In Part 3, I demonstrated that the orthodox Ultra-Left opposition to Co-ops, was the same petit-bourgeois Ultra-Leftism against which Lenin had to argue in Russia, in relation to their need to develop the industry of the Workers State on the basis of the best, revolutionary elements of Capitalism, as the basis from which to both compete effectively, and from which the limitations of Capitalist production could be transcended, through the development of new Co-operative methods and systems. But, what is worse in the orthodox Ultra-Left opposition to Co-ops is the bourgeois ideology that actually underpins it. The implication is that the conditions in the industry had been achieved as a result of “union action”. But, as Marx and Engels point out such a notion is absurd. Trade Union action could only achieve what was compatible with the needs of Capital accumulation. To quote Engels again,
“The history of these Unions is a long series of defeats of the working-men, interrupted by a few isolated victories. All these efforts naturally cannot alter the economic law according to which wages are determined by the relation between supply and demand in the labour market. Hence the Unions remain powerless against all great forces which influence this relation. In a commercial crisis the Union itself must reduce wages or dissolve wholly; and in a time of considerable increase in the demand for labour, it cannot fix the rate of wages higher than would be reached spontaneously by the competition of the capitalists among themselves.”
Engels Condition of The Working Class in England p243
Just how powerless the unions were, just how secure those conditions were was demonstrated a few years later when those conditions were swept away, along with most of Fleet Street,
as Capital simply rolled over the unions and established its operations in Wapping. But, the fundamental message here is bourgeois. What it is saying to workers is that their needs can be met by Trade Union action provided it is militant enough. But, for the reasons Marx and Engels set out that is nonsense. In fact, if the SWP had applied its logic consistently it would have seen that its argument made no sense. If a Co-op could not but act in the same way as a Capitalist firm because of the laws of Capital Accumulation, how could simple Trades Union action change those laws for the capitalist firms either? Either capital is forced to act that way, however much Trades Union opposition there is, or it is not. If it is not, then we are left with a theory that Capitalists act in a particular way because of their own subjective desires! That is Capitalists act because they are greedy or mean, or whatever, not because the economic laws of Capitalism force them to act that way. This later interpretation is the only one that can be derived from the comment,“And workers' management of a commercial concern operating in that sea deprives the workers of the strength of union organisation directed against management...”
As for, “Co-operative self-management by workers will come. But, it can only realise its potential when the working class controls the economy and when planning for its own needs replaces production for profit.” then we would have to assume that workers self-management is a very long way away indeed! The replacement of Capitalist property ownership, and even the establishment of a Workers State is not at all synonymous with working class control of the economy (whatever that might actually mean) nor even with production based on planning for need rather than profit. The reality is that the market can only be replaced to the extent that society is able to find and develop real alternatives to it, and that is likely to be a very gradual process. It is one thing as Marx and Engels spoke about in relation to the Paris Commune to establish some kind of outline National Plan of priorities, but to actually plan the whole of production is a completely different matter. If the argument for Socialism rests solely on such a perspective then we are lost. Moreover, as Lenin himself pointed out in relation to the Russian experience,
“From the point of view of the “enlightened” European there is not much left for us to do to induce absolutely everyone to take not a passive, but an active part in cooperative operations. Strictly speaking, there is “only” one thing we have left to do and that is to make our people so “enlightened” that they understand all the advantages of everybody participating in the work of the cooperatives, and organizes participation. “only” the fact. There are now no other devices needed to advance to socialism. But to achieve this “only", there must be a veritable revolution—the entire people must go through a period of cultural development. Therefore, our rule must be: as little philosophizing and as few acrobatics as possible. In this respect NEP is an advance, because it is adjustable to the level of the most ordinary peasant and does not demand anything higher of him. But it will take a whole historical epoch to get the entire population into the work of the cooperatives through NEP. At best we can achieve this in one or two decades. Nevertheless, it will be a distinct historical epoch, and without this historical epoch, without universal literacy, without a proper degree of efficiency, without training the population sufficiently to acquire the habit of book reading, and without the material basis for this, without a certain sufficiency to safeguard against, say, bad harvests, famine, etc.—without this we shall not achieve our object. The thing now is to learn to combine the wide revolutionary range of action, the revolutionary enthusiasm which we have displayed, and displayed abundantly, and crowned with complete success—to learn to combine this with (I'm almost inclined to say) the ability to be an efficient and capable trader, which is quite enough to be a good cooperator. By ability to be a trader I mean the ability to be a cultured trader. Let those Russians, or peasants, who imagine that since they trade they are good traders, get that well into their heads. This does not follow that all. They do trade, but that is far from being cultured traders. They now trade in an Asiatic manner, but to be a good trader one must trade in the European manner. They are a whole epoch behind in that.”
I'll pass over this latter comment where Lenin is committing the cardinal sin, according to the SWP, of encouraging the Russian workers and peasants to learn to be good Capitalist traders, because the most important aspect of what Lenin says here is in relation to the need for the Russian workers themselves to learn to become themselves involved in running their enterprises, for which he says a whole epoch is required. Herein lay the problem, and at base it was one that affected the Bolsheviks generally. It is the question of timescale. The reality was that even in the most active, most developed of Workers' parties – the German SPD – actual involvement by workers was abysmal. SPD branches were dominated by a small number of activists. That was not unusual, other workers' parties, including the Labour Party were exactly the same. The same was true of the Trades Unions, and the Consumer co-ops. And, although the Russian Revolution was one of the greatest upheavals in history that involved millions of people, it did not involve the majority of Russian workers, who were themselves in any case, only a small minority of the Russian population. It was one thing to overthrow a despised, tyrannical system, it was another to build a replacement in which the majority of society was actively, and democratically involved. The reality is that workers were not excluded from control because of the rise of a bureaucracy, but that a bureaucracy arose because the majority of workers showed little interest in exercising control of the means of production, and in any case had no experience or developed skill to be able to do so.The reality was that if production was not going to fall into complete chaos then decisions had to be made, and if the majority of workers were not interested and were not capable of making those decisions, then someone had to, and hence arises a bureaucracy. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does history, it was not going to wait for an “epoch”, or even two decades for workers to go through that “cultural revolution” that Lenin spoke of, in order to be able and willing to fulfil that function, and once a bureaucracy had become entrenched it was not going to encourage workers to fulfil that function anyway. Despite all the education and experience of workers in Western Europe, and the US, attendance at Trades Union meetings is at an all-time low. There is absolutely no reason to believe that workers are going to suddenly begin to demand the right to exercise such control, because the whole of their experience, and pressures of life tells them to do otherwise, to leave it up to someone else. That is all the more so the case when “Marxists” tell them that they should put off such aspirations until some time in the undefined future after the revolution.
If Socialism is to be possible, workers need to go through that process before not after the revolution. It is necessary for workers to begin to integrate the concept of control over their lives, into their daily experience and consciousness. There is really only one basis on which that is likely to happen, and that is if workers see a direct financial imperative to do so. That is, in becoming the owners of their means of production they are led on a daily basis to the need to make such decisions. To the extent that such experience can be generalised, once having learned to undertake such control at work, workers can also extend that concept to other aspects of their lives, in control of their housing and estates, and of the policing of those estates, for example. As Lenin says, for workers to learn these skills might take an epoch, but there is no time in the construction of Socialism for workers to simply learn it on the job. It is necessary for a long period of building such skills, of entrenching such ideas and creating such a consciousness as the fundamental basis of attempting to overturn property relations on an entire societal basis.
Back To Part 3
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