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The Revolution that wasn’t
many people still believing in
the theory...Continued from previous page
What if . . .
So its useful to consider what would have happened if, for example, the
Renault car factories had been taken over by the workers who worked in
them.
What we assume here is a situation where theoretically, the wage
labour/capital relationship operating in the Renault car company would
have altered and become a kind of workers’ cooperative, with all the
affairs of this car production unit under the control of the workers.
There is of course no question here that this has happened as a result
of a decision by a socialist majority to capture political control and
enact the common ownership of all means of production. There has been
no social decision to abolish the market and to establish direct
cooperation between people in producing goods directly for the needs of
the community, with no exchange of any kind and therefore no use of
money. What we have assumed, in line with the objectives of the main
activists in France in 1968, is that workers have succeeded in taking
over the Renault car company together with many other factories.
The present Prime Minister of France (Michel Rocard) was a left wing
activist in 1968 and a little later on he said this about workers’
control:
“We must aim at self management, that is, the management of
factories by the workers themselves… Workers control can only be
imposed in strikes where the balance of forces is overwhelming, that is
to say, where the unity of the workers is strongest.”
So we’ve assumed that these workers have successfully confronted the
forces of the state and imposed this workers control, which is “the
management of the factories by the workers themselves.”
The market would still be operating and these workers would be selling
the cars which they put together in the factories and the sale of these
cars would give them an income which would enable them to live, to
support their families, to buy the food, to pay the rent and the
mortgage and all the other costs involved in living in a market system.
They would have a lot of other costs as well. Renault cars are not
simply made in Renault car factories. In fact, in the main, these
factories are only the places of final assembly. Of all the labour
required for the production of a Renault are only a small proportion is
supplied in these factories where the final assembly takes place. If
the car industry in France is anything like British car production,
Renault would have hundreds of sub-contractors supplying components.
You only have to think of the materials in cars—various metals such as
copper, aluminium and steel, glass, paints, plastics, rubber, to
realise that the different kinds of labour required for the production
of a car are dispersed throughout a world wide network of productive
links. You’ve got copper mining in Zambia, the mining of iron ore in
Australia, the plastics pre-suppose the world oil industry, the paints,
the world chemical industry, rubber from Malaysia, allocations of
energy and world transport. Car production is social production and by
that we mean production organised on a world scale.
What this means for these workers in France who have taken over
factories where final assembly takes place is that they are the sellers
of cars but they also constitute a massive market, a market for all the
worked-up materials and components which they have to buy in.
These workers will be in competition with other car manufacturers—Fiat
in Italy—Volkswagen in Germany—Nissan in Japan—Volvo in Sweden—General
Motors in America—Ford and BMC in Britain. So in order to maintain
their livelihoods they will be in intense competition with these other
companies, trying to sell as many cars as possible and trying to
capture a bigger share of the market at the expense of the capitalists
and workers in other sections of the world car industry.
They would have to maintain rigorous efficiency in line with the
efficiency of these other companies. In any situation where their costs
were disproportionately high resulting in relatively higher prices they
would lose sales and there would have to economise and perhaps some
workers would have to go. Where there was overproduction in relation to
market capacity again there would have to be cutbacks. They could not
go on incurring the accumulating costs of producing cars which they
could not sell. It would then be a matter of them democratically
deciding which of them is going to be out of a job.
However, for the moment we are not concerned with the realistic
possibilities, we’re assuming that these workers find themselves in a
situation where the market for cars goes on expanding. This being the
case they will face the problem of financing expanded production so as
to take advantage of it. Perhaps they will raise the capital on the
share market. This of course is impossible. No bank or any investor
would dream of investing in an outfit which had seized the capital
funds of a company.
Functionaries of capital
You can of course see where all this is heading. In the impossible
circumstances where these workers have been able to expropriate a
company like Renault—and succeeded in managing for their own gain as
distinct from the previous owners—they would be responding to the same
economic pressures faced by the previous capitalist board of directors.
They would be acting as the functionaries of capital; different
personalities maybe but exactly the same economic role.
What we’ve actually been describing is a set of mechanisms by which the
capitalist structure of production maintains itself as an exclusive
capitalist structure. Goods are produced throughout a world wide
division of labour organised in different production units. The process
through which this structure maintains itself as an exclusively
capitalist structure is a process of constant economic selection.
Whether or not a particular production unit can continue to exist as
part of the structure is constantly tested and is determined by the
economic viability of the unit.
In every day terms this is matter of income against expenditure. If
income exceeds expenditure then the unit can continue to form a part of
the whole structure. Conversely, if expenditure exceeds income then it
must disappear from the scene.
This process of economic selection may be temporarily upset by the
traumas of political or industrial upheaval. In a period of chaos, you
may get a change of the people in power. But when production and
distribution re-commences, as sooner or later it must, the economic
forces of capitalism are immediately brought back into play, so that
daily book keeping, cost effectiveness, and the irresistible pressure
to sustain income over expenditure again act to maintain production as
a capitalist structure.
The particular ways in which a production unit is organised makes no
difference whatsoever to this process of economic selection, It can be
the usual capitalist company, it can be a so-called workers cooperative
under workers’ control. It can be a monastery producing herbs or honey
for sale.
The decision-making procedures can be authoritarian or democratic, it
makes no difference to the fact that whatever the production unit is,
in order to exist it must be economically viable. This is the process
of economic selection by which the present structure of production is
maintained as an exclusively capitalist structure.
The idea that workers cooperatives under workers’ control is socialism
or is in any way a step towards socialism is an illusion.
Bringing the subject back to 1968 when these arguments were much more
in the air of course members of the Socialist Party were encouraged by
the fact that a lot of action was taking place. But at the same time
there was great disappointment that all this protest was being diverted
into this useless activity based on the objective of workers’ control.
The only practical way to get a change from capitalism to socialism is
to have a majority of socialists acting democratically to capture
control of the state and then from this position of control, to remove
the capitalist features from social production through the enactment of
common ownership.
PIETER LAWRENCE
(from a talk given in May 1988)
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