01.04.2009
Mines: 'our' industry?
This article by Frank Grafton, from The Leninist of July 1984, was our first extensive intervention against the class-collaborationist politics that ostensibly underpinned the miners' Great Strike
It was one of the themes we were to return to time and time again - despite complaints of our “monomania” from some otherwise sympathetic miners and the (inevitable) charges of “ultra-leftism” from opponents.
Our argument was simple. Calls for a united working class front in solidarity with the miners and in a wider counter-offensive against Thatcher and the Tories were actually undermined by the commitment of miners’ leaders to the competitiveness of ‘their’ industry in alliance with its bosses. After all, why wouldn’t workers in other sectors think exactly the same way … and thus leave the miners to fight alone?
Of course, the fighting élan and sweep of the strike, the heroism and political growth of the miners and the women of the pit communities over the course of that gruelling, cruel, inspiring 12 months did much to spontaneously undermine this logic and we saw a gargantuan outpouring of real solidarity from the rank and file of the workers’ movement and the wider population. Comrade Grafton’s arguments, important at the time, retain their force and relevance today, as recession bites and workers are squeezed.
Lenin once wrote, in an article entitled ‘Economic and political strikes’: “The stronger the onslaught of the workers, the greater their achievements in improving their standard of living. The ‘sympathy of society’ and better conditions of life are both results of a high degree of development of the struggle. Whereas the liberals (and the liquidators) tell the workers, ‘You are strong when you have the sympathy of “society”,’ the Marxist tells the workers something different, namely: ‘You have the sympathy of “society” when you are strong’.”1
This axiom is still pertinent today in relation to the opportunists in our own party, who have made concerted attempts to tone down the class nature of the present miners’ strike with the intent of assuaging ‘public opinion’. Intrinsic to this strategy has been the appeal to patriotic sentiment, which the Morning Star editorial made with reference to “communities in struggle”, emphasising support for the strike by local business people in the mining areas and which comrade Gordon McLennan made more overtly when he declared: “A victory for the miners will be a victory for the British people. To help the miners is to help Britain.”2
The central tenet of the opportunists’ propaganda around the miners’ strike, however, is the idea that the coal industry is a national asset, in the sense that it is nationalised and therefore supposedly belongs to the British people, that it is the property of the working class, that it is ‘our’ industry. The opportunists thereby project the Tories’ plan to rationalise and to privatise the coal industry as an act of unpatriotic “madness”, to which they pose the alternative of “a firm energy base and major resource for rejuvenating British industry, laying sound foundations for the redevelopment of our wasted manufacturing industries.”3
To simply castigate the Tories and McGregor as ‘mad’ is bad enough, in that it hides their true motives as being the profit motive of capitalism. But to pose the task to workers of ‘saving’ British industry from these ‘unpatriotic’ butchers without making the defence of living standards our immediate priority and the seizure of state power as our ultimate aim is even worse - is in fact treachery - because it sacrifices the class interests of the workers for the benefit of saving British capitalist industry.
Let us see where patriotism and staying loyal to ‘their’ industry has got the miners since it became nationalised in 1947.
The issue of pit closures and redundancies did not just emerge recently, but has been a continuous process since the National Coal Board was set up. In fact the worst cuts were made during the boom years of the 1950s and 1960s. From a level of employing over 700,000 miners in over 900 collieries, the NCB rationalised the industry down to the present level of 185,000 miners employed in just 176 pits. Far from simply being the handiwork of only Tory governments, it was the Labour administration of Harold Wilson which oversaw the closure of 191 pits during the period 1965-70, making even the McGregor plan for a further 70 pit closures over the next five years (according to National Union of Mineworkers’ calculations) almost pale by comparison. Furthermore, the miners’ union did not oppose this loss of over a half million jobs and was unable to prevent the decline of miners’ wages in comparison with other sectors of workers, until it waged militant and uncompromising struggles in 1972 and 1974.4
The coal industry, like all other nationalised industries, was not taken over by the state with the intention of running it in the interests of the British people, or of the working class employed in that industry. The intention of the capitalist class was of course to run an industry, which because of very high capital outlay costs had become inefficient and unprofitable under private ownership, but which still provided a necessary resource and service to the rest of the capitalist economy.
The degree to which high capital investment with relatively little return is a feature of production industry in the state sector is shown by the Census of Production figures for 1981. Of all industries, including manufacturing, mineral extraction, construction, gas, water and electricity, only 15% of both employment and gross output is accounted for by the state sector, yet its share of net capital expenditure (meaning plant, machinery, vehicles and new buildings) amounts to a staggering 38%! It is the attempt to reduce the collective burden of these costs for the capitalist class, which has conditioned the long-term strategy of increasing efficiency through increased productivity and which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of jobs being lost in all nationalised enterprises during the past 20 years, including over 300,000 in British Rail and nearly 200,000 in British Steel.
Very little resistance to these drastic cuts has been put up by the trade unions precisely because of the pervading attitudes in the labour movement, which defend the logic of improving ‘our’ industry’s profitability and efficiency above the interest of defending our jobs and living standards. The opportunists in our party (and reformists in general) further justify this position by peddling the illusion that socialism can be built from within capitalist society by reforms, whilst the capitalist state remains intact, and that, moreover, nationalised industries and services represent ‘islands of socialism’, which will grow and eventually envelop society as a whole. The past 40 years show us, however, despite the naive mythology surrounding the Attlee government, that nationalisation has been utilised by the capitalist class and implemented by both Labour and Tory parties as a manifestation of state monopoly capitalism, and in the case of the welfare state, as a reform intended to ameliorate class antagonisms, which capitalism could well afford during the halcyon days of the 1950s and 1960s, but is increasingly unable to do now.5
The Eurocommunists and the Morning Star have taken yet another qualitative step in their historic slide to the right in their attitude towards nationalised industries, even when compared to the already revoltingly reformist British road to socialism.6 At least in the latter we find formal acknowledgement of the capitalist state’s role as being in the interests of monopoly capitalism, although this is still conditioned by the assumption that the state sector is ‘naturally’ non-capitalist with the casual passing remark that: “There is constant pressure to subordinate the public sector and make it serve the interests of the private sector” (p6) - as if this had not been the intention all along.7
But now, any differentiation between ‘capitalist nationalisation’ and ‘socialist nationalisation’ is totally obscured by the opportunists’ scramble to capture the mantle of true patriotism. The coal industry is no longer part of state monopoly capitalism, but is simply ‘our’ industry. The cause of socialism is pushed even further into the background as the task of saving British - not only nationalised, but British - industry becomes ever more pressingly urgent.
For anybody acquainted with the history of the international labour and socialist movement, this development is nothing new, for it is a sign that the growing crisis of capitalism is forcing opportunism to complete its passage into the camp of the bourgeoisie in the guise of social chauvinism and open class treachery. The fact that Chater8 and McLennan are following in the footsteps of Hyndman and Kautsky does not make the liquidation of the Communist Party any less tragic and certainly not a farce.9 It is a very serious threat, which all pro-party communists must organise against, in a disciplined rebellion to overthrow the Eurocommunist leadership.
To defeat opportunism it is imperative we counter the reformist argument that Britain’s economic decline is due to incompetent management and incorrect governmental policies, against which the Alternative Economic Strategy is posed as a solution. It is because Britain is an imperialist country and is driven by the demand for profit above all else that billions of pounds of capital are exported in search of more intensely exploited labour in Latin America and the far east. This is not simply a ‘policy’ of capitalism which can be reversed, any more than increasing industrial productivity with machines can be historically reversed. Parasitism and decay are fundamental features of imperialism and cannot be overcome except through the overthrow of the system itself.
The reformist solution offered by the AES, of ‘workers’ democracy’ (where trade unions share the responsibility of implementing, management decisions for increasing profitability), of planning agreements and of import controls (through which workers in Britain are diverted from confronting capitalism at home as the true cause of job losses and low wages, to blaming other workers in Japan and South Korea) is more a means of harnessing the cooperation of the organised working class in promoting Britain’s competitiveness with other capitalist (and socialist) countries. In this respect the class-collaborationism during World War II in this country, when even the Communist Party supported cooperation with the capitalists at every level - from shop floor to the corridors of Whitehall - is the real blueprint for the architects of the AES.
With over three million workers already on the dole and the attempt by the Tory government in the current miners’ strike to open the way forward for a brutal offensive against trade unionism and living standards in general, the question still arises, however: How can the working class combat this rising capitalist onslaught?
The workers’ experience of nationalisation under capitalism has shown that this is not the answer to saving jobs and maintaining wage levels by itself, and is definitely nothing to do with building socialism. But it does have an advantage in one respect. In the face of an industry going bankrupt, as happened with Rolls Royce and shipbuilding, it forces the capitalist class as a whole to take responsibility for its continuation. It provides a focal point, and an increasingly political focal point, around which workers can wage a struggle for the government of the day to guarantee jobs and wages. The success of this still rests with the strength and determination of the workers, however.
It is in this context that we support continued state responsibility for industries and services such as national health, which are under threat of privatisation. Privatisation can only mean one thing - even greater cuts in the pursuit of productivity and profitability and even greater pressure to drive down wages. Our only consideration in defending nationalisation here is the defence of jobs, living standards and free availability of welfare services for all workers.
A positive development to the limited gains and excessive losses wrought by state intervention in industry over the past 15 years has been the response of rank and file trade union organisations. Critical reports, such as those by the Lucas Aerospace shop stewards combine and trades councils in Newcastle, Coventry, Liverpool and North Tyneside, are still limited in that they propose a more left version of the AES still tied to the fortunes of a Labour government, but they raise the important demand of “production for social needs, not profits”. This must be our starting point, for then our demands on the system are based on working class interests and not what capitalism can afford.
A second positive development has been the attempts by workers to implement workers’ control in order to combat closures and redundancies, such as the numerous occupations throughout the 1970s, of which the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in was the most celebrated example.10 The important point is not whether such experiments end in nationalisation, a private takeover or the setting up of a cooperative, all of which can be accommodated within the capitalist system and do not necessarily challenge it.
The important point is that the issue of workers’ control and the setting up of factory committees (which transcend shop steward committees in that they strive to represent all unionised and non-unionised workers) begin to challenge the capitalists’ control of working conditions and production. This can become the basis of a spreading political movement, as was the case in Russia in 1917 and to a lesser extent in Britain during 1917-21, when the local shop stewards in Scotland set up bodies like the Clyde Workers’ Committee with the following declared objectives:
1. To obtain an ever-increasing control over workshop conditions.
2. To regulate the terms upon which the workers shall be employed.
3. To organise the workers upon a class basis and to maintain the class struggle, until the overthrow of the wages system, the freedom of the workers and the establishment of industrial democracy have been obtained.
We might add that such workers’ control should apply to both nationalised and privately owned industry.
Yet workers’ control should not be construed to mean building socialism in the factories and the localities now. It must be seen as a demand around which the working class can begin to demand of capitalism what it needs, begin to challenge the system and go beyond it. Ultimately, even this is not enough, for a positive answer to the question, ‘Is it our industry?’, is not determined by nationalisation or even workers’ control of industry. The determining factor is whether the working class has state power.
Notes
1. VI Lenin Collected Works Vol 18, Moscow 1977, p85.
2. Morning Star May 19 1984. Gordon McLennan was the bland general secretary of the CPGB from 1975 to 1989, a period of dramatic organisational decline, schism and political degeneration.
3. Morning Star editorial, May 24 1984.
4. The successful 1972 and 1974 strikes against the Conservative government of Edward Heath were the first national miners’ actions since the crushing strategic defeat of 1926. Heath went to the country in 1974 over the miners’ strike, asking, ‘Who rules?’ - and he lost. Labour gained a slim majority. Both strikes showed the industrial muscle of the miners at the head of a still strong trade union movement.
5. The 1945-51 Labour government of Clement Attlee is regarded as Labour’s finest reforming hour. Its agenda was gleaned from the 1942 Beveridge report, which advocated a strong publicly owned sector (including a nationalised coal industry) and the creation of a national health service to fight what Beveridge had dubbed an assault on the “five giants” - want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness.
6. The British road to socialism, the deeply reformist programme of the ‘official’ CPGB, was originally adopted in 1951 - with the direct involvement of Stalin in drafting some its parts, it later emerged. The edition referred to here is the 1978 version which - when it was agreed - was regarded as a significant victory for the right in the party. Ironically, this opportunist document is now the programme of the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain, many of whose members considered themselves revolutionary critics of it in 1978.
7. For a Marxist critique of the BRS, see Which road? by Jack Conrad, London 1983 (www.cpgb.org.uk/books/order.htm).
8. Tony Chater was editor of the Morning Star from 1974 to 1995. During his reign, the paper acquired a reputation for unrelieved dullness and lack of imagination - attributes it seemed to absorb from Chater himself. Commonly known as the ‘Yawning Star’ among many CPGB members obliged to sell it, it became a battleground between the left and right of the party in the 1980s. Chater - at one time of the same bureaucratic trend as McLennan himself (known as the “right opportunists”) - threw his lot in with the ‘Marxist-Leninist’ left of the party, as it launched a desperate (and politically unprincipled) rearguard action against the encroachments of the rightwing Eurocommunists.
9. Henry Hyndman (1842-1921) was the dictatorial founder of Britain’s first socialist party, the Social Democratic Federation, in 1881 (later the main component of the British Socialist Party). Hyndman sided with his ‘own’ bourgeoisie as the ‘lesser evil’ in 1914. He was defeated by the left at the Easter 1916 conference of the BSP and split to form the appropriately named National Socialist Party.
Karl Kautsky (1854-1938) was the foremost theoretician of pre-World War I German social democracy and of the Second International itself. He adopted a centrist position during the war and subsequently wrote polemics against the Bolsheviks’ role in the revolutionary events of 1917 and their post-revolution government, earning stinging rebukes from Trotsky and Lenin (see, for example, Lenin’s Proletarian revolution and the renegade Kautsky: www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/oct/10.htm).
10. In 1971 the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders in Glasgow went into receivership and Heath’s Tory government refused a loan to secure its survival. In an innovative move, the shop stewards of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers decided to have a ‘work-in’ rather than a strike, to run the yards themselves and complete the orders already in place. This action was led by two members of the CPGB, Jimmy Reid and Jimmy Airlie.