Questions of the Day (part 11)

Socialism and the less developed countries

'DO WE HAVE TO WAIT for the last Hottentot?' used to be a question asked of socialists. Behind it was the suggestion that the lack of industrial and social development in parts of the world might delay the establishment of Socialism. This is sometimes called the problem of the 'backward' countries but is more properly the problem of uneven development

The short answer is, No. There is no need for the whole world to be industrialised nor for the whole world population to be turned into propertyless wage-workers before Socialism can be established. We might add that perhaps the few remaining Hottentots in South Africa are wondering if they will have to wait for the last white man.

Let us get rid of one mistaken view straightaway. The less developed countries are not lagging behind because the people who live there are inherently inferior to those who live in the industrial countries. Racialism has no scientific basis. All human beings are members of the same animal species, homo sapians, and all are quite capable of absorbing modern culture in a short period of time. Such cultural differences as at present exist between the peoples of the world are not the result of different natures, but of different environments. It so happened that the peoples of Europe were the first to go through the industrial revolution and, as subsequent development of the other countries has shown, the people of other countries, given the opportunity, are just as capable of acquiring modern industrial skills. Indeed, they contributed in many diverse ways to the later development themselves. In Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, centres of highly-advanced industry are developing manned from top to bottom by local workers. It follows from this, if anyone ever doubted it, that all human beings are capable of understanding and operating Socialism.

The initial material basis for Socialism is the world-wide industrial organisation that capitalism has built up. The bulk of the wealth produced in the world today is produced by the co-operative labour of the millions of people who are employed to operate this organisation. Capitalism has brought into being the working class in whose economic interest it is to establish Socialism. This is why the strength of the socialist movement will come from the workers in the advanced capitalist parts of the world.

However, industrial development is by no means evenly spread over the world. In Europe, North America, Australasia, Japan, Russia, the great majority of the population live and work under capitalist conditions of production for profit and the wages system, while in some parts of the world capitalist industry is only an oasis in the midst of a desert of backward agriculture. In between are countries in varying stages of industrial development. As yet not all of mankind are propertyless wage-workers, many of the remainder being peasants exploited by landlords and moneylenders.

To say that a major part of mankind are not living under capitalist conditions as wage-earners is not to say that their lives are not affected by that system. Price fluctuations in the world market directly touch on their standard of living and they cannot escape the consequences of wars between capitalist powers. In view of this and in view of the fact that the bulk of the world's wealth is produced in the capitalist parts, we can say that capitalism is the predominant social system in the world today.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain rejects the suggestion that the workers must wait for capitalist production to predominate everywhere before trying to establish Socialism. A socialist society has been possible for many years now, for as many in fact as its industrial basis has existed. As soon as the workers of the world want to, they can establish the common ownership of the means of production and distribution and bring planned production to meet human needs.

Capitalism on a world scale has long been outdated so that its coming to the industrially undeveloped countries is not now a necessary stage in economic progress. Socialism involves the emancipation of all mankind and is the solution to the problems of the people of those countries as much as it is to the problems of the workers of the long-standing capitalist countries. When Socialism has been established there is no reason why these parts should not be developed under altogether different circumstances from those imposed by capitalism.

Whatever may be the long-term results, the immediate impact of capitalism on pre-industrial societies has everywhere been disastrous. Beginning with the slave trade in capitalism's early days it has now brought the world almost to the brink of famine. Capitalism breaks up existing societies in order to get the workers to labour on the plantations, down the mines and in the factories it sets up. The overall result has been terrible human suffering.

The Socialist Party does not accept that all this suffering is necessary and that people must still undergo it for the sake of a better future.

Because capitalism has everywhere outplayed its progressive role in developing the means of production, distribution and communication, the Socialist Party does not support the capitalist movements styling themselves 'national liberation' and 'anti-imperialist' which aim to gain political power in the less developed countries and by means of a ruthless policy of State capitalism (miscalled Socialism) to modernise and industrialise the areas they govern. Many of these movements, and the regimes they set up, are modelled on the Bolsheviks who as a determined minority seized power in Russia in 1917 and by a policy of dictatorship built up a modern capitalist economy with themselves as the new privileged and exploiting dass. As far as the people they aim to lead and govern are concerned, their coming to power represents merely a change of rulers and the prospect of being turned from peasants into exploited wage workers. Once again this has nothing to do with Socialism, and is quite unnecessary since the common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production and distribation on a world-wide scale has long been possible.

In many of the less developed countries political democracy does not yet exist. The governments there, whether representing the old landowning or the emerging capitalist class, stifle criticism and threaten the organisation of opposition parties and even of trade unions as plots to overthrow them. In such circumstances socialist activity is very difficult and the workers (being only a minority of the population), besides trying to organise into a socialist party ought also to struggle to get the freedom to organise into trade unions and win elementary political rights. As in the advanced capitalist countries, however, this should still involve opposition to all other parties in order that the socialist issue shall be kept free from confusion.

Socialists are sometimes asked about another aspect of uneven development. This relates to the possibility that the socialist movement could be larger in one country than in another and at the stage of being able to gain control of the machinery of government before the socialist movements elsewhere were as far advanced.

Leaving aside for the moment the question as to whether such a situation is likely to arise, we can say that it presents no problems when viewed against the world-wide character of the socialist movement. Because capitalist governments are organised on a territorial basis each socialist organisation has the task of seeking democratically to gain political control in the country where it operates. This however is merely an organisational convenience; there is only one socialist movement, of which the separate socialist organisations are constituent parts. When the socialist movement grows larger its activities will be fully co-ordinated through its world-wide organisation. Given a situation in which the organised socialists of only a part of the world were in a position to gain control of the machinery of government, the decision about the action to be taken would be one for the whole of the socialist movement in the light of all the circumstances at the time.

There remains the question whether in fact there will be material differences in the rate of growth of the sections of the world socialist movement. At present, throughout the advanced capitalist countries, the vast majority, because they are not yet socialist, share certain basic ideas about how society can and should be run. They accept that goods must be produced for sale with a view to profit; some men must work for wages while others must be employers; there must be armed forces and frontiers; and it is impossible to do without money and buying and selling. These ideas are held by people all over the world and it is this which accounts for the basic stability of capitalism at the present time.

It was Engels who remarked that a revolutionary period exists when people begin to realise that what they once thought was impossible can in fact be done. When people realise that it is possible to have a world without frontiers, without wages and profits, without employers and armed forces, then the socialist revolution will not be far away. But this advance in political understanding will be achieved by the same people who now think that capitalism is the only possible system. Because workers all over the world live under basically similar conditions and because of modern systems of communication, when they begin to see through capitalism this will apply everywhere. There is no reason at all why workers in one country should see this while those in others do not.

The very idea of Socialism, a new world society, is clearly and unequivocally a rejection of all nationalism. Those who become socialists will realise this and also the importance of uniting with workers in all countries. The socialist idea is not one that could spread unevenly.

Thus the socialist parties will be in a position to gain political control in the industrially advanced countries within a short period of each other. It is conceivable that in some less developed countries, where the working class is weak in numbers, the privileged rulers may be able to retain their class position for a little longer. But as soon as the workers had won in the advanced countries they would give all the help needed to their brothers elsewhere.

To sum up, we can say that the less developed countries might present Socialism with a problems, but they do not constitute a barrier to the immediate establishment of Socialism as a world system. Nationalism and colonial independence are not matters that ought to concern workers. Everywhere, in the less advanced as well as the more advanced countries, the workers should be striving for Socialism.

Questions of the Day (part 8)

Trade Unionism

THE SOCIALIST PARTY and the trade unions have a common origin in the class struggle. The former is the organised expression on the political field of the conscious recognition of that struggle by the workers. Its growth is the measure of their determination to end the struggle by converting the means of living into common property, thus establishing a harmony of interests within society.

The class struggle, however, does not commence with the conscious recognition of itas a fact. Long before the origin of the Socialist Party of Great Britain the class struggle was in progress. Strikes and lock-outs, machine-breaking and penal legislation have testified to the antagonism of interests in modern society for overa century.

With the rise of the factory system the workers found themselves involved in the struggle in grim earnest. It was no choice of theirs, but thrust upon them with relentless and increasing force with every step forward in industrial evolution. The Luddite machine-smashing in the early nineteenth century was typical of this phase of the conflict, but with further experience the need for some other form of organisation impressed itself upon the workers. The grouping together of the workers in the factories provided a basis for this. They began to realise that the machines had come to stay, and that the former independence which they had enjoyed, while still often working in their homes under the old system, had gone for ever. Hence the trade unions arose, uniting the workers in similar or allied occupations in order to obtain from the employers the best possible terms.

From the first, the strike was their most important weapon. Under the handicraft system, in its closing stages, workers sold the articles they produced to merchants and had to bargain with them about the price. Later all this was changed and the price of the workers' labour-power itself became the subject of dispute. They sold their energies by the hour, day or week, and the system of piece¬work, which was retained here and there, disguised but did not alter that fact. The workers had lost all substantial freedom, and their only alternative to working on the terms of the employer was starvation. Hence the right to withhold that labour-power in conjunction with their fellows became an essential means of resistance. Without it the workers would have been crushed beyond hope of recovery, and would have become, as Marx argued in his pamphlet, Value, Price and Profit, quite incapable of "initiating any large movement".

From the outset the trade unions found arrayed against them, not only the individual employers or groups against whom they were directly struggling, but the forces of the entire employing class, as represented by the State. For long the unions were subject to legal persecution as unlawful conspiracies and monopolies, and only by dint of considerable perseverance were those obstacles overcome. The workers indeed had their backs to the wall and only the fact that the unions were rooted in the new conditions saved them from annihilation.

By degrees, however, the employing class saw the uselessness of trying to destroy the new organisations and the unions were granted a legal status. In the course of time the employers discovered that 'respectable' labour leaders, whether in the field of industry or politics, were useful in helping to maintain industrial peace which they needed.

Judicious flattery aad the hankerings after political office have stimulated the ambitions of numerous leaders whom the workers have all too readily trusted. Underlying this process however has been the steady progress of capitalist industry. The constant developments in machinery, methods of working and financial organisation
of the employers have for generations set strict limits upon the effectiveness of the workers' struggles.

As the magnitude of the forces engaged in the struggle on either side increases, so the intervention of the State in industrial disputes is rendered more certain. The necessity for maintaining order on behalf of capitalism leaves governments no alternative. During the six years, 1945 to 1951, the Labour government on a number of occasions used troops to do the work of men on strike. This happened during the strike of workers at some London eletricity power stations in December 1949 and when London dockers struck in July 1949 and again in April 1950, and Bristol dockers in May 1949, when gasworks maintenance men came out on strike in September of the same year, and at Smithfield market in June and July.

These strikes, like almost all of the strikes that took place after compulsory arbitration was established in 1940 under Order 1305 were 'unofficial', that is, they were not backed by the men's unions and were also in fact illegal.

The Labour government, which had hitherto refrained from taking action on illegal strikes, prosecuted ten of the men involved in the gasworks dispute. They were sentenced to one month's imprisonment though on appeal the sen¬tences were altered to fines of £50 in each case. Because of the difficulty of enforcing the law against large numbers of such strikers, and in face of trade union demands for the repeal of Order 1305, the Labour government just before it went out of office in 1951 repealed the Order and made strikes and lockouts legal again.

When, late in 1977, the firemen came out on strike to get a pay increase greater than the 10 per cent which the Callaghan government was trying to enforce on workers generally, the government at once brought in the army to break the strike.

It is argued by defenders of arbitration that when workers have the legal right to submit their claims to an arbitration tribunal then strikes are unnecessary because the tribunal, being an 'independent' body, will give a satisfactory decision. This, however, is based on muddled thinking. It is true that the tribunals can be independent in the sense that they are not instructed by the employers or the government as to what awards they are to make on each claim, but they cannot and do not disregard governmental statements of general policy on wages.

In practice arbitration bodies exist for the purpose of preventing industrial disputes from taking the form of stoppages of work, and their awards on wage claims are bound to be influenced by the attitude of the workers. If workers were to abandon all idea of strikes the employers and the arbitration bodies alike would reduce still further the amounts they were prepared to offer. The strike remains the workers' indispensable weapon.

The relatively high levels of employment for some years after the second world war put the trade unions in a strong bargaining position. Unable to rely on widespread unemployment to hold wages down, governments sought to do this by means of an 'incomes policy'. The Tories relied only on moral appeals and them 'pay pause' was ignored by the unions. But when Labour was returned in 1964 some unions dropped this opposition to wage restraint and within a few months, along with representatives of the government and the employers, had signed a Declaration of Intent agreeing in principle to restraint.

Soon the Labour government took tougher measures. In 1966 they brought in the first of a series of Prices and Incomes Acts that gave them power to ban or delay negotiated wage increases and to fine any who defied such a ban. Many workers had their increases delayed but, although some seemed to break the law, the Labour government did not take any to court as they had done in 1950.

A new phase of wage restraint opened up under the Labour Government elected in 1974. The Labour (and Tory) policy of seeking to prevent unemployment by expansion of government expenditure — in effect, inflation — had completely failed. Unemployment rose to nearly 1 1/2 millions in 1976 but inflation had reached dangerous levels and, in order to maintain British competitiveness in world markets, it became increasingly urgent to curb it. The Labour Government negotiated a new restraint with the T.U.C. named "the social contract" designed, according to the Government, to hold down prices by limiting wage increases. It had little or no effect on prices — the rise of the price level between the return of the Labour Government in February 1974 and February 1977 was 71 per cent and it was still rising fast. Its effect on wage levels, however, was drastic. In the years 1974-77 'real wages', that is the purchasing power of money wages, had fallen materially. According to figures provided by the Trsasary, the purchasing power of the take-home pay of workers on the average wage fell by 12 per cent between December 1974 and February 1977 (The Times, 16 May 1977).

The workers' standard of living fell in the trade depression which began in 1974. just as it had in the trade depressions of the nineteenth century when openly capitalist Liberal or Tory Governments were in power.

The effectiveness of trade union action has clearly been blunted by support for the Labour Party, a link that has been justified by saying that Labour is the political arm of the trade union movement. But the experience of all the Labour administrations of capitalism since the second world war has shown that, far from using political power to force employers to grant wage increases, Labour governments had used it against workers to bring about wage restraint.

In the early months of 1969, the Wilson government announced its intention to push through legislation which would have empowered a minister to impose a twenty-eight day 'conciliation pause' on certain strikes and to enforce it by fines on workers who refused to comply with an order to continue at work. Only in face of widespread trade union opposition, and the threat of some Labour M.P.s to vote against it, was the proposed legislation dropped.

Trade union effectiveness has also been blunted by the extent to which the unions have been drawn into the administration of capitalism. During and since the second world war it has become customary for individual unions and the Trades Union Congress to associate themselves with the government and government departments in carrying out government policy. In return for consultation the TUC and the executives of the unions are expected to endorse policies and to undertake to recommend them to their members.

It may be argued that some of these activities are a logical development of the functions of organisations formed to protect the workers under capitalism but it is obvious that they, like the link with the Labour Party, distract attention from the principal purpose of the trade unions: to resist the pressure of the capitalist class on the workers' conditions.

What, then, is to be the future of the unions? At present appear to have become jumping-off grounds for Labour politicians, and to that extent less useful to the workers: but there is no obvious reason why, with the spread of understanding among their members, they should not be valuable centres of resistance to capitalist attack.

As we have seen, the trade unions arose from the resistance to the pressure on the workers in the early days of capitalism. They necessarily took the form most convenient at the moment, and have been slow to adapt themselves to changing circumstances. They have tended to overemphasise the distinctions between workers of different occupations and skills, origin, and sex. The Socialist Party, organised as it is for the emancipation of the workers as a class, insists upon the necessity for subordinating all distinctions to class solidarity. On the political field the workers of all countries have but one interest, and that involves winning political power and dispossessing the capitalist class. The supreme conflict with that class leaves no room for sectional antagonisms between workers.

Syndicalists (a name derived from the French word for trade union) argue that workers need not bother with political action to dispossess the capitalists and that instead they should organise into unions and in the course of a general strike 'take and hold' the means of production. Syndicalism is based on a dangerous illusion and is opposed by the Socialist Party. Though a general strike may be useful under some circumstances to resist attacks on living standards, it cannot be used to overthrow capitalism. The capitalists' monopoly over the means of production rests upon their control of political power. To leave this in their hands while attempting to carry out the social revolution would be folly and bound to lead to unnecessary bloodshed and suffering.

Syndicalism also, with such slogans as 'the factories to the workers' and 'the mines to the miners', suggests that capitalist control of industry should be replaced by that of a federation of industrial unions or workers' councils. This is misleading and shows the futility of drawing prints for a future society, since this proposal merely reflects occupational and sectional distinctions of capitalism.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, while recommending trade unionists to offer their utmost resistance to the worsening of conditions, never fails to point out that under capitalism the pressure on the workers is inevitable. It is not enough, therefore, merely to apply the brake to these worsening conditions. The system that gives rise to them must be abolished.

Further Reading
Trade Unions SPGB pamphlet, 1980 (.pdf)
Syndicalism - its origin and weakness Socialist Standard 1986 (.pdf)