", was "unnecessarily damaging to the miners' cause". Again this was upheld by the AGM. Thirdly, the executive committee stated that "the right to strike is a fundamental civil liberty and entirely rejects the proposition that those who break strikes are exercising an equally fundamental right". The AGM passed a similarly worded resolution.

Larry Gostin resigned as General Secretary a few days later because, as he wrote in his letter of resignation:

I, of course, respect the democracy of NCCL, but feel I could not publicly defend the full range of NCCL policies in good conscience, and with conviction and credibility. (The Times. 3 May 1985)

What should be made of this controversy? Is it just an internal political battle between different factions within NCCL? While this may be the case, it raises serious questions which are worth examining in greater detail, particularly that of the right to strike versus the right not to strike.

In the context of the coal strike this issue was made more complicated because the NUM did not hold a strike ballot. The miners who continued to work could therefore claim, with some justification, that since they had not been given the opportunity to express their views democratically through a ballot, the only way they could exercise their freedom of "thought, conscience and belief' (a ''right" contained in NCCL's own Charter of Civil Rights and Liberties) was by continuing to work during the strike.

But suppose that a strike ballot had been called and a majority of NUM members had democratically decided to take strike action. What then would be the position of the minority of NUM members who. for whatever reason, disagreed with the strike? One option open to them would be to obey the strike call but not to take part in strike activities. such as picketing, on the grounds that while the individuals concerned did not support this strike they did support their trade union, recognised the importance of trade union solidarity and felt that more damage would be done to the Union as a whole through continuing to work than they would gain as individuals by exercising the "right" to act on conscience.

An alternative, if the "dissenter" within the union felt strongly enough against the strike would be to continue to work, but at the same time to accept both the "right" of strikers to try to persuade him not to cross the picket line during a strike, and also the "right" of the union to decide that such actions were incompatible with union membership.

Both of these positions are equally tenable for a civil libertarian. A majority of delegates at NCCL's AGM decided however that the collective "right" to strike took precedence over the "right" of the individual to carry on working during a strike. Their argument was that the strike weapon — the most effective weapon that workers have against their employers — is undermined if the majority of union members do not support the strike and so their "collective right" can be rendered useless by individuals exercising their "right" to dissent.

One can't avoid the feeling that those who support this position have taken a number of ingredients (as contained in NCCL's Charter) which they like the sound of, mixed them up and have then become disappointed when they can't stomach the resulting cake — that is, that civil liberties, according to their recipe, also apply to people whose actions they find unacceptable. At the AGM they tried to change the recipe by saying that there should be a little more "collective rights" and a little less "individual rights". Several of the cooks of the original cake took offence and resigned.

However, it has not occurred to any of the protagonists as yet that maybe they need a completely new recipe. An organisation like NCCL whose intention is to defend civil liberties (however they are defined) is only necessary in a society in which the "liberties" of citizens can be curtailed by "governmental or other agencies". In most cases this means incursions by the state — the police, courts, army, government — or by those who hold economic power, the capitalist class, against those who are powerless in society. These two institutions, the state and the capitalist class, are not independent of each other. On the contrary, they live in a symbiotic relationship: the capitalist class, the minority who own and control the means of producing wealth in society, require the state to defend and administer their interests and the state would be unable to function without the resources that the capitalist class grants it. NCCL seeks to defend people from what they regard as the unjustifiable use of state power but to do that within the very system — capitalism — which itself creates the need for the state.

The coal strike exposed the diametrically opposed class interests of workers and the capitalist class. Both sides in the dispute expressed these interests in terms of "rights the right of the Coal Board to manage (to close pits that didn't produce enough profit) and the right of NUM members to express their opposition to pit closures by taking strike action. Some miners did not see the dispute in these terms and mistakenly thought that their interests were better served by continuing to work and claimed the "right" to do so.

While organisations like NCCL and the trade union movement can fight to preserve rights we should never forget what the "right to work" and the "right to strike" really mean. The right to work amounts to little more than the right to sell our labour power for a wage or salary so that we and our families can live. It means spending a considerable amount of time engaged in work that we may not enjoy and from which we, as workers, never derive any benefit. The right to strike is one of the few weapons that the working class has at its disposal to use against capital to prevent working conditions and living standards from being driven down still further. It should be used cautiously since it is the weapon of last resort and entails considerable hardship and suffering for workers engaged in strike action.

Where then does this leave NCCL? If it is to be a consistently civil libertarian organisation that applies the principles set out in its constitution and Charter, and works within capitalism without concerning itself with social justice, then it must accept all the contradictions that that will entail and also the possibility of upholding the "rights" of individuals whose views or actions it finds abhorrent.

Perhaps at least some workers among NCCL's members will have been led by this argument to look more closely at the whole issue of civil liberties and to question the value of trying to defend such rights and liberty in the context of a system of society which itself constantly acts as a fetter on the freedom of all workers — that is the freedom to democratically control the society in which we live and the wealth we produce.

Janie Percy-Smith

Industrial Peace: The Capitalist Utopia. (1928)

From the February 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once again we are being regaled in the Press and from the platform with unctuous rubbish concerning the desirability of “peace” in industry. The overwhelming fascination which the topic appears to possess for capitalist representatives and labour leaders alike only speaks for their mental bankruptcy and the fatal readiness of the workers to be deceived by promises.

Fifteen to twenty years ago Sir Christopher Furness, with his co-partnership scheme, stood in the limelight of publicity much as Sir Alfred Mond does at the present day. The only novel feature of the situation is the fact that there is now in existence a body which is supposed to stand for the interests of the bulk of the trade unionists in the country, i.e., the General Council of the Trade Union Congress. The contempt which this body has for its supporters, and its utter disregard for their interests, was forcibly illustrated less than two years ago by its conduct of the so-called General Strike. Thanks to the treachery of this body, hundreds of thousands of the workers were victimised for their actions in response to their “leaders'” orders, without any serious attempt having been made to support the miners.

No wonder, then, that these champions of ignominious defeat and surrender, swollen-headed with all the self-importance of ignorance, should fall rapturously into the outspread arms of their class foes. What else can they do? They have neglected the great essential of working-class education, i.e., Socialist propaganda; and have thus climbed to office by exploiting the support of followers who lack the understanding necessary to the prosecution of an intelligent and courageous conflict with the exploiting class. They therefore enter into conference like whipped curs, hoping for conciliatory pats on their heads and a few bones to induce them to go quietly to their kennels.

What is to be the outcome of this hobnobbing of Trade Union officials with the representatives of capital? Can the workers expect to gain anything therefrom?

A few ideas in answer to these questions may be gathered from the “Manchester Guardian” supplement of November 30th, 1927, entitled “Industrial Relations.” It consists of a symposium of the views of a number of prominent members of the master class, such as Sir J. Stamp and Sir A. Mond, and notorious Labour “leaders,” such as MacDonald, Henderson, Clynes, Bevin, Citrine, Cramp, etc.

Sir Alfred Mond having taken the initiative in the recent conference, his views are of considerable interest. Dealing with what is termed the “rationalisation” of industry, he says :

  The growth of larger industrial units does, however, bring immense problems in its train. For instance, if complete economy is to be effected, it may entail the shutting down of obsolete or unprofitable plant, the scrapping of redundant agencies and departments. Obviously, unless there is an immediate expansion of production, temporary unemployment must follow from this.

Of course, he goes on to lay stress on the word “temporary.” Improved methods mean an increase in trade, we are told, and that in turn means more employment. The workers were told exactly the same tale over a century ago, when machinery was first introduced, but the nightmare of unemployment still haunts an ever-increasing proportion of workers.

It is obvious that, in order to smother the growing discontent of the workers under such conditions, some form of bluff is necessary, so Brunner, Mond & Co. instituted Works Councils, which have since been elaborated with the growth of the combine. This is supposed to secure the representation of the views and interests of the workers ; but another article in the supplement dealing with Works Councils in Germany throws an interesting light on what actually happens under this arrangement.

Theoretically, the Councils are supposed to be able to appeal to the courts to prevent dismissals “on the grounds of victimisation, injustice, or undue hardship,” but in practice, “the Councils cannot protect the employees against dismissal on the ground of trade depression or lack of work.”

Dealing with the question of improved security and higher status (things we hear a lot about nowadays), Sir A. Mond goes on to say,

  By inaugurating a Workers’ Staff Grade … up to 50 per cent. of all workers of over five years’ service will be eligible for election to the Staff, and once promoted they will enjoy rights similar to those enjoyed by the office staffs, including weekly instead of hourly rates of wages and the right to a month’s termination of employment. The healthy rivalry for promotion . . . should mean greater efficiency.

A typical capitalist dodge to intensify the competition between the workers, and thus wring more out of them.

Then, for the information of the workers, a monthly magazine is to be issued. In Germany, however, things are further advanced.

  The Councils are empowered by the Act to nominate one or two of their members with full voting rights, on to the control boards of all companies, and, in the larger firms, to have submitted to them a balance sheet and profit and loss account for the establishment for which they are elected. The Councils may also demand verbal explanations from the employer as to the significance and composition of any of the items so submitted.

  In practice these provisions of the Act have largely remained on paper. Even if the usual education and the experience of the Works Councillors were sufficiently good to enable them to understand the information which they are entitled to receive—they would have derived little benefit owing to the effective methods taken by most employers to prevent the Works Councils from using their rights to obtain any information that might be regarded as confidential. It is notorious that balance sheets are rarely self-explanatory, and it is usually impossible for the members of the Councils to check the accuracy of any additional data supplied.

The above is an illuminating reply to both Mond and the Trade Union officials who talk large about increased control of industry by the workers.

MacDonald opposes any application of what he calls book logic to capitalism. He criticises any attempt to apply the lessons of history to this notion of industrial peace.

He pays “unqualified tribute” to the railway companies’ conciliatory attitude; and is only worried about the coalfields because some of his political supporters have been boycotted by the managers.

Citrine is all for the unions

  actively participating in a concerted effort to raise industry to its highest efficiency by developing the most scientific methods of production, eliminating waste and harmful restrictions, removing causes of friction and avoidable conflict, and promoting the largest possible output so as to provide a rising standard of life and continuously improving conditions of employment.

His objection to such systems as “Taylorism” is not the effects of the system, but the fact that they are “automatically introduced without consultation with the workers’ representatives.” He is quite prepared to support the exploitation of labour-power so long as he and his ilk supervise the sale thereof.

The other workers’ (?) “representatives” follow in similar strain. So long as the trade unions officials are recognised and allowed to bold place and honour in the councils of the thieves, they are all in favour of peace. The testimonies of numerous capitalist apologists, statisticians and politicians, that the workers are relatively poorer than ever before, in spite of the accumulated powers of production, highly-developed efficiency, and all the rest of it, is simply ignored. Years ago, Seebohm Rowntree, Sir Charles Booth and others compiled the evidence showing the downward trend of the workers’ conditions of living. Political hacks like Lloyd George and Chamberlain broadcast it to gain votes for their policies of reform.

Yet these alleged leaders of labour, these misleaders, can think of nothing more original as a solution of the evils that afflict the class that carries them on their backs than to support the employers’ cry for “peace” and increased output.

The subject of the industrial conflict is the exact amount of blood, nerve and sinew that shall be sucked dry of energy in order that a small class of idlers may feast and frolic. The cause of the conflict is the fact that the idlers own the means by which alone the blood, nerve and sinew of the workers can be re-energised. Every increase in efficiency in the blood, nerve and sinew, every corresponding increase in its output, only heaps higher the wealth that the idlers waste. The sooner their maws are glutted, the sooner their wardrobes are crammed, the sooner their “ladies” are surfeited with cocktails and jewels — the sooner will the workers be “transferred” to the labour exchange or the Relieving Officer to feel the pinch of want.

Never has any capitalist, never has any labour leader produced a shred of evidence to conflict with this simple obvious fact. Similarly, not one of them dare deal with the only remedy. If the workers are to enjoy the fruits of their labour, they must own and control the means by which they produce them. The land, factories, railways, etc., must be made the common property of all to meet the needs of all.

That is what we mean by Socialism. It is to accomplish that which has led us to organise a Socialist Party. Forsake your masters and leaders and study the history and condition of your class for yourselves. You will then see that there has been no industrial peace since capitalism has existed—that your class has been compelled, from the day of its origin, to struggle for its existence, and that the struggle will go on until you discover the way to end it—by throwing the wealthy idlers from your backs—by using the political power which is yours whenever you choose to organise with us for Socialism.

Eric Boden

Master and Worker (1961)

From the August 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

How often has it been proclaimed that the planning of constitutions and the founding of leagues of nations have been for the purpose of establishing equality among all men. Yet, as long as capitalism exists, the equality of men can be nothing more than a Utopia, or, at best, just a fancied reality. Laws may propose that employer and worker have equal rights; that just as employers have the right to employ or not to employ, so have the workers the right to work for whomsoever they please. But do these rights exist in fact?

On the employers' side, there exists not only the "right," but the power. This may not apply to those who, by their own desperate struggle and long hours of work, manage to run small businesses with a return hardly higher than the wages paid to an outside worker. These are not capitalists, but men forced to work, very often more arduously than most other workers. They may delude themselves that they are “ upper class," but actually they are of that vast army which must toil in order to live.

When Socialists speak of the employing or the capitalist class they refer to that small class in current society which, enabled to employ and to exploit the workers by its ownership of the land, factories, mines, railways, etc., is, if necessary, able to live without working upon the proceeds.

This, then, is the capitalist class: the class of employers, of masters. At the sweet will of this class men can be employed. exploited, dismissed. And in each of these eventualities the right and the power of the capitalist are plainly visible.

From the very first appearance of a working-class applicant for employment the whip-hand is held by the capitalist. He is seeking a worker whose energy, applied to the tools and material which he, the capitalist, has made available, will create a mass of commodity values and. in due course, blessed and well-loved PROFIT.

This is the sole purpose for which a capitalist employs workers. But, yearned for though they are, profits are not essential in the preservation of life. Their diminution or failure to rise above a certain level may mean for capitalists a check upon expansion, and a drop in interest, even a curb upon luxurious living. But that is all. Only profits are at stake—not the essentials of life itself.

For the working-class applicant for employment the case is very different. Dependent upon his success or failure is the problem of whether or not he will be able to provide for himself, his wife and family without recourse to assistance boards and the like. Should he fail, will the matter of the new clothes he had promised the children have to be forgotten? Will his wife have to go out to work? Will they have to cut down on the food bill—have marge instead of butter, buy cheaper milk? Must the washing be done by his wife instead of being sent to the laundry? Must he cut out his daily pint and smoke fewer cigarettes? Will he have to take the telly back?

Thus does the encounter between prospective employer and prospective employee show the inequality in the "master and man" relationship. It is further shown when the new worker is absorbed into industry. The “governor" himself is seldom seen in the factory for there is no real need for the presence of one who takes no part in production, and who possibly knows nothing of the working side of the industry. But ever present are the works manager, the supervisor, the foreman, the progress chaser those members of the working class who, for somewhat higher wages must see, on behalf of "the governor," that production is carried on speedily, conscientiously, and as profitably as possible. This overseership, whether tyrannous or not, reveals the existence of someone at the top; of an individual or group with something to gain from working-class exploitation.

And where is equality when capitalists, in depressed trade conditions, are unable to sell their commodities? Where is the evidence, then, that working men may work for whomsoever they please — that they need even be employed at all? Where is the “right” to work when the introduction of machinery renders certain workers redundant? Experience shows that wholesale sackings and dismissals are the accepted order of the day as soon as the employment of workers is not profitable enough. It matters not that these dismissals might mean for the workers involved long spells of unemployment, a depression of living standards already far from satisfying, and minor—or even major—domestic tragedies. For such is the accepted pattern of master-class behaviour in capitalist society. That it is accepted—and not least by those who suffer most therefrom —is the most pitiful feature of modern life.

F. W. Hawkins

Class struggles in France (2006)

From the May 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Doubtless many readers of the Socialist Standard will already know that the strikes and demonstrations in France last month had to do with the new work contracts which the de Villepin government introduced into the legislative process over three months ago. Some of this legislation is already on the statute books: the so-called Contrat Nouvelle Embauche (New Hiring Contract), for example, already covers more than 300,000 hirings in small enterprises. It was only over the infamous Contrat Première Embauche (First Hiring Contract) that President Chirac has back-pedalled  in the face of massive demonstrations. This ultra-liberal legislation was aimed at establishing more flexibility into what is often considered to be a highly protective and rigid system of employment relations in France. This legislation was justified in terms of the high levels of unemployment experienced by young people, the recent riots in France being presented as a wake-up call heard only by right-wing politicians but ignored by the more consensual politicians on the left. French workers were being asked to believe that the scrapping of legal protection against arbitrary hiring and firing was in their own interest.

Both the CNE and the CPE established the principle of abrupt firings with little or no legal protection for workers during a two-year trial period. The CNE affects workers in small enterprises and can be applied to workers of any age whilst the CPE was aimed at young workers up to 26 years of age. Once the two-year period is up (if it ever is), the happy workers will be offered permanent contracts, so everything will turn out well, in theory. Other legal dispositions packaged under the misleading term ‘law of equal opportunities’ include the possibility of hiring apprentices at 14 years of age and the possibility of inducing 15-year-olds to work at night. This partial return to nineteenth-century practices, we are told, would loosen up hiring practices and significantly reduce the high levels of unemployment recorded in the statistics produced by governmental agencies. The cost, of course, will be a significant increase in the insecurity experienced by workers who risk being laid off at any moment. This means that they will soon be unable to find decent accommodation, accumulate pension rights or simply plan for the future in such a way as to constitute normal family life. The contrast with the existing legislation centred on the permanent contract with built-in pension provision and a range of social benefits could not be sharper.

Big Lie

The difficulty of getting workers to swallow the big lie that job insecurity is a good thing being obvious, the government resorted to an ideological broadside aimed at setting one category of worker against another. The students who sparked off the movement against the CPE have been presented as privileged middle-class youth relatively unconcerned with the dire situation faced by immigrants in the run-down sink estates of the suburbs. The de Villepin government asked us to believe that these contracts were designed specifically to help a population of workers which has been consigned to suburban dumping grounds for more than three decades. (The fact that de Villepin waited for more than three weeks of demonstrations before he discovered this ideological fig-leaf shows how clumsy the public relations job has been.) Another strategy was to present French workers as dyed-in-the-wool conservatives defending a status quo made irrelevant by globalisation, the highly indebted nature of the French state and the need to remain in the vanguard of the technological revolution.

Inevitably, the ‘phenomenal success’ of Tony Blair’s ‘Third Way’ in reducing the level of unemployment to a mere 5 percent was wheeled out as a counter-example to French timidity, notwithstanding the fact that the definition of unemployment in Britain has been changed over 20 times since the 1970s in order to disguise the real situation. Workers in Britain are well aware that the unemployment and insecurity which they see all around them does not find its way into the official statistics. The deregulation of the labour market in Great Britain over the last two decades has resulted in a doubling in recorded levels of official poverty and a new category of working poor has emerged to replace the indemnified unemployed. The recent mass strike of over 1.5 million public sector workers clearly shows that workers in Britain are by no means living in a neo-liberal cornucopia.

This said, it’s true that many French workers have enjoyed a level of protection denied to many new entrants into the labour market, young workers and immigrants. The permanent work contract provides access to a range of social benefits and protections which are envied by those workers who hop from one short-term contract to another. The government obviously hoped that this would constitute a source of resentment and jealousy which could be exploited. It’s true that workers on permanent contracts are difficult to fire, given that breaking a contract in these cases is very expensive, compensation being proportional to the number of years worked. But this tactic has backfired: even short-term contracts are better than the almost total absence of legal guarantees contained in the CPE and CNE. Besides, over half a million ‘baby boom’ workers are now leaving the labour force every year heading for retirement, so the level of youth unemployment is bound to fall. The question is whether or not these relatively secure jobs will remain on offer to the new entrants.

The hard fact is that it’s quite clear that in the long run greater job insecurity is on the cards for everyone. Long term permanent jobs – jobs for life – are getting scarcer and even the public sector has been placed on a slimfast diet. The bosses want workers who can be hired and fired in reaction to sudden and unexpected changes in demand in markets where every sale counts. Industrial jobs have been disappearing fast to be replaced by service sector jobs which are notoriously badly-paid and insecure. These trends do not respect political frontiers. The left-wing government under Lionel Jospin imposed a shorter working week in exchange for greater flexibility in working patterns, production workers being placed on call for work during the weekends or in the evenings to meet sudden fluctuations in demand with disastrous consequences for family life. Real wage levels are stagnant or falling. Pension rights have been reduced. A capitalism which attempted to adjust fluctuations in world demand by modifying monetary exchange rates in accordance with the rules laid down by the International Monetary Fund has been replaced by a highly volatile monetary system in which adjustments are made by hiring and firing production workers. The new generation of workers is facing a future where they will be considered simply as commodities, labour power, to be bought and sold in line with demand, all human safeguards having been removed.

The movement

The movement against the new employment legislation was initiated by students at the universities of Poitiers and Rennes. Despite superficial resemblances, these students do not have the same profile as the relatively privileged students who took to the barricades in May 1968. Nowadays university students in France tend to come from the more threatened sections of that section of the working class known as “the middle-class”. Elite students usually go to the so-called ‘Grandes ėcoles’ where they are guaranteed access to a world-class education, contacts into the upper-reaches of the civil service and entry into well-paid jobs in multinational corporations. They are even paid a salary whilst they study. By way of contrast, students in the universities tend to finance their studies by doing Mac-jobs, grants being rare and piss-poor. About 40 percent of students drop out in the first couple of years, disgusted by the ramshackle organisation of the faculties and courses given by a small army of hourly-paid teachers who are already living in the state of insecurity that the young are fighting against. Those who do succeed in this often unimaginative system are usually rewarded by a succession of badly-paid or even unpaid training courses, quite rightly presented as an apprenticeship into the real world of work (exploitation).

It is this threatened section of the so-called “middle-class” which has finally come out in open revolt against the absence of perspectives which capitalism has been trying to get them to accept. What has surprised many commentators has been the brilliant organisation and determination of students formerly presented as apathetic and passive by their elders. Rather than seeking the help of professional politicians and full-time student unionists, the students set up their own system of co-ordination with elected delegates and they undertook mammoth debates on the issues involved in the new legislation. (Some of the debates lasted 72 hours.) Taking advantage of the new forms of communication offered by internet and high-speed trains they improvised a nationwide movement which quickly led to the closure of 60 of the 90-odd universities in France and the partial closure of dozens of high schools. The various attempts made to establish links with production workers have resulted in a spectacular leap forward in political awareness, workers suffering from poverty wages and unemployment having been invited to speak at student assemblies. Safety inspectors, experts on employment problems and workers in jobcentres have been given a chance to talk of their experience. Outreach into the high schools in the run-down suburbs resulted in the presence of thousands of black and Arab youths in the demonstrations, offering an apprenticeship in peaceful political agitation to youngsters subject to social stigma and popular prejudice.

Anyway, it was fun seeing the conservative government caught with its pants down. De Villepin’s authoritarian imposition of the new legislation via the undemocratic procedure of decrees failed to impress the masses. His popularity, never very great, is now in free fall and his political career is seriously compromised. Nobody ever elected him anyway. Chirac, a burnt-out old wheeler-dealer elected faute de mieux in a second round play-off with Le Pen, promulgated the CPE law while at the same time promising to amend it in such a way as to remove some of the more contentious aspects. In the end he had to withdraw it. The short-term winner has been Chirac’s sworn enemy and would-be successor, the insanely ambitious Sarkozy.  As you can imagine, the cartoonists had a field day and the only people not laughing are the leaders of the French ‘socialist’ party who are increasingly filling the vacuum in their political programme with precisely those Blairite nostrums that the young are refusing.

The moment the trade union movement was reluctant to get engaged in a full-blown conflict with the government. Doubtless this has something to do with the fiasco of its mobilisation to counter the government’s pension ‘reforms’ three years ago but it could also reflect the fact that the students have done a good job in discrediting the prime minister and dividing the government. However, the unions could have shown a little bit more muscle. Although the CPE has been withdrawn, the employers seem very attached to the CNE which constitutes a real threat to workers and, it may be added, to the ability of unions to organise workers. Indeed, the MEDEF, the bosses’ union, wants to generalise the CNE to all sectors and age-groups. 

The students, future workers, tried to expand their movement to incorporate all the various categories of workers but they clearly failed to generalize their demands adequately. Vague slogans against the precarious society more often than not failed to reach those workers who have been living from hand to mouth for some time. The reason for this is fairly simple: the general outlook of many of the poorer workers is constrained by the absence of qualifications and the urgent need to find cash. By staying largely at the level of a simple defence of their own immediate interests (in a movement which had all the strengths and weaknesses of spontaneity) the students were confronted by the rapid demobilisation of the movement as the examination season looms into sight. The movement was, after all, a student one albeit with a considerable amount of grass-roots support from the trade unions. The suspicion that the aim of the movement was simply that of defending the value of academic qualifications – what distinguishes the students from the unskilled workers – is, in this sense, inescapable. The unions, for their part, were only too glad to keep the movement within the narrow bounds of the defence of wages and conditions, notwithstanding the considerable level of economic insecurity which already exists. On the other hand there were many hopeful signs that the students were getting to grips with a more general malaise and that the movement was groping towards a wider perspective. It is at this point that the absence of a deeper understanding of what capitalism implies and of the need for a socialist movement embracing all categories of wage-earner was at its most glaring.

A Personal Note

I am not alone in having been taken completely by surprise by the students’ movement. The rapidity of its expansion and its extension to other categories in the population was nothing short of incredible. After the heavy and depressing riots of November with their mindless violence and undercurrent of racial tension, it has been comforting to see an outburst of political activity clearly directed against the poverty and loneliness of capitalist society. Despite the images shown on television, the massive demonstrations were on the whole good-natured and peaceful. The mixing together of young and old, and absence of sectarian politics, and the generally high level of debate was particularly encouraging. Although the movement has not taken a socialist direction, there is clearly a lot of discontent out there seeking a political expression and there does seem to be something of a resumption of the class struggle in Europe as a whole.

Malcolm Mansfield

Rights. What rights? (2019)

From the February 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the bourgeoisie (capitalist class) was struggling with the feudal nobility, it was anxious to secure its ‘rights’ –  the ‘rights’ of the towns – the rising factor all through the Middle Ages – against barons and king, who controlled the state.

Rights were in the hands of the feudal state to bestow on its subjects. The word implies acceptance of one’s subordination to another, of whom you demand rights – the right to do something, express an idea, and so on. Rights are bestowed or withheld. Where there are no classes, no rulers and ruled, rights are an absurdity. They cease to be.

When the bourgeoisie stopped requesting its ‘rights’ and, instead, overthrew the nobility (namely in the French Revolution), it kept the language of Rights, and enshrined it in the bourgeois constitution. Now the bourgeoisie grants rights to, or withholds them from, its subject class, the working class.

Everyone thus today clamours about their ‘rights’ – the right to be a wage-slave, the rights of women, the rights of animals, the rights of minorities, ethnic or sexual. Like ‘freedom’, ‘rights’ is bourgeois language. We petition and plead with our masters for our “rights.”

No more rights! No more capitalist system! Abolish class by abolishing the wages system! Let’s get up off our knees and stop begging for treats.

Taking liberties (1989)

From the February 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Index on Censorship, a journal that monitors "human rights" violations throughout the world, recently devoted a complete issue to Britain. It examined such areas as education, freedom of speech and assembly, public broadcasting and sexual intolerance. One of the contributors, Ronald Dworkin, University Professor of Law, New York University wrote:

Liberty is ill in Britain. Freedom is being curtailed or sacrificed in favour of some real or supposed advantage: popular moral sensibility or financial tidiness or administrative convenience or the virtues of conventional family life. Censorship is no longer an isolated exception . . .  The sad truth is the very concept of liberty is being challenged and corroded by the Thatcher government.

Why is it that at a time when many people have seen their living standards decline and their limited freedoms eroded, there has been so little reaction? The liberal democratic model of society, with its talk of "freedom, equality and rights", is less appropriate than it ever was. And yet the restriction of these freedoms is important, if for no other reason than that, without them, political dissent and opposition become more difficult and dangerous.

A recently published book, Blacklist: the inside story of political vetting (Hollingsworth/Norton-Taylor; Hogarth Press) underlines the difficulties that even those who are not revolutionary socialists face. Detailing vetting and blacklisting of individuals by both the state and commercial interests, it informs us that association with groups such as CND, Friends of the Earth, the Anti-Apartheid Movement and trades unions is now deemed to be "potentially subversive". It reminds us of Thatcher's remark in 1984 that 140.000 striking miners were "the enemy within". Individuals who consider themselves patriotic find they are subject to the attention of Big Brother for apparently innocent reasons. Jack Dromey. a national officer for the T&GWU. has little time for Marxists or the “ultra-left" but his union activities have led M15 to compile a thick file on him. After thirty-five years as an engineer, Ken Richards discovered, when applying for a new job with a company with links with the Ministry of Defence, that he was considered a security risk. His reaction was one of disbelief: “I am not a security risk. I'm not a communist and never have been. I've been to the Soviet Union and there is no way I want to see my country run like that".

Being unaware that the state exists for the benefit of the capitalist class, the vast majority would probably concur with the authors' view that positive vetting for employees who work in areas "genuinely involving national security" is perhaps necessary. Greater awareness of other areas of covert interference in peoples lives might make them think twice about the society in which they live.

One interesting fact to emerge from the book is that blacklisting can be traced back to the time when trades unions first became active in the seventeenth century. In 1697 the Feltmakers’ Company introduced the "leaving certificate" system, whereby a master could refuse to employ a journeyman who failed to produce a "character note” from his previous employer.

The extent of blacklisting in specific industries is dealt with comprehensively. Since building a house or making a car have nothing to do with national security, what are the reasons for someone being commercially blacklisted? Page twelve provides the answer. The basic motive, for the employer, is a clear commercial one: sack the activists and you will remain a non-union firm. That means lower wage costs and higher profits. " Two more quotes underline this. "Management, on whom our future power and prosperity primarily depend, cannot be effective without a loyal and contented staff and labour force" (page 208): and "Managers should have the right to ensure that a potential employee is going to work well for their company and have no other ulterior motive for going into his employment" (page 227).

Since it is now harder for employers to sack workers, a large effort goes into vetting potential problem employees. One of the main agencies used for this purpose is the Economic League whose more than 200 subscribers include contributors of funds to the Conservative Party. Also prevalent is the use of private security firms to obtain information on individuals: sources include the Police National Computer and security services.

It is unlikely that the authors of Blacklist will get a three a.m. visit from the "thought police". Neither is reading the Socialist Standard likely to result in your being detained for possession of subversive literature. The ruling class has two hundred years experience of subjugating its workforce and the methods it uses to achieve its ends are not as overtly brutal as those of other capitalist states: but they are just as effective. The Observer recently ran a story about the huge increase in the number of official telephone taps: 30.000 was their figure. Of equal concern is the fact that proposals to reform the Official Secrets Act would have prevented the newspaper from making such disclosures.

The majority of the working class, because they support capitalism, do not comprehend and therefore do not value democracy. The erosion of legal freedoms are accepted with little demur in the frame of mind that the need for quiet life justifies them In the western world legal rights are eroded or vitiated in this "soft" way. The smug patrician's view is that we live in a democratic and "liberal" society. The reality is that socialists have to struggle to make the most of limited means of "free speech", against pressure from opponents who plead necessity but are glad to find excuses for further restrictions.

The real answer is to build a strong socialist movement. With growing numbers we shall be better able to resist the pressure to box us in, and to push outwards all the time. Socialist consciousness is democracy-consciousness, and its spread is the only positive answer to all repressions and intrusions.

Dave Coggan

The working class in Russia (1979)

From the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

All class societies are based on the separation of the producers from the means of production. Under capitalism the means of production and distribution monopolised by a minority function as “capital”, as wealth used to produce other wealth with a view to profit.

The source of this profit is the unpaid labour of the working class. Being excluded from the ownership and control of the means of production, the working class can only get a living by selling their ability to work, mental and physical, to a capitalist employer for a wage or salary. But this wage or salary, representing the value of the labour power they have sold, is less than the value of what they produce. The difference is surplus value and belongs to the capitalists who have bought the labour power. It is the source of their profits and of all other property and privilege incomes.

If we look at the social position of the producers in Russia we see that they are in basically the same position as are the working class in the West. They too are excluded from ownership and control of the means of production and they too are forced to sell their ability to work for a wage or salary. Defenders of the Russian regime argue that in reality the situation is different: that Russian workers work not for capitalist employers but for the State which represents the whole community, so that they are in a sense working for themselves and the profits they produce belong to them.

COLLECTIVE CAPITALIST

This view is incorrect, both from a theoretical point of view and on all the evidence we have on the social and political scene in Russia. We are also told in the West that “the state represents the whole community” but workers in state-owned, or nationalised, industries know different. They still have to organise into trade unions to fight against their employer, the state. The state, in fact, represents not the community but the ruling class, the class which monopolises the means of production. When the state takes over an industry, it does so on behalf of the ruling class as a whole and functions as a kind of “collective capitalist”.

On theoretical grounds, then, we have every reason to suspect the claim that the state in Russia represents the community. This suspicion is fully confirmed when we examine the structure of the Russian state. In most Western countries the state is subject to formal democratic control: its top officials are elected or are answerable to elected assemblies. This is not the case in Russia. Here there is a single legal political party from whose ranks come all the top state officials and leaders. This party itself is not organised on a democratic basis but is controlled from the top downwards by its politbureau and central committee. State power in Russia, then, is concentrated in the hands of a minority quite as small as, if not smaller than, that in the West.

The fact of the existence of a political dictatorship in Russia, concentrating state power into the hands of a single political party, shows that the claim that the Russian state represents the community or the workers in Russia is quite without foundation. The state clearly represents the interests of the minority which controls it and through it the means of production. But if this is the case then the surplus value produced by the working class in the state factories of Russia belongs not to them but to this minority which controls the state. As in the West the working class is exploited by a class which monopolises the means of production and distribution.

NO PROTECTION

The Russian ruling class in fact has a stronger hold over its working class than have Western ruling classes. In the West, after many hard struggles, the workers have won the right to organise into trade unions and to bargain, and if need be to strike, over their wages and working conditions. What they can achieve by such trade union action is not much, but at least it is a means of minimum protection against pressures from their employers. The Russian workers do not have this right nor this protection.

Organisations called “trade unions” do exist in Russia but these are not organisations formed by workers to protect their interests; they are state organisations into which the working class are brigaded, whose functions are precisely to see that strikes do not take place and that the work of production (of profits) is not interrupted. Strikes do take place in Russia but they are generally severely suppressed by the police. An attempt was made in January last year by some Russian workers to form a sort of trade union (though we would rather call it a “claimants union” since its purpose was to try to redress grievances against the state rather than to negotiate over wages); most of those responsible are now in psychiatric hospitals. The Russian ruling class is clearly not going to allow genuine trade unions to be formed in Russia except under mass pressure from the workers. As they did in the West, the workers in Russia are going to have to struggle against their rulers to obtain the freedom to organise.

It is the same with regard to political democracy. Limited as this must be by the class structure of capitalism, it is still the framework within which can develop the working class movement, both to defend its interests under capitalism and to replace capitalism by socialism. Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and so on are needed by the working class so that they can acquire the majority socialist consciousness needed before capitalism can be abolished. The Russian ruling class, however, has the same fear of political democracy as it has of genuine trade unions and does the best it can to suppress the growing civil rights movement in Russia.

RUTHLESS DICTATORSHIP

We workers in the West must wish our fellow workers in Russia every success in their struggle to win elementary trade union and political rights. But we do them a great disservice if we do not identify the Russian rulers for what they are: a class of state capitalist exploiters living off the backs of the Russian workers and oppressing them through a ruthless political dictatorship.

This is all the more necessary since this class of exploiters uses the language of socialism to disguise its class rule, thus discrediting the whole idea of socialism among millions of workers throughout the world who knowing what goes on in Russia, think (correctly) “If that’s socialism, no thank you!” But it’s not socialism and has nothing to do with socialism. It is state capitalism.

Adam Buick