WeeklyWorker

25.04.2001

Small businesses

Provide answers for all

The policy conference of the Socialist Alliance, held in Birmingham on March 10, constituted a significant step forward for left unity and the cause of the working class. It was, however, marked by a crammed agenda and the need to severely restrict the time taken up by debate. As a result one of the many sections of the policy document that went through on the nod was the one-headed 'Rural Britain in crisis'.

Ironically this had found its way onto the order of business almost by chance. Comrades working on press and publicity had become conscious of the need for an SA statement on the burgeoning foot and mouth outbreak that had started to take hold of the countryside and, after some consultation, had come up with an SA unofficial policy. Since the policy document proposed by the SA executive was silent on the question, and since no affiliated organisation or local Socialist Alliance had proposed any amendment on rural policy, the press and publicity comrades themselves put forward an addition, based on their earlier press statement.

This called on the SA to "champion the rights of rural workers, small businesses and farmers", as failure to do this would "leave them open to manipulation by reactionary forces" such as the Countryside Alliance. Specifically it demanded "secure rights of tenure for small tenant farmers and small business, with low rents"; "cancellation of debts to banks"; "provision of low interest rates for small business and farmers"; "incentives for small farmers to form cooperatives"; "administrative assistance and grants for capital improvements", etc (see 'Rural Britain in crisis' below).

The CPGB warmly welcomed this amendment, which was very much in line with the demands laid down in our own 'Socialist Alliance draft programme'. Indeed some of the proposals were virtually identical, word for word, with our own (see supplement Weekly Worker January 25).

For us it is axiomatic that the working class must provide answers for every question posed by life under capitalism. Communists do not restrict themselves to the narrow field of workers' own economic and trade union-type interests, but take up the concerns of all sections, strata and classes adversely affected by profit-hungry monopoly capital and the bourgeois state. So we regretted the fact that this and other important questions were simply put to the vote with no time for debate - thus gaining understanding - at Birmingham.

However, this issue has now come to the surface, thanks to the intervention of comrade China Miéville, our prospective parliamentary candidate for the London constituency of Regents Park and Kensington North, on the Socialist Alliance press e-mail list. This list was set up for the purpose of exchanging advice and information, as well as posting statements from local alliances aimed at the press. From time to time, though, it has seen comrades taking issue with one another (in fact one or two have expressed the opinion that such debate should be excluded and that perhaps another list be set up to cater for it).

Comrade Miéville, a member of the Socialist Workers Party, stated in a contribution posted on April 20 that he had just properly read through the agreed policy document for the first time and was unhappy with parts of the 'Rural Britain in crisis' section: "My overall concern is that in an attempt to deal with the crisis in the countryside we risk blunting the class edge of our arguments. I think I'd argue that mentions of 'small business' should be removed." Here we have economism in its most narrow-minded form.

Conceding that he was "open to persuasion that I'm being ultra-left", he continued: "Since when did the labour movement champion small business? Has anyone out there worked for a small rural business? I have, and if anything they're more predatory and exploitative, and have worse pay and conditions, than large businesses."

Comrade Miéville was totally in favour of "supporting small farmers - namely, that we would like to try to change their class basis (from petty capitalist). But you can't change the class basis of a business, however small. The impression given is that we see small business as somehow more progressive than big business, whereas it's just not as powerful. Small businesses - rural and urban - are going to oppose us viciously on issues of workers' rights. Should we really be claiming to represent them just because they're rural? I agree, obviously, that the main propagandist thrust should be against big business, but that surely doesn't mean seeming to champion any business - small, rural or whatever."

First of all, the SA policy document does not claim to "represent" small business. Nor should it. We are firmly based on the working class. But we do seek to "champion the rights" of those who find themselves under the hammer of our main class enemy - big capital and its state. Neither do we see small business as "somehow more progressive than big business". Far from it. It is big, international capital that, through bringing together workers of different nationalities in their millions, through the globalisation of production, objectively lays the basis for the only form of society that can emancipate humanity: i.e., world communism.

As the CPGB 'Socialist Alliance draft programme' explains, "While the destruction of this stratum is economically progressive, the working class has a political interest to defend the petty bourgeoisie from the short-term ravages of the anarchic capitalist economy, at the same time helping to raise the working conditions, security of employment and living standards of wage-workers in farming and in small businesses" (my emphasis).

But comrade Miéville soon won support from an unexpected quarter. Martin Thomas of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty rushed in to back him later the same day: "I agree with China's points. Would have raised this at the Birmingham conference, but, given the limitations on time and the number of amendments that could be submitted, and the fact there was lots else that we had bigger arguments with (Europe, Ireland, the class axis, etc), that became one of the things we had to let pass by. Don't know what procedural possibilities there are for dealing with these points now, but if there is an opening for a discussion on this I'd be glad."

However, several other contributors disagreed, including one or two of comrade Miéville's own SWP comrades. Howard Senter, SA prospective parliamentary candidate for Cambridge, retorted: "As one of the rare SA candidates who actually lives in deep rurality, I'd argue for keeping the stuff about small businesses. There aren't actually many businesses round here that you'd really call rural, but there is a local shop (for local people), which is a gem, and is run as a business. Without it, we'd all be a lot worse off: and they're up against three or four major supermarkets within 10 miles."

Alan Docherty (not an SWP member), PPC for Darlington, backed this up: "I don't think any of us are fans of small business people, but we still have to appeal to them. If we go out of our way to alienate them they could eventually turn to the fascists. There are plenty of BNP hanging around small businessmen's causes up here."

But it was left to Colin Barker, another SWPer, to come up with some theoretical justification for the inclusion of the section in our policy document. Comrade Barker referred readers to an "explicitly 'revisionist'" article by Tony Cliff which appeared in International Socialism way back in the winter of 1964-65.

According to the comrade, Cliff "drew a surprising conclusion". In the aftermath of a genuine socialist revolution, the main tendency would be towards socialisation of production under workers' control, but agriculture - which does not follow the same general laws of capitalist production entirely - would be marked by a new growth of private farming. Collectivisation of agriculture might be a desirable long-term goal, but could not be achieved rapidly except by totalitarian means (as in Stalin's USSR, etc). Socialism could - in the long run - expect to achieve collectivisation, but only by the method of "attraction" rather than "compulsion" (April 21).

But, comrade Barker argued, "in another respect, Cliff did not perhaps go far enough". In urban life, too, small enterprise is far from dead. On the one hand, the supermarket and the franchise chain have come to dominate sphere after sphere of production and distribution: Kwikfit and Halford, for example, beside the continuing plethora of small car-repair shops, or Pizza Hut, Starbucks and McDonalds beside the small restaurant and take-away food outlets. Small enterprises do continue to be "generated in the many interstices of large-scale capitalist enterprise".

The petty bourgeoisie has shrunk in advanced capitalism, but by "no means to the point of extinction", says comrade Barker. There are indeed some three million small businesses in Britain today. Life in the petty bourgeois sector is marked by relatively low incomes for most, along with long hours of work and high insecurity. And, according to the comrade, "we might (like Cliff) hazard that, in the aftermath of a socialist revolution, the petty bourgeois sector could grow further for a long period as workers' disposable incomes rise and the possibility of choosing to eat out more and engage in a variety of leisure pursuits grows."

Comrade Barker concluded: "If socialist organisations do not develop policies to defend small business, and if they speak only to the immediate interests of employed workers, they leave the petty bourgeoisie to be recruiting fodder for the right." Therefore a policy of cheap credit, incentives for cooperatives, security of tenure, technical advice and assistance, etc, along with enforcement of public health controls, restrictions on workers' hours and defence of workers' rights and pay levels, "does seem necessary for a socialist programme aiming at transforming society and carrying the largest possible majority with us."

True, the petty bourgeoisie - small farmers and small businesses alike - "do not have the same interests as workers, and we should not pretend they do." Where their interests conflict, "we should be very clear about this". For comrade Barker, China Miéville is quite right: working for small business (and not only in rural areas) is often even worse than working for big business. So we should "insist that all measures concerning workers' rights are applicable in all sectors."

We cannot leave the political dominance of big business over small unchallenged, whether in the Countryside Alliance or in the Tory Party, etc. We have to tell the small business and artisanal sector that their "whole life situation" will be immensely improved by socialism and that, even if in the course of the long transition from the start of socialism to its establishment as the "secure future of humanity", i.e., communism, we expect them to "wither away", the withering will be slow and protracted and by no means entirely unpleasant.

If and when the working class develops its power to the point where it can "compel the socialisation" of public transport, major productive enterprises, the banks, etc, and where it can compel the immediate democratisation of the bureaucratic institutions of large-scale capitalism and beginnings of a "genuine process of democratic planning and coordination of these vital centres of everyday productive life, should it also aspire, immediately, to socialise the corner shop, the shoe-mender, the car mechanic, the plumber, the TV repair enterprise, the local restaurant? Would doing so improve working class life, in town or country? I don't think so."

While comrade Barker injected the theory, another prospective candidate, comrade Rupert Mallin of Lowestoft and District (Waveney) SA, posed a practical problem: "Could comrades offer me advice: a local SA comrade's partner is opening a small toy shop in one of the poorest wards in the constituency and I have been asked to open it (?!) as the SA PPC.

"Now, if I can give the opening a political edge, then the publicity could be quite good (i.e. - our New Labour MP is pictured every week in the local paper opening shops, projects, small businesses). On the other hand, potential supporters may say: 'Our SA PPC promised to be totally different to the rest - now he's opening shops!'"

For what it is worth, here is my advice: go ahead and take up the offer, comrade. Use the occasion to show that the Socialist Alliance has answers not only for the working class, not only for small businesses, but for all sections of society.

Peter Manson

Rural Britain in crisis

From the SA policy document

From BSE to foot and mouth disease, to poor transport networks to low pay, our rural communities face a severe crisis. Small farmers, small businesses, agricultural and other rural workers are being squeezed by agribusiness, the supermarkets and the chaos of capitalist production. Last autumn's rebellion by small business and farmers over the price of fuel showed the uncertainty and anger in this section of society, which has only been exacerbated by the foot and mouth epidemic. Farm incomes are down by 60% in the last three years. EU agricultural subsidies have mainly benefited wealthy farmers with large tracts of land, and have encouraged overproduction and environmental degradation. Meanwhile the giant supermarket chains exploit the rural crisis to hammer down farm gate prices, even as they charge their customers some of the highest retail prices in Europe.

The Socialist Alliance believes that the countryside is a precious resource that belongs to us all. We want a policy that sustains a diverse and accessible rural landscape, populated by diverse and vibrant rural communities. The Countryside Alliance, led by the rural rich, is no answer for farmworkers, small farmers, low paid workers in rural areas or the unemployed. If the labour movement fails to champion the rights of rural workers, small businesses and farmers, then we leave them open to manipulation by reactionary forces. That's why the Socialist Alliance will fight for a real alternative in the countryside: