#title Towards a Programme
#author Libertarian Communist Group
#date 1977
#lang en
#pubdate 2024-06-26T06:44:38
#authors Libertarian Communist Group, Anarchist Workers’ Association
#topics libertarian communism, United Kingdom, national liberation, Ireland
#notes Another, earlier TOWARDS A PROGRAMME text can be found on <[[https://www.thesparrowsnest.org.uk/collections/public_archive/15788.pdf][www.thesparrowsnest.org.uk/collections/public_archive/15788.pdf]]>
** Preface (2004)
This document was originally drafted by members of the Anarchist Workers’ Association, (A.W.A.) following a resolution passed at the 1976 [?] A.W.A. conference, which called for the A.W.A. to agree a clearer definition of its theory and strategy. At that time the A.W.A. had groups and members in England and Scotland, and a sympathiser or two in Ireland, and published the monthly newspaper ‘Anarchist Worker’. The text below was adopted as a ‘provisional’ rather than as a definitive text by the tendency whose members went on to publish ‘Libertarian Communist’, and renamed the A.W.A. as the Libertarian Communist Group.
The text below is taken from a typeset edition produced after the conference in the autumn of 1977. It should be read keeping in mind the context of the early 1970’s. Britain experienced the Conservative government of the pro-European liberal-conservative Edward Heath (1970–74), which secured entry into the European Economic Community in 1973, in the face of criticism from an alternative racist-conservatism of Enoch Powell (a precursor of Margaret Thatcher). Heath also faced economic difficulties, not least the hike in the price of crude oil, and a miner’s strike: both reduced energy supplies forcing the “three-day week” in the winter of 1973–1974. This era saw the relative success of some militant trade unionists at the level of local/ shop steward organisation and at the level of national action and the early years of the Women’s Liberation Movement, (note the lower level of employment of women in the workforce in these times). The repression of the nationalist people of northern Ireland was highlighted by the killings of 13 unarmed nationalists by paratroopers in Derry on Bloody Sunday, April 20th 1972. Unable to reverse the decline of British capital, or to demobilise a relatively confident Trade Union movement, Heath was defeated in two general elections held in 1974 and was replaced by the Labour Governments of the Harold Wilson and ‘Jim’ Callaghan which lasted from 1974 to 1979.
This text has been reformatted and has been edited for spelling and punctuation. Most annotations are those added in April 2004.
** Libertarian Communism
Libertarian Communism is the historic theory of the working class. It is
the most complete expression of the historic practice of the working
class towards self-emancipation. After setbacks due as much to economic
phenomenon (new forms of exploitation) as ideological ones (the
mystification of Russia and China, represented as socialist countries)
the chance of revolutionary change reappears. Economic, political and
social factors render more necessary than ever a social revolution
leading to communism. The reappearance of revolutionary trends inside
the working class enriches and makes more relevant than ever the theory
of libertarian communism. Libertarian communism is the only theory that
truly voices the moves towards a genuine democratic mass movement for
self-management and self-activity. In this context, it becomes
day-by-day more urgent to construct a revolutionary libertarian
organisation on a national and international level, and to define the
nature and field of activity of its role.
For this we need a revolutionary programme. We mean two things by this:
An analysis of capitalist society and the forces at work in it; and an
action programme responding to the most immediate problems of the
working class and proposing lines of struggle and forms of organisation
most practical at the present, but which can lead to revolutionary
perspectives.
This programme will be open to change and modification in interaction
with the developing struggles and with a dialogue maintained with the
revolutionary elements inside the working class.
*** At Present
The practice and theory of the A.W.A. is divided and confused. There is
no collective understanding of classes (what they are, which ones are in
the process of disappearing, like the petty bourgeoisie and the middle
bourgeoisie), a national attitude to the important problems of
cooperatives and nationalisation. This is apparent on many other issues
— what role do political parties, particularly the social democrats,
play? Where do we stand on national liberation struggles? What do we
think about the women’s movement, the gay movement? What solutions do we
have to the problems of the family, housework, urbanisation, the
environment?
Our practice, too, as a reflection of the lack of theoretical positions,
is confused. There is little communication between groups on the
problems facing us all in particular campaigns, in industry, in
education, in the home. One militant may be doing first class work in,
say, NAC, in town X, and the same goes for a militant in town Y. But
what contact do they have between each other, what support does the
local group and the organisation nationally give them?
*The Organisational Platform of the Libertarian
Communists*[1] argues
“A common tactical line in the movement is of decisive importance for
the existence of the organisation and the whole movement. It removes the
disastrous effect of several tactics in opposition to one another, it
concentrates all the forces of the movement, gives them a common
direction leading to a fixed objective.”
Therefore it is necessary to formulate clear positions and tactical
unity. Otherwise
“The working masses ... will not work with the anarchist movement until
they are convinced of its theoretical and organisational coherence. It
is necessary for every one of us to try to the maximum to attain this
coherence.”
(Arshinov, The Two Octobers, *Libertarian Communist Review*).
** The Crisis
In trying to sketch out the nature and implications of the crisis we
have to go further than quoting sections of ‘Capital’ or dodging our
duty of specific analysis and simply stating that capitalism is a system
of crisis. Having said this we have to pick out the main features and
work on them. We have to place the roots of the crisis in the
‘stability’ of the last thirty years. The overriding factor which
enabled others to come into play was the failure of the European working
class, armed in France and Italy, to seize power. The role of the
Communist Parties, helping to establish ‘order’ in W. Europe and allow
the British to destroy the Greek revolution (agreed at the Yalta meeting
between Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt which set zones of influence)
was crucial in this defeat, as was the rapid intervention of Social
Democracy (built up where necessary by the AFL-CIO agents of the CIA).
This defeat for the working class opened the way for the boom based on:
1. The enormous material destruction caused by the war
which enabled
2. US (Marshall) Aid.
The fear of revolution and competition from the bureaucratically planned
regimes gave the US the will to intervene. The precondition was the 1944
Bretton Woods agreement, which set up the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) to overcome balance of payments difficulties by establishing a
pool of gold and currency. This itself was only possible because its
cornerstone was the dollar — then exchangeable at the fixed rate of $35
to an ounce of fine gold; *and*
3. The technological advances forced by wartime needs (particularly
production techniques)
*with*
4. The important help of state intervention established during the war
and greatly expanded after it ( e.g. the Labour nationalisation
programme of 1945!).
*to establish the conditions under which an enlarged market could be
created and a higher rate of profit than previously enjoyed to be gained
i.e. the precondition for capitalist development.*
All this did not change the fundamental characteristics of capitalism
(particularly the long-term tendency for the rate of the profit to
decline but added new aspects to them. In trying to see how the
contradictions reasserted themselves we should look at what is
contributed by the above factors.
*** Bretton Woods
International financial stability rested on the US dollar. However the
credit system built up to artificially stimulate the international
economy could only give rise to inflation (paper money chasing itself in
circles) because the system was not strong enough for all its reserves
to be based on gold (75% of the pool was in local currencies, 25% in
gold). This meant that while the dollar gave the system some stability,
the weak currencies threatened the dollar in turn. Whilst the dollar was
supreme the system was all right. The uneven — on an international scale
— development of late capitalism (which we need to understand better)
was probably the main cause of the growing US balance of payments
deficit, although the drain caused by the Korean War, playing
international policeman, and then the war in Indochina played a
considerable part This created a bleed on US gold reserves which in 1950
held 2/3 of the world’s mined gold. Recently this had declined to less
than a quarter. This could only affect all the world’s currencies. In
the early ‘60s gold made up 60% of ‘liquidity’ (i.e. gold and foreign
exchange) this is now less than 30%. The truth is that roughly 2/3 of
the world’s trading assets are *valueless* i.e. not convertible. This
situation is reflected in gold reserve assets which in the ‘60s
represented 30% of world imports and is now about 10%. In the late ‘50s
and ‘60s fears of the instability of the system led to the French
hoarding of gold, which in turn forced others to take out this
insurance. The surface signs of the approaching crisis were a rightward
turn in the US, cutting foreign aid, developing ‘colonial’ wars, the
wave of West European wage freezes and ‘anti-inflation’ measures’ e.g.
Selwyn Lloyd[2] pay pause, 1962–3, UK recession, the Wilson
‘inherited’ £800m trade deficit of 1964, the Callaghan[3]
1967 devaluation, etc. The edifice cracked open on August
15th 1971 when Nixon announced that the dollar link with gold
was ended. Now the vast amount of paper floating about had no basis. The
key problem for the system is to re-establish a function. There is no
new, young, rich capitalist power to act as guarantor. The fake cap must
be destroyed, the paper burnt. So currencies must fall, assets
disappear, production fall.
*** Technical Advances
The destruction in Japan and Germany gave them the chance to refit with
the most advanced methods and become leading capitalist powers in a
short time; indeed to compete with their benefactors. The British
position was affected by its ‘victory’ which cost it most of its foreign
investments to repay the US loans and so left it even more
under-invested than in the ‘30s (the age of machine tools in British
engineering is a clear guide to this). Also the conflict of finance
capital (relic of the imperial past) interested in freer trading
relations than industrial capital which needs protected markets
prevented development in manufacturing (this is an ‘old-fashioned’ view,
crudely put, but it needs investigating, for its influence on UK
attitudes to the EEC, for instance). Technical advances under capitalism
are either destroyed by vested interests or else spread far and wide in
a short time. On an international scale their advantage lasts for a
relatively short time.
*** State Intervention
A planned communications, power, and transport system is an enormous
advantage, initially, for industrial production. Many of the wartime
measures were maintained and extended. European social democrats had a
key role to play because this ‘mixed’ economy is their goal. State
intervention enables production on a wider scale. State buying provides
a customer for expanded production. But it does nothing to improve or
hold the rate of profit. State, buying is paid out of taxes or borrowed
money from funds of capitalism’s private sector i.e. these policies
produce government indebtedness and vulnerability to panics and crises
of confidence. So if anything these policies worsen the rate of profit:
- by helping ‘lame duck’ industries from the taxes of the profitable
sectors the average rate of profit is lowered.
- government induced production cannot be of commodities in competition
with private capital so it increases the volume of non-profitable
production, e.g. roads railways power systems or armaments, space
research etc. This ‘dilution’ will also tend to lower the rate of
profit.
So the expansion of production upon which the post War recovery wet
built was not a sign of health for the system and contained within
Itself Its own contradictions. Inflation is a product of the enormous
amount of fictitious capital in circulation and a result of the expanded
production created by state intervention.
The ruling class has to produce a higher rate of profit to climb out of
the slump. To do this it must try to
1. destroy the fictitious capital — bankruptcies, devaluations.
2. increase the rate of exploitation.
3. avert trade war which will break the tenuous cooperation and destroy
all hopes of a new foundation.
These are not easy to reconcile. Devaluation gives industrial capital
some advantage, damages native financial centres, upsets competitors and
places further burdens of a higher cost of living upon the working
class. Increased exploitation needs a new technical breakthrough and
capital to exploit it -neither exists at present — *or* it needs a
thoroughly beaten working class. This defeat would have to be of a
different order from that inflicted by the Labour/TUC policy of
redundancies and wage cuts. The capacity to fight back still exists (for
the Labour and TU leaders cannot destroy the movement they live on;
mislead it, yes, dismantle it, no). This capacity to fight must be
destroyed for capitalism to have a future.
The increasing pressure from the TUC for import controls[4]
is contradictory to the needs for a new solid structure for capitalist
trade.
The Labour Party is a particularly dangerous enemy to the working
class, because the ‘mixed’ economy has reached its limits and cannot
resolve the crisis. The ‘National’ solutions lie in two directions — a
National government to take on the working class or a national siege
economy. We must understand clearly that both are dangerous for the
working class. The return to laissez faire — the only orthodox
(Capitalist solution and the most likely -means a government dominated
by the Thatcher-Joseph line. This line was what Callaghan expressed in
his key’ speeches to the Labour Party conference:
- Cut government spending, less controls on capital, by implication,
cut living standards, let unemployment grow!
- The alternative, the ‘left’ labour policy of a command economy, in
particular tariff barriers and control on capital movement, will
signal open trade war. This cannot defend the living standards of the
working class for even greater sacrifices in consumption will be
called for.
A command economy under ‘the social democrats would be like a General
strike under the General Council of the TUC — a defeat of enormous
scale. In the short run we have to beware of stop-gap measures designed
to carry out parts of the long term needs of British capitalism. For
instance the need for an increase in the rate of exploitation, in the
face of working class resistance to wages policy, can only lead to a big
sell of productivity as Wilson tried in the ‘60s. We may well see Phase
Three[5] of the wage policy next year containing the traps of
job evaluation, further measured day work, etc., etc. We have to study
the lessons of the past period this tactic was applied and be prepared
to meet it. The dominance of financial orthodoxy (à la 1925) in the
Labour leadership must mean further cuts in public expenditure. For this
to be fought a public sector workers alliance will be absolutely
necessary.
A programme of demands around which the working class can be rallied is
the key to this whole period, these demands must, not be economistic
shopping lists (less hours, more pay) but must pose collective and
independent working class solutions i.e. demands which extend beyond the
local struggle. This must reopen our consideration of the idea of
transitional demands such as work sharing with no loss of pay, opening
the books under workers’ inspection, a sliding scale of wages. We must
develop further our position that ‘It’s not our crisis, we shall not pay
for it’.
** What Politics, Then, Should A.W.A. Advocate within the Workers Movement?
These politics should contribute to the process of beginning the fight
back, forming united class struggle fronts with other
left tendencies and indicating a way out of capitalism towards
libertarian communism. Our strategy as indicated in past copies of
*Libertarian Struggle* and *Anarchist Worker* is as follows. We have
consistently adopted a position to opposition to the effects of the
crisis: we have urged workers to oppose the cuts, oppose the four and a
half % limit,[6] etc. We have indicated the organisational
methods to be adopted by workers in their struggles (basically federated
rank and file committees of different sorts) and we have warned them not
to set up isolated workers’ cooperatives or accept nationalisation. We
have said that the ‘Right to Work’[7] campaign has
limitations, and stressed the need for a revolutionary movement to
overthrow capitalism. We have also attempted to give coverage of and
encouragement to actual struggles as they have occurred. The most
noticeable characteristic of this policy has been the repeated recourse
to the word ‘must’, not so much as an imperative but rather as a
desperate and generally unheeded plea. We repeatedly say that the
working class must do this or that. We then proceed to present
immediate tactical perspectives as if this attitude of intransigent
opposition been wholeheartedly accepted by millions of workers!
Our way forward is, in other words, aimed at a working class already
consciously united in substantial sections in opposition to the
consequences of capitalism; in our ‘.what to do’ contributions we
concentrate upon tactical and organisational observations — as if the
working class’ was everywhere in ferment and the battle against social
democracy and class collaboration had already been won. (As if, also, we
were speaking through a paper that had a mass circulation within the
working class).
Let’s begin a reappraisal of our approach with its pivotal point — the
occupation as a resistance to one or other effect of the crisis. Firstly
we must realise that however effective as a potential tactic occupation
might be, it is by no means *predictable* as a widespread expression of
working class struggle over the coming period. Secondly, it must be
emphasised that the criticisms made below are not intended to deny the
positive aspects — the main being, of course, its involvement of the
assertion of workers’ control over the plant or whatever concerned. What
we must address ourselves to is how an occupation can relate to the
immediate demands of the workers involved and the general state of the
class struggle.
A struggle in all our minds at the moment when the word ‘occupation’
crops up is that pf, the IMRO[8] workers. We must, however,
be cautious” in our evaluation of this. In IMRO we find a small
workforce that has developed unity in revolutionary action over a long
period of struggle, and matured into an example of a beautiful example
of class intransigence. There are elements of their struggle that reveal
their willingness to use it as a general didactic and propaganda organ.
Because they have had a sophisticated and united consciousness of their
situation they have not been prone to disillusionment: their stated
objective, that of preserving their jobs, has been sustained by a
mixture of pragmatism and political awareness that has seen them through
nine months of occupation and eventual eviction apparently bringing them
no nearer to it. Are we to expect such determination from every group of
workers accepting occupation as their mode of struggle? Probably not.
There is often unevenness between the form of workers’ actions and the
clarity and extent of their internal political commitment. Stiff though
this fight may be and much as the left may give assistance and
encouragement in the particular situation, in most cases the workers
will be unwilling to make working class martyrs of themselves by going
hammer and tongs against everything in the IMR0 manner. The Union
bureaucracy will effectively isolate them. They will face defeat or else
be involved in some attempted reconstruction of their sector. We have
polemicised against both the major restructurings that can take place
within capitalism — establishment of a workers’ cooperative and
nationalisation. It is of course correct that because both do occur
within capitalism they both can and do tend to act against the workers
interests. On the one hand the case of Triumph Meriden has had a
sobering effect on the whole of the self-management left with regards to
cooperatives. It provided a telling example of how ‘an ‘island of
socialism’ could not resist the pressures put on it by its organic links
with and dependence upon the profit system. The workers had to turn on
themselves to maintain the cooperative’s liquidity.
The only way they could have avoided this in the short term (beyond a
technological or marketing coup) would have been by demanding repeated
cash injections without strings — which would have brought them back to
square one. State Intervention via nationalisation, meanwhile, has
repeatedly been revealed to be oriented to the overall needs of
capitalism, Its effect on sectors such as coal, steel, railways and
car-manufacturing has repeatedly been to assist the process of
rationalisation and streamlining. But what about the occupying workers?
Are we to refuse to relate to their struggle in any other way than to
urge them to carry on the struggle at white heat even when the potential
of the working class as a whole to assist through rank and file activity
has failed to materialise despite our exhortations? We need to
accommodate ourselves, in other words, to the limitations of what
occupations are likely to achieve in terms of the defence of workers
interests. Unless there is a take-off into sustained revolutionary
growth — with other sectors of workers getting involved by a sort of
chain reaction (which not even IMRO has achieved) — scattered outbreaks
of workers resistance will play an ambiguous role in terms of overall
class struggle. On the one hand they will serve as inspirations and
examples to other workers and focal points around which propaganda can
be made and towards which the fight for active support in the rank and
file can be directed. On the other hand, even an occupation on the IMRO
scale is likely to fail to break through the barriers to revolutionary
advance created by the general conditions of class consciousness and the
balance of forces
of the class struggle.
*Beyond and in addition to the support and encouragement we give to such
struggles there consequently remains the task of formulating general
response to the state of the class struggle* — a response which an be
the beginnings of a matrix of class struggle solidarity, which can have
relevance to all struggles, and which can indicate lines of battle
within them which have the potential to prevent any retreat from
‘eyeball to eyeball’ situation turning into a rout. Such a response is
not supplied by the historic programme of revolutionary anarchism alone.
That programme is, on the contrary, only applicable as an exclusive
political intervention at a time when a revolutionary situation has
developed not only in terms of the condition and direction of the
economy but also in terms of the coherence, unification and turning
towards class struggle of workers’ consciousness. It is to claim,
however, that it is not *sufficient* to achieve it. It remains
insufficient because the response of the working class to crisis is not
a pavlovian propensity to be drawn immediately to revolutionary
principles, but rather depends in part on the role played by
consciousness as it has already developed. The historic programme
achieves a *fully* comprehensible relationship to this consciousness
relating to the contemporary balance of forces only be allowing itself
to be mediated by the objective situation. The process of revolutionary
politics consequently becomes one of *rediscovering* historical
objectives as they appear at the various levels of contemporary struggle
and development. It is when this process is dictated that divisions
occur between awareness of the historical programme and our responses to
the myriad conflicts and activities of the working class. The former
does not achieve its fullest possible implantation within he
latter, where it acts as an agent in their development. Our intervention
is not as effective a social force as it might have been; it becomes
rather a standpoint explaining out sympathies. A response that is
mediated by objective circumstances should above ill relate to the
general political debate in the working class (especially in its mass
organisations) and to the balance of class forces that this represents.
It should focus on and define the main areas of class conflict — in the
present situation, wages, work conditions (speed-ups etc) and
unemployment. These are the basic economic indices, given that the cuts
ire being dealt with elsewhere, though some aspects are relevant here.
When we look at the balance of class forces we have to define which
class is on the offensive. At the moment the initiative lies firmly in
the lands of the capitalists as they respond to the crisis of financial
credibility and profitability in their imperialist market. Alongside
their economic measures, they have launched a major ideological
offensive, based strongly on chauvinism. class collaboration and
sacrifice: they have begun to score accesses against individual
militants and militant sections of workers n plants and through the
assistance of allies in the labour movement. True, the working class has
not been ground down as much as necessary, but this very deadlock only
worsens the desperation of the losses and their need to act drastically
whilst it does nothing to clarify he workers’ understanding of what is
at stake. Under these conditions tie prime function of the response we
fight for must be to change the direction of the struggle initiative.
Such an intervention would centre around a series of demands exhibiting
a willingness to preserve standards of living and employment at the same
time as it challenged the social benefits and the politics of the
bourgeoisie within capitalism.
On the question of incomes this involves clarifying the call for
resistance to wage restraint by adding to it the rider that incomes must
rise to compensate for losses through inflation. It also involves
attacking the incomes structure of modern capitalist corporations —
demanding that the incomes of managers, directors and shareholders be
reduced to that of the best paid producers in their corporations and
that the lower paid be raised up to this level. The responsibility for
assessing the state of incomes with regard to inflation should be that
of instantly recallable committees selected from the shop floor. To
assist in the fight against the living standards of stockholders etc NO
must add an attack on the ‘investment strike’ — a wealth tax on
individual and company profits to feed a national investment fund.
Another ‘anti-rich’ tactic is to call for the abolition of the civil
list.[9]
The demand ‘no redundancies’ is obvious. It can, however be extended by
advocating ‘work sharing on full pay’ to be decided at branch or shop
floor level (this covering both overtime and hours and introducing the
ideas of cooperation and shop floor control) and ‘full union rights for
the unemployed’ with the branch rather than the personal officer being
the point of entry into work. It should not prevent
us.
The demand ‘open the books’ is a useful appendage to any specific
conflict and to the general state of the economy. If private industry
cannot meet workers’ demands the state should be challenged to satisfy
them. If private owners are forced into liquidation, nationalisation
should be favoured to the establishment of a cooperative on the sole
grounds that the latter poses the greater threat to the workforce by
making its own representatives agents of capitalist forces.
The utility of such a series of demands is basically as an answer to the
question ‘what would you do then?’ which goes beyond the vagueness of
‘have a revolution’ or the basically defensive ‘resist this or that’. It
has use in all areas of the labour movement, though the essential task
remains the willing of rank and file workers so as to prevent it
becoming merely the talking shop of bureaucrats.
The advocacy of such a series of demands should not obscure our
commitment to the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism by the working
class and the re-organisation of production around workers and community
councils. It should be presented as the line of defence of workers’
interests we advocate precisely because we realise that the working
class does not possess a revolutionary consciousness. It should not be
presented as exclusive to A.W.A. but rather be presented as being of
relevance to all workers and revolutionaries who we are able to reach
with the limited circulation of our publications: it should be seen by
them as a way to fight for the development of conditions where the
debate about the historic programme (with which one may still disagree)
becomes more relevant and pressing. We should not forget about the
historic programme, though, nor cease to propagandise the basic tenets
of revolutionary anarchism in a readily accessible form, but this
activity should be accompanied by a greater awareness of orientation
through demands to those workers already reacting to the futility of
capitalism, yet dependent, despairing of their fellows and searching for
some way out of the impasse.
** National Liberation Struggles
The problems of national liberation struggles cannot be viewed en block.
Each case has its own particular aspects — differing class composition
of liberation movements, etc. It is important to examine the forces; at
work inside a country fighting for liberation and to examine the forces
at play on an international level. In most cases, the interests of the
three great power blocks, USA, USSR, Peoples Republic of China, will be
involved. It is necessary to analyse these interests and how they can
effect the development of a national liberation struggle and the
political complexion of a newly liberated country.
We recognise that it is a necessary stage on the road to libertarian
communism for the peoples of the third world countries to throw out
colonial powers. This will weaken the economic and political influence
of major power blocks, robbing them of supplies of cheap labour and
materials.
At the same time, we must be aware of the economic interests of the
capitalist and state capitalist powers involved in the development of
the emergent nation. Economic and political influence can still be
exercised through a ‘comprador’ or native bourgeoisie, whose interests
will be subordinated to international capitalism, and who may allow the
multinationals, etc, to continue their plundering of labour and
resources. National liberation struggles are usually led by sections of
the national bourgeoisie, allied with intellectual and petty bourgeois
elements. The working class and peasantry usually take an active part in
national liberation struggles. Very often, however, their interests are
subordinated to those of the native bourgeoisie, who seek state power
and establishment of capitalist and state capitalist economies. We must
give what aid and advice we can to forces of the workers and peasants
inside the liberation movements. We must point out the tendencies
towards self-management, popular assemblies, and popular militias that
can assert themselves (Angola, FRETILIN[10]) while offering a
critical view of the overall struggle, and the inevitable clash between
the masses and the bourgeoisie. As national liberation struggles involve
the interests of sections of the native bourgeoisie and the working and
peasant classes, they are not in themselves revolutionary. However,
these struggles can outstrip themselves by the dynamic they create, and
lead to considerable advances towards libertarian communism by the
masses (both the Paris Commune 1871 and the Hungarian Revolution 1956
had their starting points in nationalist sentiments).
They can create a situation of stress in the oppressor country, often
leading to radical upheaval and revolutionary feeing there (e.g.
Portugal, and USA to a lesser extent).
We therefore give critical support to national liberation struggles
where it affects the in influence of colonial powers and where
revolutionary struggle has a chance of outstripping the national
liberation struggles. We are aware of the difficulties of establishing
genuine socialism in the underdeveloped countries. Therefore, we regard
it as essential that e we build a revolutionary movement in the
industrialised countries that can assist the proletariat and peasantry
of the underdeveloped countries.
** Ireland
Although the issue of our response to British involvement in Ireland was
an early component of the basis for agreement in the minority tendency
(around forwarding the Troops Out Movement’s demands) we are in a
situation where for reasons of time we have not been able to produce an
extensive recapitulation of this for the present document.
Unfortunately, A.W.A. has been prevented from giving its full attention
to events in Ireland because of its small size and its lack of immediate
contact with the six counties[11]. One of the main failings
of Troops Out Movement moreover has been in the field of disseminating
contemporary information. We reaffirm nevertheless our belief that it is
possible for our organisation to achieve a correct general orientation
towards the Irish crisis according to the main outlines of our attitude:
[1] Present A.W.A. policy obscures the issues at
hand by ignoring the unique features of the situation in favour of pious
voluntarism.
[2] For any understanding of the situation we must
begin by characterising the six counties. The first thing we note about
these is that they are a territory over which the British parliament
claims sovereignty. The second is that this sovereignty has been
historically inter-related with the existence, of Protestant ‘planter’
communities which even before the existence of ‘Ulster’ as a separate
political entity had enjoyed economic and social privileges expressing
the special relationship of the protestant bourgeoisie with the British
state and the British imperialist market, and also the special
relationship of the protestant workers to this bourgeoisie. After
partition, British sovereignty consolidated these privileges within the
six counties by adding to them a semi-independent state power
(especially in its internal military and legal aspects) which stood on a
gerrymandered bourgeois democratic base. The Stormont statelet was never
anything more than a blatant institutionalisation of the ‘Protestant
ascendancy’ — sectarianism was built into it as an integral part of its
structure, manifest at all levels of social analysis, from employment
patterns to ideology.
[3] What we have been presented with over the last
seven years is a crisis within this vicious apparatus of repression and
discrimination. Consequently, one of the ways in which we characterise
the forces operating in this crisis is according to their relationship
with this apparatus. For workers in Britain, attention should focus on
the British state and army. As the sovereign authority and through
military intervention, successive British governments have adopted a
policy of operating within and to preserve the sectarian structure of
the six counties. Though they have been forced to suspend its
independent organs of political control, its social appearance remains
well rooted and the lines of caste division have been drawn more clearly
by war than they were even by the electoral boundary or by lists of
council employees. Meanwhile all attempts at reform or compromise have
fallen foul of the contradictions maintained by the British connection
itself, moves towards a solution being thwarted on the one hand by
strong currents in the protestant communities (e.g. UCS strike)
determined to resist the incorporation of any catholic representatives
into the parochial political mechanism, and on the other hand by
minority fear of the consequences of failing to defeat the ascendancy.
[4] As operating within the sectarian structure and
according to its contours the British military (and ideological)
intervention has concentrated upon the isolation and battering down the
latter of these forces (the minority)., often blatantly. Given the
cooperation of the Southern Irish State this appears as the simplest
task — indeed the continuation of resistance of any kind is stunning
when you consider the odds. At the moment this strategy is reaching a
high point o f success. The new legislation in the South and the
continuation of ‘containment’ in the North have meant that the core
areas of minority resistance are again feeling the strain of their
isolation and embattlement. As this was written the assassination of
Maire Drumm[12] suggests that morale is so high amongst
loyalists that someone from them has decided to cast a crucial testing
challenge at the provisional republican movement. The more British
strategy succeeds the more loyalism waxes and grows confident.
[5] Present British strategy can lead only to the
restitution of some form of the ascendancy — its political mediation
ranging from the maintenance of ‘ghost’ supremacy under the umbrella of
continued direct rule, through some species of semi-independent
power-sharing assembly to the restitution of a vigorous and open Orange
hegemony. The latter is what substantial sections of the protestant
communities have their eyes on. Those who wish to defend British policy
(or refuse to challenge it) must accept that its first consequence has
been and in the immediate future will continue to be the use of violent
repression against the minority population of the 6 Counties. They must
also reckon with the conclusion that the sort of future for the catholic
working class towards which British policy is leading holds but slim
chance of equal citizenship for them even in terms of social benefits
and basic bourgeois democratic rights.
** Women’s Oppression and the Family
Women in capitalist society are in a position distinct from that of male
workers. The structural oppression that they suffer is centred on the
family and home in particular, although in work outside the home women
are usually especially badly paid and cannot win the limited rewards
that capitalism does offer male workers.
Women have been defined as living and acting within the emotional and
psychological field of life while men belong to the workplace. The
humiliation and frustration that men suffer in the workplace is counter
posed to the fulfilment and joy that women experience in the home caring
for husband and family. Without wishing to say that involvement is as
alienating as work in the industrial field, women suffer huge
discrimination and oppression in return for their ‘good fortune’ at
being allowed to stay at home.
First, the labour they perform at home is not considered to be real
work, although it is tiring and requires a sixteen hour day when young
children are involved. They are not paid for this work, nor are they
considered unemployed and therefore cannot usually claim unemployment
benefits. These financial and economic disadvantages render women
downtrodden and unable to take initiatives outside the family, unless
the husband, the breadwinner is sympathetic. This problem grows as the
crisis deepens and women are pushed back into the home and not only have
to struggle to keep the family on less money but also have almost no
financial independence of their own.
Secondly, women suffer enormously on the emotional side of life as well.
Freud divided life into work and play — the latter being defined as the
area outside work where the individual psyche developed. The family is
presented as the area of free activity where each person can, if lucky,
reach fulfilment through tender loving relationships and by together
weathering the storms of lift and economic crisis. Not only is the
family thus completely turned in on itself and incapable of looking to
the community for collective support, but individual women are
completely trapped within their own families and are on their own at
home most of the day. To set up community crèches is almost impossible
at the present time because women are so physically isolated and because
to move out into the community for help is to betray their family and
imply that it has failed.
Thirdly, women are greatly put upon by men. The alienation and
humiliation of industrial life leads men to need to feel superior in the
family situation. They counter-balance their shame at the meanness and
meagreness of the work they perform and their social inferiority by
emphasising their importance to the family and to women. Usually this is
expressed simply in a belief that women tend to accept, that work done
outside the home is solely responsible for the well-being of the family
and that women’s work at home is not significant as work. This leads to
a psychological dependence on feeling more important, influential,
sensible, etc, than women which stifles the woman’s ability to express
herself at home: this leads to physical outrages performed upon women by
men who do not want to face up to them as real people or who need to
assert then superiority physically to shore up their growing feeling of
being dispensable. Wives are beaten up, their arms and noses broken and
sometimes they are murdered and women are raped; in such cases society
implies that ‘it is their own fault.
Finally, all this is surrounded by a massive oppression at the level
of sexual relationships which in some senses is the lynch-pin of all the
rest. In that it is the medium whereby women are brought to absorb the
theory of their own inferiority. In all spheres of society the image of
woman that one meets is that of the inferior half of a sexual
relationship which is the model for all relations between men women and
children and is the process whereby homosexual relations are defined as
unnatural and pushed outside ‘normal’ society. Hence also the particular
oppression of the unmarried woman or ‘spinster’.
*** Women’s Liberation
Having said this we must discover ways for those in a left revolutionary
organisation to approach those layers of society, this half of the
class, which strike directly at the core of women’s oppression and which
could be effective in drawing women into a critique of their own
situation. The women’s movement did this for a large group of women who
had not thought of themselves as particularly oppressed or defined to
themselves the position they were in before. It produced interesting
ideas about orientation and suggested alternative structures for
activity which related more directly to the situation that women found
themselves in. This process of the awakening of a feminist consciousness
demanded a headless, open form of organisation in order for as much
energy as possible to be fed around for the movement. This became more
significant with the connections that feminists made between patriarchy,
authoritarianism and sexism. The connection between these is worthy of
consideration for revolutionaries, but as a revolutionary organisation
we have correctly rejected the over-loose form of organisation and seek
methods of avoiding authoritarianism by well-defined organisational
forms. However, we must ensure that the full impact of feminist ideas is
fused into our approach to politics.
Women’s Liberation particularly emphasised the importance of bringing
personal and psychological life into politics. While criticising an
outlook that seeks a revolutionary response solely by an appeal to
emotional distress and alienation we should not underestimate its
importance. Women can only be drawn into political activity through
campaigns organised around demands they can see might be met, and meet
their own needs: the National Abortion Campaign, demands for refuges,
better medical care, changes in the laws on rape and ways of helping its
victims etc.
However in such campaigns women will raise the personal and emotional
because they have been told that this is the sphere of life particular
to them. The lessons they learn from talking about their situations with
other women will draw them inevitably into a critique of their own
emotional/ family relationships. The attempts they make to change their
lives will cause distress to themselves and to those they are involved
with. The women’s movement has always stressed the importance of
consciousness raising groups to help direct the efforts they make and to
keep the personal emotional problems that arise within a clear
perspective of women’s general oppression.
As revolutionaries we must raise demands that can adequately be used as
the basis for campaigning politics and as organisational foci and which
encourage the development of self-help groups as a method of exposing
the mystification which surrounds education, medicine and child-care and
which can bring women into contact with each other and towards an
understanding of their oppression. The role of revolutionaries in the
women’s movement and campaigns springing from it lies largely in drawing
out the connections between all aspects of the class struggle and in
developing a revolutionary class-consciousness within them.
[1] The demand for abortion and contraception on
demand raised by the women’s movement clearly must be taken up by
revolutionaries. As abortion comes under attack the working class must
be induced to see this as an attack on itself, not simply as an attack
on a few women who deserve what’s coming to them anyway. Let’s not be
moralistic or falsely emotional about childbirth. For women with little
help from the state, the community or the man bearing a child can be a
crushing burden and it is as wrong to force this on a woman, as it is to
force slave labour on a man. A woman’s right to choose will be realised
in the context of not only a decisive change in availability of abortion
but through a process of socialisation of child rearing. We can campaign
for nurseries and crèches while realising the fundamental importance of
the demand for abortion, and vice versa.
[2] We must demand that nurseries and crèches are
provided free for all women to make use of. The absence of any national
campaign around this issue, despite the inroads that the crisis is
making on the limited gains that women have won in regard to child care
from the National Health Service, social services, etc, is a
considerable gap. This is perhaps best filled by encouraging activity by
women around the cuts in general and around how they affect women in
particular Specific political organisation of women into caucuses to
resist the cuts and to expose the particularly severe way they reinforce
women’s oppression, mobilisations which occur with the emergence of
feminist consciousness, can provide avenues for creative political
development.
[3] The problems of straight sex discrimination in
schools, further education and jobs is being most successfully raised by
women’s caucuses in the unions around the basis of the Working Women’s
Charter (WWC). While recognising the inhibiting effects of bureaucratic
formalism in the Trade Union hierarchies’ response to the initiative of
the WWC, the Charter, conceived as a rank and file programme for action
is a good focus for organising women trade union militants and posing as
an alternative to the sexism of the authoritarian male union
bureaucrats. The WWC has successfully brought the principles that
emerged from the Women’s Movement into contact with women actually
working at the point of production and raised these questions within
unions.
[4] Women fighting all aspects of their oppression
through campaigns and support groups around rape, battering, nurseries
etc. should be encouraged. The function of many of these groups lies
mainly in providing direct aid and solidarity and demanding that the
state should provide assistance. At the moment this depends almost
entirely on the time and energy of small numbers of people who are
prepared to put their concern into practice, either because they suffer
themselves or because they understand the need for the community to
rally round those whom society has no room for and who officially aren’t
there at all. This kind of activity, while important in actually
providing something women urgently need, is inclined to function as
little more than a charity unless it is accompanied by real efforts to
mobilise these women into actively campaigning for treatment they
deserve and need and to ensure that a clear political understanding of
their situation emerges. Alone, the setting up of a refuge or demanding
a refuge from the council or state will not raise the revolutionary
class consciousness of women but they have some success in imparting to
women a greater understanding of their situation and add to the swell of
feminist revolt against capitalist patriarchy. The isolation of
particular projects hinders the development of mass political
consciousness around these issues and tends to encourage a degeneration
of these ideas into simple charity. This tendency is being fought
against by attempts to establish campaigning links between particular
projects, though with limited success. Women’s Aid has held national
conferences and attempted to give the movement more organisational
coherence so that a more formalised attack can be made on the social
services. This is the kind of development that we should support and
while supporting efforts to solve or raise problems through self-help
the drawbacks of this as a political method on its own should be
recognised and resisted.
[5] The central issue, around which an adequate
campaigning position must be found, is that of women’s unpaid labour in
the home. As long as women suffer the financial and hence political
disabilities resulting from labour at home the other problems of women’s
oppression cannot begin to be solved. Moreover, without financial
independence, women who have to stay at home to care for children and
keep the house will continue to have to devote what spare time they can
create to what wage labour they can find, and will have little energy
left over for political activity.
trade union militants and posing as an alternative to the sexism of the
authoritarian male union bureaucrats. The WWC has successfully brought
the principles that emerged from the Women’s Movement into contact with
women actually working at the point of production and raised these
questions within unions.
*** Socialising Housework
A clear strategy for provoking struggle around housework must be
developed within a general approach to the current situation. This is
especially true as more and more women are forced out of what employment
has been available to them as unemployment grows.
As the crisis deepens women in particular become poorer, more dependent
on the dole if they are entitled to it at all, or to the pay that the
men bring in. In this situation they are less likely to be drawn towards
a revolutionary analysis but more in need of an alternative to what is
presented by the bourgeois press or fascism.
The Wages for Housework (WFH) campaign fulfils the function of raising a
demand that cuts straight to the heart of this central matter of the
oppression of women. However it is criticised for reinforcing the role
of women in the home rather than questioning it. We do not want to
institute wages for housework through workers power, but to socialise
housework and remove the need for such a demand. Nor is it an adequate
‘transitional’ demand in that it does not point in a direction that we
conceivably want to go except as a romantic/symbolic expression of a
desire for female emancipation in general.
However this perhaps dismisses too easily a demand that has a wide
general impact on women, has some international organisation, and
considerable support. Have we anything else to offer which achieves the
ends that WFH sets out to achieve? A demand for a minimum weekly
allowance, say £20 (plus a substantial allowance for each child?) work
or no work is a possible alternative and has advantages in that it
demands that women should be financially independent without implying
that they should stay at home and because it avoids the problem of the
difference between women’s labour at home and wage labour, while
combining the two in a single campaign. This however does lack a direct
relationship to the problems of unpaid labour at home and so has less
immediate appeal to women in; that situation It seems that a demand for
£20 a week, work or no work is a better starting point than wages for
housework. As this area is so important, and debate so far has not
succeeded in fully clarifying a position a working group should be set
up to examine the arguments clearly and politically and produce a paper
on this for inclusion in the Internal Bulletin in as short a time as
possible.
The A.W.A. must develop a coherent approach to women’s oppression and
understand the particular position that women find themselves in with
regard to the crisis. Women must be mobilised around a programme of
demands that relate their problems clearly to the problems of the class
and which will encourage militant activity against the cuts and against
all attacks on working class women, while developing consciousness
towards a revolutionary solution for the class. Some of the demands
which should be included in such a programme have been suggested above;
other must be formulated more clearly and time given to the debate
around these issues on which A.W.A. has not yet succeeded in making
clear positions and action.
** Public Spending, the Cuts and the Fight Back
We need to understand the recent history of public spending and attempt
to present a libertarian historical materialist analysis of
developments, not only to be able to work out a strategy and attempt to
predict its effects, but to be able to understand how the rest of the
working class views the crisis, and therefore to be able to communicate
on common ground.
This document is a first attempt to demonstrate such an approach;
hopefully we can develop a clearer understanding particularly of the
role of the working class. There are many omissions and generalisations,
both in economic background and in the different characteristics of the
various fields of welfare and administration. This calls for more
detailed documentation, a more detailed strategy, and more facts and
figures, especially if we are to appear convincing to workers. A
comparison with the situation in other countries would also be useful.
*** [A] The Recent Development of the Welfare State
Prior to the end of the Second World War, welfare provisions tended to
be primarily for ‘the relief of the poor’, subject to means tests and
based on the assumption that everyone should be able to pay their way.
Those too idle (or unfortunate) to provide for themselves were aided out
of a desire to avoid disease and discontent spreading from the slums (or
out of conscience and kindness). With the partial exceptions of
education and council housing even most workers felt some stigma
attached to accepting aid. When the war effort was turned to peace time
production, state intervention in the economy had become more acceptable
and sections of both classes put the case for increased state
intervention over previous peacetime levels.
[1] Keynesians (enlightened Tories and right social
democrats) wanted to stabilise the economy by directing production and
consumption (though they tended to prefer incentives and taxes to direct
government control) and to increase the capability, mobility and
placidity of the workforce. Some industries could only be run
‘efficiently’ on a national scale and their nationalisation might be
desirable to avoid monopoly profiteering at the expense of other
sections of capital.
[2] Socialists wanted to provide certain essentials
to everyone regardless of income to even out differences (in time) and
to bring industry under public ownership as an improvement leading
beyond private competitive organisation. The balance of these forces
(against those of committed laissez-faire right-wingers) led to
increased public spending and government attempts to manipulate the
economy:
a. Waste production:- armaments, subsidies for stockpiling goods,
destroying or dumping them, white elephant production. The state
apparatus — the courts, the police, the army, etc.
b. Nationalisation of ‘key’ industries. Basically this was to regulate
and be regulated by the capitalist sectors of production, but the
original Acts contained some references to taking social costs into
account. For example, British Rail was to subsidise rural routes;
however this was more in order to get workers to work and shoppers to
the shops than to cater to all real social needs.
Provisions for job security and working conditions were made, and for
limited consultation with TU representatives; however the government
recoiled in horror from any suggestion of control by workers in any
specific industry over that industry (as opposed to control by all
workers through their ‘democratically elected government’). Threats of
non-cooperation from the (largely unchanged) managements ensured that
few drastic changes were made, and it must also be noted that the
nationalised industries continued to buy and sell on the ‘free’ market,
and to subcontract.
c. Health, Education, personal social services, the Factory
Inspectorate, and other welfare industries, promised to be free at point
of use, provided according to need. Housing — not so freely available,
but intended to be within the reach of all the ‘deserving’.
d. Repayment of the national debt, interest repayments, subsidies to
private industries, and other payments directly to capital. Apart from
the industries producing goods for sale, all this required taxation and
borrowing. Thus it depended on the willingness and the ability of the
worker to pay taxes and more important on the willingness of industry
and finance to part with or not compete for the fruits of some of the
surplus value they were extracting.
Socialists saw taxation as a way of evening out wage inequalities (but
this assumes initial inequalities continue to exist) and of allowing the
state to carry out tasks that it could perform more efficiently and
fairly than individuals and small concerns could. It is tolerated so
long as they are convinced of this or remain socialists.
Capital, on whose continued existence (whether private or state owned)
the non-profitable welfare spending depends, tolerates taxation if it is
convinced by Keynesian arguments about greasing the wheels of the
economy, of increased wages generating extra consumption and so more
scope for production — *and if it is facing threats of worse working
class militancy if it doesn’t grant concessions.*
Although it can be shown that the increased public spending temporarily
benefited capital the benefits to the working class were not purely
incidental, and, important to get across, were not granted out of
kindness or common interests either. Divisions of interests, whether
real or subjective, within classes, as well as class differences, led to
criticisms and attacks on the welfare spending.
The Interest of the Bourgeoisie:
1. Large companies would prefer to regulate capitalism where necessary
to them by collaboration rather than via the mediation of the state when
the state is more vulnerable to the demands of other sections or to
workers and/or less effective. They value the state as a safety net
(especially the less prosperous) and as a protector of imperialist and
general foreign interests.
2. Whilst the working class must be kept alive physically and
psychologically, they must not become allowed to be too choosy about
their conditions of exploitation or too confident in their power.
3. Keynesianism, though staving off immediate economic crises, hinders
the long term accumulation of capital, and some capitalist realise this
without realising also the failings of laissez faire, corporate state
fascism or etc.
Attacks include:
a. Announcements of increased welfare spending or lack of cuts are met
by ‘runs on the Pound’.
b. If the declining rate of profit is worsened by taxation and market
manipulation and there appears to be an increased share of income going
to the working class there may be an investment strike, hoping to
provoke the government into subsidies and lowering borrowing rates and
increasing the ease of making profits.
c. Claiming that if allowed to have free rein they would produce a boom,
they demand release of resources for private industry — i.e.
unemployment and less consumption to cheapen labour and material costs.
d. The petty bourgeoisie uses the existence of private facilities in
health, education and building as shining examples and calls for
‘freedom of choice’.
e. Within welfare and social services, as a hierarchical structure of
management based on economic differentials has been maintained, the
managers and senior civil servants align themselves with the ruling
class and use their skills to safeguard their positions. As exploitation
and alienation are retained workers also have neither the inclination
nor the opportunity to be particularly efficient either. Lack of
community consultation also weakens the effectiveness of even the best
intentioned.
The interests of the Working Class:
a. Although mostly in favour of equal opportunity etc in principle, they
resent the unevenness of its application both in geographical and
sectional divisions and in priorities of allocating e.g. council houses.
b. They think too much goes on scroungers and immigrants.
c. Relying on the labour and Trade Union leaderships to understand and
cater to their needs, they think that the existing provisions at any
given level of resource allocation re the best possible, and that the
bureaucratic inefficiency and orientation towards servicing and
pacifying the labour force is inevitable.
d. Public sector workers have comparatively good job security and
conditions won as part of the socialist planning pressure that went into
setting up the welfare industries, which makes them keen to defend their
jobs but causes resentment from other workers ‘my tax going on idle
civil servants’ etc.
These forces, and the tendency towards complacency on the part of the
working class, regarding welfare as a fundamental and un-removable part
of the system, sabotage the socialist and liberal forces supporting
welfare, at a local and national, political and economic level. No
public service has expanded at the promised rate, and many have been
declining for some time as the original gains are eroded. Budgets are
worked out on the basis of past expenditure, maintenance, expansion and
predicted inflation and wage claims. These are usually ludicrously
underestimated and then can be cut. The government lays down the
guidelines for local and sectional administration; there is some TU and
professional body consultation, but no means of control.
*** [B] Working Class Reactions to the Cuts
This is presented as a dialogue between the generally ‘trade union
conscious’, labour voting &/or community minded, but politically
conventional or apathetic sections of the working class, and the
libertarian communist approach to developing class consciousness.
Self-managed struggles against the cuts can be encouraged and proposed
as a bridge to attacking capitalism as a whole and realising the
possibilities of self-management of welfare and all industries. Some
issues not specific to fighting the cuts have not been taken up but are
or should be dealt with elsewhere in this document or existing A.W.A.
discussion and practice — anti-racialism and -nationalism, the
particular intensity of women’s oppression, unemployment, the role of
the Trade Union and labour leaderships, and a more detailed explanation
of the instability of capitalism.
The bankers’ reactions to increased or insufficiently cut public
spending shows they know it isn’t really good for the country It may not
be good for their part of the country but that doesn’t mean it isn’t
good for working people, just because it hits the coffers of bankers and
businessmen. The economy — the total level of material production -is
measured by them as profits, as overseas balance of payments. It has
slumps or booms but not because the workers are too greedy or unwilling
to work, nor by acts of God, but because sometimes they can get richer
in a boom but sometimes they can’t go on making increasing profits; they
prefer to let resources stand idle than to let them be used.
They control the system; they are in a mess; let them pay for it — they
can best afford to. Besides, they aren’t just trying to force gifts from
the government through legislation. A run on the £ forces the state to
borrow and so to run up a bigger interest debt to be paid from public
money to the bankers.
**** *But this country is in debt; we can’t afford it.*
Who can’t afford it? We are talking about the total government income
from tax, borrowing, investment, etc, and the proportion of it that is
spent on welfare. The ways and means of raising taxes are notoriously
easy to avoid — if you are rich enough to begin with.
The one thing the government seems to think is untouchable is interest
repayments. The token protest to the bankers only come when the details
of the cuts to be made are specified and the government’s area of
decision making is infringed. While public spending is down £4 billion,
interest payments are up £3 billion, and the ‘advice’ of the financiers
is usually followed — the raising of the Minimum Lending Rate, cuts in
welfare, rather than increased taxes or decreased concessions to the
rich. Defence, subsidies to and purchases from private industry (paying
prices that includes their profits) and all the top salaries and
extravagant prestige functions get their share. The knowledge, the skill
and the workforce to provide much better public services exists, so why
not make use of them? With two million (including married women not
registered but able to go out to work if conditions suited them)
unemployed, and even existing facilities, both welfare and industrial
standing idle, there’s no excuse for saying resources have to be taken
away from welfare to free them for industry.
The government and the bosses just don’t seem to be able to put them to
use. The welfare of the working community should be the priority and a
system of spending which will meet their needs sought. When businessmen
make the government say ‘we can’t afford it’ what they mean is that they
want anything that is going, to help them increase their profitability.
They are saying that unless their real wealth increases each year (while
workers’ incomes are always lower, and at present going down) they will
just sit on the wealth and resources that they control.
Productivity per worker is higher now, yet total production lower than
it was during the three day week[13]. Why should they be able
to demand incomes increasingly higher and higher than those of the
workers? That’s what’s happening as inflation and prices rise faster
than wages and welfare spending. The government should cut off interest
repayments for a start and make welfare spending the first on the list,
not the crumbs that remain when everything else is done.
If firms threaten to go out of business in protest, let them, and let
there be public ownership, and/or a subsidy to the workers to take over,
with a say in what they produce and why as well as how, on fill wages,
with no redundancies. Why can’t our economic system produce goods
directly in response to the needs of the producers, on wages to allow
them to live as well as is possible for everyone? If this is impossible,
then what use is the system and how can we change it? The existing
welfare industries show work and production can be organised (though of
course they could be improved) without marketing a product for a return
on capital as the direct motive.
**** *But we need to make profits and improve our balance of payments in order to buy the imports everyone needs.*
What businessmen mean by this is that they want to trade internationally
because they can (or think they can) make more money that way, not out
of concern over the cost of imports to the ordinary person. (There ought
to be an analysis of international capitalism and how to attack it here,
without expecting workers to show international solidarity at their own
expense. But the A.W.A. hasn’t discussed this much, except to affirm the
need for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and to oppose
the idea that a satisfactory solution in a single country can be found.
Suggestions for how to meet the working class’s present perceived needs,
or at least to begin to, in attacking the international market while it
still exists, are needed.)
**** *But welfare services are impersonal, bureaucratic, and inefficient.*
Even so if they weren’t there most of us wouldn’t be able to afford
anything at all. There are three main reasons why they are bad at
present: firstly, lack of resources allocated to make improvements like
smaller classes, less patients per nurse, more houses built to higher
standards, public transport efficient enough to make a car unnecessary,
cheap enough for everyone. All these could be provided if available
labour and know-how was combined, but instead things are getting worse
because of the cuts.
Secondly, the services are run without any proper community consultation
— at best we are presented with a set of alternatives, none of them
adequate, with no practical encouragement to work out our own plans, no
guarantee that anything we decide will be implemented (if we stick to
the proper channels, that is). Workers have no chance to have any say in
their working conditions in order to improve ways of doing things
without the danger of finding that they’ve doubled their workload or
done themselves out of the job.
Managers want to make it look like they are the only ones who are able
to understand or plan anything, because only then can they continue to
command privileged positions. But as they are usually a cut above the
rest of us they are the least likely to understand workers’ needs even
if they wanted to. There are plenty of examples of groups of workers,
tenants, mothers, etc being able to organise cooperatively to get things
done. The offices are not mostly overstaffed, though; its not a matter
of needing to cut them out to save other things, but of using the
apparatus of the bureaucracy to provide the information that workers and
the community need to decide1 what to do, not using it to account for
every scrap in triplicate. We don’t need to rely on top salary earners
at all.
Thirdly, services aren’t being provided to do the best for every
individual, as part of her/his needs in eating, sleeping, working,
relaxing, etc, but, as they are reduced, only those which keep the
workers working (education for engineers, getting people with industrial
diseases just fit enough to work) are given any importance; the old, the
very young, the chronically disabled, and the non-crippling discomfort
like tonsilitis just nave to wait.
*** [C] A Strategy for Action
Following on from these and other arguments and from examples of workers
taking direct action, we must encourage people to realise that while
forced to make demands on the state and the bosses because they at
present control the means of production, the only way to secure use of
them to meet the needs of the working class is by specific demands
backed up by proof of mass support and involvement. We must attack their
use of resources wastefully, for their own ends only. Withdrawing labour
and causing disruption is not only an essential part of getting them to
return to us the benefit of what they have expropriated but a way of
developing self-organisation that can be carried over into situations
where workers are able to run things themselves.
In order to be able to point out the exorbitant costs even within
welfare spending on top salaries, interest repayments, and profits to
outside firms, we need access to the accounts and plans of hospitals,
schools, bus companies, local authority housing departments, etc. This
gives warning of proposed future cuts too, and allows workers to work
out what is available, what is lacking and what plans should be made,
what resources demanded. OPEN THE BOOKS!
Some things, such as crèche facilities or women’s health centres or
lower fares can be organised directly without first explicitly raising
demands for the expropriation of state controlled recourses. But such
things should not be possible solely if people are giving time and money
to patch up holes in the welfare state. Facilities directly run by the
users, any moves towards self-organisation, should be supported, but
every possible way of getting money and equipment back from the state
and capital should be tried (e.g. crèche workers could apply for a job
creation scheme or refuse to pay rates, as well as getting the support
of workers and the community
for direct action against councils and employers). We should explain why
capitalism cannot provide the facilities in question and how this
failure is linked to other attacks on the working class and so how it is
important to take a general economic offensive against capitalism in the
process of meeting immediate needs.
In some cases volunteer labour however well-meaning is scab labour like
the use of women (usually) who are used to working unpaid to supervise
in schools; we should try to get the people involved to develop more
effective ways of getting the jobs done, by forcing the school or
whatever to employ enough trained staff at a proper wage. The
involvement of the community in the public services should be encouraged
as a way to make sure that they are adequate and well run, by increasing
the strength of those working in them, helping them organise their work
and the pressure on employers, and the authorities, and if they want to
work in a public service and are needed demanding proper training and
proper employment on full pay. The pressures at present on public
employees to take real wage cuts and more work must be fought, not only
on economist grounds but because also the quality of the service they
provide and their own physical and mental health will suffer. Until we
can force the building of enough schools, hospitals, etc, to employ all
those at present unemployed and seeking or needed for jobs as teachers,
nurses, etc, we call for FULL AVERAGE EARNINGS FOR ALL AVAILABLE WORKERS
ON REDUCED HOURS
A great increase in public spending is needed and in demanding this we
must also call for the setting up of workers and community committees
(based on recallable etc union etc delegates) to decide how it is to be
spent and also to asses the rate of increase of the cost of living; for
a start, REVERSE ALL CUTS! This must include cuts in spending power due
to inflation and we must explain that the causes of crises and inflation
lie outside the working class; to safeguard public spending it must be
based on a minimum of a SLIDING SCALE OF PUBLIC EXPENDITURE and we
should prepare for the end of the present wages policy by calling for
increased basic rates, then also linked to a minimum of a sliding scale.
There are many mote specific issues to educate and mobilise around and,
as a parallel process to getting discussion and planning going lies the
unification of people around common interest groups — unionisation,
forming women’s, passengers, tenants, parents, students groups, and
encouraging those that already exist to link up across boundaries and
with existing campaigning bodies. These are forums for discussion as
well as mobilising bases for action and we must point to the existing
policies that have been successful and to the failures and frustrations
and point out how the latter can be lessened by taking power back from
bureaucratic leaderships which act in concert with employers and the
state. Initial fears of reprisals and victimisations can be overcome by
building solidarity and showing divisive demands (e.g. cut education not
health) shown to be self-defeating.
The initial protests and actions against the cuts are coming from both
outside and inside the unions; we must recognise which groups are
capable of mounting the major attacks on capitalism, and which, though
vital, ultimately rely on the actions of others to succeed. To
generalise broadly, groups with economic power, either customers paying
or not paying the money (e.g. fare fight passengers[14]) or
the producers of wealth are those who can really force concessions;
those most immediately affected and with an easily used organisational
link are the first to take action. We need to examine these
considerations, along with the existing situations and experiences of
A.W.A. members, in order to see what would be most useful to put energy
into. Campaigns like Fare Fight and tenants rent strikes fulfil both
requirements, and once established can try and take the struggle to
transport and housing and local government workers. In health and
education the main initiatives are coming from the workers in most
places; through their unions they need to try to involve the community
as consumers and draw them into action as industrial workers with
economic muscle. This will happen when the cuts are more generally
understood as part of the same process which involves redundancy and
unemployment, alienation and danger to health and safety at work, and so
on, and the inadequacy and wastefulness both in the present welfare
industries and in production for profit.
*** [D] Tactics for the A.W.A.
**** a. Campaigns and unions and other groups activities.
Situations vary widely from active unions to none at all, from militant
tenants groups to largely social residents associations. But in any such
situation we can and usually do work to increase involvement and
challenge the stranglehold of reactionary leaderships. What is often
lacking is the support by the apparatus of A.W.A. for communications and
mobilisation and for channelling its resources to greatest effect for
the individuals or even groups involved. We must look at areas where we
already have some strength, asses our impact so far and see if anyone
else is able to enter these profitably. Comrades in the same field, with
the help of the rest of the organisation, can discuss what lines of
action, motions etc to introduce or support or introduce and so by
coordination increase effectiveness, and enable others to distinguish in
some cases A.W.A. practice and (hopefully) learn from or constructively
criticise it. In discussing the state of action in a union we can
discuss why a particular set of views prevail and why there isn’t more
involvement, and how to lead on If possible from existing proposals or
break with them if not, on the criteria of what will go towards meeting
both immediate perceived needs and revolutionary perspectives. These
include combating fragmentation and provoking attacks from a class base
and increasing confidence in self-organisational abilities. This is not
a call for every action of every member to be determined by the A.W.A.
as a whole; self-organisation applies here as well, and e.g. teachers
are usually the best judges of what is going on in National Union of
Teachers, but they should be able to draw on collective experience and
on the successes and failures of other revolutionaries’ experiences also
through discussion of the work of other anarchists and the International
Socialists[15], International Marxist Group[16],
etc.
We must be prepared to tactically adopt positions we are critical of and
enter united fronts if, as at present is often the case, ‘pure’
positions meet with a limited response while limited issues at least
give the rank and file involved experience and keep them together, gives
them confidence and weakens management if demands are won; gives us a
platform within the union and an opportunity to influence the lead given
by a united left. We can go on to prove in practice the effectiveness of
any particular A.W.A. suggestions which are adopted, or the inefficiency
of those we criticise (or vice versa and learn from our mistakes). We
must also of course oppose any moves we think are in balance reactionary
and worse than nothing, and if we have a chance of winning support for a
controversial position fight for that. We are after all trying to take
the class struggle forward, not lust prove we can maintain a coherent
libertarian communist organisation; the two are dialectically related.
**** b. Campaigns, pressure groups and so on, such as rank and file groups,
anti-cuts committees and groups, squatting groups, etc
Our attitude should be on a similar basis; if possible, and in area
which we think important we should become involved in any initiative
with any potential and if at first it sticks in our throats we should
ask ourselves what alternatives are open — to back out of that kind of
work? not, is there any alternative? If not, we should then identify
what is wrong and try to change it. The main faults tend to be:
1. Another group is trying to use it to further their aims not those of
the class. This can be fought by insisting that if it is a delegate body
all delegates are fully accountable, any non-delegates have a good
reason (e.g. a minority of militants in a rightwing union branch) and
are acceptable to all the delegates as fully active supporters working
to achieve enough interest from their parent body for delegation — i.e.
are not just political commissars. We can stress the need to attack the
state and capitalism (or a particular section thereof) on the basis of
fundamental inability to meet through its structure the demands placed
on it to a permanent and full extent, and consequently the need for
workers to develop their own organisations in struggle, not just replace
the personnel at the top of existing structure.
2. Domination by the bureaucracy of the TU movement. This is harder to
fight but the number of people and resources they can mobilise if
attacked in the right way is great. We should try and use their drawing
power, recognising that they were (mostly) elected because people
thought that they represented their interests, and supporting their
limited demands on the above criteria, and try and expose their
betrayals when we have something better to offer than total
disillusionment.
3. Poorly and undemocratically organised campaigns — see ‘Tyranny of
Structurelessness’[17]! The local group and the organisation
as a whole should be prepared to offer practical help in producing
leaflets and shit workers[18] where needed and should
constantly try and asses the effect of particular interventions) in
order to judge what to concentrate on or scrap in future. On the basis
of past performance and our size and capabilities, at present A.W.A. is
best aimed at the periphery of the revolutionary movement and at
convinced class-strugglers; single topic leaflets, broadsheets and maybe
future pamphlets at a wider audience.
[1] Available on
http://www.zabalaza.net/texts/txt_platform.htm
[2] In 1962, Lloyd was Chancellor of the Exchequer
(Finance Minister of Finance) in the Macmillan Conservative
Government (1958–63).
[3] Callaghan was Chancellor of the Exchequer in
Harold Wilson’s Labour Party Government (1964–1970).
[4] Britain had been a member of the European Free
Trade Area (EFTA) that grouped together Scandinavia, Iberia,
Switzerland and the British Isles, as an alternative to the ‘Common
Market’: the European Economic Community that grouped together the
low countries, France, Germany and Italy. Britain joined the EEC in
1973. After the Second World War restrictions on imports — import
controls — were only gradually broken down, and within and without
these trade areas. In the early 1970’s “Free” trade was prospect for
the future.
[5] Faced with a trade deficit, the Labour
government tried to implement wage freezes to preserve the
productivity of British capital and to defend the Pound against
devaluation.
[6] A limit of wage rises to £6 (at a time when
the average wage was around £60 ) was followed in August 1976 by a
4.5% limit on wage rises- at the time inflation was running at over
15%.
[7] In February 1974 the Labour manifesto said:
“It is our intention to bring about a fundamental and irreversible
shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people
and their families.” Unemployment was around half a million in 1974,
and rose to 1.6 million in 1976.
[8] IMRO- the imprimerie (Print shop) of Rouen was
occupied by workers — see reports in *Anarchist Worker* c. 1976.
[9] I.e. the millions paid to the family of the
British head of state.
[10] FRETILIN — The National Liberation Front of
East Timor
[11] i.e. the six northern Irish counties that
form part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern
Ireland.
[12] On 28 October 1976: it has been suggested
that this killing was one of several in which state security forces
worked in collusion with loyalists: “ A key allegation as to why
the authorities concealed the politically sensitive circumstances
surrounding the Ludlow murder is that they were protecting an agent
for the British military intelligence. Two of Seamus Ludlow’s
alleged killers were officers in the British Army’s Ulster Defence
Regiment who were also members of the paramilitary Red Hand
Commandos. The gunman was also in the red Hand Commandos and has
long been suspected of being an agent or informer for the British
military. From Bangor, Co Down, he was allegedly involved in
multiple killings, among them the 1976 murder of Sinn Fein
vice-president Maire Drumm and the murder of a Comber man six weeks
after Ludlow’s death. A fourth man, Paul Hosking, travelled with
the killers the night they crossed the border and he witnessed the
opportunistic murder of Seamus Ludlow. In 1987 Hosking gave the RUC
Special Branch a full account of the murder. Forget it, they
advised him, it was political.” From Macgill
http://freespace.virgin.net/m.donegan/magill0499.htm
[13] Following a miners’ strike (which reduced
coal output) and a hike in oil prices the Conservative government
imposed a three day week to protect energy supply in January 1974.
[14] Campaigns against the increase of bus and
other transport fares. In the 70’s in Sheffield the ‘Socialist
Republic of South Yorkshire’ used to provide bus services for 2 or
3 pence, compared with current fares ten or twenty times these
prices.
[15] International Socialists- now the Socialist
Workers’ Party (GB).
[16] Supporters of this tendency — The Forth
International publishing the journal International Viewpoint- can
now be found in the International Socialist Group.
[17] This is the title of a pamphlet originally
written by Jo Freeman drawing on campaigning experiences in the
Women’s Movement in the USA, and re-published by the A.W.A. in the
UK.
[18] Persons to do back office and support work
for campaigns, leafleting, etc.