Nationalisation, Workers Control, and Workers Ownership

The decision of the Labour Representation Committee to pass a resolution advocating support for Workers Self-Management is a tremendous step forward from the failed statist policies of the Left – including those that call themselves Marxists – of the last 100 years or more. Discussion of strategy and tactics within the Left is developing, and questioning many shibboleths. Its about time. Recent struggles, however, show that the Left, including the supposedly revolutionary Marxist Left, remains in large part tied to a Lasallean view of Socialism, a view of the world dictated by concern not with the direct self-activity and self-emancipation of the working-class, but of a top-down Socialism always seen through the prism of the State.

Nationalisation

What is the Marxist view of nationalisation? I dealt with this some time ago in my blog Why Marxists Do Not Call for Nationalisation . To summarise:

1. Marxists view things in terms of historical development. The description “progressive” has no moral content for a Marxist. It does not mean “better” in any moral sense, or even, in this sense, necessarily meaning more efficient, it merely means more mature, the more developed form, and therefore closer to being replaced by the next higher form.

2. Using this definition Marx says that Monopoly, which arises necessarily out of Capitalist development, is more progressive than the small capitalist enterprise. Marx is not in any way saying here though, that the Monopoly is in any way “better”. Marx, does not call for monopolies in place of those small firms. But, he recognises that the demand for a return to those small firms is reactionary. Such is true of calls for anti-trust legislation, or anti-monopoly alliances.

3. Marx recognised that the logical extension of this process within the confines of Capitalism was that Capital should reach its ultimate concentration in the form of ownership by the Capitalist State i.e. nationalisation, State capitalism. In Anti-Duhring, Engels sets out their attitude to such State Capitalism. Like Monopoly, it is progressive vis a vis those forms which have gone before. Not only is it the logical progression of those forms, but it shows to workers, in practice, the form of industry most suited to their own development of the productive forces. It shows that there is no need for individual capitalist owners. In addition, the extent to which these owners become mere “coupon clippers” deriving their income merely from ownership of Government debt, the more the real nature of workers exploitation is exposed. Its on that basis that he argues such State Capitalism could not last long. But, nowhere in these later writings do Marx and Engels actually raise the demand for such nationalisation by the bourgeois state. On the contrary, in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx is vitriolic in his condemnation of those that do raise the call for such state intervention.

4. The position of Marxists is the same as that they take to workers engaged in say a wage struggle. If workers are fighting for higher pay, Marxists make themselves the best supporters of such a struggle, but in so doing they take the opportunity to explain to workers that they will repeatedly have to engage in such struggles for higher pay, so long as the Capitalists own the means of production. Moreover, any victory will be short lived. The capitalists at the earliest opportunity will take back what they have been forced to concede. Workers living standards can only rise in line with what is compatible with Capitalist development. Only by owning the means of production themselves can they avoid such repeated struggles, and inevitable defeats, along with the loss of production and wealth that go with them, the damage done to other workers who are affected by the loss of production caused by the strike etc.

Similarly, if workers are demanding nationalisation of their industry e.g. because it is about to go bust then Marxists make themselves the best supporters of such a struggle, but they do not raise the demand for nationalisation themselves. Rather, they point out what nationalisation by the Capitalist state will mean. It will mean control by an inefficient, bureaucratic, management that will leach off the workers. It will mean the State uses its muscle to impose worse conditions on the workers than even the private Capitalists could manage, including initially a big reduction in jobs to try to make the firm profitable. Its monopoly power will often result in the provision of poor quality goods and services to consumers, who in the majority are themselves other workers. All the time that they are supporting the workers struggle they point out these things as the limitation of their ideas, and programme, and instead point the workers again to the need to rely on themselves, to take the firm into their own ownership, and to run it in the interests of workers not bosses.

The reformists, who seek to present the State as being some non-class institution, counter this by claiming that nationalised industries are, by virtue of the democratic nature of the State, under bourgeois democracy, run for the benefit not of Capital, but in the interests of society. Marx gave the lie to that argument in his Critique of the Gotha Programme. The State is and always has been, and always will be the State of the ruling class. Any impartial study of nationalised industries anywhere in the world shows that the points made above are apparent for all to see. In Britain, the nationalised industries were used as fodder for the profits of private companies. Just look at the way pharmaceutical companies milk the NHS. At the same time, the power of the State was used to crush workers resistance as the 1984 Miners Strike, the 1981 Steelworkers Strike etc. demonstrated. In every instance nationalisation has been accompanied by huge job losses. And in every sphere nationalised industries have been an epitome of bureaucratism, inefficiency, and poor quality. Nowhere have they been under meaningful democratic control, nowhere have they served the interests of “society”.

The Leninists for shame cannot deny the class nature of the State, and yet in the main they still call on this Capitalist State to act. They justify this crass subservience to the bourgeois state with one of essentially two arguments. Either, it is necessary to demand this State act, because not to do so would “let it off the hook”, or else, the demand for nationalisation has to be accompanied with the demand for Workers Control. The first argument is crass. Marxists have no grounds for sowing illusions in the bourgeois state. If they call on this state to act e.g. by nationalising the banks, and it does so they have done precisely that. Rather than showing it up in front of the workers they have helped it gain credibility! And if the aim is to show to the workers that this State does not act in their interests – a fact which most workers from their daily experience already know without such elaborate masquerades having to be performed – then why not say in advance simply, there is no point calling on this State to act on your behalf because it will not. If it nationalises it will do so on its own terms, for its own reasons, and to meet the needs of Capital not workers? Much better to argue from the beginning that rather than relying on it, workers should rely on themselves, instead of calling on the Capitalist State to act, to call on workers to act themselves by taking the firm into their own hands, management and ownership.

The second argument is utopian. No one hands over control of their property unless they are forced to do so. To say, when we call for nationalisation what we mean is nationalisation under workers control, is simply as Marx put it to cover your shame with mealy-mouthed words that can have no real meaning. Under certain circumstances it may be possible to force a weak employer to concede a measure of workers control, a real Workers Government might introduce Workers Control, but the full force of the Capitalist State is NEVER going to concede Workers Control over State property. Either the demand for workers control under these conditions means either mealy-mouthed words used to cover the demand for nationalisation with some pseudo radicalism, or else it is effectively a demand for revolution NOW, for the overthrow of the Capitalist State and its replacement with a Workers Government, or a Workers State.

The Leninist left raise this call, because Lenin himself had imbibed from the Second International that heritage of statism that comes from Lassalle rather than Marx. But, it has another root. The whole basis of Leninism is the idea of revolution as some single big event – the political revolution. It is on that basis that Leninists effectively disdain any piecemeal changes that workers might effect for themselves short of that revolution. Either such changes constitute reformism or else utopianism. For the Trotskyist Left with the tradition of opposition to “Socialism in One Country” this tendency is particularly marked. Yet, ironically, in neither of these two things do the “Leninists” particularly follow Lenin.

If we look at Lenin’s attitude to State intervention by the Capitalist State in Russia his attitude is actually much closer to Marx than is that of today’s Leninists. When Stolypin introduced agricultural reforms from above Lenin recognised the progressive nature of those reforms compared to the backward feudal agriculture that existed in Russia. So Lenin did not oppose those reforms in the name of some past “golden-age”, and certainly not because they were capitalist reforms. But neither did Lenin SUPPORT these reforms. Why would a Marxist argue support for Capitalist measures, implemented by a Capitalist State rather than explaining their true nature to the workers and peasants, and arguing for a struggle for the interests of workers and peasants within them and so on.

And, although Lenin certainly did not support the idea of “Socialism in One Country” as proposed by Stalin, he was certainly in favour of utilising the bulwark that the Workers State represented as a means of attempting as far as possible to develop “socialistic” production, and of using this as a tool within the class struggle, both to inspire other workers by the example of their successes, and as a means of giving active support to workers elsewhere. So, when today’s Leninists disdain the idea of building Co-operatives, on that same basis as a means of forging within Capitalism bulwarks of Workers economic and social power, as examples of how workers can transform society and provide a better solution than can Capitalism, and as a means of being an important position of strength for supporting workers in the class struggle in general, they do not at all stand on the ground of Lenin.

Nor do they stand on the ground of Lenin, when they claim that those that advocate such a strategy of workers direct self-activity rather than calls for the bourgeois State to act, are Anarchists. In fact, they stand on the ground not of Lenin, and certainly not of Marx, but on the ground of Kautsky and Bernsetin. As Marx, Engels and Lenin pointed out workers cannot lay hold of the existing State. It has to be smashed. The task of Marxists is to point out to workers the true class nature of that State, and to weaken and undermine it by whatever means they can. You do not weaken the bourgeois State by advocating that it be given greater control over the economic levers of society, and the social controls which go with it. The opposite is the case. Marxists are in favour of reducing the role of the Capitalist State to a minimum. As Lenin argued Marx in relation to the bourgeois state was an Anarchist himself.

Lenin declares,

"Marx agreed with Proudhon in that they both stood for the 'smashing' of the present day state machine. Neither the opportunists nor the Kautskyites wish to see this resemblance between Marxism and Anarchism (both Proudhon and Bakunin) because they have departed from Marxism on this point."

Lenin - "The State and revolution" pp 64-5

Today it is those who call for greater power to that Capitalist State whether it be in calls for nationalisation, or even, with some, calls for it to act on behalf of the workers in fighting their enemies, in Iraq, or Iran or elsewhere, that stand on the ground of the Opportunists, and the Kautskites.

Workers Control

So, where workers are struggling for nationalisation or some other form of State control, for example Municipalisation, Marxists support such struggles to their best ability, but they do not raise the demand for nationalisation or Municipalisation themselves. Rather they engage in such struggles, to “stick with the workers”, to go through the process with them, and to educate them in struggle. But, in so doing the Marxists explain what is wrong with such a Programme, what will be its outcome, and why instead they should struggle for their own ownership, and thereby control over the means of production, and other aspects of their life. Where, workers are struggling against privatisation, similarly, Marxists engage fully with such struggles, but again point out why the nature of State Capitalism leads to such a drive towards a return to less progressive forms, why a successful struggle against a return to private ownership means also a struggle against State Capitalism itself, why the State capitalist bureaucrats will inevitably betray them, and line themselves up with plum jobs in the new privately owned enterprise and so on. Under these conditions, raising a demand for Workers Control as a transitional demand, set within an overall programme, designed to lead workers to see the need for and struggle for their own ownership of the means of production, might be acceptable.

For example, in the NHS now, a struggle against privatisation could perhaps be enhanced by a call for democratic, workers and patients control over local health services. Indeed, in its propaganda and arguments in favour of the setting up of Foundation Hospitals, the Government has used the argument of democratic control with the proposal that such Hospitals should be run by elected Boards made up of Hospital staff, Patients, and Community Representatives. Such proposals are a sham, but Marxists should argue for the filling of such empty forms with real content, and for not only Foundation Hospitals, but all Hospitals and Primary Care Trusts to be run by elected Boards of Workers and Patients. But, Marxists would have to begin by pointing out that the State would not easily concede such an arrangement, and the bureaucrats and top Consultants, that run the Health Service, and leach off it, certainly would not want such an arrangement which would undermine their power. Only by bringing health care under direct workers ownership could real democratic control be effected, and, even then, those vested interests, together with the pharmaceutical companies and others, that milk it dry, would attempt to undermine such a transformation. It would in fact, mean that workers would have to struggle for much wider changes such as bringing the pharmaceutical industry under workers ownership and control too. It would mean recognising a need to train and educate many more doctors, and healthcare specialists to reduce the power of a few, and demysticise medicine. It would mean upskilling nurses and others, both so that they could provide a much broader healthcare provision, and so that ordinary healthcare workers were in a better position to challenge the arguments of those above them, and thereby effect real day to day control.

Or, take the struggles occurring now over evictions, and other housing issues. Of course, Marxists will support such struggles, and again raise a demand for Workers Control over existing estates, through giving Tenants and Residents Associations greater power. They will support collective occupations of houses threatened by Banks and Building Societies seeking evictions. But, the solution to these problems cannot flow through the Capitalist State. We have seen the actions of that State in its nationalisation of Northern Rock. We have also seen the actions of that State, through its local agency, over decades, in the way it allowed Council Estates to literally rot, until they reached a stage where many residents were led to prefer a private landlord, an ALMO or a Housing Association. It is no use raising the demand for this local state, which has miserably treated workers in respect of their housing needs, to miraculously begin to act progressively, and it ill behoves Marxists to dupe workers into believing that it might. Workers need a solution here and now to these problems. They do not want to waste their time in some pantomime designed to convince them that the local state will not meet their needs – they know that from living in its houses – nor to convince them of the need to get rid of Capitalism – that is not on their or anyone else’s agenda for the foreseeable future, and so cannot be a practical solution to their problems.

But, there are solutions to these problems both of existing tenants of the Capitalist State, and of people faced with eviction by banks and building societies. If workers want, as they should, greater control over their lives, in the places they spend most of their time – in their homes and communities – they can only do this if they own those houses, and communities. As with the means of production it is often not practical for workers to own things on a meaningful scale by individual ownership, only collective ownership, and co-operative activity can make that possible. Rather than calling, like pissing in the wind, for the Capitalist State to act in workers interests, Marxists should be pointing out within such struggles why it will not, why it cannot, and why they have to take matters into their own hands, and establish Co-operative housing, and Co-operatively owned estates and communities.

Even besides the funds available in workers pension funds, which I have previously alluded to, as being available for such ventures, workers have their own immediate funds that could be mobilised for such activities. Not only are there those funds which are currently paid to inefficiently run Council Housing Departments, or in interest and Capital payments to Banks and Building Societies – funds which would go much further in sustaining an efficient, Co-operative Housing system run under workers control, but just as with the establishment of Credit Unions on many estates, there are some workers with excess funds that could be lent out at a reasonable interest for such developments. In addition there are funds available for the development of Co-operative Housing schemes through the various Co-operative organisations See: Confederation of Co-operative Housing . Besides, that workers have, in their Trade Unions, hundreds of millions of pounds which largely goes to finance expensive offices, a bloated bureaucracy, and services which are often nothing to do with real Trade Unionism, and replace direct activity by workers themselves to resolve their problems in the workplace. These funds could be mobilised to meet workers needs. Finally, if the Labour Movement began to organise to ensure that those of its parts such as the Co-op Bank etc. were brought under real workers control then the huge sums of money available in the form of Credit, could be mobilised to spread worker-owned co-operative housing throughout the country, immediately diverting huge flows of rent and mortgage payments away from private Capital, and into the workers own coffers.

There are other instances where Workers Control might be appropriate. For example, in the 1980’s many British companies adopted Japanese practices, Quality Circles and so on. The intention was to utilise the workers own ideas to improve production, and to tie workers more into the future of the Company. In some instances this went along with the introduction of Profit Sharing schemes, which also tied workers into the future of the company making them believe that they had some shared interests with management. Generally speaking, Marxists opposed such schemes, precisely because their corporatist nature implied class collaboration. Yet, I think there is an argument for saying that this approach was wrong. Marxists should not have opposed such schemes as such, but argued for pursuing them to their logical conclusion, argued for workers involvement to be pushed to the degree of effective workers control over production. In doing so, Marxists would have pointed out to workers why managements would necessarily not carry through these experiments to their logical, democratic end. A similar thing applied to so called “Technology Agreements” where Marxists did advocate that kind of approach, arguing, “We are not Luddites, we want technology to be introduced, but, we want control over how its introduced in order to ensure it benefits us as workers.”

But, in reality, improvements in production brought about by Quality Circles are no different than improvements brought in by technology. This point was made by Gramsci in discussing the role of Factory Committees in Italy in improving production. The argument was raised there too that such activity amounted to class collaboration, and simply the workers participating in exploiting themselves more effectively. But, as Gramsci points out, Marxists are not in favour of holding back more effective means of exploiting labour, because those very means are the means workers will need themselves to develop production for themselves. And, workers will never be able to learn to control and manage production for themselves, if they do not learn to do that now under Capitalism, or at least doing so would mean a considerable drain on resources, a dislocation of production whilst that learning process was undertaken, and necessarily a tendency for workers to look to specialists to come in and make up for their inadequacy.

Finally, this is the other instance where the demand for Workers’ Control might be appropriate. In Italy, at the time Gramsci was writing about the Factory Committees and Workers Councils springing up around the country, there was, as this development showed, a growing dual power within society, with the power of the workers counterposed to that of the bosses. Under such circumstances it may be possible for workers to force such Workers’ Control on to weakened individual bourgeois. But, like a period of dual power itself, such a period is necessarily short-lived. The question, “Who rules?” has to be decided in favour of one or other class. Where workers have won political power it may be possible for a Workers Government even to legislate for such Workers’ Control as a requirement on businesses still in Capitalist ownership, but even in these extreme cases Workers Control can only be a transitional stage to actual workers ownership of the means of production.

There is another reason for this. In some distant day, in the socialist future, it may be that workers will take going to some democratic forum, to discuss their workplace or community, as being as much a part of their daily life as today they take watching football, or Coronation Street, or playing on a computer game. But, for now we know that workers do not do that. Very few go to their Trade Union meetings, very few engage in the activities of a political party, few take up the opportunity to have a say in how the Co-op is run, and so on. After, the Russian Revolution – and after most revolutions – there was a great upsurge in such activity. Yet, the fact is that the majority still did not participate. There was enthusiasm for such activities amongst the “Vanguard”, but the majority of workers were more concerned with trying to survive, and earn a living than running the enterprises in which they worked. Partly, that was because in truth they did not see that they personally owned those enterprises. It was still a place to go to work in order to earn money.

It might not be a popular thing to say, but Marxists first duty is to tell the truth, and the truth is that as Lenin once put it we have to deal with the real workers that exist today, not the workers we would like in an ideal future. Those workers like most other people in society, only put themselves out to attend meetings and so on, where they see that they have some direct interest in doing so. Those of us who engage in political activity of one form or another out of some ideological conviction, or moral conviction are the tiny minority. Workers will only demonstrate a lasting interest in workers’ control, will only put themselves out to attend meetings and so on to discuss such matters if they feel they have some direct interest in doing so. That means that they must feel in the here and now that they own what they are controlling, by taking such decisions they are enabling their property to be worth more, are facilitating their employment being more secure, more lucrative etc.

Workers Ownership

The demand for Workers Ownership, and for Workers Self-Management based on that ownership is then fundamental to revolutionary strategy for a number of reasons.

1. Workers need ownership of the means of production in order to build their own economic and social power within society on a more stable basis than could ever be achieved simply by wage struggles.

2. Workers ownership provides the fundamental requirement for developing Workers Control of production.

3. Workers Ownership demonstrates to workers that production can be successfully undertaken without the organising and directing force of either individual capitalists or their State.

4. On the basis of Workers Ownership real solutions can be offered to the real problems of workers here and now rather than offering workers solutions based upon action by the Capitalist State, or solutions which basically tell workers that nothing can be done until the Revolution.

5. On the basis of Workers Ownership, workers in Co-operative enterprises are not only led to the requirement to actively participate in the management of their enterprise, but as shareholders in that business they have a direct pecuniary interest in doing so.

6. Out of Co-operative enterprise, and the Workers Control that flows from it, workers not only learn that they do not need bosses, but learn that they can run society more effectively than can the capitalists. They learn that the profit motive is not the only basis on which enterprises can act, and from the lessons learned in acting co-operatively within a single enterprise, follows logically the lesson that even greater benefits flow from a range of enterprises, communities and other organisations working co-operatively rather than competing against each other.

7. On the basis of the fundamental changes in the relations of production that such co-operative enterprise brings about flows necessarily a different set of ideas, ideas based on co-operation not competition. On this basis is laid the foundations of challenging bourgeois ideas, and by winning the battle of democracy within the working class, as Marx put it, the starting point of positing socialist ideas as the ideas of the new ruling class, of placing the working class in its vast majority as the conscious force which not only recognises the need to demolish the old, but the need for it to construct the new. A construction based on its own tried and tested Co-operative forms created not from on high by some State, but as Marx suggested by its own hand.

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