Politics Of The Ghetto - Part 4

Part 4

Elements Of Socialism

Elson then goes on to outline Purdy and Prior’s view of those elements of a Socialist Mode of Production that already exist within existing society. The aim they argue should be to push forward these aspects. Now of course, as I have pointed out myself in the past, every Mode of Production is forced to adopt some of the forms of the new Mode of Production (indeed every Mode of Production retains some aspects of previous Modes of Production too). We can identify elements, within Capitalism, of Co-operation, of enterprise forms such as the large integrated company, of the use of planning at enterprise and national economy level, even of the provision of welfare systems that appear to subvert production on the basis of Exchange Value, by production of Use Values. The aspect that Purdy and Prior focus on – Incomes Policy – is just one aspect of the use of planning at a macro-economic level. But, what Purdy and Prior seem to ignore is the difference between form and content. Capitalism adopts many forms which are borrowed from the future socialist society – indeed the Tories advocacy of Co-operatives today is a good example of that – but those forms remain filled not with Socialist, but with bourgeois content! Of course, short of any other alternative, socialists argue for trying to fill those forms with socialist content, but the real issue here then revolves, as Elson previously stated, around the question of ownership.

It was precisely on that basis that Marx in his Critique of the Gotha Programme, pointed out that the only reason that the Worker Co-operatives had value was because they were the independent creations of the workers themselves. Co-operatives set up by the bourgeoisie FOR workers, or set up by the Capitalist State, or which were reliant upon state aid completely undermines that. It’s the same cretinism, which identifies nationalised industries as being in some sense “socialist” simply because of them being owned by the State, irrespective of the class nature of that State!

As Elson states there is some merit in the fact that, having recognised the limited nature of free collective bargaining, Purdy and Prior do not see the alternative to Incomes Policy as simply a return to it as if this were “the touchstone of the struggle for socialism”. As she elaborates, the aspects of collectivity and solidarity involved in collective bargaining can be seen as socialistic, but in reality there is little socialist about it. Frequently, the majority of workers are not themselves directly involved in the process, their involvement restricted to the payment of union dues. And, although, as socialists, we always highlight those instances of solidarity between workers, the reality is that Capitalism divides worker from worker even within the same workplace, let alone between workplaces, countries etc. However, the idea that these limitations can be overcome by advancing a system of wage bargaining under workers control, or which can take any such system of Incomes determination, and gradually reform it to meet workers needs, is preposterous.

Purdy and Prior’s assertion that,

“Correctly used a social contract becomes an instrument for the assertion of a coherent working class strategy for the national economy”, is, of course wholly compatible with the reformist notions of the British Road. All that is required is that “socialist” forms are taken up by the Capitalist State, which recognises their rationality, and then the Left has only to insinuate its own forces and politics into control of these forms. It is not just reformist, but a particularly Stalinist, bureaucratic type of reformism, whereby the process proceeds effectively behind the backs of the workers, and which obviates the need for real class struggle. What it misses, of course, is that the whole purpose of the bourgeoisie adopting these forms is in order to further its own interests, not those of the working class, and the last thing it is going to concede WITHOUT being forced to via intense class struggle is any kind of control over those forms by workers.

Elson does not appear to recognise the Utopian nature of such an approach i.e. the fact that the bosses state is not going to allow any kind of meaningful socialist content to be inserted into such a Social Contract, but focuses instead on demonstrating that Prior and Purdy’s approach does not break out of the Economism from which they have been trying to escape.

“Simply because the negotiation is about the policy of the State and the restructuring of the economy does not mean that the process of class struggle will no longer be contained by the Economistic objective of an improvement in the terms and conditions of exploitation. To show that we have gone beyond the limits posed by Economism, it is necessary to show the way in which a particular practice specifically challenges capitalist class relations, points the way to the end of Capitalist exploitation and the beginning of the self-determination of the working class. To do this it is not enough to argue that a certain strategy increases the power of the working class in some unspecific general sense – it might simply be power of its leaders to secure better terms and conditions of exploitation, to redistribute income for example, not power to challenge capitalist class relations, to substitute proletarian for bourgeois hegemony. Going beyond Economism does not, of course, mean ceasing to struggle for a better standard of living for the working class here and now: class struggle under capitalism is always to some extent Economistic, to some extent a struggle for better terms of exploitation. What matters is whether the econmistic aspect dominates the forms of struggle, stunting the development of forms of proletarian hegemony. But simply transports the struggle over wages from the shop floor to the offices of Whitehall and making it more coherent, less fragmented, does not in itself guarantee that the struggle has overcome the limitations of Economism.”
(ibid p.103)