The Socialist Issue 150March 24th 2000 |
Fight every Job Loss |
Rover shop stewards have committed themselves to fighting all the way the break-up of the company: “the works committee is in favour of the government taking over Longbridge and Rover and putting proper investment in to build new models.” |
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The Government starves public services and blames refugees. Wherever you look in the media, from TV news to the smallest local paper, there are negative stories about asylum seekers. |
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“FROM EACH according to ability, to each according to need” - this is how Karl Marx characterised the way a socialist economy will work. But far from being preposterous or utopian, as the supporters of capitalism argue, such a vision of socialism is a practical and realisable alternative to the horrors of the market system. |
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TONY BLAIR supposedly shook with anger when told of BMW’s plans to shut Rover. Maybe it was fear at the workers’ anger that will be directed at this government. |
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KEN LIVINGSTONE’S present-day popularity comes partly from the perception of his battles against Thatcher’s Tories as Greater London Council (GLC) leader from 1981 to 1986. |
AFTER
THE BMW bosses sold Rover to vulture capitalists Alchemy, thousands of jobs in
Rover’s West Midlands plants were threatened. Cowley works in Oxford also cut
production by over 50%.
Cost-cutting
bosses threaten similar devastation to other workplaces, such as Harland and Wolff in
Belfast. The capitalist class threaten what little remains of British manufacturing
industry.
What’s
going to happen to Rover workers? A Longbridge night-shift worker told The Socialist that
ever since the first threats last year, he’d been looking for another job. But his
local JobCentre only offers jobs on the national minimum wage (£3.60 an hour).
The
Rover worker currently gets £8 an hour and he’s got three young kids. How could he
afford to live if he got made redundant?
The
hype around the budget, that it was a give-away budget, was a con. Brown’s
‘prudence’ has come from depriving public spending of £40 billion in the past
four years. Public-sector workers have suffered for that.
Meanwhile
Brown’s budget threatened unemployed people. It extended the New Deal scheme to the
long-term adult unemployed and many lone parents.
How
long will it be before workers like those at Rover, on being made redundant, have to go
straight onto this pay-cutting scheme? Unemployed people who refuse any job offered to
them could face getting their benefits removed.
Workers
at Rover are fighting back with protests. They can see that capitalism has no answers. The
unions must mobilise their members to fight every threat to jobs.
The
whole workforce, backed by their local communities, must unite to force the Labour
government to nationalise Rover and any other company which threatens mass lay-offs.
JOIN
THE fight to save Rover! Join the demo organised by Rover shop stewards. Saturday 1 April.
Assemble 10amat Jennens Road, off Masshouse Circus. March to Cannon Hill Park for 1pm
Rally, (opposite Edgbaston cricket ground), Birmingham.
WHEREVER
YOU look in the media, from TV news to the smallest local paper, there are negative
stories about asylum seekers.
By
Naomi Byron
The
hatred poured out against asylum seekers today starkly contrasts with media coverage of
the Kosovar Albanian refugees only a year ago. Then even the Daily Mail publicly demanded
that the government allow tens of thousands of refugees into Britain.
Why
the change? Has the worldwide refugee crisis suddenly been solved and so the only people
applying for asylum are frauds? Has there been a halt in “ethnic cleansing”,
war, environmental disasters and repression?
Working-class
people are increasingly angry and frustrated at New Labour’s continued betrayal of
their interests. The government could use their £10 billion budget surplus to raise
living standards for the poorest.
Instead,
aided by the media, they spread lies that asylum seekers are taking money that they would
have otherwise spent on public services.
Cuts
in social spending by New Labour are down to their pro-big business agenda - this is what
lies behind council tax increases.
The
housing crisis has been caused by government spending cuts of £3 billion a year since the
1970s not by the relatively small numbers of asylum seekers to this country.
The
bill for asylum seekers 18 months ago was only £0.5 billion. This would make little
difference to public spending elsewhere compared to the £10 billion handed over to big
business in corporation tax cuts.
New
Labour’s immigration policies encourage people to feel they can get away with openly
racist views.
Barry
Hearn, chairman of Leyton Orient football club, said on a Radio 5 Live phone-in that it
was “disgraceful that we let all these people into the country. It’s about time
we started looking after ourselves. I wouldn’t have one of them in.”
Hearn
only made one exception - boxers like ‘Prince’ Naseem Hamed, who he promotes,
would be welcome “because they make me money”.
If
there are fraudulent asylum claims it is because it has been made virtually impossible for
genuine refugees to gain asylum. Only 7% of asylum applications processed in February this
year were accepted. A new detention centre specifically for refugees has been opened up
near Cambridge.
Thousands
more traumatised and desperate refugees will be imprisoned in conditions not much
different from those of convicted criminals but without being given any reason for their
detention, any date for release or right of appeal.
We
are all angry at the failure of the government to represent our interests. But we need to
argue against their attempts to exploit tensions between asylum seekers and the existing
population.
We
need unity to fight for proper public services available to everyone and against divisive
and racist immigration laws.
“FROM
EACH according to ability, to each according to need” - this is how Karl Marx
characterised the way a socialist economy will work. But far from being preposterous or
utopian, as the supporters of capitalism argue, such a vision of socialism is a practical
and realisable alternative to the horrors of the market system. PETE DICKENSON explains. |
THE
COLLAPSE of the planned economies in Eastern Europe ten years ago resulted in a tidal wave
of pro-capitalist market propaganda against so-called socialist economies. Politicians and
economists alike argued that planning was dead and that the ‘free market’ of
capitalism was triumphant.
All
of these individuals had a vested interest in upholding the capitalist system which
accumulates private property and profits for an elite in society while the mass of the
population struggle to survive.
Capitalism
is a system that works on privilege and coercion. but its defenders argue that it is the
only economic system that works.
This
has caused many workers also to be sceptical about whether socialism could work. The
Stalinist soviet economies were a caricature of socialism, which initially achieved
economic growth but lacked the workers participation and democracy that would have allowed a genuine socialist democracy to
thrive. Instead the bureaucratic elites that controlled those societies drove the economies to collapse.
Now
sections of workers, increasingly disenchanted with capitalism, are looking for an
alternative socialist way of organising the economy. So what are the general principles on
which a genuine, democratic socialist economy will be built?
Where
will the resources for a socialist planned economy come from?
THIS
IS a question that is commonly asked and the answer can be divided into several
categories:
a)
By the elimination of unemployment. We now have again what Marx called ‘a permanent
army of unemployed’ in the advanced capitalist countries. In Britain in the present
‘boom’ the jobless rate is still nearly two million, whose cost in terms of lost
production and benefit payments has been estimated at £5,000 a family per year.
Even
at the height of an upturn industry never works at full capacity. A planned economy will
be able to guarantee work for everyone, with retraining provided to make sure the new jobs
are meeting the needs of people, democratically determined.
b)
Luxury expenditure for the rich will be ended. The capitalist experts are always keen to
point out that ending the wealth of the rich will not solve the problems of society,
because however obscenely well off they are, there are not enough of them to make a big
difference. Nevertheless, the rich do consume 5% of national income which amounts to £40
billion a year in Britain, a significant sum that would begin the process of transforming
the NHS.
c)
Ending arms spending. On a world scale the waste of resources on arms is vast, reaching
nearly $1 trillion each year at the end of the cold war - approximately $1,000 a year for
every family on the planet. This money would be a big first step in lifting the majority
of the world’s population out of grinding poverty.
Although
redeploying millions of highly skilled arms workers will be a formidable task, under
capitalism such a transformation will never take place. This is because the reason for
arms expenditure will not disappear, ie the hostility between rival capitalist countries,
and because the market system could not plan the transfer of resources needed due to its
anarchic nature.
d)
Eliminating the waste of capitalism. The world is dominated by a handful of multinational
corporations who duplicate expenditure in research and development, spend unnecessary vast
sums on advertising and design products with planned obsolescence. For example, rival drug
companies spend billions on developing varieties of pain killers with marginally different
effectiveness.
e)
Freeing the creative power of the working class. Workers in the market system have no
incentive in putting in their energies to help out the bosses. But in a socialist society
it will be possible to release the creative instincts of employees because no fundamental
conflict of interests will exist.
It
is often said by management theorists that the real experts in any firm when a problem
needs to be solved are the workers themselves.
Although
a factor which is difficult to quantify, in the long run this will be a very significant
advantage of socialism.
WHAT
DOES planning actually consist of? It is allocating resources of labour and materials for
the production of goods and services for the benefit of society as a whole, rather than to
make profits for the capitalists. It will operate at three levels, nationally (and
internationally), at industry or sectoral level and at the individual enterprise.
a)
The overall performance of the economy will be decided at the national (and international)
level. There will be targets for productivity growth, investment, consumption etc, which
will be determined democratically by institutions created after the overthrow of
capitalism. Here the decisions about the priorities that society wants to have, for
example between health expenditure or housing, will be made.
b)
Industry or sectoral level. It will be necessary to determine consumer demand for the
goods or services of that particular industry and to organise the efficient exchange of
materials and semi-finished products with other sectors eg from suppliers.
The
determination of demand will be done by obtaining information from powerful,
democratically representative consumer bodies and by using the very sophisticated tools
for market research developed under capitalism. To organise the movement of goods between
industries, avoiding bottlenecks, it will be possible to use the techniques, such as
operational research, developed by the big capitalist monopolies to plan the complex
movement of goods between their operations around the world.
c)
Planning at the enterprise level. The methods mentioned in above will also be used here to
determine consumer needs and preferences. It is also likely that as far as enterprises
making consumer products are concerned (as opposed to capital goods - machinery etc used
in the production process - manufacturers) a type of market system will be retained in the
early stages of the transition from capitalism.
This
could operate through small businesses or worker co-ops, but only within the framework of
a nationalised economy. If the market sector was too large it would threaten to impose its
inherent inequalities onto society.
SINCE
MARX’S day, and particularly since the Russian Revolution, academics have written
libraries full of books about why socialism won’t work.
One
of the main criticisms is that planning the efficient allocation of resources is
impossible because of the vast complexity of modern industrial society, where millions of
economic transactions take place every day. However, most of these economic interactions
are between enterprises, they do not involve consumers, and it is quite clear that
present-day multinational firms conduct planning of a similar complexity all the time.
The
activity of the multinationals answers a further criticism that the operation of supply
and demand to determine price is the only efficient way to proceed in the exchange of
goods. In their international operations companies like General Motors simply allocate
resources between countries and factories without reference to the market.
As
far as planning for consumer needs are concerned the key point is that active democratic
institutions should exist that can compel the planning bodies to respond to their demands.
In addition to this, techniques such as market research and using the internet will ease
the tasks faced by future socialist planners.
It
is important, though, not to exaggerate the role that will be played by the internet or
look for a ‘technical fix’; the existence of democratic institutions will be
paramount.
The
role of democratically elected and powerful consumer bodies will also make sure that
shoddy goods are not produced and that quality is maintained. Here as well the advances in
modern production management techniques can be applied, since the future socialist society
will inherit, unlike the Soviet Union, a quality culture associated with the highest
levels of technique developed by capitalism.
The
quote from Marx at the beginning of this article implies that there will be a
super-abundance of goods and services under socialism which will not require rationing by
price (and therefore the existence of money) as under capitalism. This is completely
feasible once the constraints imposed by the market system are removed and the creative
energies of the working class unleashed.
The
concept of super-abundance, however, raises one of the most serious criticisms of the
socialist project, namely environmental destruction caused by consuming energy and
resources at the rate of the advanced capitalist countries.
Socialism
will not work unless the standard of living of the world’s poor majority is raised to
that of the industrialised countries causing energy consumption to rise very sharply. This
will not result in environmental disaster however.
In
the first place, there is an enormous waste of energy in the industrialised countries,
particularly in the USA. Without affecting living standards, energy consumption could be
reduced by up to 50% if appropriate investment is made.
Secondly,
using fossil fuel is the key problem. Expansion will have to be based on other sources of
energy. The technology for this exists now in the form of wave, wind and solar energy, but
it will need huge investments to implement the change.
Under
a socialist planned economy, a large impetus will be given to the development of science
and technology leading to new non-polluting energy sources being developed.
Although
the introduction of a democratically planned socialist economy will not be without
difficulties, it is important not to exaggerate them since the doubts arise largely
because the barrage of hostile propaganda from the capitalist class. The arguments for a
new way of organising society will find a growing and receptive audience in the coming
years.
TONY
BLAIR supposedly shook with anger when told of BMW’s plans to shut Rover. Maybe it
was fear at the workers’ anger that will be directed at this government.
Longbridge
workers accepted 1,500 redundancies in June 1999 to “make their jobs safe” or so
they were told by union leaders like Ken Jackson and Tony Woodley of the TGWU union. Many
workers didn’t believe their assurances even then and these union leaders were booed
and jeered at a mass meeting. Only the intervention of a senior BMW official that allowed
these union leaders to carry the vote to accept the plan.
When
the bosses came back for another 2,400 redundancies last October, the same union leaders
told them that “it was the only way”.
Workers
at the plant believe it should be business as usual and that they don’t want anything
to do with this asset-stripping company, Alchemy
The
New Labour government, the most vigorous advocates of the global capitalist market, were
trampled on and treated with contempt by BMW and are squirming with embarrassment at their
blind faith in capitalism.
BMW
have already axed 10,000 jobs. Up to 50,000 jobs could go in the West Midlands alone. But
the Labour government claims it is impotent in the face of this catastrophe.
Faced
with a similar situation in the 1970s, the Heath Tory government nationalised Rolls-Royce
in 24 hours to save jobs. But Blair’s government’s allegiance to the capitalist
system means it won’t lift a finger to save one job.
Rover
workers must demand that their unions turn action into deeds and launch a programme of
action to defend every job. This should include:
*
No job losses, no asset stripping of Longbridge and Rover.
*
No breaking up of Rover and sale of Land Rover to Ford.
*
No transfer of Mini production from Longbridge to Cowley without the agreement of the
workers.
*
End business secrets. Open the books to find out what has happened to all the profits and
government aid of the last 20 years.
*
Rover’s renationalisation under democratic workers’ control and management.
KEN
LIVINGSTONE’S present-day popularity comes partly from the perception of his battles
against Thatcher’s Tories as Greater London Council (GLC) leader from 1981 to 1986.
By
Roger Shrives
In October 1981 the GLC introduced Fare’s Fair, a radical policy to cut London’s transport fares, subsidising them through the rates.
Tory
Bromley council took the GLC to court over Fare’s Fair and the Law Lords abolished
the scheme as ‘illegal’ in December 1981. Fares were forced up until Livingstone
negotiated a new compromise a year later, which only partly restored some of the
GLC’s reforms.
Socialist
Party members (then Militant supporters) argued at the time that Livingstone and other GLC
leaders needed to develop a strategy to mobilise mass opposition to the Tories.
Militant
supporters wrote a section of the 1981 GLC manifesto which pointed out that Tory
governments don’t listen to pleas, only to pressure.
It
said that if the GLC faced government opposition it must “appeal to the labour and
trade union movement to support its stand. Mass opposition to Tory policies led by a
Labour GLC could become a focal point of a national campaign involving other Labour
councils, against the cuts.”
On
Fare’s Fair Livingstone unfortunately didn’t mobilise the opposition of the
unions who faced job losses but relied on using PR agencies, publicity and lobbying
campaigns. Nonetheless, many Londoners still remember this period affectionately.
The
policies of Livingstone and other left leaders (with the exception of Liverpool and
Lambeth) led to serious failings in the next big battle.
From
1983 Thatcher wanted to abolish the metropolitan county councils, especially the GLC, and
crush the independence of all local authorities by
‘capping’ rates (the pre-poll tax local property tax).
This
policy cut central government support for local councils. It tried to make ratepayers,
especially the middle class, rebel against ‘high-spending’ left councils.
LIVERPOOL
COUNCIL, where Militant supporters had a sizeable influence, fought Thatcher’s plans
boldly. It led a mass movement of the unions and local residents, including huge
demonstrations.
They
fought to set a deficit budget, a policy of maintaining jobs and services, not by pushing
up rates but by demanding that the government fund their deficit. This was very popular
and mobilised support for the council on the basis of specific proposals such as a massive
housebuilding programme.
If
other Labour councils had followed such a programme and linked it to mass action,
including strikes, this could have spearheaded a real fightback by local Labour councils.
The
GLC and other soft-left led councils had a policy of refusing to set a rate. This made it
harder to co-ordinate different councils’ opposition as every council would have a
different date of bankruptcy.
They
also favoured a fall-back of massive rate rises, which put much of the cost back onto
ordinary working-class people.
However,
if the councils had stood together, Thatcher’s talk of surcharging and bankrupting
rebel councillors would have been idle threats.
Livingstone,
unfortunately, offered merely symbolic opposition including sending Valentine’s cards
of protests to Tory ministers. Even when the Tories stripped the GLC of powers such as
education (the Inner London Education Authority [ILEA] was Britain’s biggest) and
then abolished it, there was no attempt to build a genuine mass struggle against it.
In
March 1985, the GLC and ILEA led the left councils’ retreat. Livingstone fixed a rate
which included cuts, blaming other London boroughs for leaving them isolated, which was
nonsense as one London borough, Hackney, had refused to set a rate only the week before.
In
fact the GLC leaders were anxious to avoid battle with the government, fearing legal
action from the Tories, including a five-year ban on holding public office. The next year,
1986, the Tories abolished the GLC and ILEA.
Liverpool
and Lambeth were still fighting. The GLC’s defection delighted the Tories and cost
the councils which kept up resistance - and their workers - dearly. By the end of 1985,
even Liverpool had had to make a tactical retreat and local councils were subsequently
reduced to mere appendages of central government.
Livingstone,
even in his left-wing days, never saw the need to build a movement amongst the working
class. Workers are still paying for that misjudgement.
Liverpool:
The City that Dared to Fight by Peter Taaffe and Tony Mulhearn - available from Socialist
Books, £6.95, 020 8988 8789.