Dealing With Uber

Uber is emblematic of the gig economy, for which read the casualised, precarious, zero hours economy. It argues that Uber drivers are not its employees, but are self-employed workers. To the extent that those workers have to buy their own means of production, have to provide for their own holiday pay, sick pay, national insurance and so on, that is, of course, true. But, the reality is that the Uber drivers, like others in the gig economy, are dependent upon Uber for work. They are like the Scottish pebble collectors described by Marx in Theories of Surplus Value, who nominally sold a commodity – pebbles – to the stone cutters, but who were so numerous themselves, and so dependent upon selling to those stone cutters, that, in fact, they had to sell their pebbles to the stone cutters at prices below their exchange-value, and which only, at best, covered the pebble collectors own wages.

But, both cases, actually demonstrate the limitations of trades union solutions. In the case of the pebble collectors, the best a trade union organisation for them could have ensured would have been that the stone cutters were forced to recognise them as employees, and to try to ensure that the prices paid to them did not fall below what effectively reproduced the value of their labour-power, as trades unions did in respect of other workers paid on the basis of piece-rates. The same is true for Uber drivers. But, with Uber a further limitation of a trades union solution is illustrated.

Around 40,000 people in London are dependent on Uber for their employment. The decision of TfL has provoked a backlash, with around half a million people quickly signing a petition against it, because of that fact. This is a bit like the situation in relation to workers in less developed economies. Liberals sitting comfortably in well paid jobs in developed economies throw up their hands in horror at children being employed in Bangladesh, and elsewhere, or at workers in such countries being employed on very low wages. But, of course, in many cases, in those places, these terrible jobs, represent an improvement for those that undertake them. The children in employment, would often otherwise have been scraping a living begging on the streets or worse. The real option is often not a more civilised employment and conditions, but no employment at all, and desperate penury. As Marx put it, in contrast to the Liberal idealism of others, in his Critique of the Gotha Programme,

“A general prohibition of child labour is incompatible with the existence of large-scale industry and hence an empty, pious wish. Its realization -- if it were possible -- would be reactionary, since, with a strict regulation of the working time according to the different age groups and other safety measures for the protection of children, an early combination of productive labour with education is one of the most potent means for the transformation of present-day society.” 

The reason that workers in countries like Britain have higher standards of living is because, over the years, capital made profits, which were then accumulated, as additional capital, as competition drove each capital to seek to be more efficient so as to grab a larger market share for itself. As this caused labour productivity to rise, and the value of labour-power to fall, the rate of surplus value was driven higher, and the average annual rate of profit along with it. Even as workers living standards rose, because a given amount of wages bought an increased quantity and range of ever cheaper goods and services – and this “Civilising Mission of Capital", as Marx describes it, is also necessary for capital, in order that it is able to sell this increased mass and range of goods and services to workers – still meant that because of higher productivity, British goods and services were cheaper than those produced in other parts of Europe, let alone in places like India, or China, and its rate of profit was also higher than in these less productive economies.

“Intrinsically, it is not a question of the higher or lower degree of development of the social antagonisms that result from the natural laws of capitalist production. It is a question of these laws themselves, of these tendencies working with iron necessity towards inevitable results. The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.

But apart from this. Where capitalist production is fully naturalised among the Germans (for instance, in the factories proper) the condition of things is much worse than in England, because the counterpoise of the Factory Acts is wanting. In all other spheres, we, like all the rest of Continental Western Europe, suffer not only from the development of capitalist production, but also from the incompleteness of that development. Alongside the modern evils, a whole series of inherited evils oppress us, arising from the passive survival of antiquated modes of production, with their inevitable train of social and political anachronisms. We suffer not only from the living, but from the dead. Le mort saisit le vif! [The dead holds the living in his grasp. – formula of French common law]"

Preface To Capital I

That is why the profits produced in the developed economies have always tended to be invested in other developed economies, rather than in low wage economies, because the rate of profit to be had from these low wage economies was generally lower than in the developed economies, despite their low wages. Far from their being “super-exploitation” in these low wage economies, as the liberals and Stalinists, and other “anti-imperialists” try to explain it, the real super exploitation is of workers in the developed economies, where the rate of surplus value is far higher, despite the higher living standards. As Marx puts it, the problems for low wage, developing economies is always that they suffer not only from capitalism, but also from insufficient development of capital. It is why, as against the reactionary socialists such as Sismondi, Marx agreed with the ruthless scientific approach of Ricardo that promoted the idea of production for the sake of production, for the most rapid development of the productive forces, so as, as quickly as possible, to develop the productive forces to a level which makes a transition to a higher form of society possible. The same idea was put forward by Lenin, who wrote,

“And from these principles it follows that the idea of seeking salvation for the working class in anything save the further development of capitalism is reactionary. In countries like Russia, the working class suffers not so much from capitalism as from the insufficient development of capitalism. The working class is therefore decidedly interested in the broadest, freest and most rapid development of capitalism. The removal of all the remnants of the old order which are hampering the broad, free and rapid development of capitalism is of decided advantage to the working class.”

Lenin - Two tactics of Social Democracy In The Democratic Revolution, Chapter 6.

Those who have pointed to the fact that Uber represents such a similar revolutionising and developing of the productive forces are absolutely right, as against those who seek to hold back such development, and who thereby also place themselves in the camp of defending existing restrictive monopolies, and entrenched power. And, the reality is that such restrictive solutions can never work, in the longer run, for workers. In the case of Uber, its fairly obvious why that is the case. Firstly, even if all of the Uber drivers join the Independent Workers Union (which they should, in any case, do, by the way), they face the same problem as the Scottish pebble collectors. That is there are so many of them, and so many more people who would take their place, that they lack the market power to be able to drive up their wages.

Suppose, as members of the IWU, they were able to exercise their own monopoly? The response has been seen many times in the past. Adam Smith thought that as capital grew and the demand for labour-power grew with it, labour would become in short supply, so that wages would be pushed up. It was his explanation for the law of the falling rate of profit. But, as Marx points out, when wages rise to such a level that they begin to squeeze profits, capital responds by introducing labour saving technology, which then causes unemployment, and causes wages to fall again.

Even if Uber drivers were able to organise so as to push up their wages, or even if the demand for Uber drivers rose to a level whereby they were in relative short supply, so that they could increase their income, what would be the response of Uber? It is already apparent. By 2020, electric cars will be becoming ubiquitous, and by a similar point, those electric cars will all begin to be autonomous, self-driving vehicles. There will be no requirement for drivers, and consequently their economic power disappears.  Higher wages for drivers simply encourages a more rapid adoption of new technological developments.  Indeed, that has been one of the main drivers in the history of capitalism towards such productivity raising technology being introduced.

Recently, on Newsnight, Paul Mason, effectively provided the answer. Within a much shorter period of time than most people imagine, in a place like London, all transport will be controlled by a single computer. The tube and other train drivers are fighting an heroic battle to protect their jobs and conditions, but ultimately it is a losing battle, as workers in other industries found in the 1980's when technology developed to be able to replace them. Driverless trains are much easier to develop than driverless vehicles. Its the disappearance of train drivers that the unions should be preparing for.

Essentially, the technology for a single transport computer organising journeys, and allocating trains, buses, and cars to passengers requirements is identical, in each of these different forms. The question is who has ownership and control over it. Given our experience of the state in the past, during the Miners Strike, the BL disputes, the actions of TfL in relation to tube workers today, is there any reason whatsoever for workers to place more faith in these instruments of the capitalist state, than there is in the executives – often the same executives – that shareholders place in control over companies like Uber? Absolutely not, which is why the statist solutions put forward on many of these things at the Labour Party Conference last week, offer no way forward.

The way forward for Uber workers, and so for others in a similar situation, is fairly clear. Uber say that the drivers are self-employed. Fine, firstly via the IWU, those drivers should take Uber at their word. They should then merge their capital, and become one single worker-owned, Uber Drivers Co-operative, and should sell their services via that co-operative. Quickly, they should develop for themselves the only thing that Uber actually has as a means of extracting surplus value from them, that is the software application. The Uber drivers could then quickly displace Uber itself, having real control over their means of production, and using their own profits to further develop the co-operative. They could exercise their own direct control not over their own working conditions, but over policing their own drivers to avoid some of the problems that have arisen in relation to attacks on passengers. That model could then be rolled out to other areas of the gig economy, but it could also link up with other areas of the transport industry, including the tube and train drivers who will face similar problems in coming years.