Politics Of The Ghetto - Part 8

Part 8

Conclusion

“The problem is how we are to conceptualise these pre-figurations of socialism so that we can locate them. Purdy and Prior conceptualise them in terms of discretely distinct, determined socialist forms which co-exist in articulation with discretely distinct, determined capitalist forms. This means that they can only conceive of the struggle to build socialism in terms of an extension of already existing socialist forms. It is this which leads them towards a reformist gradualism, not their down-grading of the importance of a single revolutionary moment in which state power is seized.”

(ibid p. 112)

That is correct, but in this final part I want to examine where I think Elson's elaboration of this process is inadequate. For example, she writes,

“This approach means that we do not expect Capitalist social relations, Capitalist forms, to be completely, unmitigatedly, absolutely Capitalist. Rather we examine them for their potentially socialist aspects, socialist potential which is presently subsumed under, dominated by, their Capitalist aspects. The socialist potential does not therefore stand alone, as discretely distinct islands of socialism; its more like the flowers of a plant, still part of that plant, yet representing the potential for a different plant.”

(ibid p. 113)

True as far as it goes, but the flowers have to form seed heads, and before a new plant can be created, the seeds have to separate themselves from the old plant. Unless they do that, the seeds themselves degenerate, and die on the old plant without having fulfilled their potential. Elson, here I think, like most Marxists is afraid of the accusation of “Utopianism” that has wrongly been tagged to those proposing the establishment of such “Islands of Socialism”. The USSR was such an island after 1917. The argument was not should such an island have been established, but how could it be used to provide a practical example for workers, how quickly could such a forward base be used to help develop other such “islands”, how effectively could these “islands” be linked together consciously, and so on.

Of course, it is necessary to engage in struggles on bourgeois terrain. It is necessary to struggle for, and defend bourgeois democratic freedoms without which the workers struggle is at least made more difficult if not impossible. But, in conducting that struggle Marxists do not limit themselves to containing the workers struggle within the realm of bourgeois democracy, because it is a means to an end not the end itself. The Marxists represent the needs of tomorrow in the movement of today. Trotsky's “Action Programme For France” is a good example of that. He argues for defending those bourgeois freedoms against their removal by the fascists, but in doing so makes no concessions to bourgeois democracy itself. The means by which he proposes to organise such defence are not via bourgeois democracy, but via proletarian struggle, proletarian forms. He writes,

“15. The Struggle for the Workers’ and Peasants’ Commune

The alliance of the peasantry and the workers will be achieved only if the working class shows its strength, its decided initiative and its ability to carry out this program. This is why we must, above all, create conditions for unity of action.
The workers’ alliance of parties and trade unions must be organized, uniting all the forces of the laboring people without exception.

A national committee of the workers’ alliance, regional committees, local committees, should be organized. Creation of shop committees elected by the workers.
The impulse given by these workers’ alliance committees, their authority among the masses, will inspire the laboring people of the countryside to organize themselves into peasant committees.

In the struggle against fascism, reaction and war, the proletariat accepts the aid of petty-bourgeois groupings (pacifists, League for the Rights of Man, the Common Front, etc.), but such alliances can be only of secondary importance. Above all, the task is to secure the united action of the working class itself in the factories and the workers’ neighborhoods of industrial centers. The alliance of the important workers’ organizations (Communist Party, Socialist Party, CGT, CGTU [20], Communist League) will have no revolutionary value unless it is oriented toward the creation of:

1. Committees of struggle representing the mass itself (embryo soviets);

2. Workers’ militia, always united in action, even though organized by various parties and organizations.

To reinforce the struggle of both the workers and peasants, the workers’ committees should establish close collaboration with the peasant committees. Constituted as organs of popular defense against fascism, these workers’ alliance committees and these peasant committees must become, during the course of the struggle, organisms directly elected by the masses, organs of power of the workers and peasants. On this basis the proletarian power will be erected in opposition to the capitalist power, and the Workers’ and Peasants’ Commune will triumph.”

We are, of course, nowhere near such a situation in Britain, but the point is that this METHOD can be applied. In demanding a bourgeois democracy that is consistent, for example, building on the outrage over the expenses scandal, we can argue the need for the books to be opened not to those same elements of the establishment from which the political elites are drawn, but via properly constituted committees of Workers Inspection, just as ordinary workers are drawn at random to form Trial Juries. At a time when we are being told we are “All in this together”, the Queen has just asked for a pay rise of 15%. Let us have a Workers Committee to look into that, and the finances of the Monarchy. If the State will not agree to such Committees, let us argue for establishing our own through the Labour Party and Trade Unions. In so doing we can make the point to ordinary workers that bourgeois democracy is a fraud, that if they want real democracy they have to create their own democratic forums, their own committees of Inspection to get at the truth. We need such committees to look at the way money is spent by Local Councils and so on too.
The Tories have said they want to involve the whole population in discussing what to cut. Of course, that will be a fraud too, but in showing why it is a fraud, we should not be content simply to be be Oppositional, but to be transformational. We should mobilise through local Labour parties and Trades Councils the very debate the Tories say they want. Let us organise in each area, such discussions on every estate. Let us suggest some of the things that could be cut, such as Trident, the Monarchy, the House of Lords, reducing the wages of all functionaries down to the average wage, look at how the Public sector is ripped off by private contractors and so on.

Of course, where Councils are selling off Housing we should oppose the sale to private landlords. But, even before then it is necessary to be developing Tenants and Residents Associations so as to be not just oppositional bodies, whose only role is to respond defensively when the Council does something we don't want. Instead they should be developed into real Management bodies demanding control over all aspects of the estate, with powers to open the Councils books. Again, so long as ownership, and therefore, control, rests with the Council any such gains will be temporary and fragile, if achieved at all. That is why it is necessary to use the experience gained to show why the workers themselves will only be able to truly exercise that control if they become the owners themselves, by establishing their own Co-operative, but not a limited Co-op like that proposed by the Tories, but a Co-op tied into other such Co-ops in the area, tied to the Co-op Bank to ensure Finance for expansion, tied to a Workers Construction Co-op, to organise renovation and renewal and so on. In other words not an island of socialism, but a transformational, expansionary process.

Of course, it is necessary for workers to defend their wages and conditions, but for the reasons that Marx outlined in 'Wages, Price and Profit', there are severe limits to the extent that this can be done. The job of Marxists is not to simply act as oppositionists encouraging workers over and over again to simply respond with more militancy, but is to explain why that is, as Marx did, not by simply writing the occasional article about it, but through day to day, explanation in practice on the shop floor. Yes, as part of that process we can argue again for opening the books, but what when the books demonstrate precisely that point? What when the books show the boss actually cannot pay? Should we then settle for that other form of Economism, the replacement of one boss by another, the private Capitalist by the State capitalist? Or, having shown within the workers communities that a real alternative democracy, a real control is possible where Workers take ownership directly themselves, should we not argue, precisely that the real solution is for the workers to take over the means of production themselves by the establishment of a Workers Co-op, again not as an 'island of socialism', but again as part of a wider transformational movement.

Elson continues,

“Very schematically, the political problem is how to free the specific, conscious, collective aspects of a capitalist social relation from domination by the abstract elements. Thompson puts it rather more eloquently: it is to

'pass from process-determined 'necessity' to the 'freedom' of rational intentionality.' (Thompson, 1978, p.156)

As a starting point we need to locate the points at which the process of material abstraction is incomplete, the points at which 'objective' market forces break down and a 'subjective' element enters. This is the critical terrain of class struggle.”

(ibid p.113)

But, is this true? I think that Elson here simply replaces Purdy and prior's Economism with a fetish for Plannism. It is to identify what is crucial in creating the future socialist society not as being that workers actually do become the new ruling class because they become the owners of the means of production, but that the market is replaced by planning. But, of course, just as the State can replace private Capitalist ownership of the means of production without that in any way being socialist or even a movement towards socialism – in Nazi Germany it meant the opposite - so too can the market be replaced by even extensive planning without that in any sense implying a move towards socialism either. Many people would argue, for example, that the involvement of workers on the German Works Councils has not meant a move towards Socialism, but only towards a Corporatism, in which the workers economic interests are tied to a continuing Capitalist ownership, and its horizons limited by it.

As Marx pointed out if you establish Co-operative forms of production i.e. workers ownership here and now, then distribution changes too, fundamentally. Along with those changes in distribution go changes in social relations, in power relations. What is utopian is to believe that power relations, the extent to which the workers can exercise control, can change without first fundamentally changing those basic productive relations.

Even when Elson recognises the importance of ownership she doesn't seem to draw the appropriate conclusions. She writes,

“So long as control of the means of production and of the money supply is abstracted from the working class, there will always be severe limits to the power of Trade Unions to increase or defend the standard of living of the working class. For any increase in money wages can always be cancelled out by a rise in prices or unemployment. It is for this reason that it is quite futile to expect a wages offensive to preserve or improve the standard of living of the working class in a period of recession. When the working class standard of living rises, this is not simply the result of good trade union organisation and wage militancy. It also depends on objective factors, in particular the rate of accumulation. It should be the job of Marxists to explain these objective limits, and to insist that they are taken into account; not to encourage the illusion that the main limit to increasing the standard of living of the working class is state power expressed in the form of incomes policy...

The criterion of success of a wages strategy for socialists, should not be the size of the money wage increases. It should be the extent to which the scope for the subjective element in wage determination has been widened; the extent to which the social relations through which wages are determined have been transformed to strengthen their conscious and collective (not corporatist) aspects; the extent to which the wage bargaining process has been democratised; the extent to which the prerogatives exercised by the representatives of Capital have been eroded; and the extent to which the standard of living of the working class is liberated from dependence on the the wage.”

(ibid p. 114)

As an example of this she writes,

“The production of these 'ideal estimates' (internal accounting prices, the weights ascribed to different kinds of labour-time in job evaluation studies, etc.) is a material indication that it is possible to establish the social comparability of different concrete labours through conscious, collective action, rather than through blind market forces. The element of conscious decision in these estimates is pre-figurative of socialism, but it remains hidden, subsumed in accounting conventions or techniques of management 'science'. They remain instruments of capital's domination so long as the working class is excluded from the conscious, collective action in producing them; so long as they are 'ideal estimates' of Capital rather than labour, couched in terms of an 'objective' calculus, rather than a democratic decision.”

(ibid p.115)

But, there are several things wrong with this. Firstly, as she states these problems remain so long as the means of production remain in Capitalist hands. Of course, democratising the wage bargaining process, in a way that happened to some extent in the rise of militancy and the shop stewards movement in the 1960's, would be a gain. Indeed, I would argue that one of the reasons for advocating the establishment of Factory Committees, that organise workers across all unions, and those that do not even belong to a Trade Union, is precisely to break down inter-union rivalry, to weaken the power of officialdom (that frequently utilises such rivalry in its own interests), and to encourage such a democratic transformation on the shop floor across a range of issues. But, as the history of that shop stewards movement demonstrated – in fact even as the experience of the Combine Committees demonstrated – it is precisely that continuance of ownership in Capitalist hands that ensures that as soon as a period of weakness ensues, Capital as well as the union bureaucracy has ample means by which to incorporate such structures, or even to simply abolish them. A whole layer of Trade Union rank and file militants from that period were simply transformed into another aspect of bureaucracy sitting on the workers backs.

Secondly, there has been plenty of experience with job evaluation, including experience where workplace representatives were involved in the process. Iwas involved in such a process myself back in 2000/1. But, there are two clear problems. Firstly, the process can only develop relativities not absolute levels. It remained an Economistic struggle, and more so in so far as management argued that there was just one pot of money to be divided up. Secondly, this approach really represents that same Plannism referred to earlier. Local Government for a long time had some semblance of such a Pay Structure, yet the reality was that the market reality forced its way through, and rather like the experience in the Stalinist States, forced its way through in ways which ensured further bureaucratism and deformity. For example, when shortages of particular types of worker arose – for example Environmental Health Officers – because the wages were not high enough, exceptions had to be made, bureaucratic manoeuvres put in place, to offer, non-money wages, expense allowances and so on. In fact, a whole series of “Recruitment and Retention” packages had to be established to deal with such shortages. The problems of such an approach in a “Socialist” economy could be even more severe. No matter how democratic a decision is to set the wage for a particular form of concrete labour at a particular level, what do you do when the market breaks through and a shortage arises? Direction of Labour anyone?

When she writes,

“To summarise: I am suggesting that we approach class struggle by locating the points in social relations at which abstract forms of establishing social comparability break down. The aim is then to contest capital's prerogative to establish the forms of establishing comparability, while at the same time taking action to loosen the limits placed on this by the persistence of abstract forms of establishing social comparability.”

(ibid p.115)

this is both reformist and an application of that utopian plannism. Rather than dialectics it reminds me of Marx's criticism of Proudhon. Marx said that Proudhon's understanding of dialectics was that everything was made up of “good” and “bad” aspects. Proudhon's concept was to take the good and reject the bad. But, as Marx pointed out the concrete reality entailed both aspects – even to the extent the terms “good” and “bad” had meaning. It wasn't possible to retain the existing concrete reality without both aspects. Only a new reality could encompass the “good” without the “bad”. It cannot be simply transformed. Yet that appears to be precisely what Elson envisages. Secondly, as Marx points out, “Right” can never be higher than the Economic level of society. The market continues to exist for specific reasons. The kind of market based decisions over wages do not persist simply because of the existence of Capitalist Power, but because development has not yet proceeded to a degree to which the market can be replaced effectively with the kinds of non-market mechanisms that Elson refers to. In fact, here too, the establishment of worker owned property is a precondition for developing such non-market mechanisms.

That reformism is expressed clearly in her comment,

“The metaphor we need is not that of seizing state power, but of subverting state power. The struggle to transform the state can begin now.”

This is fundamentally wrong. It continues to stand the relation between state and civil society on its head. It assumes wrongly that the existing state can be simply “transformed” rather than that a completely new, completely different type of state has to be created in its place. It continues to see the process of transformation of society as springing from that well-head, whereas as Marx says in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, the state is a reflection of society. The transformation that has to occur is a transformation of civil society, of productive and social relations. But, of course, this process too is not a purely evolutionary process. Evolution itself does not proceed by just slow gradual changes, but is punctuated by the termination of such changes with sharp revolutionary leaps. That is the metaphor that we really need. A process of real transformation within civil society as workers property is built up, and upon it, workers economic and social power. Corresponding to it, the development of new democratic forms within the workplace and the community, forms which mirror the workers own self-activity through a direct democracy that combines both legislative and executive functions.
This is the process that Marx refers to in the Critique when he speaks of the working class being made fit to rule. In “State and Revolution” Lenin completely misunderstood and underestimated this process. He believed that after the revolution the process of running the State would be a simple matter, because Capitalism had reduced it to effectively a straightforward process of book-keeping. He was wrong, across the piece he had to bring back the old Tsarist officials to run the State supervised by a vast bureaucracy of Commisars. The same was true in industry where workers were neither trained nor anxious to exercise control over the means of production, and where the old bosses had to be brought back, again supervised by, and eventually merging with a vast Party, and then State bureaucracy. It is also what Gramsci refers to in the quote that Elson gives, where he states,

“What is needed for the revolution are men of sober mind, men who don't cause an absence of bread in bakeries, who make trains run, who provide the factories with raw materials and know how to turn the produce of the country into industrial produce, who ensure the safety and freedom of the people against attacks of criminals, who enable to network of collective services to function and who do not reduce the people to despair and to a horrible carnage. Verbal enthusiasm and reckless phraseology make on laugh (or cry) when a single one of these problems has to be resolved even in a village of a hundred inhabitants.”

(Gramsci, Political Writings 1910-20)