Workers reduced to supporting role The pipe-dream of planning agreements
By HARRY SLOAN *I participate, you ticipate, he participates: they profit!
The old. cynical thrown up in the revolutionary struggles of students workers which rocked France in 1968. applies with particular relevance to the question of production under capitalism.
"Production" in itself as an abstraction appears a neutral term — but its actual meaning varies according to the social class of the person using it.
For a capitalist, "production" is the process whereby the fixed investment of plant and raw materials transformed, via the exploitation of living human labour, into a source of profit.
For a worker, "production" is a source of a weekly wage enabling the purchase of goods and services which enable her or him to exist from week to week. For the unemployed, "production" pears to be a dwindling activity of a minority which might offer some escape from enforced idleness and dire poverty.
The objective interests capitalists demand that the lowest possible wage is paid tor the maximum possible effort by the workforce employed. The workers who sell their labour power, on the other hand, have no stake in the workplace or the finished product: their only relationship with the production process is as a source of livelihood — and their interests lie in maximising wages in relation to physical effort.
Behind the bland term "production" is therefore a daily battle of wills on the shop floor, a conflict of interest, a class conflict which runs right through capitalist society. It is not sufficient to say "produce" necessary to take sides between exploiter and exploited in order to define the basis on which production will take place.
But Neil Kinnock, like generations of Labour leaders before him, rejects this class perspective. He sees in the
interests but merely par- tion to ensure that system is motto, Labour than under Thatcher. and Bournemouth defy Tory spending cuts). has been been published in pamphlet form: is try. we production." "We have packet useful ap of the the British people: "Britain - it is tain will make it' of Britain, the to make it."
capitalist crisis not a conflict of class
"bad management" on the part of the Tory government and sections of the capitalist class they represent. And he sees the solution in terms of parliamentary ac-
Othe capitalist "managed" better under
Kinnock set these views out very clearly in his speech at last year's
Party conference, (where most on the left heard only his few witch-hunting asides against Liverpool city council's attempts to
The theme was set out then which
endlessly recycled in Labour Party political broadcasts ever since, and the speech has now
"To rescue and rebuild this coun-
must be the Party of to meet new MILTOBS YEAR challenges in our determination that our country shall produce its way out of a slump... Through our Jobs and Industry campaign. in all ohe Brities, Weine: Britain has British made it. Britain can make it. Bri- Go to the
- provided that the people of Britain, the managers
technicians. the Swedes workers of Britain have the means
("It can be done, It must be done,
Tp. 6) Socialist Viewpoint No. 11 March 2986 p21
Kinnock — stuck in Wilson mould.
Kinnock doesn't entirely dismiss the potential of the British working class even while placing his main emphasis on the role of managers and technicians in the regeneration of British capitalism. On the contrary, he believes that still more effort can THE CASE FOR PLANNING • FULL EMPLOYMENT
be screwed out of the workforce at
the point of production:
"To all those defeatists - the real
moaning minnies and ministers -
who say: 'That's all very well, but
workers won't respond.
British managers can't cope." I say:
industries in Britain
where the Japanese and the
Americans and the Swiss and the
have established
themselves: go to those industries
in Britain which have committed
resources to modernisation: and
see how they hold their own with
And if anyone in the world car
force even more effort out of the
workforce, the drift of the argument
goes, it must be Neil Kinnock and a
future Labour government committed
not to socialism but to modelling itself
His Bournemouth speech
"We've got to have a government that, like the government of Japan. of Germany, of Sweden, of France, of Italy, puts the real interests of its country first."
The reaction to this of Japanese, German and other workers would be
None of Kinnock's confused line of argument is new. It is so traditional a line of social democratic politics it is now being equally trotted out by both the two Davids of the Alliance, by Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan: it could equally be echoed by the infamous Ramsay MacDonald himself if only he could be resuscitated.
Kinnock's eager attempts to em-
technology" bolster capitalist investment are a product of the same which spawned Harold Wilson's 1964 reformist utopia of a (capitalist) economy reforged in "the white heat of the technological revolution".
Wilson secured election in 1964 and 1966 and again in 1974. He stayed in office for long enough each time to expose the hollow fraud of his claims that capitalism can be
new-fangled agencies of the capitalist state.
Instead Wilson presided on both occasions over the wholesale tionalisation of industry which drove unemployment sharply upwards and brought speed-up and even attempts at anti-union legislation in 1969. Wilson imposed wage controls which cut living standards and even went controls*Pointless charades of "price through
which inflation spiralling.
The 1974 Labour government:
• funnelled vast sums of money into bankrupt private firms through the National Enterprise Board;
• sapped the independence of shop stewards through class collaborationist "workers' participation" schemes (before eventually switching tack with the appointment in 1978 of Michael Edwardes to carve up British Leyland);
• used Tory legislation and then TUC collaboration to hold down pay settlements;
• again faced runaway inflation and by 1976 had completely capitulated to the international bankers, imposing the first wave of monetarist policies including heavy cuts in the NHS and social services; • its fourth phase of controls in 1978 were backed up by an undeclared coalition with the Liberals, and finally triggered a massive wave of strikes during the "winter of discontent" of
"What's yours, Roy?" - "d like the same again, old boy!" Thatcher.
Kinnock's present-day commitment to an expansion of capitalist production can only set a future Labour government on a similar course of seeking to maximise profitability and maintain the cooperation of the big employers at the workforce. Miners, council workers and printers have already seen which side of the class barricades Kinnock stands on when the chips are down even under Thatcher: how much less sympathetic will he be when it is his government's policies of rationalisation and speed-up which are being opposed!
Kinnock's whole scheme rests on increasing capitalist production and capitalist profitability. Even while loudly insisting that a Labour government would halt the outflow of capital and "bring the funds back home' hastens to assure the bankers that
We will ensure that the return paid on those funds is equal to what they can earn elsewhere."
How? By raising levels of exploitation in Britain to the levels experienced elsewhere! There can be no other way! But while workers can expect a hard time at the point of production, Kinnock wants to reward the managers and entrepreneurs
None of this is any great surprise, Believederhat tinhose whoreall represented a new "radical" face of Labour politics. In fact Kinnock's forthright statements of right wing social democratic views have left Roy Hattersley in the shade and Denis Healey all but redundant. Not for nothing did the AUEW right wingers join with other union bureaucrats in backing Kinnock as part of a "dream ticket" for the leadership.
But understanding the content of Kinnock's cross-class approach to the capitalist crisis is important for the workers' movement: we need to warn Socialist Viewpoint No. 11 March 1986 p22
1978-9, which paved the way for | and prepare workers at every level of the dangers of trusting their fate to
organising themselves independently to place demands and wage struggles
latest fad in "left" social democratic politics — an
* then booklet by Andrew Glyn Million Jobs a
does nothing to challenge Kinnock's basic assumptions. Instead
complete with a forward by Tony Benn and tacit support from the Campaign Group of MPs - the pamphlet dangerous illusions peddled by Kinnock and is all but devoid of the politics of class struggle.
In its whole frame of reference, the
• Accepts the Kinnock/Wilson notions of a "planned capitalism". be-
forcibly expanded to create • Kinnock's reactionary notion of an "enabling state" capitalist state machinery being utilised somehow against the inerests of big capital (ignoring the atastrophic lessons of Chile under
Allende government. whose Popular Front reforms came to a 1973), end in the Pinochet coup of
• Accepts the related Wilson/Kinagreements" somehow compelling multinationals
Wto comply with government plans. Taken to its logical conclusion, it would be - if suc-
Little other than legally compelling private employers to expand their capital and accept bigger profits! • Adapts to the traditional reformist view of achieving "socialism" not by the mass working class revolutionary
adopted by that state nerd imposed through machinery behalf of the workers. Poc leaders use us mistie wate rUC leaders. Labour's right wing parliamentarians within the Campaign Group. and the politicians of the Communist PartyIt has also been embraced by the "Marxists" of the "Militant" tendency. whose annual calls at Labour Party conference for an Enabling Act which would open the door to nationalisation of the monopolies reflect the same naive faith in Parliamentary socialism. and the same separation parliamentary politics mobilisation of class struggle action in the workplaces.
• Just as the traditional politics of reformism as displayed by the big social democratic parties rest on the basis of collaboration with their
ONE NATION Wilson's manifesto pledged price controls — but he wound up cutting wages. capitalist state, but by legislation | "own" capitalist class, and lead to grotesque cross-class alliances against "foreign" petitors, so the line of the Glyn ap- pamphlet leans towards subsidies to "British" employers and protec- tion for "British" Stalinist while pulling from calls for nationalisation or a full-scale monopoly trade. These tionalist pressures are dangerous for the hard left in the Labour Party and in the unions. 250 top pamphlet, with the radical tone of its title and of rightward evolution of the Kinnock- from the Hattersley policy on jobs and the represents economy counterblast to those who argue that unemployment - natural disaster — has to be accepted as a fact of life for the foreseeable future. Socialist Viewpoint No. 11 March 1986 p23
unemployed Glyn new enforcing workers' Campaign implemented "dogmatists" ble promises." Whatever programme, nationalist com- Campaign challenge capitalist firms deliberately back of foreign concessions to na- directors, the There is no denying that Glyn's its critique of the rapid It is healthy a like some vast these
It is useful too to counterpose the interests of the working classes who need the jobs, improved living standards, housing, social services, which can only be produced by an expanding economy - to those of the ruling capitalist class, which has chosen to use a large reserve army of
Tand the harsh disciplines of capitalism in slump to drive up their rate of profit and line their own pockets.
Tis right to press for a wholescale rethink of the economy rather than the timid tinkering promised by Hattersley if the necessary 5 million jobs are to be created. But he leaves a vast question unasked: if a
Labour government were. somehow, to come to office and carry out the "full programme" mapped out in the pamphlet, nationalising the banks and finance houses, imposing exchange controls, import controls, price controls, breaking with the EEC, and
compulsory planning agreements on major production industries: why should it not complete the job, nationalise all of the major monopolies, and establish
control of a planned. socialist economy?
Perhaps this perspective is missing because Glyn is drafting a text for the
Group, many of whom really do believe that the kind of sweeping reforms it proposes can be
through Parliament: perhaps he has an eye to those timic left MPs who want an alternative policy of sorts but don't want to be branded by Kinnock as "extremists"
Tor makers of "impossithe reason for softpeddling the full sweep of a socialist
Tit is clear that this weakness undermines the whole line of argument of the pamphlet.
It is implausible enough to imagine Kinnock and Hattersley, having won an election, agreeing to attempt to implement the far-reaching reforms called for in "A Million Jobs a Year". (We should note in passing that there is no organised lobby within the
Group pressing for a to the Kinnockersley leadership at the 1986 Party Conference, so the pamphlet should not by any means be seen as a manifesto for a new would-be Labour leadership in the forseeable future.)
It is even more implausible to imagine bankers, the City, the boards of
USA and the EEC chiefs sitting back and tamely watching their influence be whittled away by legislation without resorting to their well-established levers of control and destabilisation.
almost inconceivable that whole sections of the Parliamentary Labour Party and the trade union bureaucracy would throw themselves wholeheartedly into campaigning for
reforms. (They know that
however marginal is the role of working class involvement to the policies mapped out in Glyn's pamphlet, fight even for such policies almost certainly generate substantial favourable echoes and rank and file movements within the working class which could well develop politically well beyond the original demands.)
But it is absolutely impossible fo achieve socialism in Brilain without
revolutionary capitalist rule, the smashing of the tate machinery of the present rul na class, and the establishment oi a new, workers' state apparatus to defend the class interests of the new ruling majority.
This of course does not trouble Kinchallenging — let alone overturning - capitalism. But the fact that the establishment of socialism is not even discussed as an issue in A Million Jobs a Year is a telling indication of
Another question therefore must be asked. If A Million Jobs a Year is not the basis of a challenge to the Hattersnock leadership; if it is not an outright socialist alternative to Kineconomics, and since it contains not even a passing reference to struggles in the present period to detend existing jobs - what is the function of this pamphlet? frontation with Kinnock's politics, it can only be an attempt to within the Parliamentary Labour Party, the unions, and the labour movement generally for a more radical, more intellectually satistying schema
knowing it plemented! The PLP right wing and much of the union bureaucracy are way past any point where a convincing argument could shift them into challenge the power of capital or unleash the miitancy of the working Cedda Dean end Tues Dion ot faced with the sequestration SOGAT's assets and the extinction of the print unions' key power base in Fleet Street, yet still seeing the main danger in the situation not as Murdoch but as mass pickets and class struggle elements from the left, ably sum up the wretched incapacity to lead class struggle today does not get to gripe with these problems: it confronts the whole question of policies almost as an academic debate between rival theoretical positions - while the reality is that the conflict is between the inferests of two leaders of the labour movement clearly on the side of capitalism).
A closer look at some of the points and proposais in A Million Jobs a Year will illustrate these problems.
Glyn on several occasions refers to the two periods in which British
Wto increase employment by 1 million per year.
The first was in the war mobilisation between 1938 and 1942, in which 3.7 million were drafted into the
British imperialism prepared to breach many of its old rules, to boston to reinthe righte general interest of fighting to defend its own empire, markets and global
Yet this was the capitalist state using extraordinary powers to defend itsell - and, as Glyn later admits, using those powers with full political endorsement from the Labour, trade union and later Communist Party leaders, against the working class: unions, sucked into "Joint Production Committees" were transformed into an arm of management.
The second period was the immediate post war phase of 1945-48 when the upsurge of working sentiment had ousted Churchill in
Tand a Labour elected by a landslide undertook the task of defusing the
militancy of 3 demobilised troops and stabilising capitalist rule. The Attlee ment's period of office, representing any beacon for today's socialists to follow, proved a resounding success for capitalism, disillusioning millions of workers, diverting from socialist demands and paving the way for the Tories who in 1951 returned for the "13 years of misrule" until Wilson's first election triumph in
It was in these highpoints of class collaboration
Cof "National Government" under Ramsay MacDonald in the 1930s that many of the emerging
Ta der Comr Communist Party learned the politics which have proved such a burden for today's workers movement. For Glyn now to use these episodes one-sidedly, to argue that capitalism could, If it chose, create millions of new jobs, is irresponsible.
A re-elected Labour government could not count on the unanimous support of the decisive sections of British capitalism for a job-creating economic package in the way Churchill's coalition bankers and industrialists to from the war effort. Nor could Kinnock or the union leaders intimidate big capital into accepting anything akin to the mood of a returning newly-jobless demobilised army of 3 million young men and women.
inappropnate parison however Glyn goes on not only to argue for protectionist import controls but also to insist that
"We know that the rapid expansions of total employment Socialist Viewpoint No. 11 March 1986 p24
SOCIAL •ONTRACi SOCIAL CONTRA 1 SOCIAL SOCIAL : ONFLICT CON-TRCI Workers fought Wilson's "social contract", but union bun (1938-42), and civil employment (1945-48) were technically feasible because they happened.
(p. 12, emphasis added)
"Technically capitalism: Glyn's frame of reference is arguing that capitalism can reform itself to incorporate extra workers. This leads on to the argument for in-
"competitiveness" "British industries in tional market. As with Kinnock's line
Thas made it; Britain can make it; Britain will make it"). Glyn's argument for a nationalist line is essentially one of abandoning any class analysis. point against the "competitiveness of goods produced by sweated labour "in South Korea or South Africa" But he ignores the massive increases of exploitation already imposed upon employers. He does not discuss who would profit most from a new, lean
Britsh industry still in private hands; instead Glyn hides behind the abstract declaration that
"Competitiveness in the sense of producing attractive and effective goods. at the minimum cost in labour time, is precisely what allows living standards to be raised. hours of work to be cut and social services to be improved." disagree? The key issues for socialists are who owns the firm, who profits decides the products to be made, the management of the factories? Glyn offers no answeres.
The pamphlet moves on to propose extensive exchange controls which are (later) linked in to the generalised call for the nationalisation of the financial institutions. But Glyn refers only belatedly and in passing to the need for workers' control in the banks and finance houses if the back-room speculations, cash transfers, and
MINI WAGES WONT BUY MINI CARS. a fully backed it.
FIE FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT NTS Fl F THE CUTS !: THE CATS JE HEL
15 SAVE FIGI FIGHT i j JoB JOBS
THE ! THE CUTS SP SAVE OBS By 1976 the second Wilson government was heavily cutting health and social services. other wheeling and dealing of the capitalists were to be forestalled. He does not addresss the real problem of persuading the unions most centrally involved - BIFU, ASTMS, APEX to renounce their present stance and endorse a policy of nationalisation — a problem compounded by the fact that the Kinnockersly leadership and the TUC leaders also oppose the policy. Rather than grasp the nettle of a political campaign spelling out the need and the case for nationalisation, Glyn winds up arguing for radical but more restricted measures to curb currency dealings and force the financial institutions to lend to the government, in isolation from any serious mobilisation of the workers' movement. Such a compromise would threaten to bring the worst of all worlds - provoking bitter backlash by employers and many contused workers against policies which still fall well short of the all-out na-
FIGHT HT FIGHT SITE THE CUTS FIGHT * gar: FIGHT: THE CUTS 1 J SAVE THE CUTS T JOBS SAVEE SAVE VE JOBS ES JOBS tionalisation of the banks which he admits is needed. Glyn In similar fashion, ap- the question of inflation roaches from a Parliamentary rather than a class struggle point of view. He em- braces the discredited and previously quite ineffective call for price con- rols, only diflering from the pathetic Harold Wilson experiments and fron Hattersley's present line by arguing Socialist Viewpoint No. 11 March 1986 p25
Benn's "left" image was used by Wilson to sell the new National Enterprise Board in 1975. that wage increases should not be limited
For the working class, experience of runaway inflation even in previous periods of "price control" has underlined the need to defend real wages by establishing cost of living clauses in pay agreements which provide automatic increases to keep pace with rising prices. Such policy can be fought for. established and implemented by workers through their own trade unions in the workplaces, rather than relying on parliament and the state to control rogue employers.
When he moves on to the section on "Trade" 25-27) Glyn embarks on a suggestions which wilfully blur the line bewteen the protection which we should argue for in a workers' state fighting to establish socialism, but which in a capitalist economy amount to nationalist class collaboration.
Glyn's ideas range from a "left" version of "dumping" (It would be ports below the times to coll ot ports below production, if the foreign exchange was thereby which allowed the economy to expand") to full-scale restrictions on imports, enlisting the support of workers to ensure compliance. While British union members "foreign" goods which might cut the profits of their "own" employers, Glyn lends this nationalist policy an even more bizarre international dimension:
"Labour's potential allies overseas are the labour movements and it would have to be to them that Labour would appeal to minimise the disruptive action of foreign governments and employers. The rather tentative
----- pull-quotes on this page ----- L ACT L RCK 1 bun
difficult. tive will become substantially more fight for a serious socialist perspecgle left in the labour movement, the of the class strug. "full programme"
If Glyn's pamphlet becomes and the Labour Party. prepared to fight for it in the unions arguments: we need a programme for and those still on the dole. We don't in Thatcher's the public services, and low pay which threatens those in industry and the super-exploitation problems facing the working class in Better Way", but to spell out the real capitalism with "An Even challenge Kinnock's "better way" of now is not to
Othe past ten years. the course of the class struggle over nothing from the miners' strike and "uneconomic pits" the cause - has learned
championing leaderships shows that Glyn - for all reactionary positions of the union from confronting the backward and dent working class struggle and away The direction away from indepenthe fight hamstrung from the outset. needed in the unions, it will go into next Labour government and the line come on the economic policies of the of this pamphlet in the debates to If the Labour left embraces the line workers' control demands will be nationalising the banks and its while the far from prominent demand become widely known and argued agreements and import controls will arguments against nationalising inpaign Group of MPs is that its more hands of many of those in the Camprobable fate of his pamphlet in the know that the most He must also
workers' power. mobilisation in developed organs of the Bolsheviks, on the basis of mass Revolution of October 1917, led by the Russian working class was the economy was "transferred" to the the only occasion in which control of Andew Glyn knows full well that
brutal capitalist reaction. elsewhere — as in Chile 1973 - to undisguised capitalist policies, and most cases to an abject retreat into unmitigated disaster - leading in ment this type of policy has been an He knows that every attempt to implehe has mapped out in the pamphlet. "Transfer of control of the economy" example in history of the kind of this. He knows that there has been no borter of Militant, knows better than for years a sup-
opposition. **ird class? - HS] to overcome the threat Labour's supporters [the working mitment would be required from degree of active support and com-
Socialist Viewpoint No. 11 March 1986 p.26 economy indicate that the highest tempts to transfer control of the "The history of all previous at-
reactionaries: and perogative of the capitalists the as action parliamentary" "extra regards significantly passing reference to class action, but final paragraphs contain a
working class. and appointees, for the action of the intervention, or teams of "planners" substituting Parliamentary and state fiascos of past Labour governments, up and rehabilitates some of the worst Instead the whole system dredges
Othe economy as a whole. control as part of a workers' plan for dustries and for full-scale workers" tion or expropriation of major inlogical demand for the nationalisabends over backward to avoid the Glyn section Throughout this
Tbe run? such a hypothetical (capitalist) firm interests: in whose interests would combination of counterposed class is a , as we have seen, "Society" (p. 33)
society."
firm in the interests volving workers and planners. to
management structure. "have the power to appoint a stead, he suggests, the government class action or nationalisation: inply, Glyn does not propose working Even if a company refused to com-
(p. 32) pany would be obliged to accept." which after discussion the comadjustments and modifications "would be able to propose
Workers cooperation. degree of worker workers control as state control with much not But the concept is access to all the company's books. who should be given ment planners", workers in the firm and by "governby monitored agreements, ing establishment of compulsory plannEmployment. Instead he proposes the sabotage a Labour Plan for Full to capacity immediate less have he argues they tionalisation, since industrial firms" from the call for naGlyn goes on to exclude the "major
capitalist governments! the pamphlet) or other earlier in ried out by Mitterrand (and ridiculed the kind of bank nationalisation carthese "interests" intact is to replicate To nationalise the banks and leave those of the working class majority. terests are diametrically opposed to in extortionate interest rates: these infits derived from rationalisation, and of high levels of exploitation, in proTheir interests lie in the perpetuation capitalists? How can it be otherwise? the of interests the jeopardise and finance houses is designed to case that nationalisation of the banks simple and obvious: but is it not the For small savers this is reasonably
interests." their not jeopardise will tion to be convinced that nationalisato these institutions will also have "Depositors in, and contributors
argue that But strangely. Glyn goes on to (p. 31)
employment." system as part of planning for full and be enabled to use the credit ment is to prevent financial crisis indispensible if a Labour Governpublic ownership seems absolutely them into immediate "Taking
the "major financial institutions": decisive element to be nationalised is spells out his argument that the only Control and Public Owership, Glyn Under the heading Social position. This is no exaggeration of Glyn's
collaboration. class nationalist line of a up state in Britain are invoked to dress valid to defend a fledgling workers' Arguments which would be quite ciently committed to import controls! nock is criticised for being insuffiit refused to nationalise: while Kinand profits of Britsh capitalists whom class to help them protect the markets appeal to the international working So Britain's Labour leaders should (p. 27) enough to allow rapid expansion. nor strong overseas fury. avoid would be neither mild enough to proposing. now is leadership which the Labour tain sectors. measures for import controls in cer-
Learn the lessons of Trotskyist history!
Socialist IHIs very important book should be read by all Trotskyists. There is no other history of Trotskyism in Britain covering this period other than side reference in such books as Robert Black's Stalinism in Britain and reports on particular periods such as The Balham Group by Reg Groves.
In fact British Trotskyism which has correctly long attacked the Communist Party for hiding or distorting or just plain lying about its history. has published a great deal on the history of Stalinism but little on its own past.
Even the CP now producing its own lying history has not prompted Trotskyist organisations to write their own.
It has been left to two unaffiliated Trotskyists to do this. Quite natually some of their analysis will be distorted because all histories are subjectively written. But it is difficult to criticise because of the lack of alternative material.
As you read through this book, particularly the later periods, you see how important this history is.
Many of the questions dogging Trotskyism, such as how to relate to the Labour Party, have also been confronted in the past. Because of the lack ot any study of this history. Trotskyists today are forced to live the experience over again. Virtually none of the lessons of the past have been learned.
The most many Trotskyists have done in relation to the history of their movement has been to read Trotsky's Writings on Britain.
These have been very helpful, but they have only given a very limited view of the experience. Most of the Writings are letters which answer particular questions but do not show the real conditions prevailing at the time on the ground in Britain.
This is why every Trotskyist should read this new book. By the huge amount of quoted material it is clear that Bornstein and Richardson have done a great deal of work. In fact this
Bookshelf "Against the Stream"