Prise out the facts to strengthen the fight!
SUE OWEN explains why an end to business secrets is vital in the fight for jobs and for workers' control. THE NCB's claims about "uneconomic" pits have now been attacked three times by specialists: by a group of accountants, by a report by Andrew Glyn commissioned by the NUM, and now by the "Aberystwyth report". Each time the Coal Board's response has been the same: "You've missed the point; the arguments you attack aren't the basis on which we decide which pits are uneconomic.
The reason is clear enough: the NCB and the Tory government are not concerned with the short-term economic costs of pit closures - far less the long term social costs for the mining communities. They have shown themselves ready to invest upwards of £3.5 billion to achieve the twin objectives of defeating the NUM and restructuring the coal industry to suit the long-term needs of capitalism. This type of "balance book" approach — like that of Edwardes In his period in British Leyland — can appear at any given moment to be economic nonsense: only by assessing their long-term plans can we understand why they are prepared to shoulder such heavy short-term costs.
But the answer from the workers' movement - as embodied in the miners' challenge to the argument for keeping open only, "profitable", ke mist be to tight for policies of fits employment and decent living standards, regardless of the requirements of capitalism. As the early Communist International declared, in uncompromising terms in 1921:
"The Communist Parties should be concerned not with the viability and competitive capacity of capitalist industry or the stability of the capitalist economy, but with proletarian poverty, which cannot and must not be Longer. is the demands put forward endured by the Communists correspond to the immediate needs of the broad proletarian masses, if the masses are convinced that they cannot go on living unless their demands are met, then the struggle around these issues becomes the starting point of the struggle for power. In place of the minimum programme of the centrists and reformists, the Communist International offers a struggle for the concrete demands of the proletariat which, in their totality. challenge the power of bourgeoisie, organize the proletariat and mark out the diiterent
OPEN THE
BOOKS!
Bolshevik factory committees: challenged capitalists' control over industry.
stages of the struggle for its dicthe broad tatorship. Even before masses consciously understand the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat, they can respond to each of the individual demands. ...
* This comes from the "Theses on Tactics" adopted at the Communist International's Third Congress, and is published in Theses,
Resolutions and Manifestos of the First Four Congresses of the Third In.
Links, London, 1980, ternational,
Ink
(TRM) pp270-1.
Socialist Viewpoint, No. 4, March 1985. Page 30
Trotsky, discussing with American revolutionaries in 1938, elaborated a similar approach as the basis for the 1938 Transitional Programme:
"Lundberg writes a book about the sixty families [the handful of capitalists who then land now!) dominated the US economyl. The Annalist says that his statistics are exaggerated. We must ask for the abolition of commercial secrets that the workers have the right to look into the bookkeeping - as a
premise for workers' control of industry...."
(Discussion between Trotsky, Cannon and Schachtman Pathfinder [New York, 1977] edition of the Transitional [Path. TP] p.76).
In the same discussions, Trotsky answers the same type of objection to this demand that is raised today by organisations like the Workers Party in Britain. Leading Teamster militant Vincent Dunne raised the problem:
"I wanted to ask one question about the slogan of workers access to the secrets of industry. It seems to me that needs to be well thought out and carefully applied or it may lead to difficulties which we have already experienced. As a matter of fact one of the ways of reducing the militancy of the workers is for employers - we had one such case - to offer to show us the books anc prove that they are standing a loss (whether honestly or not is not the question). We have fought against that, saying it is up to you to organise your business; mand decent working conditions. I wonder what then would be the etfect of our slogan of workers access to the secrets of industry."
Trotsky replied:
"Yes. the capitalists do lopen their books] in two instances: when the situation of the factory is really bad, or if they can workers. But the question must be put trom a more general point of view. In the first place, you have million or so unemployed, and the government claims it mover and the capitalists say thay cannot make more contributions -we want to have access to the bookkeeping of this society. ... Workers will say: We want our own statisticians who are devoted to the working class. If a branch of industry shows that it is really ruined, then we answer: We propose to expropriate you. We will direct better than you. Why have you no profit? Because of the chaotic condition of capitalist society. ...'
(Path.TP pp. 85-6)
Trotsky was not inventing this approach from scratch: it had been developed in the early before the emergence of Stalin and the conservative bureaucracy in Russia.
The Communist International was founded on the perspective of the open and immediate struggle for workers' state power in the midst of the wave of revolutionary which followed the First World War, in 1918-19. Everywhere except in Russia, however, this wave ended in defeats for the working class and a temporary restabilisation capitalism in a brief period of prosperity in 1919-20. The Comintern's Third World Congress in 1921 was, therefore, forced to confront the fact that:
"the world revolution is developthe in
Programme
Socialist dewe decieve the expected...
(TRM p.275)
and:
ly revolutionary tionary
Crisis of the passages taken. In this situation:
Comintern majority of the working class and direct sp. 271e
Now,
CrIses
"maximum but programme;
workers:
Communist Parties must put for-
Lenin and Trotsky: turn to win over "majority of the working class".
ing even more slowly than was mediate class.
"Although the present economic and political situation is objectiveand a revolu-
The could develop without warning as a result of a major strike, a colonial uprising, a new war or a serious parliamentary crisis, the majority of the working class is nevertheless outside the quoted here are
... the most important task for the Communist International is to win a dominant influence over the etc.
involve the more active workes in put workers the starting point for this struggle.
"The sruggle is not some schema of the transition to socialism, a utopian retormist minimum rather the immediate needs and struggle of the closure.
"The Communists' main aim is to destroy the capitalists system. But in order to achieve their aim the ward demands expressing the im-
Socialist Viewpoint, No. 4, March 1985. Page 31 needs of the working The Communists must organise mass campaigns to fight for these demands regardless of whether they are compatible with the capitalist system.
Theses on Tactics, however, did not elaborate a programme of such demands. The nearest approach is the Programme of Action put forward in the Theses on the Communist International and the RILU. It is in this Programme of Action that the demand for the opening of the books is manan a ration if bacon)
cong nite remoted fat
zing the unemployed; OCcupations, co-ordination in the wages struggle, workers' defence squads,
The context of these demands was very clearly one of closures and recession: the Comintern sought to forward answers that of ed an independent road unions must fight the closure of factories and demand that the workers have the right to investigate the reasons behind the
Special control commissions to deal with raw materials, fuel and orders must be established to carry out on-the-spot checks of the raw materials in stock, the materials essential to production and the bank balance of the factory
OI institution. Specially elected control committees must undertake a thorough investigation of financial relations between the concern in question ad other concerns this raises in a practical way the need to open the books [of industrial monopolies]."
(From The Communist International & The Red International of Labour Unions, adopted by the Third Congress of the Communist International, July 1921.)
What can we draw out of the demand for "opening the books"? In the first place it's a weapon against the lies and the economic arguments of the employers. It helps to win over workers who are influenced by these arguments. In this way it is directed at forestalling the sort of divisions that the government has been able to create in the ranks of the NUM, and the isolation of the miners from other sections of workers that the TUC leadership has helped o develop. In this context, the de mand for 'opening the books" defensive demand, one that conforms to a situation of defensive struggles and strengthens those struggles.
A good example of how this can help, albeit on a very small scale, was provided by the work of the Open the Books committee of the Leyland Cowley Joint Shop Stewards Committee in the 1970s. Management launched an offensive on and productivity leaked by publishing to the workforce which showed that the cause of the problems was mismanagement oad quality parts, the Committee was able to completely undercut this offensive. It is a demand that plays a role in fighting for united action of the workers.
But the demand also has an offensive content. There are two sides to this: stengthening the working class and weakening the capitalists.
For the capitalist class, information is property (and a growing area law and legal remedies exist to protect this property) and secrecy power. The jealous protection of this property right is behind the determination of this government to prosecute Ponting and Tisdall, and a few years ago Harriet Harman and the 'British Steel mole" how the 1980 steel strike was provoked. Unwillingness to expropriate this property right makes the agreements" cooked up by Labour governments come to nothing, Trotsky pointed out in the Transitional Programme:
"The actual relationship existing between the extroiters exploiters democratic is characterised by the fact that the gentlemen reformers' stop short in pious trepidation before threshhold of the trusts and their usiness 'secrets'. Here the princi. Business dominates! non-interterence kept between the capitalist and society remain the secret of the capitalist: they are not
"unrealistic"
is a
British quality"
documents and tent plot of monopoly capitalism jects for limiting the autocracy of economic royalists' to be pathetic farces as long ducers and of bery and fraud....
(Path TP, p. 120)
1S is workers' control of production. But the means of getting the information are also steps to establishing that control.
The same who revealed methods, the subordinated to the workers, which will serve to find out the information,
"planning will also later serve to establish control over the practical process of proas duction. And through organising to take and workers learn the details of management of production:
and the
"workers' school 1p, pled economy.
best
(Path.' the for socialism as a workers' management of the economy nce the capitalist class has beel with expropriatec
The accounts individual precisely the sort of situation toI which the demand, tor the abolition of business secrecy/open the books,
Socialist Viewpoint, No. 4, March 1985. Page 32
Lenin addresses 3rd Congress of Comintern. the concern of society. The motivation offered for the principle of business 'secrets' is ostensibly, as in the epoch of liberal capitalism. tional that of free 'competition'. In reality, the trusts keep no secrets from one another. The business secrets of the present epoch are part of a persisagainst the interests of society. Prostruggles, will continue as private owners of the social means of production can hide from proconsumers the machinations of exploitation, robindustry,
For the working class, information essential in order to establish organisational same specialists" much use the information, the banks the control becomes a
This is essential if we see the fight real fight for
The immediate political situation is forming capitalism.
and the other demands of the Comintern's trade union action pIogramme, and the Trotskyist Transi-
Programme of 1938 were designed. The working ckass is on the defensive, and the bourgeoisie counts on dividng one section from another. What is essential is to find the way to overcome these divisions, and through this to turn the defensive first into a victorious defence, and then into a new offensive against bourgeois class rule.
The slogan of opening the books is, in this context, not by any means only relevant to the miners. Equally in the struggle in defence of jobs in every
For the public services provided by local government, the question of information is of great importance. Labour Councils are asking their workers, and local inhabitants to take action to defend... the councillors' right to impose taxes (rates). And in the midst of this struggle the councillors want to control what information the workers and the Labour movement gets. At the same time there is great ignorance as to how local government finance winds up in the coffers of the big and private industrial suppliers. The demand for openness in the making of the budget, openness in all Council proceedings, • and generally the opening of the Coun cils' books is essential for an effective united fight-back against the Tories' cuts. It can also provide the beginning of subordination of the Councils, not to the, bourgeois Parliamentary State, but to the local working class,
Council workers into workers' councils that will challen f power privilege
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