Phil is quite right when he says that the Grenfell Tower disaster is Class War. This disaster is a direct result of years of Tory austerity, and playing up to the Rachmanite landlords, whose numbers have been massively swelled by all of the hype and incentives given by the state for the Buy To Let brigades. As with the continued numbers of workers lives that are lost or destroyed in industrial accidents, or from industrial diseases, it gives the lie to the Tories and the gutter press onslaught against "Health and Safety Gone Mad!"
This kind of disaster occurs somewhere in the world every week, and as in this case, that somewhere is nearly always within workers communities, and often the poorest workers communities, not in those of the rich. It is a direct result of treating workers like cattle, attempting to squash them into the cheapest, least extensive spaces possible. Britain has vast amounts of open space. There is twice as much of the country taken up by golf courses as there is by private residences! Yet, Britain has the smallest property sizes anywhere in Europe, and we are still being told the country is overcrowded, that the Green Belt has to be maintained, rather than providing workers with the decent living space they need.
The government, and the other representatives of the capitalist and landlord class will try to sweep this under the carpet as soon as they can. There will be a big hue and cry over this one tragic event, but by that precise means they will try to present it as an unusual event, rather than one that we can expect with greater regularity unless something is done about it. The residents in the building have said that they had complained to the Council many times, and been brushed off. That indicates the basic problem where workers either as workers, or as, in this case tenants, do not own and control either the means of production, or their immediate environment.
Had the tenants in this building had real ownership and control over it, they would have acted immediately upon their concerns. Indeed, had they owned and controlled the building collectively, they would have ensured that the work on the building would have been done properly, so as to ensure their safety, and well-being from the start. Indeed, if workers as tenants were able to own and control their immediate environment, they probably would not choose to live in such buildings in the first place, and would instead work with other workers, organised as construction co-operatives, to create a decent and safe living environment in its place.
To stop the Tories, the Council and the landlords from sweeping this tragedy and its implications under the carpet, we need a Workers Inquiry, not just into this tragedy, and what led up to it, but into all of the other similar situations that workers find themselves in, as tenants. The Fire Brigades Union, has all of the expertise required to undertake the investigation of what caused the fire and what enabled it to spread so quickly; the construction workers unions have the expertise to reveal what deficiencies in the building and maintenance work existed; UNISON should investigate why the Council and its officers did not pick up this problem, and why it was that tenants complaints and warnings had been brushed off; and the tenants in this tower, and all the others like it, via their tenants associations can provide background information on who knew what and when, and what the actions of the Council and landlords were that led up to it.
In fact, it indicates why we need to co-ordinate Tenants Associations across the country, to share information, and take collective actions, such as general co-ordinated national rent strikes demanding that all issues be addressed. The Labour Party, with the TUC and residents Associations across the country should, indeed set a date, for a month long national rent strike, on the basis of a set of demands that councils deal with rogue private landlords, that they demand that all outstanding repairs are undertaken within that month and so on.
In the 1980's, Thatcher gave away vast swathes of state owned assets with her right to buy legislation, and Cameron introduced a similar right for Housing Association Tenants, even though Housing Associations are supposed to be non-state organisations. As I suggested some time ago, Labour should reverse that process. Labour should commit itself to giving all private tenants the same right to buy that council tenants were given. They should enable all private tenants to buy the property they live in with the same 60% discounts that council tenants were given. Labour should commit itself to working with the Co-operative Housing Federation, and using its National Investment Bank, to ensure that tenants are able to borrow the remaining 40% of the value of the property. That is particularly important in cases such as this, where it makes sense for the tenants to form their own Housing Co-operative, so as to buy the building from the landlords.
It would also be a powerful means to start to address the question of Britain's Housing Crisis, by developing additional co-operatively owned and controlled properties, and estates, and to improve the environment and condition of the existing housing stock.
But, for now, as well as extending our sympathy to all those involved in this tragedy, and once again witnessing the tremendous spontaneous co-operative and compassionate response of ordinary people whenever such crises arise, we need to begin to organise our own workers and tenants inquiry into this slaughter, and to hold this responsible to account, whilst peparing to take action to prevent its recurrence.
Showing posts with label Health and Safety. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Health and Safety. Show all posts
Thursday, 15 June 2017
Wednesday, 1 June 2011
Capitalism & Care
The last few days have shown once again that Capitalism cannot be relied upon to provide even basic standards of Care for workers. Coming on top of the many revelations about appalling conditions and treatment of patients at Stafford Hospital and elsewhere, there have been further similar revelations about Redditch Hospital, and Panorama has produced film evidence of atrocious treatment of residents at a private Care Home, Winterbourne View, in Bristol.
On top of that, Southern Cross, the biggest provider of private residential Care in Britain, is facing a financial crisis, partly due to its model of selling its homes to Landlords and renting them back (a version of PFI), and because of limitations on payments by the State to cover costs.
The fact, that these problems extend to both private and State capitalism demonstrates that this is not a question of whether care is provided by private companies or by the State, but is a result of the fact this provision in both cases is CAPITALIST, i.e. it is ultimately determined by the needs of Capital, not of ordinary workers. In fact, even in the case of the private provision, the Capitalist State is also culpable. The reason that private companies such as Southern Cross and BUPA are resorted to by Local Authorities, is that the scale of operation of these companies means that they can achieve efficiencies that the Local Capitalist State cannot, and usually can do so whilst still providing higher quality facilities than the local Council is capable of.
But, although these private care homes do have a considerable number of residents who pay the full cost of their places, in order to meet their legal responsibilities, and to operate on a large enough scale, they also have to take residents sent by the Local Authority, and they are, therefore, at the mercy of what the Local Authority is prepared to pay, and as the Cuts imposed by the Liberal-Tories bite, that is passed on.
This shows the lunacy of attempting to provide something like Care on the basis of profit. At least in the case of Southern Cross, and BUPA and other large scale providers there is not a question about the quality of Care provided. In fact, this is really a mirror of what is seen elsewhere. Particularly, since WWII, we have seen the development of a small number of very large companies in most sectors of production. These companies compete, mostly not on price, but on quality, in order to expand their market share.
This has driven the marked improvement in the quality of most consumer goods seen during that period. At the same time, in order to increase their rate of profit, these companies have also been vigorous in finding new methods of production, new techniques etc. in order to raise productivity and reduce costs. This has acted ultimately, to ensure that higher quality has been accompanied by lower prices, as these new methods become standard. In Europe, where socialised healthcare is achieved via State run National Insurance schemes, which commission services from often large private or not-for profit companies, this has also acted in the same way to raise quality, and reduce costs.
But, this assumes that the care needs of the population will be met by the National Insurance funds collected by the State. In the event that does not happen, then the companies providing the services will make losses, and eventually withdraw provision or close down.
If workers had full control over this, then they would ensure that, if necessary, the insurance premiums required to meet the costs were increased. But, this is precisely the problem with Capitalist provision of Care, be it private or State Capitalist. Workers do not have any control over the provision, either in terms of how much of their wages are devoted to it (let alone how much of society's resources are devoted to it), or over what or how provision is made. In the case of Redditch Hospital, it had only recently been given a clean bill of health by the Care Quality Commission, the Capitalist State body set up to inspect such establishments.
In fact, as the Patients Association have reported in the past, it is not the first hospital that has been given such a clean bill of health, but been found to be wanting in its provision. Similarly, the CQC was responsible for the inspection of Winterbourne View, and despite having been warned by a former member of staff about what was going on there, failed to take any action.
But, anyone who has worked in the State capitalist sector can understand why this is. In reality, the whole culture breeds an attitude of complacency. Frequently, those doing the inspecting – this applies to external audits amongst other things – move in and out of doing the very functions they are inspecting. They belong to the same profession as those they are checking up on, and so on. In addition, the bureaucratic mindset developed is one of box ticking. You have a job to do like any other, for which you get a pay check at the end of the month, and like most other workers your attempt is to maximise the pay check, whilst minimising the effort you need to put in to get it. Again, any one who has worked in the State capitalist sector knows that not only do people who rock the boat not get promoted, but they are likely to face hostility from both superiors and peers alike. But, more than that there is no imperative for an Inspector sent in by the Capitalist State to have any immediate reason to make their own life more difficult. It is not their parents or children who are in the home after all.
When it comes to buying a new car, there is lots of information, including the information given by people you know, and your previous experience. That means you have a good chance of being able to make the right decision, and, if there is a problem with it, of complaining and getting it sorted out by the dealer. That is even true if you are going into a hospital yourself. But, it is largely not true about care for your children or parents. What is more, they are frequently not in a position to complain, or to tell you if there is a problem. You rely, on the State Inspectors to do their job properly in that regard. But, why should we be surprised that this does not happen.
Although, we have had Factory Acts for 150 years, and a Factory Inspectorate, and now a Health and Safety Executive, workers do not rely on them to ensure their safety, they know that these things provided by the Capitalist State are a facade, and that we have to continue to appoint our own Health and Safety Reps, and undertake our own direct Trade Union action to try to protect workers health and safety. If we really want to ensure that the existing provision of health, care and education even minimally goes to meet our needs, we cannot rely on the Capitalist State to do that. Just as we have our own Health and Safety Reps, we need our own Committees of Workers Inspection to go into hospitals, schools and care homes to ensure that our needs are being met.
But, just inspection alone is not enough. As a County Councillor, sitting on the Social Services Committee, both myself and the Chair of the committee, month after month complained about the terrible level of education provided to children in the Council's care. But, we found that we were effectively impotent to do anything about it. Real control rested with the Permanent State bureaucracy, and when eventually some action was taken by them, it was to appoint yet another high paid bureaucrat to be responsible for improving the situation.
Of course, month after month, despite that, the situation did not improve. My Mother spent the last three years of her life, bed-ridden in a Private Nursing Home, paid for by the Council. The quality of the home was good, better than the Council, Residential Home she had been in previously. Many of the staff, lived near to me, and so I knew them personally, which helps. A number of them came to my Mother's Funeral. Yet, if I had had any complaints, it would have been difficult to raise them individually, because, ultimately I was not paying for my Mother's stay there, and even if I was, it would still have left me relating to the Home on an individual basis.
If ordinary workers are to have any real power in such relationships they have to be able to act collectively, and that means that they must be responsible for Commissioning that Care themselves on a collective basis from within their Community, rather than the Commissioning being done by a Health Authority, Primary Care Trust, or Doctor's Collective. Only if workers through a Commissioning Co-operative, have control of the funds, and use it to buy in the care they need, will they have any hope of exercising any power in such relationships.
That would also mean that workers through such a process could also exercise direct supervision over the care provided to avoid the kind of problems seen at Winterbourne View, Stafford Hospital, and elsewhere. That could be done by workers, through such a Commissioning Co-op, placing one or more of its members into each establishment on a full-time basis, and providing regular reports back. This duty should be done on a rotational basis to prevent any relationship developing between the Monitor and the establishment, and like Jury Service, the time taken from their usual work to carry out this function should be met by their employer, and guaranteed in law.
That would be a start in ensuring some degree of democratic and workers control over provision. But, such control is only effective if the Commissioning Co-op, also has control of the purse strings in a wider sense. If the State continues to determine how much money shall be allocated to each activity, then workers will only exercise partial control. The quality and quantity of provision will remain under the control of the Capitalist State. In other words, workers will need to move to a situation, in which the taxes and other payments that are currently absorbed by the Capitalist State, and its bureaucracy, go directly to them to cover the commissioning of these services.
In that way, as Marx described we will also be better able to see how much of our taxes go to pay for these services, and how much is actually siphoned off by the Capitalist State for its own purposes, including the maintenance of its vast and controlling bureaucratic apparatus.
“Because indirect taxes conceal from an individual what he is paying to the state, whereas a direct tax is undisguised, unsophisticated, and not to be misunderstood by the meanest capacity. Direct taxation prompts therefore every individual to control the governing powers while indirect taxation destroys all tendency to self-government.”
(Marx - Programme of the First International)
Already in Britain, we have some move towards the establishment of worker co-operatives in health and social care provision. That is far more developed in Europe and other parts of the world. It is the rational extension of Worker Owned and controlled commissioning of services. In the first instance it is likely that such Co-operatives will continue to compete against each other, private Capitalist and State Capitalist providers.
We should not be afraid of that situation, but be confident that a Co-operative, socialistic model is more efficient, and will win out in the end, due to its superiority, even if there are inevitably some failures along the way. Even whilst they compete on quality, and, to begin with, price, we should encourage these Co-operatives to join together in a national Co-operative Federation, in order to obtain the benefits of economies of scale. As part of that Co-operative model we would expect a continual expansion of planned production in conjunction with the needs expressed by the Commissioning Co-ops, and a general sharing of best practice, new techniques and so on, so that the Worker Co-operative sector as a whole could rapidly develop at the expense of the private and State Capitalist sector.
In Left-Wing Communism, Lenin wrote,
"We must work to accomplish practical tasks, ever more varied and ever more closely connected with all branches of social life, winning branch after branch, and sphere after sphere from the bourgeoisie.”
Given that Lenin here recognised that bourgeois democracy was a sham, and that it was impossible to control the Capitalist State through it, it is clear that what he means is that these practical tasks, and this winning over of branch after branch means workers doing that outside Parliament, in their daily life. As Trotsky puts it,
“It would of course be a disastrous error, an outright deception, to assert that the road to socialism passes, not through the proletarian revolution, but through nationalization by the bourgeois state of various branches of industry and their transfer into the hands of the workers’ organizations.”
Nationalised Industry And Workers Control Of Production
It is a reatatement of the ideas of Marx and Engels who rejected the idea that workers should rely on or promote the development of the Capitalist State in all forms including Welfarism. Instead they argued that workers if they were to make themselves fit to become the ruling class had to increasingly establish their own forms of property, democracy, and state in opposition to the Capitalist State. Marx and the First International called this "self-Government". Engels himself remarked,
“It seems that the most advanced workers in Germany are demanding the emancipation of the workers from the capitalists by the transfer of state capital to associations of workers, so that production can be organised, without capitalists, for general account; and as a means to the achievement of this end: the conquest of political power by universal direct suffrage.”
If we want to avoid the kind of abuse, and catastrophes we have seen in the last few days, then workers have to begin to take control and ownership into their own hands, rather than simply expecting the Capitalist State to do it for us.
The fact, that these problems extend to both private and State capitalism demonstrates that this is not a question of whether care is provided by private companies or by the State, but is a result of the fact this provision in both cases is CAPITALIST, i.e. it is ultimately determined by the needs of Capital, not of ordinary workers. In fact, even in the case of the private provision, the Capitalist State is also culpable. The reason that private companies such as Southern Cross and BUPA are resorted to by Local Authorities, is that the scale of operation of these companies means that they can achieve efficiencies that the Local Capitalist State cannot, and usually can do so whilst still providing higher quality facilities than the local Council is capable of.
This shows the lunacy of attempting to provide something like Care on the basis of profit. At least in the case of Southern Cross, and BUPA and other large scale providers there is not a question about the quality of Care provided. In fact, this is really a mirror of what is seen elsewhere. Particularly, since WWII, we have seen the development of a small number of very large companies in most sectors of production. These companies compete, mostly not on price, but on quality, in order to expand their market share.
If workers had full control over this, then they would ensure that, if necessary, the insurance premiums required to meet the costs were increased. But, this is precisely the problem with Capitalist provision of Care, be it private or State Capitalist. Workers do not have any control over the provision, either in terms of how much of their wages are devoted to it (let alone how much of society's resources are devoted to it), or over what or how provision is made. In the case of Redditch Hospital, it had only recently been given a clean bill of health by the Care Quality Commission, the Capitalist State body set up to inspect such establishments.
But, anyone who has worked in the State capitalist sector can understand why this is. In reality, the whole culture breeds an attitude of complacency. Frequently, those doing the inspecting – this applies to external audits amongst other things – move in and out of doing the very functions they are inspecting. They belong to the same profession as those they are checking up on, and so on. In addition, the bureaucratic mindset developed is one of box ticking. You have a job to do like any other, for which you get a pay check at the end of the month, and like most other workers your attempt is to maximise the pay check, whilst minimising the effort you need to put in to get it. Again, any one who has worked in the State capitalist sector knows that not only do people who rock the boat not get promoted, but they are likely to face hostility from both superiors and peers alike. But, more than that there is no imperative for an Inspector sent in by the Capitalist State to have any immediate reason to make their own life more difficult. It is not their parents or children who are in the home after all.
When it comes to buying a new car, there is lots of information, including the information given by people you know, and your previous experience. That means you have a good chance of being able to make the right decision, and, if there is a problem with it, of complaining and getting it sorted out by the dealer. That is even true if you are going into a hospital yourself. But, it is largely not true about care for your children or parents. What is more, they are frequently not in a position to complain, or to tell you if there is a problem. You rely, on the State Inspectors to do their job properly in that regard. But, why should we be surprised that this does not happen.
But, just inspection alone is not enough. As a County Councillor, sitting on the Social Services Committee, both myself and the Chair of the committee, month after month complained about the terrible level of education provided to children in the Council's care. But, we found that we were effectively impotent to do anything about it. Real control rested with the Permanent State bureaucracy, and when eventually some action was taken by them, it was to appoint yet another high paid bureaucrat to be responsible for improving the situation.
If ordinary workers are to have any real power in such relationships they have to be able to act collectively, and that means that they must be responsible for Commissioning that Care themselves on a collective basis from within their Community, rather than the Commissioning being done by a Health Authority, Primary Care Trust, or Doctor's Collective. Only if workers through a Commissioning Co-operative, have control of the funds, and use it to buy in the care they need, will they have any hope of exercising any power in such relationships.
That would be a start in ensuring some degree of democratic and workers control over provision. But, such control is only effective if the Commissioning Co-op, also has control of the purse strings in a wider sense. If the State continues to determine how much money shall be allocated to each activity, then workers will only exercise partial control. The quality and quantity of provision will remain under the control of the Capitalist State. In other words, workers will need to move to a situation, in which the taxes and other payments that are currently absorbed by the Capitalist State, and its bureaucracy, go directly to them to cover the commissioning of these services.
“Because indirect taxes conceal from an individual what he is paying to the state, whereas a direct tax is undisguised, unsophisticated, and not to be misunderstood by the meanest capacity. Direct taxation prompts therefore every individual to control the governing powers while indirect taxation destroys all tendency to self-government.”
(Marx - Programme of the First International)
Already in Britain, we have some move towards the establishment of worker co-operatives in health and social care provision. That is far more developed in Europe and other parts of the world. It is the rational extension of Worker Owned and controlled commissioning of services. In the first instance it is likely that such Co-operatives will continue to compete against each other, private Capitalist and State Capitalist providers.
In Left-Wing Communism, Lenin wrote,
"We must work to accomplish practical tasks, ever more varied and ever more closely connected with all branches of social life, winning branch after branch, and sphere after sphere from the bourgeoisie.”
Given that Lenin here recognised that bourgeois democracy was a sham, and that it was impossible to control the Capitalist State through it, it is clear that what he means is that these practical tasks, and this winning over of branch after branch means workers doing that outside Parliament, in their daily life. As Trotsky puts it,
“It would of course be a disastrous error, an outright deception, to assert that the road to socialism passes, not through the proletarian revolution, but through nationalization by the bourgeois state of various branches of industry and their transfer into the hands of the workers’ organizations.”
Nationalised Industry And Workers Control Of Production
It is a reatatement of the ideas of Marx and Engels who rejected the idea that workers should rely on or promote the development of the Capitalist State in all forms including Welfarism. Instead they argued that workers if they were to make themselves fit to become the ruling class had to increasingly establish their own forms of property, democracy, and state in opposition to the Capitalist State. Marx and the First International called this "self-Government". Engels himself remarked,
“It seems that the most advanced workers in Germany are demanding the emancipation of the workers from the capitalists by the transfer of state capital to associations of workers, so that production can be organised, without capitalists, for general account; and as a means to the achievement of this end: the conquest of political power by universal direct suffrage.”
If we want to avoid the kind of abuse, and catastrophes we have seen in the last few days, then workers have to begin to take control and ownership into their own hands, rather than simply expecting the Capitalist State to do it for us.
Friday, 23 July 2010
The Politics And Programme Of The First International - Part 3
4.
Juvenile and children's labour (both sexes)
We consider the tendency of modern industry to make children and juvenile persons of both sexes co-operate in the great work of social production, as a progressive, sound and legitimate tendency, although under capital it was distorted into an abomination. In a rational state of society every child whatever, from the age of 9 years, ought to become a productive labourer in the same way that no able-bodied adult person ought to be exempted from the general law of nature, viz.: to work in order to be able to eat, and work not only with the brain but with the hands too.
However, for the present, we have only to deal with the children and young persons of both sexes divided into three classes, to be treated differently [a]; the first class to range from 9 to 12; the second, from 13 to 15 years; and the third, to comprise the ages of 16 and 17 years. We propose that the employment of the first class in any workshop or housework be legally restricted to two; that of the second, to four; and that of the third, to six hours. For the third class, there must be a break of at least one hour for meals or relaxation.
It may be desirable to begin elementary school instruction before the age of 9 years; but we deal here only with the most indispensable antidotes against the tendencies of a social system which degrades the working man into a mere instrument for the accumulation of capital, and transforms parents by their necessities into slave-holders, sellers of their own children. The right of children and juvenile persons must be vindicated. They are unable to act for themselves. It is, therefore, the duty of society to act on their behalf.
If the middle and higher classes neglect their duties toward their offspring, it is their own fault. Sharing the privileges of these classes, the child is condemned to suffer from their prejudices.
The case of the working class stands quite different. The working man is no free agent. In too many cases, he is even too ignorant to understand the true interest of his child, or the normal conditions of human development. However, the more enlightened part of the working class fully understands that the future of its class, and, therefore, of mankind, altogether depends upon the formation of the rising working generation. They know that, before everything else, the children and juvenile workers must be saved from the crushing effects of the present system. This can only be effected by converting social reason into social force, and, under given circumstances, there exists no other method of doing so, than through general laws, enforced by the power of the state. In enforcing such laws, the working class do not fortify governmental power. On the contrary, they transform that power, now used against them, into their own agency. They effect by a general act what they would vainly attempt by a multitude of isolated individual efforts.
Proceeding from this standpoint, we say that no parent and no employer ought to be allowed to use juvenile labour, except when combined with education.
By education we understand three things.
Firstly: Mental education.
Secondly: Bodily education, such as is given in schools of gymnastics, and by military exercise.
Thirdly: Technological training, which imparts the general principles of all processes of production, and, simultaneously initiates the child and young person in the practical use and handling of the elementary instruments of all trades. [The German text calls this "polytechnical training." -- Ed]
A gradual and progressive course of mental, gymnastic, and technological training ought to correspond to the classification of the juvenile labourers. The costs of the technological a schools ought to be partly met by the sale of their products.
The combination of paid productive labour, mental education bodily exercise and polytechnic training, will raise the working class far above the level of the higher and middle classes.
It is self-understood that the employment of all persons from 9 and to 17 years (inclusively) in nightwork and all health-injuring trades must be strictly prohibited by law.
Marx's views here would no doubt be abhorrent to those Liberals who today masquerade as socialists, and can only see in the use of child labour something that offends their petit-bouregois sensibilities. Still worse that they are so much more opposed to child labour in those developing Capitalist economies where it is that much more inevitable, that much more the only available means of subsistence for so many. In the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx wrote,
“A general prohibition of child labor 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 labor with education is one of the most potent means for the transformation of present-day society.”
Marx's method rather was to start from his position in relation to general wage struggles. Wage struggles could only succeed within certain limits to prevent the working-class sinking down. Workers had to engage in these struggles to prevent that, and the general rise in the accumulation of Capital would facilitate it. Similarly, workers could struggle for reduced hours or better conditions rather than higher wages. A struggle to place limits on the hours and conditions under which women, or children could work was no different than that. But, for the reasons set out earlier, as to why competition between employers over working hours, meant that it was better to have a general law that defined this, so it was better to have a general law that defined the conditions under which children could labour. Introducing such a law did not mean relying on the State,
“In enforcing such laws, the working class do not fortify governmental power. On the contrary, they transform that power, now used against them, into their own agency.”
In other words, Marx is not seeking to grant further power to the State, least still to give it a role in education, he is merely using it as a more rational means of making an agreement between workers and bosses than having to reach separate agreements, but like any other agreement, he sees it as the role of the working class to “enforce” it, to make sure that it is implemented by all employers. Far from wanting to give the State a role in Education, he wrote in the Critique of the Gotha Programme.
"Elementary education by the state" is altogether objectionable. Defining by a general law the expenditures on the elementary schools, the qualifications of the teaching staff, the branches of instruction, etc., and, as is done in the United States, supervising the fulfillment of these legal specifications by state inspectors, is a very different thing from appointing the state as the educator of the people! Government and church should rather be equally excluded from any influence on the school. Particularly, indeed, in the Prusso-German Empire (and one should not take refuge in the rotten subterfuge that one is speaking of a "state of the future"; we have seen how matters stand in this respect) the state has need, on the contrary, of a very stern education by the people.”
In fact, in dismissing those who asked workers to put their faith in this State, or their ability to exercise any kind of democratic control over it, Marx goes on,
“But the whole program, for all its democratic clang, is tainted through and through by the Lassallean sect's servile belief in the state, or, what is no better, by a democratic belief in miracles; or rather it is a compromise between these two kinds of belief in miracles, both equally remote from socialism.”
In the 1850's, the Co-op had started to set aside a proportion of its surplus for workers education. The first stores had established libraries and reading rooms above them. Part of the idea of developing Co-operative Communities was that the members of the Co-ops would be able to find employment where they faced unemployment or repeated reductions of wages, and they would be able to obtain education and training. In fact, the Co-op was at this point the only source of workers' education. This is the model that Marx appears to see as desirable. The State sets general laws about how long children could work, the working-class through the Trades Unions enforce those laws, part of which is the requirement to provide education and training.
But, Marx was also very circumspect about what children should be taught. He was well aware of the possibility that employers in providing education, could use it to indoctrinate the workers. In a speech to the IWA, Marx made the following points,
“The question treated at the congresses was whether education was to be national or private. National education had been looked upon as governmental, but that was not necessarily the case.”
There was general agreement that the Church and government had to be kept out of Education.
“Education might be national without being governmental. Government might appoint inspectors whose duty it was to see that the laws were obeyed, just as the factory inspectors looked after the observance of the factory acts, without any power of interfering with the course of education itself.”
In response to a proposal by Citizen Milner that children be educated in bourgeois political economy Marx said it,
“was not suitable to be introduced in connection with the schools; it was a kind of education that the young must get from the adults in the everyday struggle of life.”
In fact,
“Nothing could be introduced either in primary, or higher schools that admitted of party and class interpretation. Only, subjects such as the physical sciences, grammar, etc., were fit matter for schools. The rules of grammar, for instance, could not differ, whether explained by a religious Tory or a free thinker. Subjects that admitted of different conclusions must be excluded...”
Speech To IWA 1869.
The bourgeoisie understood as clearly as Marx and the First International the power of education as a tool for socialisation, and political indoctrination. In place of the development of the kind of Education that Marx envisaged here, it was not long before employers shuffled moff the responsibility for providing education on to the State, and, therefore, on to General taxation, and off their Profit and Loss Accounts. Instead, of the State and Church being kept out of educating the working-class, it was a combination of Church and State that took on that role. The US socialist Max Shachtman described it as, “Capitalism's headfixing industry”.
As with much of the expansion of the Welfare State at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Capitalist State simply intervened to cut off the potential for independent workers education just as it cut off the potential for workers to develop their own funds for their pensions, sickness, etc. As Eric Hobsbawm states in “Industry and Empire”, this did not, as Social democracy has tried to portray it, mean a transfer of resources from Capital or the rich to pay for these basic necessities of the working class. Capital largely avoids the payment of taxes, as does the properly rich. The resources for paying for the Welfare State fall almost exclusively on workers and the middle class, amounting today in most Capitalist countries to around 40% of workers earnings. To the extent that any transfer takes place at all, it is merely a transfer WITHIN the working-class, from better paid to worse paid workers or the unemployed. That transfer can only be made with huge administrative cost, which represents a huge waste of workers resources, compared to if they simply controlled those things themselves. It also means that a division is created between those workers who pay the tax, and those that receive the benefits.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Co-operative education was still important for workers. The bourgeoisie responded here too. Ruskin College was established as the result of a donation from two American bourgeois who had studied at Oxford, Walter and Anne L. Vrooman, in 1899. The workers at the College began to demand control over the curriculum, and were supported by some of the lecturers. The workers wanted courses based on Marx's Capital. Ultimately, the conflict led to students establishing thePlebs League, which split away and developed the Central Labour College, and National Council of Labour Colleges, through which courses were run in many working class districts, often using Co-op facilities. The Plebs asserted no compromise with bourgeois education. Even then the bourgeoisie had its own response, establishing the Workers Educational Association in competition, which offered professional, but bourgeois, lecturers as a means of trying to win the backing of the TUC.
In the first part of his speech above Marx said,
“there was a peculiar difficulty connected with this question. On the one hand a change of social circumstances was required to establish a proper system of education, on the other hand a proper system of education was required to bring about a change of social circumstances; we must therefore commence where we were.”
The same applies today. It is the Capitalist State's “headfixing industry”, which dominates workers education, and unfortunately, unlike Marx, large sections of the left see it as their responsibility to defend it, rather than seek to replace it. But, we do have to start from where we are. In the same way that the Plebs first had to wage a struggle for control over the curriculum, before they were led to the conclusion that they needed to establish their own educational facilities, so today it is necessary for workers to wage a struggle for democratic control over the State's schools. The development of Co-operative communities, or the extension of organisations such as Tenants and Residents Associations, could be one base of working class power from which to wage such a struggle, combining with the teaching unions, though teachers have a vested interest in defending the existing state capitalist organisations. It is also necessary to develop democratic school students unions to struggle for democratic control within the school.
But, as the Plebs found, ultimately democratic control can only arise if you have ownership of the school. To that extent the Tories proposals to allow communities to set up their own schools is an opening through which workers can push their own interests. The best arrangement would be for local communities to establish the school buildings in their community under their ownership and control, and to act as commissioning agents buying in Education from a Teaching Co-operative, owned and controlled by the teachers within it, as a producer co-op. In this way, the latter would have an incentive to provide the best quality education in the most efficient manner, whilst the local community would exercise effective control over it. It would in this way end the hierarchical arrangement that exists within the school, making teachers, students and parents equal participants and partners, and would be a step towards ending the alienation of labour.
Juvenile and children's labour (both sexes)
We consider the tendency of modern industry to make children and juvenile persons of both sexes co-operate in the great work of social production, as a progressive, sound and legitimate tendency, although under capital it was distorted into an abomination. In a rational state of society every child whatever, from the age of 9 years, ought to become a productive labourer in the same way that no able-bodied adult person ought to be exempted from the general law of nature, viz.: to work in order to be able to eat, and work not only with the brain but with the hands too.
However, for the present, we have only to deal with the children and young persons of both sexes divided into three classes, to be treated differently [a]; the first class to range from 9 to 12; the second, from 13 to 15 years; and the third, to comprise the ages of 16 and 17 years. We propose that the employment of the first class in any workshop or housework be legally restricted to two; that of the second, to four; and that of the third, to six hours. For the third class, there must be a break of at least one hour for meals or relaxation.
It may be desirable to begin elementary school instruction before the age of 9 years; but we deal here only with the most indispensable antidotes against the tendencies of a social system which degrades the working man into a mere instrument for the accumulation of capital, and transforms parents by their necessities into slave-holders, sellers of their own children. The right of children and juvenile persons must be vindicated. They are unable to act for themselves. It is, therefore, the duty of society to act on their behalf.
If the middle and higher classes neglect their duties toward their offspring, it is their own fault. Sharing the privileges of these classes, the child is condemned to suffer from their prejudices.
The case of the working class stands quite different. The working man is no free agent. In too many cases, he is even too ignorant to understand the true interest of his child, or the normal conditions of human development. However, the more enlightened part of the working class fully understands that the future of its class, and, therefore, of mankind, altogether depends upon the formation of the rising working generation. They know that, before everything else, the children and juvenile workers must be saved from the crushing effects of the present system. This can only be effected by converting social reason into social force, and, under given circumstances, there exists no other method of doing so, than through general laws, enforced by the power of the state. In enforcing such laws, the working class do not fortify governmental power. On the contrary, they transform that power, now used against them, into their own agency. They effect by a general act what they would vainly attempt by a multitude of isolated individual efforts.
Proceeding from this standpoint, we say that no parent and no employer ought to be allowed to use juvenile labour, except when combined with education.
By education we understand three things.
Firstly: Mental education.
Secondly: Bodily education, such as is given in schools of gymnastics, and by military exercise.
Thirdly: Technological training, which imparts the general principles of all processes of production, and, simultaneously initiates the child and young person in the practical use and handling of the elementary instruments of all trades. [The German text calls this "polytechnical training." -- Ed]
A gradual and progressive course of mental, gymnastic, and technological training ought to correspond to the classification of the juvenile labourers. The costs of the technological a schools ought to be partly met by the sale of their products.
The combination of paid productive labour, mental education bodily exercise and polytechnic training, will raise the working class far above the level of the higher and middle classes.
It is self-understood that the employment of all persons from 9 and to 17 years (inclusively) in nightwork and all health-injuring trades must be strictly prohibited by law.
Marx's views here would no doubt be abhorrent to those Liberals who today masquerade as socialists, and can only see in the use of child labour something that offends their petit-bouregois sensibilities. Still worse that they are so much more opposed to child labour in those developing Capitalist economies where it is that much more inevitable, that much more the only available means of subsistence for so many. In the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx wrote,
“A general prohibition of child labor 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 labor with education is one of the most potent means for the transformation of present-day society.”
Marx's method rather was to start from his position in relation to general wage struggles. Wage struggles could only succeed within certain limits to prevent the working-class sinking down. Workers had to engage in these struggles to prevent that, and the general rise in the accumulation of Capital would facilitate it. Similarly, workers could struggle for reduced hours or better conditions rather than higher wages. A struggle to place limits on the hours and conditions under which women, or children could work was no different than that. But, for the reasons set out earlier, as to why competition between employers over working hours, meant that it was better to have a general law that defined this, so it was better to have a general law that defined the conditions under which children could labour. Introducing such a law did not mean relying on the State,
“In enforcing such laws, the working class do not fortify governmental power. On the contrary, they transform that power, now used against them, into their own agency.”
In other words, Marx is not seeking to grant further power to the State, least still to give it a role in education, he is merely using it as a more rational means of making an agreement between workers and bosses than having to reach separate agreements, but like any other agreement, he sees it as the role of the working class to “enforce” it, to make sure that it is implemented by all employers. Far from wanting to give the State a role in Education, he wrote in the Critique of the Gotha Programme.
"Elementary education by the state" is altogether objectionable. Defining by a general law the expenditures on the elementary schools, the qualifications of the teaching staff, the branches of instruction, etc., and, as is done in the United States, supervising the fulfillment of these legal specifications by state inspectors, is a very different thing from appointing the state as the educator of the people! Government and church should rather be equally excluded from any influence on the school. Particularly, indeed, in the Prusso-German Empire (and one should not take refuge in the rotten subterfuge that one is speaking of a "state of the future"; we have seen how matters stand in this respect) the state has need, on the contrary, of a very stern education by the people.”
In fact, in dismissing those who asked workers to put their faith in this State, or their ability to exercise any kind of democratic control over it, Marx goes on,
“But the whole program, for all its democratic clang, is tainted through and through by the Lassallean sect's servile belief in the state, or, what is no better, by a democratic belief in miracles; or rather it is a compromise between these two kinds of belief in miracles, both equally remote from socialism.”
In the 1850's, the Co-op had started to set aside a proportion of its surplus for workers education. The first stores had established libraries and reading rooms above them. Part of the idea of developing Co-operative Communities was that the members of the Co-ops would be able to find employment where they faced unemployment or repeated reductions of wages, and they would be able to obtain education and training. In fact, the Co-op was at this point the only source of workers' education. This is the model that Marx appears to see as desirable. The State sets general laws about how long children could work, the working-class through the Trades Unions enforce those laws, part of which is the requirement to provide education and training.
But, Marx was also very circumspect about what children should be taught. He was well aware of the possibility that employers in providing education, could use it to indoctrinate the workers. In a speech to the IWA, Marx made the following points,
“The question treated at the congresses was whether education was to be national or private. National education had been looked upon as governmental, but that was not necessarily the case.”
There was general agreement that the Church and government had to be kept out of Education.
“Education might be national without being governmental. Government might appoint inspectors whose duty it was to see that the laws were obeyed, just as the factory inspectors looked after the observance of the factory acts, without any power of interfering with the course of education itself.”
In response to a proposal by Citizen Milner that children be educated in bourgeois political economy Marx said it,
“was not suitable to be introduced in connection with the schools; it was a kind of education that the young must get from the adults in the everyday struggle of life.”
In fact,
“Nothing could be introduced either in primary, or higher schools that admitted of party and class interpretation. Only, subjects such as the physical sciences, grammar, etc., were fit matter for schools. The rules of grammar, for instance, could not differ, whether explained by a religious Tory or a free thinker. Subjects that admitted of different conclusions must be excluded...”
Speech To IWA 1869.
The bourgeoisie understood as clearly as Marx and the First International the power of education as a tool for socialisation, and political indoctrination. In place of the development of the kind of Education that Marx envisaged here, it was not long before employers shuffled moff the responsibility for providing education on to the State, and, therefore, on to General taxation, and off their Profit and Loss Accounts. Instead, of the State and Church being kept out of educating the working-class, it was a combination of Church and State that took on that role. The US socialist Max Shachtman described it as, “Capitalism's headfixing industry”.
As with much of the expansion of the Welfare State at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Capitalist State simply intervened to cut off the potential for independent workers education just as it cut off the potential for workers to develop their own funds for their pensions, sickness, etc. As Eric Hobsbawm states in “Industry and Empire”, this did not, as Social democracy has tried to portray it, mean a transfer of resources from Capital or the rich to pay for these basic necessities of the working class. Capital largely avoids the payment of taxes, as does the properly rich. The resources for paying for the Welfare State fall almost exclusively on workers and the middle class, amounting today in most Capitalist countries to around 40% of workers earnings. To the extent that any transfer takes place at all, it is merely a transfer WITHIN the working-class, from better paid to worse paid workers or the unemployed. That transfer can only be made with huge administrative cost, which represents a huge waste of workers resources, compared to if they simply controlled those things themselves. It also means that a division is created between those workers who pay the tax, and those that receive the benefits.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Co-operative education was still important for workers. The bourgeoisie responded here too. Ruskin College was established as the result of a donation from two American bourgeois who had studied at Oxford, Walter and Anne L. Vrooman, in 1899. The workers at the College began to demand control over the curriculum, and were supported by some of the lecturers. The workers wanted courses based on Marx's Capital. Ultimately, the conflict led to students establishing thePlebs League, which split away and developed the Central Labour College, and National Council of Labour Colleges, through which courses were run in many working class districts, often using Co-op facilities. The Plebs asserted no compromise with bourgeois education. Even then the bourgeoisie had its own response, establishing the Workers Educational Association in competition, which offered professional, but bourgeois, lecturers as a means of trying to win the backing of the TUC.
In the first part of his speech above Marx said,
“there was a peculiar difficulty connected with this question. On the one hand a change of social circumstances was required to establish a proper system of education, on the other hand a proper system of education was required to bring about a change of social circumstances; we must therefore commence where we were.”
The same applies today. It is the Capitalist State's “headfixing industry”, which dominates workers education, and unfortunately, unlike Marx, large sections of the left see it as their responsibility to defend it, rather than seek to replace it. But, we do have to start from where we are. In the same way that the Plebs first had to wage a struggle for control over the curriculum, before they were led to the conclusion that they needed to establish their own educational facilities, so today it is necessary for workers to wage a struggle for democratic control over the State's schools. The development of Co-operative communities, or the extension of organisations such as Tenants and Residents Associations, could be one base of working class power from which to wage such a struggle, combining with the teaching unions, though teachers have a vested interest in defending the existing state capitalist organisations. It is also necessary to develop democratic school students unions to struggle for democratic control within the school.
But, as the Plebs found, ultimately democratic control can only arise if you have ownership of the school. To that extent the Tories proposals to allow communities to set up their own schools is an opening through which workers can push their own interests. The best arrangement would be for local communities to establish the school buildings in their community under their ownership and control, and to act as commissioning agents buying in Education from a Teaching Co-operative, owned and controlled by the teachers within it, as a producer co-op. In this way, the latter would have an incentive to provide the best quality education in the most efficient manner, whilst the local community would exercise effective control over it. It would in this way end the hierarchical arrangement that exists within the school, making teachers, students and parents equal participants and partners, and would be a step towards ending the alienation of labour.
Thursday, 22 July 2010
The Politics And Programme Of The First International - Part 2
3.
Limitation of the working day
A preliminary condition, without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive, is the limitation of the working day.
It is needed to restore the health and physical energies of the working class, that is, the great body of every nation, as well as to secure them the possibility of intellectual development, sociable intercourse, social and political action.
We propose 8 hours work as the legal limit of the working day. This limitation being generally claimed by the workmen of the United States of America,'40 the vote of the Congress will raise it to the common platform of the working classes all over the world.
For the information of continental members, whose experience of factory law is comparatively short-dated, we add that all legal restrictions will fail and be broken through by Capital if the period of the day during which the 8 working hours must be taken, be not fixed. The length of that period ought to be determined by the 8 working hours and the additional pauses for meals. For instance, if the different interruptions for meals amount to one hour, the legal period of the day ought to embrace 9 hours, say from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., or from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., etc. Nightwork to be but exceptionally permitted, in trades or branches of trades specified by law. The tendency must be to suppress all nightwork.
This paragraph refers only to adult persons, male or female, the latter, however, to be rigorously excluded from all nightwork whatever, and all sort of work hurtful to the delicacy of the sex, or exposing their bodies to poisonous and otherwise deleterious agencies. By adult persons we understand all persons having reached or passed the age of 18 years.
Its necessary to ignore the rather sexist or at least patronising tone of the last section given the time it was written. The section follows rationally from the previous one in that it uses the evidence of working hours in the US, as the basis of demonstrating that such a demand could be conceded by Capital. That is also another aspect of Marx's political method. In the Grundrisse he had set out how Capital, in its need to expand, and because of its continual drive to reduce the value of Labour Power by cheapening wage goods, is also led to expand the range of Use Values it produces and sells to workers, who increasingly form the majority of consumers. In other words, it is led by its own development to raise the living standards of workers, and this does not extend just to physical goods, it extends to things such as education and culture. He calls this Capitalism's “Civilising Mission”. No individual capitalist seeks to voluntarily raise their workers wages, but each wants the wages of the workers of other employers to rise so that those workers can buy more of their goods. It is a contradictory process, and the actual raising of wages arises through a combination of means including strikes, and the simple action of Supply and demand for Labour Power, particularly in periods of rapid Capital Accumulation. In short, what Marx calls the production of Relative Surplus Value, that is increased Surplus Value within the same duration of working day, as a result of increased Labour productivity, allows each capitalist to grant higher real wages, whilst at the same time increasing their profits through a higher rate of exploitation. The limit of how much those real wages can rise, however, remains constrained by the factors he outlined in his debates with Weston, that is the needs of Capital Accumulation, the ability of capital to introduce machinery, reduce investment etc. if wages rose beyond those limits.
“But during these eleven years they introduced machinery of all sorts, adopted more scientific methods, converted part of arable land into pasture, increased the size of farms, and with this the scale of production, and by these and other processes diminishing the demand for labour by increasing its productive power, made the agricultural population again relatively redundant. This is the general method in which a reaction, quicker or slower, of capital against a rise of wages takes place in old, settled countries.”
Value, Price and Profit
Marx, recognised that it was necessary for workers to engage in such struggles, because it was possible for capital to make such concessions, and if workers were not to degenerate, if they were to build up their resources then such struggles were essential. More than that, workers WERE engaging in such struggles, and if socialists were to take them forward, they had to support the workers in those struggles. But, he was at pains to point out that a) there were limits to what Capital COULD grant at any particular stage, and b) even where workers were succesful in winning such battles, it took them no closer to a fundamental change in society. On the contrary, it could in fact, tie them even closer to the existing social relations.
On the first point his writings above in Value, Price and Profit illustrate those limits within, which Capital could grant concessions. But, he did not restrict that analysis to just wage struggles, he extended it to what we would today refer to as the “Social Wage”. In the Critique of the Gotha Programme Marx states,
“Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.”
He is speaking here about the fact that even in a socialist society inequality would exist, because choices would have to be made, and distributions would be on the basis of equality. But, as he says human beings are not equal. Some are stronger others weaker, some more, some less skilled. Equal distributions would, therefore result in inequality. Only a Communist Society, where abundance meant that the Law of Value no longer applied, where choices over the use of resources were no longer needed, could introduce real equality on the basis of the principle - “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.”
But, if that applies to a socialist society, it applies all the more to a capitalist society! And in the other parts of the Critique he makes that clear. He writes,
“"Equal elementary education"? What idea lies behind these words? Is it believed that in present-day society (and it is only with this one has to deal) education can be equal for all classes? Or is it demanded that the upper classes also shall be compulsorily reduced to the modicum of education — the elementary school — that alone is compatible with the economic conditions not only of the wage-workers but of the peasants as well?”
and,
“A general prohibition of child labor 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 labor with education is one of the most potent means for the transformation of present-day society.”
And this last point is also significant for understanding Marx's method. In the programme of the French Socialists, which Marx and Engels formulated with Guesde, they included a number of these “Minimum” demands, which Marx believed Capital was quite capable of conceding, and which would benefit the workers. There was no difference essentially in such demands fought for by the class as a whole, as there was in sections of workers fighting for higher wages or better conditions. There was no point Marx believed in including within the programme demands that Capital could not concede just for the purposes of propaganda against the existing State. Guesde disagreed, he argued that by raising such demands, the workers would be led to lose their faith in the Capitalist State. It is the same logic that some Trotskyists put forward today in calling for the Capitalist State to do this, that or the other, not because they believe it will, but because they argue it will lead workers to lose their illusions in that State. Marx called such an approach “revolutionary phrase-mongering”, and it was in this connection that he made his famous remark that if their politics represented Marxism, “ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste” (“what is certain is that I myself am not a Marxist”).
But, what Marx most certainly was not arguing here was that workers could count on the Capitalist State to act as their friend, or even to act impartially in implementing any of these demands. It was not a demand for the State to act on their behalf, but only a demand that it make a concession in the same way that an employer is forced to make a concession of a pay rise. It is merely a demand that rather than one Capitalist make a concession that ALL Capitalists make that concession. As Marx, puts it elsewhere in the Instructions,
“In enforcing such laws, the working class do not fortify governmental power. On the contrary, they transform that power, now used against them, into their own agency. They effect by a general act what they would vainly attempt by a multitude of isolated individual efforts.”
Moreover, the nature of the concessions are such as to enable the workers themselves to better organise, to better educate themselves, and so on. In that respect, these demands are no different than the demands for bourgeois freedoms. Socialists do not advocate a struggle for them, because they have any faith in them as a solution to workers' problems, do not suggest to the workers that having agreed to them, the Capitalist State will stick to them, but merely argue that they facilitate the workers struggle to really make significant changes, to overthrow the power of Capital. That is why he says,
“A preliminary condition, without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive, is the limitation of the working day.
It is needed to restore the health and physical energies of the working class, that is, the great body of every nation, as well as to secure them the possibility of intellectual development, sociable intercourse, social and political action.”
But, he also goes on,
“For the information of continental members, whose experience of factory law is comparatively short-dated, we add that all legal restrictions will fail and be broken through by Capital...”
and so on.
In other words there is no suggestion that even if the workers were to win such a concession they would not have to continue to struggle for its actual implementation. In Capital, Marx relates how the demand for a restriction of the working day did not just come from workers. Employers like Wedgwood petitioned for such a limitation, because they recognised that competition between employers had meant that voluntary agreements between them, broke down, as each tried to obtain an advantage. Yet, the working days of 18 hours and more, were destroying the very working class, which was the source of their profits! He also goes on to demonstrate that after the defeat of Chartism, and a period of reaction set in, with the workers weak, the existence of such legislation was meaningless, because the employers simply ignored it, and the State connived with them to do so. The simple lesson Marx gives is that although workers have to struggle for such concessions, they can offer no solution to the workers problems. They have to rely on their own strength, on their own “self-government”, and where possible on their own forms of property. The discussions within the First International, in its requests for information are replete with questions about whether workers in different countries had established Co-operatives as a solution to the repeated attacks of employers.
As Marx put it in “Value Price and Profit”,
“At the same time, and quite apart from the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society.”
And, in line with that approach he had set out the relative importance he placed on things such as the Ten Hours Bill compared to the workers utilising these “social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society.” In his Inaugural Address To The First International he said,
“After a 30 years’ struggle, fought with almost admirable perseverance, the English working classes, improving a momentaneous split between the landlords and money lords, succeeded in carrying the Ten Hours’ Bill. The immense physical, moral, and intellectual benefits hence accruing to the factory operatives, half-yearly chronicled in the reports of the inspectors of factories, are now acknowledged on all sides....
But there was in store a still greater victory of the political economy of labour over the political economy of property. We speak of the co-operative movement, especially the co-operative factories raised by the unassisted efforts of a few bold “hands”. The value of these great social experiments cannot be overrated. By deed instead of by argument, they have shown that production on a large scale, and in accord with the behests of modern science, may be carried on without the existence of a class of masters employing a class of hands; that to bear fruit, the means of labour need not be monopolized as a means of dominion over, and of extortion against, the labouring man himself; and that, like slave labour, like serf labour, hired labour is but a transitory and inferior form, destined to disappear before associated labour plying its toil with a willing hand, a ready mind, and a joyous heart.”
And, in the end the extent to which workers could improve their position vis a vis Capital was not determined by their ability to win such guerilla fights. Nor could it be improved by measures of so called redistribution through the Tax system. In the Critique of the Gotha Programme, he says in relation to the first,
“Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. The latter distribution, however, is a feature of the mode of production itself. The capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of nonworkers in the form of property in capital and land, while the masses are only owners of the personal condition of production, of labor power. If the elements of production are so distributed, then the present-day distribution of the means of consumption results automatically. If the material conditions of production are the co-operative property of the workers themselves, then there likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption different from the present one. Vulgar socialism (and from it in turn a section of the democrats) has taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution. After the real relation has long been made clear, why retrogress again?” ,
and criticising the Lassallean notion of redistribution contained in the idea of a progressive Income Tax, he writes,
“That, in fact, by the word "state" is meant the government machine, or the state insofar as it forms a special organism separated from society through division of labour, is shown by the words "the German Workers' party demands as the economic basis of the state: a single progressive income tax", etc. Taxes are the economic basis of the government machinery and of nothing else. In the state of the future, existing in Switzerland, this demand has been pretty well fulfilled. Income tax presupposes various sources of income of the various social classes, and hence capitalist society. It is, therefore, nothing remarkable that the Liverpool financial reformers — bourgeois headed by Gladstone's brother — are putting forward the same demand as the program.”
The struggle for reforms that Capital could concede was no different than those other “guerilla” fights that workers had to engage in from time to time. But, their importance could not be exaggerated. The ultimate goal was not the achievement of these reforms of the Minimum Programme, but the establishment of a Socialist Society as set out in the Maximum Programme. The bridge between the two was the increasing development of the workers “self-government” within Capitalist society, the utilisation of Credit and co-operative production, to bring about those real changes in distribution and the economic and social relations that went with them, and alongside that the political struggle of the Workers Party, defending and advancing the cause of the workers property from Capitalist attack.
Limitation of the working day
A preliminary condition, without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive, is the limitation of the working day.
It is needed to restore the health and physical energies of the working class, that is, the great body of every nation, as well as to secure them the possibility of intellectual development, sociable intercourse, social and political action.
We propose 8 hours work as the legal limit of the working day. This limitation being generally claimed by the workmen of the United States of America,'40 the vote of the Congress will raise it to the common platform of the working classes all over the world.
For the information of continental members, whose experience of factory law is comparatively short-dated, we add that all legal restrictions will fail and be broken through by Capital if the period of the day during which the 8 working hours must be taken, be not fixed. The length of that period ought to be determined by the 8 working hours and the additional pauses for meals. For instance, if the different interruptions for meals amount to one hour, the legal period of the day ought to embrace 9 hours, say from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., or from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., etc. Nightwork to be but exceptionally permitted, in trades or branches of trades specified by law. The tendency must be to suppress all nightwork.
This paragraph refers only to adult persons, male or female, the latter, however, to be rigorously excluded from all nightwork whatever, and all sort of work hurtful to the delicacy of the sex, or exposing their bodies to poisonous and otherwise deleterious agencies. By adult persons we understand all persons having reached or passed the age of 18 years.
Its necessary to ignore the rather sexist or at least patronising tone of the last section given the time it was written. The section follows rationally from the previous one in that it uses the evidence of working hours in the US, as the basis of demonstrating that such a demand could be conceded by Capital. That is also another aspect of Marx's political method. In the Grundrisse he had set out how Capital, in its need to expand, and because of its continual drive to reduce the value of Labour Power by cheapening wage goods, is also led to expand the range of Use Values it produces and sells to workers, who increasingly form the majority of consumers. In other words, it is led by its own development to raise the living standards of workers, and this does not extend just to physical goods, it extends to things such as education and culture. He calls this Capitalism's “Civilising Mission”. No individual capitalist seeks to voluntarily raise their workers wages, but each wants the wages of the workers of other employers to rise so that those workers can buy more of their goods. It is a contradictory process, and the actual raising of wages arises through a combination of means including strikes, and the simple action of Supply and demand for Labour Power, particularly in periods of rapid Capital Accumulation. In short, what Marx calls the production of Relative Surplus Value, that is increased Surplus Value within the same duration of working day, as a result of increased Labour productivity, allows each capitalist to grant higher real wages, whilst at the same time increasing their profits through a higher rate of exploitation. The limit of how much those real wages can rise, however, remains constrained by the factors he outlined in his debates with Weston, that is the needs of Capital Accumulation, the ability of capital to introduce machinery, reduce investment etc. if wages rose beyond those limits.
“But during these eleven years they introduced machinery of all sorts, adopted more scientific methods, converted part of arable land into pasture, increased the size of farms, and with this the scale of production, and by these and other processes diminishing the demand for labour by increasing its productive power, made the agricultural population again relatively redundant. This is the general method in which a reaction, quicker or slower, of capital against a rise of wages takes place in old, settled countries.”
Value, Price and Profit
Marx, recognised that it was necessary for workers to engage in such struggles, because it was possible for capital to make such concessions, and if workers were not to degenerate, if they were to build up their resources then such struggles were essential. More than that, workers WERE engaging in such struggles, and if socialists were to take them forward, they had to support the workers in those struggles. But, he was at pains to point out that a) there were limits to what Capital COULD grant at any particular stage, and b) even where workers were succesful in winning such battles, it took them no closer to a fundamental change in society. On the contrary, it could in fact, tie them even closer to the existing social relations.
On the first point his writings above in Value, Price and Profit illustrate those limits within, which Capital could grant concessions. But, he did not restrict that analysis to just wage struggles, he extended it to what we would today refer to as the “Social Wage”. In the Critique of the Gotha Programme Marx states,
“Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.”
He is speaking here about the fact that even in a socialist society inequality would exist, because choices would have to be made, and distributions would be on the basis of equality. But, as he says human beings are not equal. Some are stronger others weaker, some more, some less skilled. Equal distributions would, therefore result in inequality. Only a Communist Society, where abundance meant that the Law of Value no longer applied, where choices over the use of resources were no longer needed, could introduce real equality on the basis of the principle - “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.”
But, if that applies to a socialist society, it applies all the more to a capitalist society! And in the other parts of the Critique he makes that clear. He writes,
“"Equal elementary education"? What idea lies behind these words? Is it believed that in present-day society (and it is only with this one has to deal) education can be equal for all classes? Or is it demanded that the upper classes also shall be compulsorily reduced to the modicum of education — the elementary school — that alone is compatible with the economic conditions not only of the wage-workers but of the peasants as well?”
and,
“A general prohibition of child labor 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 labor with education is one of the most potent means for the transformation of present-day society.”
And this last point is also significant for understanding Marx's method. In the programme of the French Socialists, which Marx and Engels formulated with Guesde, they included a number of these “Minimum” demands, which Marx believed Capital was quite capable of conceding, and which would benefit the workers. There was no difference essentially in such demands fought for by the class as a whole, as there was in sections of workers fighting for higher wages or better conditions. There was no point Marx believed in including within the programme demands that Capital could not concede just for the purposes of propaganda against the existing State. Guesde disagreed, he argued that by raising such demands, the workers would be led to lose their faith in the Capitalist State. It is the same logic that some Trotskyists put forward today in calling for the Capitalist State to do this, that or the other, not because they believe it will, but because they argue it will lead workers to lose their illusions in that State. Marx called such an approach “revolutionary phrase-mongering”, and it was in this connection that he made his famous remark that if their politics represented Marxism, “ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste” (“what is certain is that I myself am not a Marxist”).
But, what Marx most certainly was not arguing here was that workers could count on the Capitalist State to act as their friend, or even to act impartially in implementing any of these demands. It was not a demand for the State to act on their behalf, but only a demand that it make a concession in the same way that an employer is forced to make a concession of a pay rise. It is merely a demand that rather than one Capitalist make a concession that ALL Capitalists make that concession. As Marx, puts it elsewhere in the Instructions,
“In enforcing such laws, the working class do not fortify governmental power. On the contrary, they transform that power, now used against them, into their own agency. They effect by a general act what they would vainly attempt by a multitude of isolated individual efforts.”
Moreover, the nature of the concessions are such as to enable the workers themselves to better organise, to better educate themselves, and so on. In that respect, these demands are no different than the demands for bourgeois freedoms. Socialists do not advocate a struggle for them, because they have any faith in them as a solution to workers' problems, do not suggest to the workers that having agreed to them, the Capitalist State will stick to them, but merely argue that they facilitate the workers struggle to really make significant changes, to overthrow the power of Capital. That is why he says,
“A preliminary condition, without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive, is the limitation of the working day.
It is needed to restore the health and physical energies of the working class, that is, the great body of every nation, as well as to secure them the possibility of intellectual development, sociable intercourse, social and political action.”
But, he also goes on,
“For the information of continental members, whose experience of factory law is comparatively short-dated, we add that all legal restrictions will fail and be broken through by Capital...”
and so on.
In other words there is no suggestion that even if the workers were to win such a concession they would not have to continue to struggle for its actual implementation. In Capital, Marx relates how the demand for a restriction of the working day did not just come from workers. Employers like Wedgwood petitioned for such a limitation, because they recognised that competition between employers had meant that voluntary agreements between them, broke down, as each tried to obtain an advantage. Yet, the working days of 18 hours and more, were destroying the very working class, which was the source of their profits! He also goes on to demonstrate that after the defeat of Chartism, and a period of reaction set in, with the workers weak, the existence of such legislation was meaningless, because the employers simply ignored it, and the State connived with them to do so. The simple lesson Marx gives is that although workers have to struggle for such concessions, they can offer no solution to the workers problems. They have to rely on their own strength, on their own “self-government”, and where possible on their own forms of property. The discussions within the First International, in its requests for information are replete with questions about whether workers in different countries had established Co-operatives as a solution to the repeated attacks of employers.
As Marx put it in “Value Price and Profit”,
“At the same time, and quite apart from the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society.”
And, in line with that approach he had set out the relative importance he placed on things such as the Ten Hours Bill compared to the workers utilising these “social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society.” In his Inaugural Address To The First International he said,
“After a 30 years’ struggle, fought with almost admirable perseverance, the English working classes, improving a momentaneous split between the landlords and money lords, succeeded in carrying the Ten Hours’ Bill. The immense physical, moral, and intellectual benefits hence accruing to the factory operatives, half-yearly chronicled in the reports of the inspectors of factories, are now acknowledged on all sides....
But there was in store a still greater victory of the political economy of labour over the political economy of property. We speak of the co-operative movement, especially the co-operative factories raised by the unassisted efforts of a few bold “hands”. The value of these great social experiments cannot be overrated. By deed instead of by argument, they have shown that production on a large scale, and in accord with the behests of modern science, may be carried on without the existence of a class of masters employing a class of hands; that to bear fruit, the means of labour need not be monopolized as a means of dominion over, and of extortion against, the labouring man himself; and that, like slave labour, like serf labour, hired labour is but a transitory and inferior form, destined to disappear before associated labour plying its toil with a willing hand, a ready mind, and a joyous heart.”
And, in the end the extent to which workers could improve their position vis a vis Capital was not determined by their ability to win such guerilla fights. Nor could it be improved by measures of so called redistribution through the Tax system. In the Critique of the Gotha Programme, he says in relation to the first,
“Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. The latter distribution, however, is a feature of the mode of production itself. The capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of nonworkers in the form of property in capital and land, while the masses are only owners of the personal condition of production, of labor power. If the elements of production are so distributed, then the present-day distribution of the means of consumption results automatically. If the material conditions of production are the co-operative property of the workers themselves, then there likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption different from the present one. Vulgar socialism (and from it in turn a section of the democrats) has taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution. After the real relation has long been made clear, why retrogress again?” ,
and criticising the Lassallean notion of redistribution contained in the idea of a progressive Income Tax, he writes,
“That, in fact, by the word "state" is meant the government machine, or the state insofar as it forms a special organism separated from society through division of labour, is shown by the words "the German Workers' party demands as the economic basis of the state: a single progressive income tax", etc. Taxes are the economic basis of the government machinery and of nothing else. In the state of the future, existing in Switzerland, this demand has been pretty well fulfilled. Income tax presupposes various sources of income of the various social classes, and hence capitalist society. It is, therefore, nothing remarkable that the Liverpool financial reformers — bourgeois headed by Gladstone's brother — are putting forward the same demand as the program.”
The struggle for reforms that Capital could concede was no different than those other “guerilla” fights that workers had to engage in from time to time. But, their importance could not be exaggerated. The ultimate goal was not the achievement of these reforms of the Minimum Programme, but the establishment of a Socialist Society as set out in the Maximum Programme. The bridge between the two was the increasing development of the workers “self-government” within Capitalist society, the utilisation of Credit and co-operative production, to bring about those real changes in distribution and the economic and social relations that went with them, and alongside that the political struggle of the Workers Party, defending and advancing the cause of the workers property from Capitalist attack.
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
The Politics & Programme of The First International - Part 1
“2.
International combination of efforts, by the agency of the association, in the struggle between labour and capital
(a) From a general point of view, this question embraces the whole activity of the International Association which aims at combining and generalising the till now disconnected efforts for emancipation by the working classes in different countries.
(b) To counteract the intrigues of capitalists always ready, in cases of strikes and lockouts, to misuse the foreign workman as a tool against the native workman, is one of the particular functions which our Society has hitherto performed with success. It is one of the great purposes of the Association to make the workmen of different countries not only feel but act as brethren and comrades in the army of emancipation.
(c) One great "International combination of efforts" which we suggest is a statistical inquiry into the situation of the working classes of all countries to be instituted by the working classes themselves. To act with any success, the materials to be acted upon must be known. By initiating so great a work, the workmen will prove their ability to take their own fate into their own hands. We propose therefore:
That in each locality, where branches of our Association exist, the work be immediately commenced, and evidence collected on the different points specified in the subjoined scheme of inquiry.
That the Congress invite all workmen of Europe and the United States of America to collaborate in gathering the elements of the statistics of the working class; that reports and evidence be forwarded to the Central Council. That the Central Council elaborate them into a general report, adding the evidence as an appendix.
That this report together with its appendix be laid before the next annual Congress, and after having received its sanction, be printed at the expense of the Association.
General Scheme of Inquiry, which may of course be modified by each Locality
1. Industry, name of.
2. Age and sex of the employed.
3. Number of the employed.
4. Salaries and wages: (a) apprentices; (b) wages by the day or piece work; scale paid by middlemen. Weekly, yearly average.
5. (a) Hours of work in factories. (b) The hours of work with small employers and in home work, if the business be carried on in those different modes. (c) Nightwork and daywork.
6. Meal times and treatment.
7. Sort of workshop and work: overcrowding, defective ventilation, want of sunlight, use of gaslight. Cleanliness, etc.
8. Nature of occupation.
9. Effect of employment upon the physical condition.
10. Moral condition. Education.
11. State of trade: whether season trade, or more or less uniformly distributed over year, whether greatly fluctuating, whether exposed to foreign competition, whether destined principally for home or foreign competition, etc. [The Minute Book of the General Council has the word "consumption" instead of "competition." -- Ed.]”
This section demonstrates Marx's scientific mind at work. The fundamental basis of his theory was to begin with “material conditions”. As he puts it, “To act with any success, the materials to be acted upon must be known.” In Capital, he cites such statistics at length in relation to Britain. Those figures he obtained from Government Statistics, but here he insists that the workers gather these figures for themselves, from their own experience. Why? Even at this level, Marx is insisting that the workers rely on themselves, and not on the bourgeois State. There is a political message there, both not to trust that State, and for the Workers to insist upon and develop their independence of it. By workers conducting such a survey they demonstrate their ability to do so, and build their own self-confidence. Moreover, the idea here was that workers in one country should be able to compare their condition to that of workers in other countries. On that basis the workers in the worst position would have arguments for raising their conditions. But, there would be no reason why workers in Country A should trust the data for country B, if that data was provided by Country B's bosses. The very collection of the data by workers, and the sharing of that data amongst workers was in itself an act of solidarity.
In some ways it might be difficult to understand how powerful this is, but I can give an example from my own experience. As late as 1973 when I went to work for a very large pottery firm the office staff were not unionised. Coming from another factory where the union had just been established, it was the first thing I was involved in doing. In fact, I was able to unionise most of the office staff very quickly. But, again, even at that time, because there was no union, there was no annual wage negotiation for office staff. It was similar of the kind of set up you read in a Dickens novel. Every Christmas, the Director, would invite staff into his office, one at a time, and hand them a note of how much, if any pay rise they would be granted. His final comment would always be, “Now you must not share this information with anyone.”
By this kind of paternalistic arrangement, and by keeping each worker atomised, the management were able to divide the workers, and weaken them. The first thing I did was to turn to the other young workers who were on my team, and say, “I've had X, its not very good, is it, how much have you had.” In itself this was saying I have no secrets from you, we are in this together. Before long all the young workers were discussing their wages with each other, which highlighted some glaring anomalies. It took longer to get the older workers to break the habits of a lifetime. But, one upshot was that on one occasion a young worker was asked to train another young woman who moved from another factory. It turned out that the woman being trained was earning about 50% more than the young woman training her. Both agreed this was untenable. Management argued that it was because one was older, but that argument clearly could not hold, especially given the huge variation. By this stage, a degree of confidence and solidarity amongst many of the young workers had been developed that when I asked if they would like me to go in with them to the Director, as their Shop Steward, they said no, they felt confident enough to go in themselves – the younger worker was only about 20 years old. In the end I did have to go into to confront the Director after they told me what crap he had come out with to them, and we did get them to phase in an equalisation of their salaries up to the higher salary. That event soon caused the older workers to begin discussing their salaries for fear that they might be losing out.
This proposal by Marx is that approach writ large. It is a fundamental basis of establishing common cause between workers, and in the process undermines the attempts of the bosses to divide workers. There was another example of this method of collecting and sharing data as a means of asserting workers self-government, and building solidarity at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the aftermath of WWI, there was rapid inflation, and widespread profiteering, including price fixing by the large cartels. The London Co-operative Society worked with the London Trades Council and Labour Part to create the London Food Vigilance Committee, which monitored food prices. Not only was the Co-op as a major retailer in a good position to monitor prices, but at that time, the Co-operative Wholesale Society was a major concern that could monitor wholesale prices, as well as itself having a range of productive facilities through which it could monitor producer prices. Similar alliances existed in other parts of the country. Its an example, of how the element of the Transitional Demand of a Sliding Scale of Wages, which calls for the monitoring of prices by Committees of workers could be practically implemented.
The Co-op used this exercise in combination with its educational work to propagandise against Capitalist enterprise. The Co-operative Women's Guild produced pamphlets on this basis warning of the dangers of Capitalist Trusts. The Co-operative News carried reports attacking Capitalist exploitation, and a cartoon depicted a Co-operative St.George slaying a Capitalist dragon, with the caption, “The People's Co-operative Fights With The Capitalist Menace.” Thirty such committees were established and campaigned for the Government to control imports, sell at cost price, and introduce the rationing of necessities, a measure the Co-op had itself introduced during the War. On the back of this campaign a demonstration of 50,000 people took place in Hyde Park.
Another example of that was that after WWII, the Co-op established its own Research Department that was able to conduct its own analysis in relation to food and materials and processes. The Co-op had been established originally, partly due to the adulteration of workers' food. Even after WWII, milk was one of the most adulterated foods, as well as the problem of brucellosis from unpasteurised milk that could cause blindness. As the country's biggest farmer, the Co-op had been well placed to lead the way in the production of clean milk, and thereby put pressure on other producers long before the government introduced the Milk (Special Designations) Bill in 1949. The danger of relying on the Capitalist State for such analysis or regulation rather than the workers themselves conducting such actions was illustrated with the example of asbestos, where the capitalist State knew of the dangers of its use for a long time, but kept quiet about it, because to have taken action would have badly affected Capitalist profits!
International combination of efforts, by the agency of the association, in the struggle between labour and capital
(a) From a general point of view, this question embraces the whole activity of the International Association which aims at combining and generalising the till now disconnected efforts for emancipation by the working classes in different countries.
(b) To counteract the intrigues of capitalists always ready, in cases of strikes and lockouts, to misuse the foreign workman as a tool against the native workman, is one of the particular functions which our Society has hitherto performed with success. It is one of the great purposes of the Association to make the workmen of different countries not only feel but act as brethren and comrades in the army of emancipation.
(c) One great "International combination of efforts" which we suggest is a statistical inquiry into the situation of the working classes of all countries to be instituted by the working classes themselves. To act with any success, the materials to be acted upon must be known. By initiating so great a work, the workmen will prove their ability to take their own fate into their own hands. We propose therefore:
That in each locality, where branches of our Association exist, the work be immediately commenced, and evidence collected on the different points specified in the subjoined scheme of inquiry.
That the Congress invite all workmen of Europe and the United States of America to collaborate in gathering the elements of the statistics of the working class; that reports and evidence be forwarded to the Central Council. That the Central Council elaborate them into a general report, adding the evidence as an appendix.
That this report together with its appendix be laid before the next annual Congress, and after having received its sanction, be printed at the expense of the Association.
General Scheme of Inquiry, which may of course be modified by each Locality
1. Industry, name of.
2. Age and sex of the employed.
3. Number of the employed.
4. Salaries and wages: (a) apprentices; (b) wages by the day or piece work; scale paid by middlemen. Weekly, yearly average.
5. (a) Hours of work in factories. (b) The hours of work with small employers and in home work, if the business be carried on in those different modes. (c) Nightwork and daywork.
6. Meal times and treatment.
7. Sort of workshop and work: overcrowding, defective ventilation, want of sunlight, use of gaslight. Cleanliness, etc.
8. Nature of occupation.
9. Effect of employment upon the physical condition.
10. Moral condition. Education.
11. State of trade: whether season trade, or more or less uniformly distributed over year, whether greatly fluctuating, whether exposed to foreign competition, whether destined principally for home or foreign competition, etc. [The Minute Book of the General Council has the word "consumption" instead of "competition." -- Ed.]”
This section demonstrates Marx's scientific mind at work. The fundamental basis of his theory was to begin with “material conditions”. As he puts it, “To act with any success, the materials to be acted upon must be known.” In Capital, he cites such statistics at length in relation to Britain. Those figures he obtained from Government Statistics, but here he insists that the workers gather these figures for themselves, from their own experience. Why? Even at this level, Marx is insisting that the workers rely on themselves, and not on the bourgeois State. There is a political message there, both not to trust that State, and for the Workers to insist upon and develop their independence of it. By workers conducting such a survey they demonstrate their ability to do so, and build their own self-confidence. Moreover, the idea here was that workers in one country should be able to compare their condition to that of workers in other countries. On that basis the workers in the worst position would have arguments for raising their conditions. But, there would be no reason why workers in Country A should trust the data for country B, if that data was provided by Country B's bosses. The very collection of the data by workers, and the sharing of that data amongst workers was in itself an act of solidarity.
In some ways it might be difficult to understand how powerful this is, but I can give an example from my own experience. As late as 1973 when I went to work for a very large pottery firm the office staff were not unionised. Coming from another factory where the union had just been established, it was the first thing I was involved in doing. In fact, I was able to unionise most of the office staff very quickly. But, again, even at that time, because there was no union, there was no annual wage negotiation for office staff. It was similar of the kind of set up you read in a Dickens novel. Every Christmas, the Director, would invite staff into his office, one at a time, and hand them a note of how much, if any pay rise they would be granted. His final comment would always be, “Now you must not share this information with anyone.”
By this kind of paternalistic arrangement, and by keeping each worker atomised, the management were able to divide the workers, and weaken them. The first thing I did was to turn to the other young workers who were on my team, and say, “I've had X, its not very good, is it, how much have you had.” In itself this was saying I have no secrets from you, we are in this together. Before long all the young workers were discussing their wages with each other, which highlighted some glaring anomalies. It took longer to get the older workers to break the habits of a lifetime. But, one upshot was that on one occasion a young worker was asked to train another young woman who moved from another factory. It turned out that the woman being trained was earning about 50% more than the young woman training her. Both agreed this was untenable. Management argued that it was because one was older, but that argument clearly could not hold, especially given the huge variation. By this stage, a degree of confidence and solidarity amongst many of the young workers had been developed that when I asked if they would like me to go in with them to the Director, as their Shop Steward, they said no, they felt confident enough to go in themselves – the younger worker was only about 20 years old. In the end I did have to go into to confront the Director after they told me what crap he had come out with to them, and we did get them to phase in an equalisation of their salaries up to the higher salary. That event soon caused the older workers to begin discussing their salaries for fear that they might be losing out.
This proposal by Marx is that approach writ large. It is a fundamental basis of establishing common cause between workers, and in the process undermines the attempts of the bosses to divide workers. There was another example of this method of collecting and sharing data as a means of asserting workers self-government, and building solidarity at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the aftermath of WWI, there was rapid inflation, and widespread profiteering, including price fixing by the large cartels. The London Co-operative Society worked with the London Trades Council and Labour Part to create the London Food Vigilance Committee, which monitored food prices. Not only was the Co-op as a major retailer in a good position to monitor prices, but at that time, the Co-operative Wholesale Society was a major concern that could monitor wholesale prices, as well as itself having a range of productive facilities through which it could monitor producer prices. Similar alliances existed in other parts of the country. Its an example, of how the element of the Transitional Demand of a Sliding Scale of Wages, which calls for the monitoring of prices by Committees of workers could be practically implemented.
The Co-op used this exercise in combination with its educational work to propagandise against Capitalist enterprise. The Co-operative Women's Guild produced pamphlets on this basis warning of the dangers of Capitalist Trusts. The Co-operative News carried reports attacking Capitalist exploitation, and a cartoon depicted a Co-operative St.George slaying a Capitalist dragon, with the caption, “The People's Co-operative Fights With The Capitalist Menace.” Thirty such committees were established and campaigned for the Government to control imports, sell at cost price, and introduce the rationing of necessities, a measure the Co-op had itself introduced during the War. On the back of this campaign a demonstration of 50,000 people took place in Hyde Park.
Another example of that was that after WWII, the Co-op established its own Research Department that was able to conduct its own analysis in relation to food and materials and processes. The Co-op had been established originally, partly due to the adulteration of workers' food. Even after WWII, milk was one of the most adulterated foods, as well as the problem of brucellosis from unpasteurised milk that could cause blindness. As the country's biggest farmer, the Co-op had been well placed to lead the way in the production of clean milk, and thereby put pressure on other producers long before the government introduced the Milk (Special Designations) Bill in 1949. The danger of relying on the Capitalist State for such analysis or regulation rather than the workers themselves conducting such actions was illustrated with the example of asbestos, where the capitalist State knew of the dangers of its use for a long time, but kept quiet about it, because to have taken action would have badly affected Capitalist profits!
Saturday, 26 June 2010
Its Health & Safety Gone Mad
The number of British troops killed, in Afghanistan, over the last 9 years, has now reached the terrible toll of more than 300. We all know the stories about the inadequate equipment that the troops are provided with, in carrying out their duties. The fact, that the troops, killed or badly maimed, knew what they were letting themselves in for, in taking up the profession of War, is no solace to those who have lost members of their family. The repeated ceremonies for those killed, and the TV coverage of them are understandable, as are the TV interviews with those that have lost sons or husbands, wives or daughters.
Yet, year after year, even more workers are killed and badly maimed also doing their jobs. Last year 180 workers lost their lives due to industrial accidents. HSE Statistics. That figure was actually slightly down on the figure of 220, which was the average for the previous five years. Put, another way as many workers are killed by Capitalism in industry every 18 months, as have been killed by capitalism on the battlefield in the whole of the Afghanistan campaign.
The difference being that, although soldiers know, when they begin their employment, that their job is to kill, and to be killed, that forms no part of the job description of the ordinary worker. The least the ordinary worker should be able to expect is that the conditions under which they work are safe. Yet, despite the fact that there is this terrible loss of life for workers, there is no comparable coverage in the media of industrial deaths compared to soldiers deaths. We see no anguished interviews with the loved ones of industrial workers killed in the name of profit.
On the contrary, the gutter press, in particular, can only ridicule the need for Health & Safety in the work place, falsifying stories, sensationalising, and exaggerating those things which at root are extremely rational and necessary. In fact, when it comes to the real reasons why many practices HAVE been banned, it has nothing to do with Health & Safety legislation, and everything to do with the fact that organisations are afraid of being sued by individuals, egged on by an ambulance chasing culture of litigation, that has spread from the US, and which is itself a symptom of the kind of money centred, grasping culture that Capitalism itself promotes.
Its not surprising that, at the same time as demanding that workers work until they drop dead from old age, the Liberal-Tory government are also proposing to reduce workers protection by Health & Safety legislation. Perhaps we should demand that, just as they do with soldiers, who die for the greater glory of British Capitalism, Government Ministers should have to write to the families of those workers who die each year for the same cause in industry. Perhaps we should demand that, just as they answer for not providing the troops with adequate equipment, to protect their lives, they answer in person the question of why those workers who died did not need the protection of Health & Safety laws they now propose to axe!
Yet, year after year, even more workers are killed and badly maimed also doing their jobs. Last year 180 workers lost their lives due to industrial accidents. HSE Statistics. That figure was actually slightly down on the figure of 220, which was the average for the previous five years. Put, another way as many workers are killed by Capitalism in industry every 18 months, as have been killed by capitalism on the battlefield in the whole of the Afghanistan campaign.
The difference being that, although soldiers know, when they begin their employment, that their job is to kill, and to be killed, that forms no part of the job description of the ordinary worker. The least the ordinary worker should be able to expect is that the conditions under which they work are safe. Yet, despite the fact that there is this terrible loss of life for workers, there is no comparable coverage in the media of industrial deaths compared to soldiers deaths. We see no anguished interviews with the loved ones of industrial workers killed in the name of profit.
On the contrary, the gutter press, in particular, can only ridicule the need for Health & Safety in the work place, falsifying stories, sensationalising, and exaggerating those things which at root are extremely rational and necessary. In fact, when it comes to the real reasons why many practices HAVE been banned, it has nothing to do with Health & Safety legislation, and everything to do with the fact that organisations are afraid of being sued by individuals, egged on by an ambulance chasing culture of litigation, that has spread from the US, and which is itself a symptom of the kind of money centred, grasping culture that Capitalism itself promotes.
Its not surprising that, at the same time as demanding that workers work until they drop dead from old age, the Liberal-Tory government are also proposing to reduce workers protection by Health & Safety legislation. Perhaps we should demand that, just as they do with soldiers, who die for the greater glory of British Capitalism, Government Ministers should have to write to the families of those workers who die each year for the same cause in industry. Perhaps we should demand that, just as they answer for not providing the troops with adequate equipment, to protect their lives, they answer in person the question of why those workers who died did not need the protection of Health & Safety laws they now propose to axe!
Friday, 18 June 2010
Buncefield
Three firms were found guilty over the Buncefield Oil Depot explosion three years ago as the BBC reported today - Buncefield.
At the time I wrote a blog about the events, which is as relevant today.
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I was watching the pictures, of the effects of the explosion, at the oil storage facility, in Henel Hempstead, today, like many other people. I don't know the area, where the storage depot was, but I guess its not a leafy, middle class suburb. I know, from having sat on a Planning Committee, that whenever applications, for anything that might be environmentally hazardhous, dirty or unsightly, comes along a strange red (or probably blue) mist seems to cloud the vision of planning officers and Councillors alike.
Whenever an application for something like this is submitted, for some area out in the country, planning officers reel out all the objections to spoiling the countryside, Tory Councillors, who are often elected from these areas by a few voters and some sheep, of course, are outraged that their constituents should have to come into contact with anything so working class, and Labour politicians, even if for the best environmentalist reasons, dislike the idea of despoiling the Green Belt too. Yet, despite the fact that, often, for facilities such as this oil storage depot, out in the wilds is the best place for them, where they pose little risk to anyone, the same planners and politicians have no qualms about siting dangerous facilities in the midst of, or at least close to, working class areas, where, presumably, they think people already have a completely shitty environement so shitting it up a bit more won't matter. The same is true about the Government's policies for cramming even more houses or businesses on to inner city, brown field sites, when, in fact, what needs to happen, to these sites, is for them to be greened up, to provide a better environement for people stuck inside built up towns and cities, to give kids somewhere to play, and to provide a "green lung" to improve air quality.
Its not even a matter of people being given a backhander by the firms that want to site these facilities in working class areas, its more a matter that the idea that workers can be shat on from a great height is taken for granted. The companies often have economic reasons for wanting to site them in these areas (e.g. because they are close to customers) as well as knowing they are more likely to get approval for an application there than in the countryside (because especially in run down working class areas, where residents have little history of organising and standing up for themselves, they will not put up a fight, whereas, out in the country, the middle class residents will, and the local Tory candidate will give the directors grief), and planning officers go along for many of the same reasons (plus they are more likely to live in the leafy suburbs than on a run down estate).
Workers should not count on any of these people having a change of heart. They have to organise on the etsates through their own organisations to oppose such developments through direct action if (as it usually is)necessary. They need to make links with the Trade Unions in the firms involved to gain support, to link up the concerns of workers in these industries over Health and Safety with their own concerns in that regard.
At the time I wrote a blog about the events, which is as relevant today.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was watching the pictures, of the effects of the explosion, at the oil storage facility, in Henel Hempstead, today, like many other people. I don't know the area, where the storage depot was, but I guess its not a leafy, middle class suburb. I know, from having sat on a Planning Committee, that whenever applications, for anything that might be environmentally hazardhous, dirty or unsightly, comes along a strange red (or probably blue) mist seems to cloud the vision of planning officers and Councillors alike.
Whenever an application for something like this is submitted, for some area out in the country, planning officers reel out all the objections to spoiling the countryside, Tory Councillors, who are often elected from these areas by a few voters and some sheep, of course, are outraged that their constituents should have to come into contact with anything so working class, and Labour politicians, even if for the best environmentalist reasons, dislike the idea of despoiling the Green Belt too. Yet, despite the fact that, often, for facilities such as this oil storage depot, out in the wilds is the best place for them, where they pose little risk to anyone, the same planners and politicians have no qualms about siting dangerous facilities in the midst of, or at least close to, working class areas, where, presumably, they think people already have a completely shitty environement so shitting it up a bit more won't matter. The same is true about the Government's policies for cramming even more houses or businesses on to inner city, brown field sites, when, in fact, what needs to happen, to these sites, is for them to be greened up, to provide a better environement for people stuck inside built up towns and cities, to give kids somewhere to play, and to provide a "green lung" to improve air quality.
Its not even a matter of people being given a backhander by the firms that want to site these facilities in working class areas, its more a matter that the idea that workers can be shat on from a great height is taken for granted. The companies often have economic reasons for wanting to site them in these areas (e.g. because they are close to customers) as well as knowing they are more likely to get approval for an application there than in the countryside (because especially in run down working class areas, where residents have little history of organising and standing up for themselves, they will not put up a fight, whereas, out in the country, the middle class residents will, and the local Tory candidate will give the directors grief), and planning officers go along for many of the same reasons (plus they are more likely to live in the leafy suburbs than on a run down estate).
Workers should not count on any of these people having a change of heart. They have to organise on the etsates through their own organisations to oppose such developments through direct action if (as it usually is)necessary. They need to make links with the Trade Unions in the firms involved to gain support, to link up the concerns of workers in these industries over Health and Safety with their own concerns in that regard.
Thursday, 7 May 2009
Swine Flu - A Bit of a Pig
The recent outbreak of Swine Flu has shown once again the propensity of the media to hype things up out of all proportion. When the news first broke, there was reason for real concern given the fact that a number of people in Mexico had died, and given our experience in the last few years of Bird Flu and SARS. Given the past experience of Flu Epidemics that killed millions around the globe, it was understandable that the potential for disaster should be taken seriously.
However, it soon became apparent that none of the people outside Mexico that had contracted the flu were suffering from a serious life threatening disease. It also became clear that there were specific reasons for the deaths in Mexico. Many of those who have been tracked down by the media to give interviews have appeared as they hung out of bedroom windows, to be suffering from something even less debilitating than the usual seasonal flu! Yet, the media continued for some time to play up the story as though it spelled the end of civilisation as we know it, papers like the "Sun" even ran headlines to that kind of effect. Its another example of the kind of searching after sensationalism I have referred to in previous posts.
And, it has other negative effects. The Government has now spent a considerable amount sending out leaflets to everyone warning them of the danger of Swine Flu. It has also been treating not just those who have contracted the flu, but those who have come in contact with them with Tamiflu. Why???? A number of commentators have pointed out that its more likely that the real threat from the Swine Flue will arise next Winter, when it may have mutated into a more virulent form. That is the time when people need leaflets about it, not now when they are likely to end up kin the bin, and after which people will have months to forget what they might have read. But, also why treat people with Tamiflu, for what appears to be a very mild flu? Other than those people who might be at risk due to their age, or respiratory conditions, surely it would make more sense simply to allow people to go through a mild dose of flu, thereby building up their immune system to it, and saving the Tamiflu to be used against any potential more virulent outbreak!!!
Why, because as my wife said to me the other day, the Government must be shit scared not to, because of the response that would come from that same media - particularly if someone who had not been treated were to die. Its rather like the kind of Catch 22 situation I was speaking about recently in relation to Health and Safety. But, its also similar to what I was talking about recently about the way people now expect that someone - usually the Government - will deal with any problem that they may face. Its one reason that over recent decades doctors have prescribed vast amounts of antibiotics and other drugs that were probably ineffective, but which people demanded, because they believed that any time they have some sniffle the Doctor has to have an immediate curre in the form of some drug! In fact, the consequence has been highly negative as bacteria has become increasingly resistant to the antibiotics that have been so used.
Anyway, that's the serious stuff. Now let's get all the jokes out of the way.
Apparently, all the cases have now been smoked out. Symptoms apparently include crackling in the ears, coming out in rashers, followed by the skin going streaky. Skin might also become sore due to all the scratchings, but there again it should perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt, because nearly all the patients have been cured, otherwise the doctors would have been for the chop.
However, it soon became apparent that none of the people outside Mexico that had contracted the flu were suffering from a serious life threatening disease. It also became clear that there were specific reasons for the deaths in Mexico. Many of those who have been tracked down by the media to give interviews have appeared as they hung out of bedroom windows, to be suffering from something even less debilitating than the usual seasonal flu! Yet, the media continued for some time to play up the story as though it spelled the end of civilisation as we know it, papers like the "Sun" even ran headlines to that kind of effect. Its another example of the kind of searching after sensationalism I have referred to in previous posts.
And, it has other negative effects. The Government has now spent a considerable amount sending out leaflets to everyone warning them of the danger of Swine Flu. It has also been treating not just those who have contracted the flu, but those who have come in contact with them with Tamiflu. Why???? A number of commentators have pointed out that its more likely that the real threat from the Swine Flue will arise next Winter, when it may have mutated into a more virulent form. That is the time when people need leaflets about it, not now when they are likely to end up kin the bin, and after which people will have months to forget what they might have read. But, also why treat people with Tamiflu, for what appears to be a very mild flu? Other than those people who might be at risk due to their age, or respiratory conditions, surely it would make more sense simply to allow people to go through a mild dose of flu, thereby building up their immune system to it, and saving the Tamiflu to be used against any potential more virulent outbreak!!!
Why, because as my wife said to me the other day, the Government must be shit scared not to, because of the response that would come from that same media - particularly if someone who had not been treated were to die. Its rather like the kind of Catch 22 situation I was speaking about recently in relation to Health and Safety. But, its also similar to what I was talking about recently about the way people now expect that someone - usually the Government - will deal with any problem that they may face. Its one reason that over recent decades doctors have prescribed vast amounts of antibiotics and other drugs that were probably ineffective, but which people demanded, because they believed that any time they have some sniffle the Doctor has to have an immediate curre in the form of some drug! In fact, the consequence has been highly negative as bacteria has become increasingly resistant to the antibiotics that have been so used.
Anyway, that's the serious stuff. Now let's get all the jokes out of the way.
Apparently, all the cases have now been smoked out. Symptoms apparently include crackling in the ears, coming out in rashers, followed by the skin going streaky. Skin might also become sore due to all the scratchings, but there again it should perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt, because nearly all the patients have been cured, otherwise the doctors would have been for the chop.
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
Health & Safety
Last night’s Panorama , entitled “May Contain Nuts” was about “Health and Safety. When I looked at the blurb before the programme, it looked as though it might have been an intelligent riposte to all those mindless – and often simply fabricated – stories in the tabloid press about this or that measure – usually supposed to have been imposed by Brussels – that are supposed to show that we live in a “Nanny State”, and as Charlie Brooker satirised it a few weeks ago, provoke the response, “Its Policial Correctness Gone Mad”! It wasn’t.
The Programme began by referring to a few such stories saying which were true, and which were untrue. But, it made no real attempt to get behind the stories that were true to see if they were as ridiculous as the headlines make them seem. On the one issue where it did do that – the question of whether Musicians in Orchestras would have to wear ear protection where the music exceeded 85 decibels, seemed to reveal that the industry had discussed it with the HSE, and there would be no such requirement. It does raise some important arguments, however, about the way society functions, and at a time when still far too many workers die as a result of their jobs, where an even bigger number are injured or suffer some kind of industrial disease it is important to ensure that the case for Health and Safety is able of being argued without having to first get over a lot of misinformation or bad publicity arising from some of these side issues. After all, the media is quick to pick up on or to make up stories of this kind, and where some big industrial accident occurs like a train crash where they can sell their product by sensationalism they will get involved, but they never have any coverage of the thousands of accidents that ruin the lives of workers every day, or the continual breaches of basis Health and Safety that put workers at risk, or mean that they at least have to work in unsuitable and uncomfortable conditions. And, more and more, where workers do end up with some injury from their employment it is workers who are being blamed for it, or at least they increasingly face being simply sacked for being unfit for the job!
The Programme looked at the issue of gravestones in Nottingham. About 12 years ago, I was working in the Leisure Services Department of the first Council in the country to cause a furore over the issue. Fortunately, I wasn’t in the frontline of responsibility for the issue, but I did have responsibility for investigating what had happened, what had gone wrong, and trying to put measures in place to prevent it happening again. To put it in perspective, the story was taken up by the national newspapers and TV, and feelings were running so high that leading Councillors like my friend John Lockett who was Deputy Leader of the Councillor was getting anonymous phone calls, people congregating outside his house, his car being vandalised and so on. Yet, if his political position had been upheld the problem would never have arisen in the first place. It illustrates a large part of the problem.
In years gone by when Councils employed all their own workers the Grounds Maintenance teams if they were working in a cemetery and saw an unsafe headstone would have just sorted it out themselves. But, after the Tories introduced CCT that wasn’t possible. Contracts had to be entered into, specification documents drawn up and adhered to that spelled out exactly what jobs had to be done, and how much each was to be charged. This meant there was a problem. You couldn’t put into such a document the work that the Council’s workmen had done all those years, because really they shouldn’t have been doing it. The law states clearly that the responsibility for the headstones rests solely with the person who has it erected. Worse than that the Audit Commission that stands over Council’s to check they are not wasting money had even set out guidelines saying that Council’s COULDN’T spend money on doing this work, BECAUSE it wasn’t there responsibility. With private companies winning contracts for Grounds Maintenance work under CCT it was absolutely sure that these private companies would not do work that they were not being paid to do!
There had been a number of deaths in cemeteries, of usually children, where headstones had fallen on to people and crushed them. Even small headstones are very heavy. You wouldn’t want one to fall on your chest, and you can imagine older people easily pulling them over if they use them to help themselves up from kneeling at the graveside. The HSE issued instructions saying that all cemeteries had to be inspected to check for any dangerous headstones, and appropriate action taken. The Head of the Department was very keen on Health and Safety, having worked his way up from working in a Sports Centre, where accidents can occur frequently – just watch the old episodes of the Brittas Empire! So, a programme of inspections was set up, notices were posted on the relevant cemetery telling people that they should check their headstone, because any that were found to be dangerous would be made safe.
The private Grounds maintenance Contractor carried out the inspections, and the result was that hundreds of headstones were laid flat in the cemetery because they were found to be unsafe. Of course, when people went to the cemetery at the weekend there was an uproar. In truth, I think some of it was a bit hypocritical. Having gone around the cemetery myself, it was clear that many of the graves hadn’t been visited for decades. But, that people’s feelings should run so high is understandable for such an emotive subject. On the other hand, the same newspapers that were screaming for blood because the Council had acted to protect people’s safety would have been equally screaming for blood if some child or pensioner had been crushed under a headstone! For a socialist the issue was simple, the Council should just have sorted it as they used to do in the past. But, in the current conditions no Council would do that and face being pulled up, and Councillors surcharged by the Audit Commission for having unnecessarily spent Council Taxpayers’ money.
A similar situation arose at the time over playgrounds. Again there had been a number of fatalities in Council playgrounds, with one Council being sued for £1 million after the death of a child on a swing. For years, as a result of budget cuts the Council I worked for saw its playgrounds increasingly run down and denuded of equipment that was not replaced when it was vandalised or just wore out. When independent inspections were carried out by the National Playing Fields Association the Council ended up closing around half its playgrounds. In fact, that didn’t work out to badly, because at the time I’d been working on a “Policy for Play” that identified the most deprived areas of the Borough, and prioritised spending on playgrounds for those areas. When the outcry over the closures forced the Council to increase the budget for playgrounds, we were then able to ensure that some really good new playgrounds were installed in the places where they were most needed.
But, playgrounds are a good example of the issues over Health and Safety. Socialists, have rightly condemned all of those aspects of the Industrial Revolution that saw children placed in the most dangerous working environments. Yet, in reality, especially on the playgrounds we used to have when I was a kid, all of those same hazards of factory life, can be found in a playground. Sand pits were breeding grounds of all kinds of nasty bacteria that could cause various illnesses. The kind of rotating machinery of the factory that could rip-off a limb, was equally present in the old roundabouts, and impact injuries were bound to happen with unprotected swings and other equipment. Yet no one thought twice about letting kids loose in such an environment. In fact, I can remember when I was about 12 being on a Chinese swing with a friend and hearing a crunch when some toddler ran behind the swing, and must have almost had their head taken off. Of course, the parent blamed us rather than themselves for not properly minding their child!
And here lies the real reason for many of these actions by Councils and other public bodies. It is in reality, usually nothing to do with bureaucratism, and certainly not “political correctness gone mad”. Nor is it even a need to comply strictly with HSE guidelines. The real reason actually is a worry about being sued for huge sums of money in an increasingly Americanised culture of blame and claim. More than that, about a decade ago the Woolf Report set out a series of requirements that Councils and other public bodies had to comply with to show that they were adequately dealing with Risk. Every Public body has to have Public Liability insurance, and it isn’t cheap. Fail to comply with the requirements on Risk, and you just won’t get the insurance, or the insurance won’t pay out!
Its not just in those areas affecting Public bodies where this applies. An entire industry has grown up of people buying old bangers, and then driving to try to get people to run into the back of them so that they can make a claim for whiplash and other injuries. It is part of the legacy of Thatcherism, I think, where everyone is encouraged to be on the make in a very individualistic manner. I read a few years ago a report in America where something like 60% of people in a survey said that they thought that the way to get on was either to win the lottery, to get on to TV for something, or else to be able to sue somebody! Certainly, the ambulance chasing culture has been present in America for much longer than here.
In fact, in Europe things are different, despite having basically the same Health and Safety regulations to adhere to. On the Panorama programme they interviewed some Belgian building workers to ask if they had been on a ladder awareness course, which they hadn’t. Go around Spain, and you see some quite horrendous things that wouldn’t be tolerated here. Manholes left open are fairly frequent, and if you fall down a manhole and break your leg, you are likely not to be able to walk properly again! So, its likely that the real difference is as I said not to do with compliance of those Health and Safety requirements, but is due to that claiming, ambulance chasing culture that has not yet spread to the rest of Europe.
And, of course, that really has nothing to do with the Government, nor with its agencies such as the HSE. It has to do with the basic functioning of Capitalism. As service industries like the legal profession have grown, as ordinary workers become more familiar with dealing with lawyers who in decades gone by they would hardly have encountered so a branch of Capitalism has seen the potential to make money. That has fed into the kind of culture though that Welfarism has created over the last 100 years, and last 50 years in particular, which DOES encourage people to always look for someone else to resolve their problems – a mindset that Capitalism requires, because the last thing it wants is for workers to begin to think that they can and should look to themselves and their own collective strength to resolve their problems. It’s the kind of culture that Capitalism has created that I spoke about previously in my blog Is It Me? .
But, its precisely that answer that workers really need, and that is the real alternative to looking to, what is in any case an insufficient number of, HSE Inspectors, to resolve their problems. When I worked at the Council one of the problems the unions took up was that of overcrowding in the offices. It was a joke. The Heads of department as soon as they got appointed made sure that they secured for themselves a larger office, usually big enough for at least half a dozen people to work in, and got it well kitted out. On the other hand the inspection we carried out showed that in the Council’s Environmental Health Department, (which has the task of carrying out similar inspections in private industry) the largest offices had twice as many people working in them as they should have had! That was on top of dangerous conditions due to the floor being littered with things that couldn’t be properly accommodated, desks cluttered, and access to computers hampered and so on. But, the process required months of surveys, re-surveys, discussions, Health and Safety Committee meetings, and ultimately a threat to take the Council to the HSE. In the 1970’s, when I was a shop steward the process was much simpler. The bosses knew that when I went to them with a complaint the vast majority of the workforce were standing behind me, and they usually dealt with the complaints within a matter of days or at most a couple of weeks, because if not they would have faced a walk-out.
A similar thing applies to the threats to seamen being attacked by Somali pirates. All of the solutions being discussed revolve around sending more warships, putting Navy Seals or whatever on the ships, or even an imperialist invasion of Somalia. The simplest answer, is for mariners unions across the world to develop their own workers defence squads, with properly armed and trained seamen, and a demand for all ships to be sufficiently manned to be able to defend themselves against such attacks.
We introduced similar solutions into playgrounds by involving the local community in deciding where they wanted playgrounds siting, what they wanted on them, and handing them over for the community to run and own, so that Tenants and residents Associations opened and closed them, and supervised the kids in them. That way a lot of the regulations etc. become less important.
The Capitalist State if it is left to run these things or set the terms will always do so in such a way that is bureaucratic and inefficient. The answer to that is not for workers to have to put themselves at risk by accepting dangerous conditions, nor is it to simply throw up its hands and accept the cost and inconvenience caused by that bureaucratism. The answer both within the communities and within the workplace is for the working class to take back that control and that responsibility to itself, and through its own collective action make sure that its Health and Safety is assured.
The Programme began by referring to a few such stories saying which were true, and which were untrue. But, it made no real attempt to get behind the stories that were true to see if they were as ridiculous as the headlines make them seem. On the one issue where it did do that – the question of whether Musicians in Orchestras would have to wear ear protection where the music exceeded 85 decibels, seemed to reveal that the industry had discussed it with the HSE, and there would be no such requirement. It does raise some important arguments, however, about the way society functions, and at a time when still far too many workers die as a result of their jobs, where an even bigger number are injured or suffer some kind of industrial disease it is important to ensure that the case for Health and Safety is able of being argued without having to first get over a lot of misinformation or bad publicity arising from some of these side issues. After all, the media is quick to pick up on or to make up stories of this kind, and where some big industrial accident occurs like a train crash where they can sell their product by sensationalism they will get involved, but they never have any coverage of the thousands of accidents that ruin the lives of workers every day, or the continual breaches of basis Health and Safety that put workers at risk, or mean that they at least have to work in unsuitable and uncomfortable conditions. And, more and more, where workers do end up with some injury from their employment it is workers who are being blamed for it, or at least they increasingly face being simply sacked for being unfit for the job!
The Programme looked at the issue of gravestones in Nottingham. About 12 years ago, I was working in the Leisure Services Department of the first Council in the country to cause a furore over the issue. Fortunately, I wasn’t in the frontline of responsibility for the issue, but I did have responsibility for investigating what had happened, what had gone wrong, and trying to put measures in place to prevent it happening again. To put it in perspective, the story was taken up by the national newspapers and TV, and feelings were running so high that leading Councillors like my friend John Lockett who was Deputy Leader of the Councillor was getting anonymous phone calls, people congregating outside his house, his car being vandalised and so on. Yet, if his political position had been upheld the problem would never have arisen in the first place. It illustrates a large part of the problem.
In years gone by when Councils employed all their own workers the Grounds Maintenance teams if they were working in a cemetery and saw an unsafe headstone would have just sorted it out themselves. But, after the Tories introduced CCT that wasn’t possible. Contracts had to be entered into, specification documents drawn up and adhered to that spelled out exactly what jobs had to be done, and how much each was to be charged. This meant there was a problem. You couldn’t put into such a document the work that the Council’s workmen had done all those years, because really they shouldn’t have been doing it. The law states clearly that the responsibility for the headstones rests solely with the person who has it erected. Worse than that the Audit Commission that stands over Council’s to check they are not wasting money had even set out guidelines saying that Council’s COULDN’T spend money on doing this work, BECAUSE it wasn’t there responsibility. With private companies winning contracts for Grounds Maintenance work under CCT it was absolutely sure that these private companies would not do work that they were not being paid to do!
There had been a number of deaths in cemeteries, of usually children, where headstones had fallen on to people and crushed them. Even small headstones are very heavy. You wouldn’t want one to fall on your chest, and you can imagine older people easily pulling them over if they use them to help themselves up from kneeling at the graveside. The HSE issued instructions saying that all cemeteries had to be inspected to check for any dangerous headstones, and appropriate action taken. The Head of the Department was very keen on Health and Safety, having worked his way up from working in a Sports Centre, where accidents can occur frequently – just watch the old episodes of the Brittas Empire! So, a programme of inspections was set up, notices were posted on the relevant cemetery telling people that they should check their headstone, because any that were found to be dangerous would be made safe.
The private Grounds maintenance Contractor carried out the inspections, and the result was that hundreds of headstones were laid flat in the cemetery because they were found to be unsafe. Of course, when people went to the cemetery at the weekend there was an uproar. In truth, I think some of it was a bit hypocritical. Having gone around the cemetery myself, it was clear that many of the graves hadn’t been visited for decades. But, that people’s feelings should run so high is understandable for such an emotive subject. On the other hand, the same newspapers that were screaming for blood because the Council had acted to protect people’s safety would have been equally screaming for blood if some child or pensioner had been crushed under a headstone! For a socialist the issue was simple, the Council should just have sorted it as they used to do in the past. But, in the current conditions no Council would do that and face being pulled up, and Councillors surcharged by the Audit Commission for having unnecessarily spent Council Taxpayers’ money.
A similar situation arose at the time over playgrounds. Again there had been a number of fatalities in Council playgrounds, with one Council being sued for £1 million after the death of a child on a swing. For years, as a result of budget cuts the Council I worked for saw its playgrounds increasingly run down and denuded of equipment that was not replaced when it was vandalised or just wore out. When independent inspections were carried out by the National Playing Fields Association the Council ended up closing around half its playgrounds. In fact, that didn’t work out to badly, because at the time I’d been working on a “Policy for Play” that identified the most deprived areas of the Borough, and prioritised spending on playgrounds for those areas. When the outcry over the closures forced the Council to increase the budget for playgrounds, we were then able to ensure that some really good new playgrounds were installed in the places where they were most needed.
But, playgrounds are a good example of the issues over Health and Safety. Socialists, have rightly condemned all of those aspects of the Industrial Revolution that saw children placed in the most dangerous working environments. Yet, in reality, especially on the playgrounds we used to have when I was a kid, all of those same hazards of factory life, can be found in a playground. Sand pits were breeding grounds of all kinds of nasty bacteria that could cause various illnesses. The kind of rotating machinery of the factory that could rip-off a limb, was equally present in the old roundabouts, and impact injuries were bound to happen with unprotected swings and other equipment. Yet no one thought twice about letting kids loose in such an environment. In fact, I can remember when I was about 12 being on a Chinese swing with a friend and hearing a crunch when some toddler ran behind the swing, and must have almost had their head taken off. Of course, the parent blamed us rather than themselves for not properly minding their child!
And here lies the real reason for many of these actions by Councils and other public bodies. It is in reality, usually nothing to do with bureaucratism, and certainly not “political correctness gone mad”. Nor is it even a need to comply strictly with HSE guidelines. The real reason actually is a worry about being sued for huge sums of money in an increasingly Americanised culture of blame and claim. More than that, about a decade ago the Woolf Report set out a series of requirements that Councils and other public bodies had to comply with to show that they were adequately dealing with Risk. Every Public body has to have Public Liability insurance, and it isn’t cheap. Fail to comply with the requirements on Risk, and you just won’t get the insurance, or the insurance won’t pay out!
Its not just in those areas affecting Public bodies where this applies. An entire industry has grown up of people buying old bangers, and then driving to try to get people to run into the back of them so that they can make a claim for whiplash and other injuries. It is part of the legacy of Thatcherism, I think, where everyone is encouraged to be on the make in a very individualistic manner. I read a few years ago a report in America where something like 60% of people in a survey said that they thought that the way to get on was either to win the lottery, to get on to TV for something, or else to be able to sue somebody! Certainly, the ambulance chasing culture has been present in America for much longer than here.
In fact, in Europe things are different, despite having basically the same Health and Safety regulations to adhere to. On the Panorama programme they interviewed some Belgian building workers to ask if they had been on a ladder awareness course, which they hadn’t. Go around Spain, and you see some quite horrendous things that wouldn’t be tolerated here. Manholes left open are fairly frequent, and if you fall down a manhole and break your leg, you are likely not to be able to walk properly again! So, its likely that the real difference is as I said not to do with compliance of those Health and Safety requirements, but is due to that claiming, ambulance chasing culture that has not yet spread to the rest of Europe.
And, of course, that really has nothing to do with the Government, nor with its agencies such as the HSE. It has to do with the basic functioning of Capitalism. As service industries like the legal profession have grown, as ordinary workers become more familiar with dealing with lawyers who in decades gone by they would hardly have encountered so a branch of Capitalism has seen the potential to make money. That has fed into the kind of culture though that Welfarism has created over the last 100 years, and last 50 years in particular, which DOES encourage people to always look for someone else to resolve their problems – a mindset that Capitalism requires, because the last thing it wants is for workers to begin to think that they can and should look to themselves and their own collective strength to resolve their problems. It’s the kind of culture that Capitalism has created that I spoke about previously in my blog Is It Me? .
But, its precisely that answer that workers really need, and that is the real alternative to looking to, what is in any case an insufficient number of, HSE Inspectors, to resolve their problems. When I worked at the Council one of the problems the unions took up was that of overcrowding in the offices. It was a joke. The Heads of department as soon as they got appointed made sure that they secured for themselves a larger office, usually big enough for at least half a dozen people to work in, and got it well kitted out. On the other hand the inspection we carried out showed that in the Council’s Environmental Health Department, (which has the task of carrying out similar inspections in private industry) the largest offices had twice as many people working in them as they should have had! That was on top of dangerous conditions due to the floor being littered with things that couldn’t be properly accommodated, desks cluttered, and access to computers hampered and so on. But, the process required months of surveys, re-surveys, discussions, Health and Safety Committee meetings, and ultimately a threat to take the Council to the HSE. In the 1970’s, when I was a shop steward the process was much simpler. The bosses knew that when I went to them with a complaint the vast majority of the workforce were standing behind me, and they usually dealt with the complaints within a matter of days or at most a couple of weeks, because if not they would have faced a walk-out.
A similar thing applies to the threats to seamen being attacked by Somali pirates. All of the solutions being discussed revolve around sending more warships, putting Navy Seals or whatever on the ships, or even an imperialist invasion of Somalia. The simplest answer, is for mariners unions across the world to develop their own workers defence squads, with properly armed and trained seamen, and a demand for all ships to be sufficiently manned to be able to defend themselves against such attacks.
We introduced similar solutions into playgrounds by involving the local community in deciding where they wanted playgrounds siting, what they wanted on them, and handing them over for the community to run and own, so that Tenants and residents Associations opened and closed them, and supervised the kids in them. That way a lot of the regulations etc. become less important.
The Capitalist State if it is left to run these things or set the terms will always do so in such a way that is bureaucratic and inefficient. The answer to that is not for workers to have to put themselves at risk by accepting dangerous conditions, nor is it to simply throw up its hands and accept the cost and inconvenience caused by that bureaucratism. The answer both within the communities and within the workplace is for the working class to take back that control and that responsibility to itself, and through its own collective action make sure that its Health and Safety is assured.
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