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SHIFT IN POWER OR "DEMOCRATIC FACADE"?
If Bullock had concocted a scheme to circumvent the problem he would have produced waste paper. There are those who dream about the establishment of a structure separate from the trade unions through which the workers might be drawn into the problems of management, and through which the workforce might be atomised and the power of the unions diminished. But even if such a scheme were established, it would prove to be a shadow of the trade unions. The workers know as well as the employers where their power lies. Bullock assumed the futility of such an exercise to be self- evident.
The Minority Report proposes a system of Supervisory Boards, with minority worker representation. That is the capitalist proposal. Its hope is that worker representation on showy Supervisory Boards would engender a sense of responsibility on the factory floor while preserving the Board of Directors for capital. This notion is pathetic rather than vicious. Where power is not involved there will be no development.
There are some on the trade union side who are opposed to worker directors but are in favour of equal or majority worker representation on the Supervisory Boards - the GMWU for example. Since the Supervisory Board would not be responsible for running the company, the union would not be undertaking any responsibility that might conflict with its wage bargaining function by participating in it, and through participation in it the union might gain some extra leverage in wage bargaining. The GMWU says clearly that it would participate in Supervisory Boards as an extension of free collective bargaining. Since substantial betrayals are scarcely possible these days, it could hardly participate in Supervisory Boards in any other way.
The Bullock proposals would involve trade union power in responsibility for the management of the company, therefore it would cause relevant and substantial developments to take place. The first and most obvious developments would be a massive further decline in the status of the capitalist, and a further growth in the social status of the trade union representative. But these two events would signify the beginning rather than the end of the process of development. They would set the scene in which the play would be enacted, rather than be themselves the play. They would only be the prologue.
But before we go into that, let's consider the argument that Bullock would not involve such a shift in power. That is what is argued by Neil Kinnock in a New Statesman article (February 11, 1977). "Bullock's recommendations provide a democratic facade for capitalist hierarchy", he declares. [1] He arrives at this conclusion by interpreting Bullock's 2x + y as: workers = lx, and capital = lx + y. The "reasoning" which leads to this conclusion flies in the face of all common sense. Since Kinnock is not a fool, we must assume that his conclusion followed from extraneous political calculations, and that he filled in the reasoning as best he could.
[1] Kinnock's argument is repeated by Ken Coates and Tony Topham in Workers' Control Bulletin No 35. Coates and Topham oppose the Bullock proposals as leading spokesmen for the Institute for Workers' Control; but there is considerable support for Bullock's proposals within the Institute.
In a recent television interview about Roy Jenkins' departure to Europe, Kinnock said that Jenkins would never have made Prime Minister because he was not enough of a demagogue. Kinnock's misrepresentation of the Bullock Report is no doubt part of the necessary demagogy of politics, designed to enhance Kinnock's radical image, and based on the assumption that there will continue to be substantial union opposition to it.
Kinnock's position is, of course, much more "radical" than the trade union position into which it dovetails, as is demonstrated by the following comment:
"Some trade unionists - seeing the conflict of labour and capital as insoluble, necessary and perhaps familiar and comfortable - are content with the negative sanctions available to them as collective bargainers in a free society."
His position is that unless worker directors are in a majority on the board, industrial democracy is only a face lift for capitalism.
The truth is that the opposition of the mere "collective bargainers" to workers' control is much more realistic, more carefully thought out, and more grounded in class interest than Kinnock's opposition to Bullock. There is ground for opposing Bullock because it would cause a shift in power with incalculable consequences, but it is sheer demagoguery to oppose it on the ground that it would not cause a shift in power.
There is a basis in the material interest of the working class for trade union conservatism, beside which the rhetoric of a politician on the make is sheer frivolity. Of course politicians will not rise to the top of the Labour Party without judicious demagoguery. It is astonishing that Jenkins got as far as he did in view of the fact that he was morally crippled by a truth complex. And it would no doubt be a good thing if Kinnock made it into the Cabinet. Nevertheless, he is at present on the make and is talking rubbish about the Bullock Report.
If trade union activity were somehow going to be limited to Board representation there might be some cause for concern about "2x + y". Since trade unions will be free to function as hitherto, as well as being represented on equal terms with capital on the Board, "2x + y" has the virtue of providing for continuity in industry while a shift in power is taking place. It is hardly conceivable that the unions would agree to "y" being shareholders' representatives. But if they did, wage bargaining would continue as normal and workers' control would be assumed not to be in being for practical purposes.
Kinnock says that the "y" element would be suitably filled from the House of Lords, and would "have the same function in industrial democracy as that exercised by their Lordships in parliamentary democracy now, namely to ensure that the workers win as rarely as possible" - which is two-fold demagoguery.
The only condition on the "y" element is that it should be filled by people acceptable to both workers and shareholders. Kinnock scorns the notion that there is such an animal in being. If there isn't, the Bullock formula is not functional and will not operate. What most certainly will not happen is that the shareholders will have lx + y.
According to the formal ideology of wage bargaining, mutually agreeable directors ought not to exist. But reality is generally understood to be more complex than this ideology, which is not intended to be descriptive of the entire situation. It is highly improbable that mutually agreed directors, who would represent the pragmatics of the situation, and who would help break deadlocks by real compromises, cannot be found,
Kinnock implies that compromises would bolster up the capitalists, which is absurd. If worker directors began striking functional compromises with shareholders' directors about the management of companies, it is obviously the role of the capitalist that would be evolving out of existence. And the shareholders would then be obviously ripe for a final measure of expropriation, which is not the case now.
"It is as if Edmund Burke and not Alan Bullock had led the committee". Which only adds demagogic history to demagogic politics and economics. Burke contributed at least as much as any other individual, and much more than his politically and theoretically incompetent opponents, to the evolution of this wonderful and flexible representative democracy of which we are all so proud (are we not?). Who now could summon up the interest to read the speeches of Charles James Fox, who remained true to the Whig shibboleths after Burke went over to the Pitt Tories? The striking of real and necessary compromises between representatives of the real social powers in such a way as to make continuous social evolution possible is what Burke stood for more effectively than any other political theorist. And has not Bullock always been an admirer of the working class Burke: Ernest Bevin?
If Bullock's formula is not functional, what is the alternative? A simple collision between workers' and shareholders' representatives, with the workers having 51% of the Board? It is implicit in Kinnock's argument that management is simply capitalist. It follows that the existing ownership-management bloc must be got rid of before workers' control of management becomes effective. Workers' control of management must therefore begin to operate in a managerial vacuum.
An interval of industrial chaos would then be necessary, in which managerial skills, (which it is deceptive to pretend do not exist, or are very easily acquired), are developed out of the labour force. The managerial skills which did develop would undoubtedly be crude by comparison with those of the bourgeois management which had been got rid of. And the new managers would undoubtedly acquire very extensive bureaucratic power, due to the rarity of their skill and the obvious lack of any alternative except the breakdown of industry. The Soviet bureaucracy did not develop unnecessarily. An industrial bureaucracy in Britain would not be so absolute, but it would exercise far greater control than anybody is able to do at the moment, and would be a lot cruder.
If management is not detachable from capital, if it is impossible that worker directors should be able to influence portions of existing management and acquire the ability to control industries competently over a period, workers' control is not a very attractive prospect. It would be better to stop phrase-mongering about it, put up with capitalist management for as long as necessary, and have industries run by more or less the same people in the guise of state bureaucrats thereafter, with the trade unions concentrating on wage packets. Anything else would belong to the distant future.