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CLASS STRUGGLE AND INTRA-CLASS STRUGGLE
First reactions of the Government and the bourgeoisie to the working class's victories were to attack the 'monopoly power' of the trade unions and demand that it be curbed. However, this campaign against 'the big' drew no response whatsoever from 'the public'. Why? Precisely because the 'public' are the trade unions. The working class can see no reason to alter the present form of the economic struggle whereby each section of the class goes to get all that it can from the employers. The working class will not support any attempt to defeat one section because it recognises that if one section is curbed by 'public opinion', all others become vulnerable to the same kind of pressure.
Leapfrogging wage demands, parity demands, and the maintenance of differentials are all crucial if the present free market system of the economic struggle is to work. The ability of each section to extract wage increases depends on its economic power. When the demands of one section conflict with another (e.g. the dockers and lorry drivers or registered and unregistered dockers or the boilermakers and the engineers) both sections fight it out. In practice such conflicts have been solved by the employers or the Government who have been unwilling to see production disrupted seriously by such disputes.
The principle that the lower paid (the weakest sections) should be better paid is accepted by the class as a whole. However, in practice this has meant that the lower paid are granted increases at the expense of profits or redundancies (with higher productivity) because the working class has insisted that differentials are maintained - each section has a right to make their own labour contract. The working class approach to the economic struggle is one of formal equality of opportunity. And as any Marxist knows the formal equal right is always given its material content by the substance of power. The most powerful sections of the working class have been able to drive the hardest bargains. This approach is being further developed and extended by the working class. Those sections of it who have previously been weak organisationally are now becoming better organised, better disciplined, better able to stand up for themselves and hold their own - not only against the employers but in practice against the other sections of the working class. The best example is white collar workers in engineering. It is undeniable that if the wages of white collar workers are low in a firm, it is better able to pay larger increases to its manual workers. Thus, the increasing militancy of the white collar workers reduces the amount available for manual workers and in turn forces the manual workers to become even more militant (heighten competition) to gain wage increases (the employer is less able and thus less willing to grant them). Nor has this increased militancy of the 'weaker' sections been challenged by the stronger parts of the working class. It is accepted that it is their right.
It is precisely the logic of this situation that confronted the bourgeoisie in late June. The 'monopoly power' of the trade unions was not going to be curbed by 'public opinion' because the working class supported the present system of competitive collective bargaining with the full solidarity of their class. However, if the present rate of money wage increases continued, British capitalism would
(a) price itself out of the world market. Since Britain depends on exports to survive this would spell economic disaster.
(b) The alternative would be to float the pound ever downward to keep British exports competitive. However, this would be unacceptable to the rest of the capitalist world as currencies are at present so interdependent that it would rock an already unstable international boat. And even if this course were possible it would mean that imports would become so expensive on the home market that manufacturing costs would increase steeply and the cost of living would rocket as imported necessities would also rocket. This would be unacceptable to the working class and also spell economic disaster.
(c) The profits of industry are already too low to finance increases in production (which after all are dependent on having capital to purchase new machinery and plant. The capital comes from profits).
Therefore unless the present rate of money wage increases [sic. 'unless the present rate of money wage increases could be curbed'? - PB], production and the society organised around production would collapse. The only alternative was to accept the monopoly power of the trade unions and attempt to consciously regulate it - not curb or repress it, but give the society some form of conscious control over it.