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(12) MORE ON THE PROBLEM FOR THE WORKING CLASS
Both the dockers and the miners (earlier this year) called on the active support of the working class as a whole in order to win sectional concessions from the ruling class for their own and not for the class as a whole. In the case of the miners, the working class as a whole responded because of the 1926 General Strike: the connection between what it learnt then and the fact that it had been the miners in 1926. The working class as a whole responded for the dockers because 5 of them were imprisoned by the state under a law which the working class had already taken a stand against as aimed at eroding its position in the class struggle. (During the Miners Strike, arrests were made for obstruction, breaches of the peace etc without producing the same response from the working class. These are accepted as 'legitimate' because the ruling class uses them as only a limited deterrent or irritant, the bounds of their usage have been socially established.)
In neither of these has the working class as a whole benefited from the concessions made by the bourgeoisie. The real wage level of the class is not any higher; its political consciousness has not advanced. Both the dockers and the miners could not have won the concessions they did without the working class as a whole actively behind them. This is because the market forces of capitalism are working against them. It is not because their employers are more evil or parsimonious than the car employers who pay higher wages and offer better job security. It is because the commodities produced or services offered are not in demand by the economy, cheaper, mere efficient alternatives produced by other workers are available.
The result of the working class' stand for the miners and dockers is twofold:
(l) it enforces a standard of fairness and equality re wages and job security which otherwise would not have been enforced
(2) it holds back the development of the productive forces. It is possible for the working class to enforce the first without the second; there is nothing in the balance of class forces which prevents it from doing so: indeed the bourgeoisie have an interest in granting the first if the productive forces are also developing: capitalism will be healthier.
But, the sentimental socialists retort, the working class has no interest in a healthy capitalism; the worse state capitalism is in the better - the sooner the collapse of capitalism and the revolution. If this argument were valid, socialists would have opposed the introduction of the Ten Hour Day and the working class' struggle to achieve it. Because as Marx stated in Capital Vol 1, without the Ten hour day the working class would not have survived, it would have reached its physical limits and been rendered unable to produce because debilitated and broken. Then capitalism would have collapsed because there would have been no one to produce surplus value. Then we would have had the revolution without the working class. Similarly, the power loom or the steam engine should never have been introduced because they meant redundancies and the loss of livelihood. Keynesianism should never have provided for a higher level of consumption of the working class in order to ensure a higher level of employment because it has meant getting rid of the trade cycle which was to have been capitalism's death knell - the big slump will never come.
The fact is that the development of the productive forces under capitalism is the only alternative to stagnation under capitalism if the political consciousness of the working class and its power is not sufficient to destroy capitalism. In Britain, the working class has the power arising from the production process at present, but not the political consciousness. The working class can only gain from the development of the productive forces in this situation. Socialism will not be a move backward to the 'golden age' where everyone owns his own plot of land and is an independent producer; if it were, then the working class would indeed have an interest in capitalist stagnation. Marx argued that socialism was an inevitable development out of capitalism because it would be able to develop the productive forces where capitalism could not. In the present situation, the working class as a whole is in a position to demand that dockers and miners who are out of jobs because of the development of the productive forces be employed at the same or better wage rates than before at producing commodities which do advance the productive forces. [2] This is a demand that the bourgeoisie must concede if capitalism is to survive - it arises out of the "material life of society". What is lacking for its implementation is the development of the political consciousness of the working class.
[2] In 'the present situation', perhaps. But not when jobs can be outsourced to other, cheaper parts of the world. - PB