The Centrality of The Workplace
There really is no difference in the defeats that workers suffered in the 1980's to those they suffered in the 1920's and 30's, or in the 1870's, or 1820's. Paul says of the industrialisation of Asia etc.
“However, this time around, the process of industrialisation is failing to blow away the social and ideological cobwebs of pre-industrial life. Ethnic rivalries, the village network, religious fundamentalism and organised crime are the obstacles labour organisers in the global south encounter constantly – and fail to overcome.” (p 178)
But, he seems to want these industrialisations to overcome immediately what the previous industrialisations still have not completely achieved. Every new society inherits the baggage of the past, which becomes merged with it in mutated forms. As Marx points out in relation to German industrialisation, in his Preface to Capital I.
“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]
The social statistics of Germany and the rest of Continental Western Europe are, in comparison with those of England, wretchedly compiled. But they raise the veil just enough to let us catch a glimpse of the Medusa head behind it. We should be appalled at the state of things at home, if, as in England, our governments and parliaments appointed periodically commissions of inquiry into economic conditions; if these commissions were armed with the same plenary powers to get at the truth; if it was possible to find for this purpose men as competent, as free from partisanship and respect of persons as are the English factory-inspectors, her medical reporters on public health, her commissioners of inquiry into the exploitation of women and children, into housing and food. Perseus wore a magic cap down over his eyes and ears as a make-believe that there are no monsters.”
Britain's industrial revolution did not clear away religious mysticism and bigotry, as a reading of Dickens' novels reveals, or a glimpse at Northern Ireland demonstrates, nor did it clear away the racism that colonialism had bred amongst the population over the previous centuries. Indeed, neither that racism nor the other forms of bigotry, such as sexism, homophobia and so on have been swept away even today. In the US, industrialisation went along with widespread corruption, not to mention the significant role played by organised crime, in the labour movement itself.
Paul agrees with Andre Gorz's view that,
“Work – the defining activity of capitalism – is losing its centrality both to exploitation and resistance.” (p 179)
If its true that computers and automation has turned the sphere beyond work into the primary battleground, then humanity is already in the process of its descent. There is nothing sufficiently unifying about life for individuals as consumers or citizens that can give them a sufficiently cogent, class consciousness or political will to act, so as to transform society. It reduces them to the same position as the peasantry or other middle classes, who, whilst being numerically large, are unable to act as a class for themselves.
But, its not true. Work, and the labour process is central to the lives of an increased number of people, as the working class has become the largest class on the planet. Foxconn in China, alone employs 1 million workers! Across large parts of the globe, atomised peasant farming has, and continues to be, replaced by industrial farming, and so on. A global economy has created increasingly common conditions, and a common outlook for millions of workers, often working for the same multinational companies, in dozens of different countries, and the Internet creates the conditions for them to act as part of a single, global working-class.
In the Potteries, in the 19th century, the Potters Union was organised in lodges based on the towns where the workers lived, rather than the factories where they worked. Whilst that had some of the benefits of community that Paul discusses, it had the disadvantage of dividing the workers from their workmates, with whom they shared day to day concerns. It placed greater power in the hands of the union leaders, and bureaucracy, who were able to do deals with the company bosses.
The Left was driven, by inertia, to keep doing the same things, in the 1970's and 80's, it had been doing for the previous 25 years, but that doesn't mean that the answers lie outside the workplace either. It means the solutions put forward based on the workplace were the wrong ones. If the trades unions continue to offer solutions based on bargaining within the system, they may, as the new boom resumes and strengthens, have a new lease of life, but only to fail once again. If the unions adapt, they can prosper. In the US, the Steelworkers Union has linked up with the Mondragon Cooperatives to promote cooperative solutions in North America. If unions adopt that kind of approach, enabling the large numbers of self-employed workers to form together in cooperatives; if they create a cooperative employment agency that can exert a monopoly over the supply of labour-power; if they can work with Labour Councils, co-ops and progressive social democratic governments, they can become relevant to workers, and the vehicle to providing immediate and sustainable workplace based solutions to workers problems. For so long as the working-class must work to live, the workplace remains the central point of struggle. It becomes possible to link each workplace to every other, so that these struggles become a class struggle.
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