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CONSERVATIVE COMMUNISTS
It is not perhaps surprising that the Communist Party of Great Britain has taken an uncompromising stand against progress and working class advance. The CPGB has never had any reputation as a radical innovating party pushing forward to boldly go where no man has gone before but this time it has excelled itself.
Opposing immediate implementation of industrial democracy, a substantial step towards workers' control and socialism, the CPGB say:
'full workers' control can only be developed in a socialist society' (CPGB Evidence to the Committee of Inquiry on Industrial Democracy)
Just what they mean by full workers' control and socialism and just how they see the relationship between the two is left conveniently unanswered. The phrase seems to have been thrown in purely to provide a supposedly radical gloss to what is essentially a conservative position. Also the CPGB always has to keep something in hand to recommend its 'socialist' wonderland to workers. All other aspects of its programme, bureaucratic nationalisation in a little England context, have been discredited. Only the slogan 'workers' control under socialism' retains any idealist potential for the CPGB, simply because it refuses to examine the real implications of the steps necessary to achieve such a desirable situation.
The CPGB's stated reasons for rejecting the TUC s proposals for 50% worker representation on the boards of private companies are downright dishonest. They say:
'We are completely opposed to the concept of Worker Directors and the Supervisory Boards. Such a concept runs counter to the whole experience of the labour movement in Britain and does not offer anything that could not be achieved by the extension of collective bargaining and the strengthening of the trade unions.
'Secondly we believe that this concept embodies a number of dangers and could in fact lead to a restriction of industrial democracy. Among the supporters of this method are to be found individuals and organisations with a history of opposition to the trade unions and collective bargaining and who see the worker director system as a means of enmeshing the workers in the manning of private industry based on production for profit. They imply that differences of opinion between private capital and the work force can be resolved by discussion and vote,
'We would also note that encouragement of this concept of democracy is coming particularly from the Commission of the EEC in their Draft Statutes for the European Company and the Draft Fifth Directive - a body notorious for its bureaucratic approach to problems.
'Likewise we would note that in the country with the greatest experience of this form of industrial democracy, the German Federal Republic, it has not notably improved the workers power to influence or change decisions, it has led to the weakening of the trade union organisation at factory level ...'
Whether the EEC Commission is more or less bureaucratic in its approach to problems than the CPGB is open to debate, what is clear however is that there is no comparison between the TUC's proposals and the system of co-determination at present (until 1977) operating in West Germany. The TUC is demanding 50% representation with elections through existing trade union machinery. Worker-participation in West Germany is much more limited. Throughout most of industry workers' representatives have only l/3rd of seats on the supervisory boards. Even in the Coal and Steel industries where workers formally have parity with employers representatives, only three out of ten seats made available to workers would go to union representatives, six directors would be elected by the entire workforce (organised or not) and one seat would go to a representative of the white-collar employees. Such a system has only the most tenuous links with what the TUC is proposing. Also, whatever the CPGB chooses to believe, German workers have not suffered unduly from co-determination, limited and all as it is. Working class living standards are higher and the Trade Union movement has if anything more influence on national economic planning, than in Britain.
Also, contrary to the CPGB's simplistic view, the worker director system implies that 'differences of opinion between private capital and the workforce' (i.e. the class struggle, a term the CPGB prefer to forget) can be resolved by the workers backing up their representatives' arguments with the traditional weapons of the shop floor and subordinating management to their interests.
As for the composition of the pro- and anti- worker director camps, if the CPGB looks carefully it will find that those in favour of that system are the most progressive section of the TUC and Labour Party. Those against it include the CPGB itself, the AUEW, EETPU, GMWU and also the Confederation of British Industry, the Industrial Participation Association (an employers organisation), the Industrial Society (an employers organisation), the Engineering Employers Federation and the Steel Industry Management Association (a middle-management union not affiliated to the TUC) some of which bodies are not exactly noted for their enthusiastic commitment to trade unionism and the working class interest.
What the concept of worker directors offers that cannot be achieved by a simple extension of the scope of collective bargaining is the chance for workers themselves to make, not just influence or veto, but MAKE, decisions. And that is something which as the CPGB says runs counter to the experience of the Labour movement of any country including the Soviet Union in the era of Lenin and Stalin. As we pointed out in our policy statement 'Workers' Control in Britain'
'The Russian experience, while it is or great value to the general development of working class politics, is of more limited value to the investigation of the particular question of workers' control. It was not the exhaustion of the potentialities of capitalist economy that led to the socialist revolution in Russia, but the failure of bourgeois politics in a country that was economically ripe for extensive capitalist development. Learning from West European experience the small industrial working class in Russia developed a more capable political party than the bourgeoisie, and took political power in a country whose general economic and cultural conditions were more appropriate to capitalist than socialist development. Furthermore, the small working class that existed in 1917 was disrupted in the civil war and the war of intervention during the following years, so that it had been 'declassed'. In 1921 there began the development of a new working class out of the peasantry under the tutelage of a socialist state (which included large numbers of the old working class). Circumstances dictated that a system of "one man management" be operated in factories. During the Stalin period this system could not be superseded. No sooner had a modern industrial economy been built than another massive disruption was caused by the Nazi invasion ... In Britain workers' control within capitalism is being put on the agenda by the very development of the capitalist economy. This means that the British working class has to deal with a situation that did not occur in Russia because of the political failure of the bourgeoisie while the capitalist economy was in its infancy: hence the limited value of the Russian revolution in clarifying this question of workers' control.'
The class organisation of British workers has now reached a degree of perfection unmatched in any other country at any time. Its very strength and coherence argues now for substantial progress towards a form of socialist organisation which, in keeping with working class traditions, would strengthen democracy at every level in the society.
This is a time for radical change; not the dogmatic hangovers and fears the CPGB offers along with insistence on centralised control of the economy as a substitute for genuine advance. The CPGB s attitude to industrial democracy in Britain today serves only to show how deeply conservatism is embedded in the society.
Nor does the CPGB's slight nod towards progress in the nationalised industries absolve it of the charge of cowardly conservatism. No-one looking at the hopeless state of the public sector would believe for a moment that the CPGB's much vaunted principle of social control has led to any substantial, let alone desirable change in the organisation and performance of the industries concerned. Yet, according to the CPGB, workers in a majority position in a private firm would immediately demand nationalisation and would surrender control to representatives of government, consumers and local authorities. Such nonsense on top of a rejection of the only practical strategy to hand for working class advance merely adds insult to injury.
All in all, whatever troubles employers may have to face in future they can rest assured that her Majesty's loyal Communist Party will put no obstacles in the way of Britain's stable and orderly progress to the bottom of the scrap heap.