Labour's education proposals are everything that would be expected of a progressive social-democratic agenda. Value is labour, and surplus value, the basis of profit, is surplus labour. Without labour there is no value creation, and so no surplus value production, and so no profits. Of all the things that capital requires society to produce, therefore, the most important for it is labour-power. And that labour-power cannot be just any old labour-power. As capitalism develops, its requirements for the types of labour-power also change. We do not, today, require the labour-power of wheelwrights, for example, because the days when all sorts of wheels were produced, in their entirety, by such a skilled craftsman have long since gone. However, what we do need, today, is the labour-power of skilled computer programmers, designers and so on. These types of labour-power do not appear from nowhere, but have themselves to be created, by first creating workers that have significant levels of basic education, so that they are able to learn these skills, to be able to think critically and flexibly, and so on. Moreover, today, the process of technological change is such that the kinds of skills that are required change at least every decade, whereas, prior to this century, it was usually the case that someone learned a trade, and continued in it for life. What capital today requires is a continued supply of these rapidly changing types of labour-power, and, as with so many aspects of social-democracy, it requires the state to undertake and regulate the provision of them. It requires not only a continual supply of new workers, but the ability to also regularly retrain the existing workforce, and to provide them with the new skills that are required. That is what Labour's National Education Service seeks to achieve.
In the last century, large numbers of skilled jobs were transformed into unskilled or semi-skilled jobs. This process too, created new highly skilled jobs. Whilst machines replaced hand labour, the production of machines itself required new types of skilled labour to design and produce the machines themselves. There was then an explosion in the number of skilled engineers, and of mechanics, and later also in the number of electricians, and, as factories and infrastructure developed, also of plumbers and so on. As Marx notes, the amount of labour required to produce a machine is always less than the amount of labour that the machine replaces, but that does not at all mean that the consequence is not an expansion in the total amount of labour employed, as a consequence. Firstly, the capital and labour released by the machine can then be employed in some other sphere; secondly the machine almost invariably accompanies an increase in output, which requires additional inputs, which requires additional labour to produce them; thirdly, the introduction of machines more generally raises social productivity, reducing the value of labour-power and of constant capital, which raises the rate of surplus value, and rate of profit, creating additional profit that can be accumulated, as well as causing a release of capital that can be accumulated.
On the whole, in this process, the mass of unskilled and semi-skilled labour expands relative to skilled labour, but the absolute mass of both increases. The types of skilled labour changes, whilst the unskilled labour becomes more or less homogeneous factory labour. The machine minder who watches a machine producing A, can quickly be transferred to another factory where they watch another machine producing B. But, an engineer or a mechanic cannot simply become, say, an electrician or a plumber. Moreover, as private capital was replaced by socialised capital, it required trained professionals to take on the functions previously undertaken by the individual private capitalist themselves. It required, trained day to day production line managers, purchasing managers, sales managers, book-keepers, accountants, and so on (functioning capitalists). All of these occupations, along with those such as teacher, solicitor, doctor, which were originally provided on a small scale, by a small, select number of middle-class professionals, became required on a mass scale, and so had to be provided by white collar workers.
As Marx puts it, in Capital III, Chapter 17,
“The commercial worker, in the strict sense of the term, belongs to the better-paid class of wage-workers — to those whose labour is classed as skilled and stands above average labour. Yet the wage tends to fall, even in relation to average labour, with the advance of the capitalist mode of production. This is due partly to the division of labour in the office, implying a one-sided development of the labour capacity, the cost of which does not fall entirely on the capitalist, since the labourer's skill develops by itself through the exercise of his function, and all the more rapidly as division of labour makes it more one-sided. Secondly, because the necessary training, knowledge of commercial practices, languages, etc., is more and more rapidly, easily, universally and cheaply reproduced with the progress of science and public education the more the capitalist mode of production directs teaching methods, etc., towards practical purposes. The universality of public education enables capitalists to recruit such labourers from classes that formerly had no access to such trades and were accustomed to a lower standard of living. Moreover, this increases supply, and hence competition. With few exceptions, the labour-power of these people is therefore devaluated with the progress of capitalist production. Their wage falls, while their labour capacity increases.”
This is precisely the aim of Labour's education programme. It ensures that the capitalist state bears the cost, collectively, of producing the educated and skilled labour that capital requires, but which individual capitals seek to avoid bearing themselves. In so far as this education and training is provided by the capitalist state, and so paid for out of taxation, it is a part of the reproduction cost of labour-power, and so financed out of the wage-fund. Capital, of course, wants to minimise this cost, just as it wants to minimise the cost of wages in general. However, minimising the cost does not equate to just doing it on the cheap. That was the case in the early days of capitalist production, when all out competition between small private capitals led them to use all kinds of measures to cut corners, adulterate food and other products, in order simply to be cheaper than the competition. But, as a general characterisation that period of capitalism is long gone, though as with all such characterisations, its not hard to find examples to the contrary.
But, large scale capitalism, even by the second half of the 19th century, had seen that such destructive competition was self-defeating, which is why it introduced the Factories Acts, introduced greater measures of Public Health under the control of Local Authorities, established Public Parks in towns and so on. For the large capitals those old methods were counterproductive, and replacing them with more civilised regulations also enabled them to undermine their smaller capitalist competitors that depended upon them. As Engels put it,
“The state of things described in this book belongs to-day, in many respects, to the past, as far as England is concerned. Though not expressly stated in our recognised treatises, it is still a law of modern Political Economy that the larger the scale on which capitalistic production is carried on, the less can it support the petty devices of swindling and pilfering which characterise its early stages. The pettifogging business tricks of the Polish Jew, the representative in Europe of commerce in its lowest stage, those tricks that serve him so well in his own country, and are generally practised there, he finds to be out of date and out of place when he comes to Hamburg or Berlin; and, again, the commission agent who hails from Berlin or Hamburg, Jew or Christian, after frequenting the Manchester Exchange for a few months, finds out that in order to buy cotton yarn or cloth cheap, he, too, had better drop those slightly more refined but still miserable wiles and subterfuges which are considered the acme of cleverness in his native country. The fact is, those tricks do not pay any longer in a large market, where time is money, and where a certain standard of commercial morality is unavoidably developed, purely as a means of saving time and trouble. And it is the same with the relation between the manufacturer and his “hands.”...
And in proportion as this increase took place, in the same proportion did manufacturing industry become apparently moralised. The competition of manufacturer against manufacturer by means of petty thefts upon the workpeople did no longer pay. Trade had outgrown such low means of making money; they were not worth while practising for the manufacturing millionaire, and served merely to keep alive the competition of smaller traders, thankful to pick up a penny wherever they could. Thus the truck system was suppressed, the Ten Hours’ Bill was enacted, and a number of other secondary reforms introduced — much against the spirit of Free Trade and unbridled competition, but quite as much in favour of the giant-capitalist in his competition with his less favoured brother....
The fact is that all these concessions to justice and philanthropy were nothing else but means to accelerate the concentration of capital in the hands of the few, for whom the niggardly extra extortions of former years had lost all importance and had become actual nuisances; and to crush all the quicker and all the safer their smaller competitors, who could not make both ends meet without such perquisites. Thus the development of production on the basis of the capitalistic system has of itself sufficed — at least in the leading industries, for in the more unimportant branches this is far from being the case — to do away with all those minor grievances which aggravated the workman’s fate during its earlier stages...
Again, the repeated visitations of cholera, typhus, small-pox, and other epidemics have shown the British bourgeois the urgent necessity of sanitation in his towns and cities, if he wishes to save himself and family from falling victims to such diseases. Accordingly, the most crying abuses described in this book have either disappeared or have been made less conspicuous. Drainage has been introduced or improved, wide avenues have been opened out athwart many of the worst “slums” I had to describe.”
(Preface to the English Edition of “The Condition of the Working Class in England”
What capital seeks then is not cheapness but value for money. As with the production of relative surplus value, it seeks to reduce the value of labour-power by reducing its production cost, by raising social productivity. That indeed is why capital created the welfare state in the first place, so that it could regulate the supply of labour-power, in the twentieth century, by utilising the state to introduce the methods of large-scale Fordist production lines into the provision of education and healthcare, so as to produce and repair labour-power, on a mass scale, by the most efficient means, whilst also transferring that cost away from the individual capital, and on to the total social capital.
What has changed, in this century, is that the process whereby unskilled factory labour expanded relative to skilled labour, has itself come to an end. The unskilled factory labour has itself now largely been replaced by industrial robots. This is one reason that many of the older workers that occupied these positions now find themselves unable to find replacement permanent unskilled jobs, whilst also lacking the educational skills to be able to retrain for a modern skilled job. That is what has created the division between the new young progressive working-class, and the old reactionary working-class that seeks to turn the clock back to the conditions of its youth. A relatively small number of more highly skilled workers now are the only people to be found, say, on a car factory floor. Their job is to ensure that the robots can do their job, that any changes in the robots programming, to undertake a different set of instructions, and so on, are undertaken. Unskilled labour has largely been transferred into the area of service production and distribution. Even here, further automation and robotisation is taking over.
In order to produce the highly skilled labour-power that will be required in the future, therefore, a number of things are required. Firstly, all of that labour-power requires an already high level of basic education, and the ability to think critically and flexibly, so as to be able to quickly shift from one set of skills to a new one, when provided with adequate retraining. This is one reason that existing young workers already think differently to their parents and grandparents. Its why young workers have also massively rejected the lies and obvious absurdities promoted in relation to Brexit, whilst their parents and grandparents are less likely to see through it. In order to provide this base level of education, it is necessary to begin socialising and educating those workers from the earliest possible age. That is what Labour's proposals for providing free pre-school education for all 2, 3 and 4 year old children seeks to achieve.
Experience also shows the need to combine this with Surestart to offset some of the disadvantages caused by deprivation. Studies show that children that are naturally brighter at the age of 2-4, lose that advantage, by the time they are 7, if they are from disadvantaged homes. Losing the potential of such a large supply of educated labour-power is something that capital cannot afford in the 21st century. But, education cannot be separated from other factors such as living conditions, health, and environment. Labour's education plans have to be seen in conjunction with its proposals for raising living standards by increasing the Minimum Wage, as well as its proposals for housing.
If the proposals I set out earlier in relation to new housing developments were adopted, it would go a long way to improving the environment in which these children grow up, and their ability to learn. In the 1980's the Tories promoted a massive reduction in the number of schools, and Labour County Councils participated in that programme. In fact, the process of closing down small, local schools had begun under Labour in the 1970's. The argument was that school rolls were falling, but instead of using this as a means of reducing class sizes, it was used as a reason to rationalise schools themselves. It played into an argument for achieving economies of scale, and of being able to justify having specialist teachers in larger schools. A similar argument was raised in favour of closing down cottage hospitals, so as to concentrate resources on a smaller number of large prestige facilities.
In fact, the argument was specious. It meant students in the one case, and patients in the other, now had to travel long distances, bringing a series of other problems in relation to traffic, congestion, parking and so on with it. In relation to schools, it would always have been preferable to have retained smaller local schools, and simply to have the specialist teachers travel to the students rather than vie versa. But, resources have been used badly in general. Schools are a large fixed capital cost. A private business would always seek to use such a facility as intensively and extensively as possible, using it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week if possible. Yet, schools are frequently used only for a few hours day, 5 days a week, and often for only 8 months of the year.
Labour says,
“Labour’s funding settlement will ensure pupils are taught by a qualified teacher, that every school is open for a full five days a week”,
which is hardly a challenging ambition. Community based schools, based around the idea of developing new villages could not only enable students to walk to school, but those facilities should be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for the community to use. The schools have libraries that could be used as an alternative to the expensive duplication involved in keeping open separate library buildings, often located in town centres that require travel. The school can be used, and indeed will need to be used, if we are to provide lifelong access to education for all. Everyone should be free to sit in on classes. The school should be open so that its sports facilities can be utilised, so that its computers can be utilised and so on. And, the local community itself should be centrally involved in ensuring that these facilities can be used safely and effectively, in the same way that in many areas now, the local community takes responsibility for overseeing things like playgrounds, community centres, and increasingly has taken over the running of pubs, post offices, and shops, on a cooperative basis.
But, central should also be Labour's broadband proposals. In today's world, the requirement for physical libraries and books has largely disappeared. Labour can ensure that all books, reference materials, archives and so on become available free online, and accessible via a 21st century broadband network. There is no reason why students in a small village, either in a rural area, or in a new village should not have the same access to all these materials via the internet as someone living in a city. But, Labour's proposals for broadband are for that reason way too timid. The reason that economies that adopt some form of centralised planning have success in certain areas is because, in those particular areas, they are able to focus resources and move to achieve their goals quickly. Often we hear complaints about Britain being pushed into a Singaporean route, which is presented as a bad thing. But, GDP per capita in the UK is $43,000; in Singapore it is $58,000. Again, its often portrayed that the Singaporean development model is based upon low wages. The opposite is true. In 1983, I wrote,
“Singapore despite having no natural resources doubled the standard of living between 1970 and 1980. Private car sales increased by 95% in 1977. The top marginal rate of tax is 55% and is strictly levied. Well over a third of a company’s wage bill is compulsorily set aside for forced saving. After WW2 there was no significant investment either in the port or city. The only institution that prospered was the brewery whose output in 1959 formed 75% by value of the island’s manufacturing output. In that year 4% of the island’s labour force was involved in manufacturing. Today, 34% of the labour force is in manufacturing.
Wages are set by the National Wages Council. Since the early 70’s they were set at about 6% above the expected rate of inflation (which in 1976 was in fact negative). Real wages have risen very rapidly. The labour force rose from 726,700 in 1970 to 994,700 in 1978. The number of unemployed in 1970 was 75,800 (10.4%) in 1978 it was 35,700 (3.6%). Wages have, in fact, been rising less than many employers would have been willing to pay. The government has encouraged a high wage economy in order to encourage firms to go upmarket. At the end of 1979, the NWC raised the average wage of a semi-skilled worker (then about 450 dollars a month) by 18%, lower paid workers got rather more, higher paid workers less, and the employers contribution to the state pension scheme was increased from 16.5 to 20.5% of payroll cost. Singapore started by attracting large numbers of foreign firms using lots of labour to do low value jobs. Now the Government is telling these firms to move on. Many are at the end of their 5 year tax holiday and are facing the prospect of paying 40% tax on their profits.
The next stage of the development programme consists of spending large sums on educating and training workers for the new highly skilled jobs. The Government has spent a lot on training colleges and firms are subsidised to provide their own training schemes. Phillips of Holland, Rollei of Germany and Tata of India run training schools jointly with the Government. As the supply of full trained Singaporeans increases the conditions on which foreign firms can get work permits for their managers and technicians are tightened.
Singapore, on the hub of everyone’s communications, refines oil and provides a base for exploring for it. It is now in partnership with Sumitomo moving into petrochemicals too on an island specially reclaimed from the sea for the job. Oil means not just refineries and ship repairing; it means telecommunications, and financial services too, and the more they develop the more they attract other activities not directly arising from oil.
Singapore has been gradually trading upwards, using the growing skills of its labour force to man ever more sophisticated plants, and using its system of selective grants to incoming industry to favour those which add higher value. The multinationals have been happy to go along with this even with the Government policy of jacking up labour costs. Singapore would like to market not just goods, but services and know how and flows of capital, as it already does for the oil industry in the region. Singapore is after leasing the island of Batam (about twice the size of Singapore itself) from Indonesia for use as an industrial zone under Singaporean management, but using Indonesian labour.”
There are many other aspects of Singapore that can be criticised, but if Labour wants a model of how to utilise the centralised planning of the state, to rapidly develop an economy, and to move to a high-wage, high value economy, it could do worse than look at Singapore. One lesson with infrastructure is if you are going to do it, do it big, do it fast. Otherwise, it becomes a drag on the economy, and it is out of date by the time you have completed it, meaning that you never recover the value invested in it.
In terms of education, Labour could also learn a lot from Singapore, and its investment in broadband infrastructure. It already has 1 Gbit broadband capable of live streaming HD, and is upgrading to 2 Gbit that will be capable of streaming 3-D. Singapore is able to provide education from the best teachers online into students homes. If labour wants to provide life-long learning and to do so on a mass scale, and at an efficient cost, then the only real way of doing that is by massive open learning, via the internet. Labour needs to think bigger, and think in terms of 21st century solutions, rather than simply trying to repackage 20th century solutions in 21st century clothes.
No comments:
Post a Comment