December 2005
Page11
Worker-Run
Factories:
What Next?...Continued from previous page 10
The Trotskyists have another solution. According to an article in the October Le Monde Diplomatique: "During 2002 there was a lively debate on whether revived businesses should get involved in capitalist markets.
A Trotskyist minority called for nationalisation under worker control. It took over four businesses, including Brukman, a garment factory in Buenos Aires, and Zenon, a tile manufacturer in Neuquén. The workers involved saw the rescue as a first step towards a socialist system in which the state would control economic planning. The hard-left parties associated with them did not believe that cooperatives could survive in a capitalist market" (mondediplo.com/2005/10/13survey).
It is certainly true that cooperatives will never be able to outcompete ordinary capitalist enterprises, but the Trotskyists'
alternative of the state subsidising the recuperated enterprises, without requiring them to compete in the marketplace, just
to provide jobs is even more unrealistic - and has nothing to do with socialism. (It is more than likely, however, that this is just another of the Trotskyists' dishonest "transitional demands" which they know can't be achieved under capitalism but
offered as bait to obtain a following for their vanguard party.)
The fact is that there is no way out for workers within the capitalist system.
Not cooperatives, not reforms, not trade unions. At most these can only make their situation a little less unbearable. As long
as capitalism lasts workers will have to find a source of money one way or another and so will always be in a dependent and
precarious position.But a number of lessons can be drawn from the recuperated enterprises movement in Argentina.
Firstly, that built into capitalism is a class struggle between those who own the means of wealth production and those
who don't and who are therefore forced by economic necessity to sell their ability to work to those who do. This class struggle is not just over the price and conditions of sale of the commodity workers are selling.
Ultimately, it's about control over the means of production. If, as happened in Argentina after the economic melt-down of December 2001, capitalists abandon their factories or, as happened in Russia in 1917, Spain in 1936, and Hungary in 1956, the capitalist state is temporarily incapable of protecting capitalist property, then the workers more or less spontaneously take over their workplaces and keep production going.
Workers are not going to let themselves starve: if the means of production are there, and there's no state to stop them
using them, they'll go ahead and use them, even if they have no revolutionary pretensions. However, as soon as the state
has got its act together again, then it is in a position to confront the workers and re- impose access to the means of production only on its terms.
Which leads to the second lesson: the importance of who controls the state. At the moment, in Argentina as elsewhere,
this is in the hands of people favourable to the continuation of capitalism, itself a reflection of the fact that most workers too
don't see any alternative to capitalism. The state, therefore, upholds legal private property rights. The importance of
political power is in fact fully recognised by the recuperated enterprises movement. This is why they are calling for the law on property rights to be changed so as to recognise the property rights of the workers cooperatives which are running
recuperated enterprises; which will only happen if they can get the elected law- makers to do so, either by pressuring them
from outside or by electing ones favourable to a change in the law. This iswhy, too, they want people to petition the
President of Argentina.
The end of capitalism can only come as a result of a consciously socialist political movement winning control of
political power with a view to abolishing all capitalist property rights and ushering in the common ownership and democratic
control of the means of production. The preconditions for ending capitalism are a majority socialist consciousness and
workers democratically self-organised in a large-scale socialist party. Neither of which, unfortunately, existed in Argentina.
Which is why the recuperated enterprises movement there has proved a dead-end and why the workers cooperatives it gave rise to are now forced to compromise and integrate themselves into capitalism to survive.
ADAM BUICK
Cooking
the
Books (1)
the
Books (1)
Pensioned
Off
According to the government and the capitalist media, there is a "pensions crisis" in that, given the growing proportion of retired people in the population, the capitalist class is not going to be able to afford to maintain pensioners at the same
level as existing ones. Therefore, the argument goes, people must set aside more of their current income to purchase future
pension rights. And they must retire later.
It seems to make sense. If there are more retired people compared to those at work, surely that must mean that those at
work have to work more and/or consume less? This would be true but for one thing: it ignores the point that over time productivity increases, even if only fairly slowly. This means that more wealth can be produced by a workforce of the same size, out of which, in theory, both current wages and future pensions can be maintained at the same level as today.
"In theory" because the fact that this could happen is no guarantee that it will. But it does show that the capitalist class
can't plead poverty here. They can afford to maintain pensions at current levels.
That this is so was confirmed in a report, The Ageing Population, Pensions and Wealth Creation, released on 31
October by a pro-business think-tank, Tomorrow's Company. According to the BBC News of that day:
"One of the report's authors Philip Sadler said there was no 'ageing crisis'. 'As a society we can afford to grow old,' he said.
'Rising productivity will outweigh any negative influence on living standards from an ageing population.'"
The report asked "how can a working population that is expected to remain around 27 to 28 million create sufficient
wealth over the next 35 years to support an additional five million pensioners?" and answers:
"The main factor affecting our ability to afford an ageing population without the erosion of living standards is the
impact of rising productivity. More than anything else, rising productivity explains the paradox that ageing societies have
simultaneously become wealthier. At a mere 1.75 per cent productivity growth peryear, by 2045, an average British worker will be about twice as productive as today.
In other words, a doubling of new value and resources being produced while the number and share of over 64s
grows by less than 50 per cent." What is interesting in a report from a pro-business lobby is that it acknowledges
that it is the "working population" who are the "wealth creators" rather than the usual guff we get from such groups about
entrepreneurs being wealth creators.
Wealth can only be created by human beings applying their mental and physical energies to materials that originally came from nature.But they do write as if there was a direct transfer from the "working
population" to the pensioners. In fact, this only happens indirectly, as the wealth is taken from its direct producers, the
workers, by the capitalist class and then transferred by them, via the state and pension funds, to pensioners. So pensions come out of profits, not wages.
Which is why how to pay for pensions is a problem for the capitalist class.
However they solve it, what we get will never be enough to compensate for a lifetime of exploitation.
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Socialist Party